Charles H
Kerr Publishing Company is one of the oldest, continuously running,
workered-owned book publishing company. It is perhaps one of the best
single sources for authentic IWW history and critical study. Some of
these publications are almost a century old, whereas others have been
published within the last year. All of them are just as relevant today as
they were a century ago. All titles are paperback unless
indicated.
Easy Search Index:
- Featured Selections
- Labor Classics Series
- Revolutionary Classics Series
- Sixties Series
- Bughouse Square Series
- Lost Utopias Series
- Other Books About and Featuring Discussions on the IWW
- Miscellaneous Books of Interest
Rebel Voices: An IWW
Anthology - Edited by Joyce L. Kornbluh; Introduction by Fred
Thompson; "A Short Treatise on Wobbly Cartoons" by Franklin Rosemont.
No group in American labor history has exerted so profound, widespread and enduring an influence as the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), known as the Wobblies, founded in Chicago in 1905.
Welcoming women, Blacks and immigrants long before most other unions, the Wobblies from the start were labor's outstanding pioneers and innovators, unionizing hundreds of thousands of workers previously regarded as "unorganizable." Wobblies organized the first sitdown strike (at General Electric, Schenectady, 1906), the first major auto strike (6,000 Studebaker workers, Detroit, 1911), the first strike to shut down all three coalfields in Colorado (1927) and the first "no-fare" transit-workers' job-action (Cleveland, 1944). With their imaginative, colorful and world-famous strikes and free-speech fights, the IWW wrote many of the brightest pages in the annals of workingclass emancipation.
Read Howard Zinn's 1965 review of the 1964 edition, The Wobbly Spirit, featured in The Howard Zinn Reader.
464 Pages; Illustrated - $24.00
(Temporarily out of stock.)
Joe Hill: The IWW and the Making of a Revolutionary
Workingclass Counterculture - By Franklin Rosemont - Bughouse
Square Series.
JOE HILL (1877-1915) is the best-known figure in the heroic history of the Indus trial Workers of the World (a.k.a. Wobblies). U.S. labor's most worldrenowned martyr and celebrated songwriter, he is remembered above all for his songs in the Little Red Song Book "The Preacher and the Slave" ("Pie in the Sky"), "Mr Block," "There Is Power in a Union," and many more that are still popular on picketlines today.
Franklin Rosemont's important new book presents a fresh and in-depth study of the life and work of the famous Wobbly bard, and of the revolutionary counterculture he came to personify.
Examining Hill's status as a "near-mythic" figure in history as well as his enormous influence-on Wob artists; other radicals, songwriters, and poets; on movements as varied as the 1910s Chicago Renaissance and the 1950s Beat Generation-Rosemont also examines the many appearances by Hill and the IWW in popular culture, including mass-market mysteries, science-fiction, and rock'n'roll. In chapters on "The Hobo Contribution to Critical Theory," "Wobblies Against Whiteness," "Forerunners of Earth First! and Eco-Socialism," and "Surrealism, Wobbly Style" he argues that Hill's legacy -the profound but playful old-time Wobbly counterculture-is still the "most important inspiration and model for a new revolutionary movement" today.
"The fine chapter on Hill's involvement in the Mexican Revolution is alone well worth the cover price.... No doubt about it: This is the best book ever written about Joe Hill."
"In these 600-plus pages there is not one bit oftedious reading. This is an important book."
656 Pages; Illustrated - $19.00
Labor
Struggles in the Deep South & Other Writings - By Covington Hall,
edited and introduced by David Roediger - Labor Classics
Series.
This is the first publication of Labor Struggles which has long circulated in manuscript copies. Writing about events in which he played a central role and about the broader history of Southern labor, Hall describes many of the forest hours of integrated industrial unionism in the U.S. and the role of the IWW in creating a fragile unity across racial lines.
David Roediger's introduction expands our knowledge of Hall, one of the leading members of the IWW, and his influence, and assess his legacy in the light of current day struggles against white supremacy and wage slavery.
"A unique account of the hidden class and race conflicts that punctuated that region's history during the first wave of industrialization [1900-1925]. It is also the engaging autobiography ofa remarkable radical named Covington hall, who broke with the Deep south traditions and who captured in moving words and poetic images the hard lives of black and white workers and the bloody fights they waged against an oppressive social order."
