Part of the problem may be in the definition of _Left_ and maybe even of _book_. On this mailing list, for example, if someone were to mention a book about "animal rights" or radical ecology, they might well be consigned to the category of crypto-Nazis. Only the traditional categories of the Left need apply, etc. Furthermore, a good deal of writing is now taking place on the Net, bypassing academic / bourgeois control of book publishing. Though much of it is silly, it is not necessarily all bad. On the other hand, the Net so far has not lent itself to authoritative tomes like _Capital_ or _Being_and_Nothingness_ (as far as I know). I don't know as I miss them; I do not recall them doing much for me in the past, but I certainly recall people trying to use knowledge of them to, so to speak, pull rank and shut other people up.