In this lively and lucid monograph, Matthews locates the Situationist International at an intersection where literary, artistic, socio-political, and theoretical forces knot and tangle. Tracing the aesthetic and intellectual antecedents of the SI to the 19th century (from Hegelian-Marxism to Symbolist poetry) into the present, Arts and Politics of the Situationist International 1957–1972, is a vivid contribution to a body of research reconsidering the histories and tactics of revolt. Yet, Matthews is offering us much more than historiography. This book is also a nudge for an era sorely in need of renewing its aesthetic and revolutionary imagination. If the twenty-first century is indeed haunted by the ghosts of revolutionary dreams that failed to materialize, Matthews is a sober-minded necromancer raising the spirit of the SI’s visionary potentialities. Arts and Politics of the SI may very well inspire the reader to put down the book and pick up a brick.