262 Pages; Illustrated - $14.00
Starving Amidst too Much & Other IWW
Writings on the Food Industry - by T-Bone Slim, L. S. Chumley, Jim
Seymour, and Jack Sheridan; edited and introduced by Peter Rachleff,
Foreword by Carlos Cortez - Labor Classics Series.
This is a book about the irrepressible conflict between the poorly-paid workers who actually feed the world and the parasitical multi-billionaire corporate powers that make the rules and grab the profits. Reproduced here are rare classic documents on the "food question" by four old-time members of North America's most creative, colorful and uncompromising union: the revolutionary Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), known as Wobblies.
Here is the greatest Wob writer of them all, the one and only T-Bone Slim, whose detailed critique of the industry-chockful of penetrating insight and knockout black humor-is reminiscent of Jonathan Swift and Benjamin Péret
Organizer L. S. Chumley portrays the horrid living and working conditions of hotel and restaurant workers circa 1918. Here, too, is Wobbly troubadour Jim Seymour, with his inspired saga of "The Dishwasher" and reflections on the possibilities of a radically different diet.
Jack Sheridan's survey of the role of food in ancient and modern civilization is a crash-course in the materialist conception of history at its Wobbly soapboxer best.
In the introduction, historian/activist Peter Rachleff traces the history of food-workers' self-organization, and brings the book up to date with a look at current point-ofproduction struggles against an ecocidal agri-business and the union-busting fast-food chains.
"What the WobbIies of yesteryear had to say about the all important "food question" is still relevant in our time."
"The pamphlets, columns, and articles collected in this volume make available to us a rich wellspring of ideas. . . offer today's workers a first class breakfast, a place to begin consideration of all our places in the food chain, from farming to processing and production to the preparation and serving of meals The metaphor reminds us of the ways that workers and consumers are bound in their work and by their most fundamental of bodily practices-eating-by broad economic and social decisions from which workers' input has been excluded. We are bound by these chains of the food industry. T-Bone Slim, L.S. Chumley, Jack Sheridan, and Jim Seymour offer us acute analyses of these industries and processes, and, even more importantly, they offer us access to the IWW vision of how to break these chains, how to change the world."
128 pages; Illustrated - $12.00
Lucy Parsons,
Freedom, Equality, and Solidarity; Writings & Speeches, 1878-1937 -
Edited & Introduced by Gale Ahrens with an afterword by Roxanne
Dunbar-Ortiz - Revolutionary Classics Series.
"MORE DANGEROUS THAN 1000 RIOTERS!" That's what the Chicago police called Lucy ParsonsAmerica's most defiant and persistent anarchist agitator, whose cross-country speaking tours inspired hundreds of thousands of working people. Her friends and admirers included William orris, Peter Kropotkin, "Big Bill" Haywood, Ben Reitman, Sam Dolgoff -and the groups in which she was active were just as varied: the Knights of Labor, IWW, Dil Pickle Club, International Labor Defense, & others. Here for the first time is a hefty selection of her powerful writings & speeches-on anarchism, women, race matters, class war, the IWW, and the U.S. injustice system.
"The most prominent black woman radical of the late nineteenth century, Lucy Parsons [was also] one of the brightest lights in the history of revolutionary socialism."
192 Pages - $17.00
Dancin' In The Streets - Anarchists,
Surrealists, Situationists & Provos in the 1960s as recorded In the pages
of Rebel Worker & Heat Wave - Edited with Introductions
by Franklin Rosemont and Charles Radcliffe - Sixties Series.
Most books on the 1960s focus on large liberal organizations and reformist politics. This one is unabashedly devoted to the far left of the far left. The Rebel Worker was a mimeo'd magazine started by young members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) in Chicago, 1964.
While square critics derided them as "the left wing of the Beat Generation," The Rebel Worker and its sister journal Heatwave in London became well known for their highly original revolutionaryperspective, innovative social/cultural criticism, and uninhibited class-war humor. Rejecting traditional left dogma, and proudly affirming the influence of Bugs Bunny and the Incredible Hulk, these playful rebels against work expanded the critique of Capital into a critique of daily life and developed a truly radical theory and practice, rooted in poetry, provocation, blues, jazz and the pleasure principle. Active in strikes, free-speech fights and other tumults, they also introduced countless readers to writings by surrealists, situationists, IWWs, anarchists, libertarian Marxists, Provos, Japanese Zengakuren, etc.
