Jonathan Neale's account of the protests in Genoa in July 2001 is one of the most frightening books you're likely to read. The kind of things he describes - police brutality, the attacking of protesters and the killing of one of them - when they do appear in books, are usually fictional, or happened before you were born or else very far away. But these were perpetrated just last year, in a city in Italy, against largely peaceful protestors, including young Irish people, by a police force of a fellow-EUs member states.
Neale, a veteran of 1960s political protest in the US (and an activist in every decade since), now lives in Britain and was one of the main organisers of the 300,000-strong, anti-capitalist protests which disrupted the G8 summit in Genoa last July and led to the shooting dead by police of an activist, Carlo Giuliani.
Neale's is the perspective of a veteran socialist activist fired by a new enthusiasm and optimism following years of low morale on the left. Neale is also a novelist and in You Are G8, We Are 6 Billion he employs his considerable narrative skills to give a gripping first-hand account of the protest, containing most of the ingredients of a war-time thriller.
From the planning meetings and pre-protest training (the discipline expected of participants is remarkable), he builds suspense through the exhilaration - and fear - on the marches to the horrifying climax and its aftermath of shock and confusion: all exacerbated by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's backing for Italian security forces.
Astonishingly, an attack on a school where protesters were sleeping was carried out in a way that ensured full media coverage. The intention Neale feels was clear: to terrorise Italians with the message that, as he puts it, "no one is safe when capitalism is threatened".
So what motivated so many to travel to Genoa and face the batons and tear gas? What is it that Western governments resort to such appalling measures to defend? These questions were lost in the smoke of frenzied media coverage which concentrated almost exclusively on violence. Intervening chapters in Neale's book seek to provide answers by placing the battle between the G8 and the protestors in the context of third world debt, global warming, privatisation, oil wars, nuclear weapons and AIDS. Using straightforward language and drawing on his seemingly vast experience of humanitarian work, he links these problems to corporate greed at the heart of the G8-led world economy.
While Neale's story is dark and frightening, it's ultimately hopeful. He outlines a vision of a different kind of world and concludes that the vicious response of the Italian state, and the approval of the other G8 leaders, are signs that the anti-capitalist movement is seen as a real threat. "We won!" in Genoa, he proclaims and "we are winning" the ongoing struggle.
Neale's assertion that the diverse strands of leftwing activism have been reborn as a happier, more complementary, less divided international force is illustrated in much greater depth in From ACT UP to the WTO. Similarly written by those who do the protesting, this book also manages to eschew 1960s protest nostalgia and deliver a provocative and hope-filled overview. But in other ways it is a very different book.
A university course book for US students and activists, Shepard and Hayduk's ambitious, all-encompassing project surveys the history of ACT UP (the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power), which as early as 1987 identified the interests of big business as the key obstacle to tackling the AIDS crisis. It traces the various US grassroots struggles that led from there to the huge protests at the World Trade Organisation meetings in Seattle in 1999.
With colourful contributions from a liquorice allsorts bag of lefties, lesbians, anarchists, academics and others, including Naomi Klein, this compilation of essays offers a comprehensive and diverse picture of modern activism.
This might make it an ideal present for the activist/student/socialist in your life, but for the general reader, Neale's book offers an informative, accessible and thought-provoking critique of global capitalism combined with an intimate and inspiring account of the battle between the defenders of that order and those seeking to bring it down.
The world we know came about largely as a result of the protests of the past. And as history is clearly still happening, these books point to where we're headed next.
• William Hederman is a freelance journalist
You Are G8, We Are 6 Billion: The Truth Behind The Genoa Protests. By Jonathan Neale. Vision, 285pp. £10.99 sterling