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  • Monthly Review Essays
  • A 19th-century advertisement for Soluble Pacific Guano, a potent fertilizer made from seabird droppings. Produced by the Pacific Guano Company, this product was marketed to farmers as a "remunerative investment" that secured large crops of corn, potatoes, tobacco, and other vegetables.

    The Smell of Progress: A Brief History of Bird Droppings Ruling the World

    Originally published: The Climate Historian on February 25, 2026 by The Climate Historian (more by The Climate Historian) (Posted Feb 27, 2026)

    Guano, global inequality, and the long history of shifting environmental costs from centres of power to distant and expendable regions.

Monthly Review Essays

  • Parallel Universes
    Andy Merrifield

    Anybody who’s ever leafed through Finnegans Wake will quickly recognize that we’re not dealing here with a standard novel, just as anybody leafing through Marx’s Capital will know we’re not dealing with standard economics.

Lost & Found

  • Honor the Vietnamese, Not Those Who Killed Them
    Michael D. Yates A Vietnamese stamp depicting two Vietnamese resistance fighters shooting down a US Army helicopter.

    Only the courage of those who opposed the war, including the soldiers who did so at great risk, should be respected.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
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