Here for the first time in book-form are dozens of selections from both of these legendary journals, with introductions: Franklin Rosemont (editor of The Rebel Worker) and Charles Radcliffe (editor of Heatwave).
"Look here for links between the Beat Generation "Mimeo Revolution" and the later Underground Press, but also between traditional Marxist theory and the new "critique of everyday life" developed by an increasingly defiant and countercultural young left that made Martha and the Vandellas' "Dancin' in the Streets "its international anthem."
"The dreamkillers won't have finished working over the 1960s until they flatten the soaring visions of that decade into petty quarrels between vanguardists and aspiring Democratic Party functionaries. They won't be done until they turn the movement into one without humor, without poetry, and indeed almost without motion. But dreamkilling just got lots harder. This brilliant collection gives us back the audacity, imagination, energy, laughs, wildness and chance that animated freedom dreams that are as alive today as they were 40 years ago."
450 pages; Illustrated - $17.00
Hobohemia; Emma Golman, Lucy Parsons, Ben Reitman & Other
Agitators & Outsiders in 1920s/30s Chicago - By Frank O. Beck;
Introduction by Franklin Rosemont - Bughouse Square Series.
From the 1910s through the Depression 30s, when Chicago was the undisputed hobo capital of the United States, a small north side neighborhood known as Towertown was the vital center of an extraordinary cultural/political ferment. It was home to Bughouse Square (the nation's most renowned outdoor free-speech center), Ben Reitman's Hobo College, and the fabulous Dil Pickle Club, a highly unorthodox institution of higher learning that doubled as the craziest nightclub in the world.
Frank O. Beck's Hobohemia contains a long-time Towertowner's vivid reminiscences of this colorful, dynamic, creative and radical community that flourished for a generation despite constant onslaughts from the Red Squad, the Vice Squad, bourgeois journalists, fundamentalists and other bigots.
Originally published in 1956, Hobohemia has long been out of print and hard to find. This new edition is long overdue, for the book is still one of the best firsthand accounts of a unique place and time.
128 Pages - $12.00
From Bughouse Square to the Beat Generation;
Ravings of Slim Brundage - Edited By Franklin Rosemont - Bughouse
Square Series.
Hobo, Wobbly, Soapboxer, veteran of Bughouse Square and the Dil Pickle, "little theater" playwright/actor, president emeritus of the Hobo College in the 1930s, housepainter, humorist and chief architect of the scandalous Beatnik Party during the 1960 elections, Brundage was very much a maker of of the history he writes about.
Franklin Rosemont's introduction discusses the IWW/hobohemian roots of the College, outlines the Janitor's radical (and Dadaist) critique of education, and relates Brundage's life, the College and Chicago's hobo/beat scenes to the broader struggles for a better, freer, truly eqalitarian and non-exploitative society.
"A very fine book on a great character and an important part of our real culture."
"Long before talk radio, opinionated Chicagoans declaimed at Bughouse Square (the Near North Side soapbox forum) or the Bug Club on the South Side. When forced indoors, debaters assembled in saloons or salons such as the Montparnasse, Seven Arts, Dil (sic) Pickle Club and the College of Complexes. This new book gives an inside view of this lively bit of history."
"If you wish to see the so-called 'beat generation' in action, drop in at the College of Complexes. "
176 Pages - $14.00
The Rise & Fall of the Dil
Pickle Club; Jazz-Age Chicago's Wildest & Most Outrageously Creative
Hobohemian Nightspot - Edited & Introduced by Franklin Rosemont -
Bughouse Square Series.
