James Ledbetter – författare

Karl Marx (1818-1883) is arguably the most famous political philosopher of all time, but he was also one of the great foreign correspondents of the nineteenth century. During his eleven years writing for the New York Tribune (their collaboration began in 1852), Marx tackled an abundance of topics, from issues of class and the state to world affairs. Particularly moving pieces highlight social inequality and starvation in Britain, while others explore his groundbreaking views on the slave and opium trades - Marx believed Western powers relied on these and would stop at nothing to protect their interests. Above all, Marx’s fresh perspective on nineteenth-century events encouraged his readers to think, and his writing is surprisingly relevant today.

When the stock market crashed in 1929, Benjamin Roth was a young lawyer in Youngstown, Ohio. After he began to grasp the magnitude of what had happened to American economic life, he decided to set down his impressions in his diary. This collection of those entries reveals another side of the Great Depression,one lived through by ordinary, middle-class Americans, who on a daily basis grappled with a swiftly changing economy coupled with anxiety about the unknown future. Roth's depiction of life in time of widespread foreclosures, a schizophrenic stock market, political unrest and mass unemployment seem to speak directly to readers today.