What do Lucy Parsons, Clarence Darrow, Carl Sandburg, Mary MacLane, Lawrence Lipton, Elizabeth Davis (Queen of the Hoboes), Jun Fujita, Sherwood Anderson, Ralph Chaplin, Katherine Dunham, Djuna Barnes, Kenneth Rexroth, and Slim Brundage have in common? They were all Dil Picklers! And what was the Dil Pickle? Founded in 1914 by former Wobbly Jack Jones, Irish revolutionist Jim Larkin, and a group of fantastic IWW-oriented Bughouse Square hobos and soapboxers, the Dil Pickle in just a few years was widely recognized as the wildest, most playful, most creative, and most radical nightspot in the known universe-especially after Dr Ben Reitman (Emma Goldman's former lover and press agent) joined the club in 1917.
In this book-the first ever devoted to one of this country's most colorful and best-loved counterinstitutions-Franklin Rosemont has collected forty-one reminiscences of the Dil Pickle by poets, artists, journalists, novelists, hobos, scholars, anarchists, wobblies, and other assorted radicals and oddballs. Among them are accounts by the club's founders, habitues, visitors, and even a few hardhearted critics. Few of these texts have ever been reprinted since their original publication in old, hard-to-find books and periodicals. Three appear here for the first time.
Included are lively portrayals of the Dil Pickle as "A Most Important Part of the Mythology of Chicago" (Kenneth Rexroth), "A Temple of the Disinherited" (Emanuel Carnevali), "A Hobo Jungle of Ideas" (Alexander Ebin), "The Flaming Crater of Chicago's Revolution in the Arts" (Vincent Starrett), and "Bohemia in All its Glory" (John Drury)--and much more.
Franklin Rosemont's introduction provides the fullest account so far of the Dil Pickle's chaotic history-its background in "Chicago Idea" anarchism and earlier free speech forums, as well as its close association with the IWW and the Charles H. Kerr Company-and goes on to explore the role of the Picklers in the arts and the "Chicago Renaissance," along with its meaning(s) for our own troubled times.
190 Pages; Illustrated - $14.00
The Golden Book Of
Springfield - By Vachel Lindsay -- Lost Utopias Series.
Vachel Lindsay (1879-1931) was the most intensely romantic US poet of his generation. Less well known is the fact that Lindsay was also a radical critic of the white supremacy, greed, misery, brutality, ugliness and emptiness inherent in US capitalist culture. His only novel, The Golden Book - now back in print after over 80 years of shameful neglect - is a relentless dreamer's all-out assault on the stupidity and bigotry of Main Street USA. Linsay's Luciferian lyricism, incantatory and even shamanic; the carnivalesque enthusiasm and humor that he called the 'higher vaudeville'; and of course that zany, jubilant, self-contradictory mysticism that was all his own are amply evident in this radically nonconformist dram of the future.
In The Golden Book, the coffee houses, movie theaters, streets and parks of Springfield in the 'Mystic Year' 2018 are the setting for a valiant struggle to transform a village dominated by shady politicians, lynch-mobs, commercialism and cocaine into a new paradise. Ron Sakolsky's superb introduction, the most detailed examination yet of Lindsay's 'Johnny Appleseed utopianism', explores The Golden Book as a radical response to the Springfield Race Riot of 1908; relates the book to the utopias of Fourier, Ruskin, Bellamy, and others; and traces Lindsay's involvement in Chicago radicalism in the 1910s, as well as his affinities with anarchism, feminism, Black liberation, the IWW, and such poet radicals as Blake, Lautreamont, the surrealists, Langston Hughes and the Beats.
448 pages - $22.00
The Rambling Kid - By Charles Ashliegh;
introduction by Steve Kellerman.
Charles Ashleigh's novel, The Rambling Kid, is one of the best and most informative books concerning the IWW. It is also one of the rarest and hardest to find. First published in London, 1930, it has never been reissued and is practically impossible to locate, even in libraries.
Soapboxer, writer, poet, agitator, and publicist, the British-born Ashleigh was active in the IWW from 1912 until his deportation in nine years later. As a first-hand account of the Wobbly way of life in the 1910s, The Rambling Kid has few equals.
On The Road With The Wobblies - "Charles Ashleigh's semi-autobiographical novel fills a void in the record of the events that led to the federal government's brutal attempts to suppress the "One Big Union" during World War I. Ashleigh's characters ride alongside IWW job delegates, bindle-stiffs, and gandy dancers as they crisscross the country hopping freights en route to jobs and strikes and everything in between. In the tradition of The Milk and Honey Route, by Dean Stiff (Nels Anderson), The Main Stem, by William Edge, and Home to Harlem, by Claude McKay, The Rambling Kid offers an intimate glimpse into pre-World-War-1 workers' culture on the eve of the Russian Revolution. Steve Kellerman's superb introduction provides the critical and biographical context for understanding the importance of Ashleigh's work and the historical forces that produced The Rambling Kid."
302 Pages - $17.00
Crystal-Gazing The Amber Fluid & Other Wobbly Poems -
By Carlos Cortez.
Son of a Mexican Wobbly father and a German socialist-pacifist mother, Carlos Cortez served 2 years in the federal pen at Sandstone for refusing to fight the bosses (ie Second World) War, and shortly afterward joined the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Ever since - as poet, artist, editor and public speaker - he has been one of the union's best-known figures. This is the first collection of his poems - illustrated throughout with his powerful woodcuts and cartoons. Passionate tributes to Joe Hill and other Wobbly martyrs; lyrics protesting war and racial injustice; humorous assaults on modern technology and moving celebrations of biodiversity - all the poems of Carlos Cortez exemplify the old IWW slogan - Let's make this planet a good place to live. Eugene Nelson contributes a short Introductory essay -- $9.00
Direct Action & Sabotage - By Elizabeth
Gurley Flynn, Walker C. Smith, and William Trautmann.
These IWW pamphlets from the 1910s are reprinted here to reaffirm the IWW spirit of rank-and-file initiative and solidarity at a time when direct-action tactics are again stimulating debate. Action on the part of indigenous peoples throughout the world, anti-racists, environmental groups such as Earth First!, animal rights activists, the homeless, computer hackers, pirate radio broadcasters, as well as self-organization by rank-and-file workers and community struggles for self-determination are again challenging us to rethink these tactics.
120 Pages - $15.00
Syndicalism - By Earl C Ford and William Z Foster; Introduction
by James R. Barrett.
A controversial book by one-time members of the IWW who proposed a strategy later known as "boring from within", and briefly adopted, by the Communist Party as a strategy. This pamphlet touched off a major discussion within the IWW over strategy and tactics.
"In your hands you hold a little piece of dynamite, an explosive political pamphlet with a good deal of significance for the history of labor and radicalism in the United States. Syndicalism, first published in 1912, offers probably the most developed theory of pure syndicalism produced in the United States"
48 pages - $9.00
The Autobiography of
Mother Jones - By Mary "Mother" Jones, edited by Mary Field
Parton.
Mother Jones was one of the most colorful and best-known fighters for the cause of workers' rights from 1880 into her advanced years. By the time she wrote these memoirs, her battles on behalf of miners, against the evils of child labor, and for unionism in general had become legendary. Mother Jones attended the founding convention of the IWW.
"The most dangerous woman in America": That's what employers and politicians called Mother Jones. But rebellious working men and women loved her as they have never loved anyone else, before or since. Today more than ever those who are struggling for a truly free society are inspired by her exemplary courage and devotion to the cause of solidarity and freedom.
302 Pages - $12.00
Memoirs of a Wobbly - By Henry E.
McGuckin
The inside story of the Wobblies-how they hoboed; how they organized; how they ran their legendary strikes and free speech fights; how they went about fanning the flames of discontent.
The classic narrative of a lesser-known Wobbly hero who hopped freights all over the continent, saw action in the Paterson Silk Strike of 1913, and manned the jails during many a free speech fight. An IWW masterpiece that will fit in your pocket.
"These delightful memoirs add much fresh material to the data on INW history. McGuckin's whole story is mighty interesting reading."
96 Pages - $8.00
Haymarket Scrapbook - Edited by Dave
Roediger & Franklin Rosemon
This profusely illustrated anthology by many of today's finest labor and radical historians focuses on the most world-reverberating event in American labor history: the Haymarket Affair of 1886-87, and on the vast, incredibly varied and enduring influence it has exerted in the United States and across the globe. Haymarket Scrapbook contributors include William J. Adelman, Carlotta Anderson, Carolyn Ashbaugh, Paul Avrich, Alan Dawley, Heiner Becker, Sam Dolgoff, Richard Drinnon, George Esenwein, Philip Foner, Paul and Elizabeth Garon, Joseph Jablonski, Stuart Kaufman, Sidney Lens, Blaine McKinley, Bruce Nelson, Penelope Rosemont, Beryl Ruehl, Sal Salerno, Stephen Sapolsky, Morris U. Schappes, Diane Scherer, Richard Schneirov, Fred Thompson, Fred Whitehead-and many more!
"For the best insight into relations between old anarchist and socialist movements, and a hundred varieties of opinion swirling about them over the last century, get the Haymarket Scrapbook... a wonderful, big, fat compendium."
256 Pages; Illustrated - $19.00
Juice is Stranger Than Fiction;
The Writings of T-Bone Slim - Edited & Introduced by Franklin
Rosemont
The great IWW wordslinger, humorist & barge-captain, T-Bone Slim, hobo, IWW songwriter & Industrial Worker humor columnist, died under mysterious circumstances in 1942, this book is the first ever collection of his writings.
"T-Bone Slim blended proletarian humor, gypsy job skills and the beliefs in the commonwealth of toil. Along with John Henry, Paul Bunyan, Joe Hill and Mother Jones, he lives in legendary company, Rosemont's Introduction ties biography to Wobbly culture.... recaptures T-Bone's appeal."
"Gracias for the T-Bone Slim book! I loved everything in it."
"It's a rare pleasure to read wise comment on important matters, put so simply and directly. T-Bone Slim has a lot to tell us, and does it well."
160 Pages - $10.00
Fellow Worker, An Autobiography: The Life of Fred
Thompson - Compiled by Dave Roediger from the recollections of Fred W.
Thompson
This autobiography of Fred W. Thompson - Socialist, Wobbly, organizer, soapboxer, editor, class-war prisoner, educator, historian, and publisher - is an important contribution to the understanding of working-class radicalism in twentieth-century North America.
93 Pages; Illustrated - $12.00
Punching Out & Other Writings - By
Martin Glaberman, edited and introduced by Staughton Lynd.
Glaberman is the most important writer on labor matters in the United States during the second half of the Twentieth century. He developed distinctive concepts concerning the nature of trade unionism; the unfolding of working-class consciousness; and the forms of revolutionary organization appropriate to modern industrial society.
"Autoworker, historian, humorist, sociologist, poet, and baseball coach, Marty Glaberman had as close a knowledge of working people as any intellectual of his generation. He also had, as these wonderful collected writings show, the most firm confidence in their revolutionary potential."
Read a review of this book by IWW member, J.D. Crutchfield.
246 Pages; Illustrated - $14.00
The Right To Be Lazy - By Paul LaFargue.
Every wage slave should read this book! Paul Lafargue (1842-1912), Karl Marx's flamboyant Cuban born son-in-law, wrote this essay for a workers' paper in 1880, and revised it for book publication while he was a political prisoner in France three years later. At once a masterpiece of critical theory and of rip-roaring radical humor, Lafargue's militant defense of the proletariat's right to laziness is directed not only against the so-called 'right to work' but against the entire slaveholders' ideology known as the 'work ethic.' In a provocative new Introduction, labor activist Joseph Jablonks examines the managerial elite's current 'war on leisure' and highlights Lafargue's relevance to rank-and-file workers' struggles today. A bio-bibliographical essay by old-time IWW organizer and historian Fred Thompson provides useful historical background, the fullest sketch of Lafargue's life and work available in English, and an overview of subsequent literature on the problems of work and leisure.
128 pages - $12.00
Solidarity Unionism: Rebuilding the Labor Movement from
Below - By Staughton Lynd
Solidarity Unionism is critical reading for all who care about the future of labor because its modesty lets it say so much. Short and plainly written, it is also deliberately tentative in its conclusions about where and how a new workers' movement can grow. It does not proclaim a program but instead reports on how small groups of workers and retirees have created new forms of democratic organization. It does not strike postures regarding the possibilities of instant victories or of quick fixes but argues that building solidarity today means nurturing tender shoots of resistance in the face of great corporate power.
64 Pages; Illustrated with Cartoons by Mike Konopacki - $15.00
You Have No
Country! Workers' Struggle Against War - By Mary Marcy
This small book collects International Socialist Review editor Mary Marcy's penetrating analysis of the social and economic consequences of war, and her perspective on the struggle against World War I. The Review was suppressed by the U.S. government in 1918, largely as a result of these writings.
80 Pages; Illustrated - $5.00
Harlem Glory; the
Story of Aframerican Life - By Claude McKay.
Written in the early 1940s but unpublished till now, this superb portrayal of Black life during the Great Depression and the New Deal is virtually a sequel to the classic Home to Harlem. McKay's vivid, warm evocations of the omnipresent numbers racket, all-night jazz parties and the whole exuberant and cacophanous clash of social movements and ideologies-Black nationalism and industrial unionism as well as incipient Muslim and other heterodox religious formations-provide the context for a fast paced narrative of love, work, play and revolt in Black America during one of the most stirring periods in U.S. history.
175 pages - $12.00
The Lesson Of The Hour: Wendell Phillips On Abolition &
Strategy - By Wendell Phillips.
The Abolitionists were revolutionaries, willing to tear up the Southern economy and society by the roots, wreck Northern commerce, and disrupt the Union irretrievably. They renounced all traditional politics. They openly hoped for the defeat of their own country in the Mexican War. They preached and practiced racial equality. They fought for the equality of women. They understood the need to break up the North in order to reconstitute it without slavery. Although William Lloyd Garrison was the founder of the movement and remains the most widely known of the Abolitionists, Wendell Philliops was the real leader. This volume is the only collection of his work generally available. It includes six speeches charting a revolutionary course for abolition, edited and with an introduction by Noel Ignatiev, establishing their historical context.
160 pages - $12.00
A Year in the Life of a
Factory - By Maynard Seider.
In 1973, out of work university graduate Maynard Seider took the only job he could get in San Francisco at the time, at a factory. Here's an account of his year of factory toil - and of his workmates, management, rebellion, the union, and a whole lot more
"I learned more about worklife from this account of a run-of-the-mill year and run-of-the-mill strike, than from a hundred stories of historic labor struggles. Seider shows that those nameless and faceless factories that litter the view from freeways in every American city are battlegrounds where a war is fought at a low, low heat, but fought daily."
"Seider has a wonderful ability to portray the intimate details of workgroups and the interplay of personality and power in the world of work. I recommend this book to anyone who wants to know about what it's like to work in a factory today or to introduce students to the realities of American industrial life."
$14.00
Beware! Anarchist!; A Life For Freedom - The
Autobiography of Augustin Souchy
The incredible autobiography of an incredible man. Souchy fought in the Spanish Revolution;was a serious and knowledgeable student of Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin and Gustav Landauer; a consistent war-resister; a prolific pamphleteer; a major figure in the International Workers' Association (IWA); an anarchosyndicalist determined to put theory into practice; one of the best informed specialists on the varieties of workers' control and self-management. These are memoirs par excellence, with a forward by Theo Waldinger, and an afterward by Sam Dolgoff.
$15.00
Viva Posada; A Salute to the Great Printmaker of
the Mexican Revolution - Edited & Introduced by Carlos Cortez
Published on,the 150th anniversary of Posada's birth (1852-2002), this book features 121 of the finest works by the great popular engraver and relief-etcher who inspired not only the Mexican muralists but also the international Surrealist movement as well as poster artists and radical cartoonists from all over the world. Also included here are excerpts from classic texts on the artist by Jean Charlot, Jose Clemente Orozco, Frida Kahlo, Andre Breton and others, as well as statements by poets and artists of our own time-Gale Ahrens, Jen Besemer, Dennis Brutus, Ronnie Burk, Laura Corsiglia, Rikki Ducornet, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Jan Hathaway, Tristan Meinecke, Penelope Rosemont, Joseph Jablonski, Ted Joans, Casandra Stark Mele, and more-all published here for the first time.
"Posada, as great and prolific as Goya and Callot, was inexhaustibly inventive-a wellspring of creativity. He was the interpreter of the joys and sorrows, the anguish and aspirations of the Mexican people, a precursor of Zapata and Flores Magon."
90 Pages; Profusely Illustrated - $10.00
