AK Press Winter 2015 Catalog

Join the Friends of AK Press...every spark matters.

Things are heating up. Crisis is the rule, not the exception. A nervous ruling class is pushing “solutions” like repression, austerity, and devastation-as-usual. We need to push—and build—our own alternatives. That means getting even more radical and anarchist ideas into people’s hands and heads. We need to fan the flames.

But hard times hit us much harder than they hit the bosses and bureaucrats. That’s why the Friends of AK Press program exists. It’s a way for people to support anarchist publishing, each kicking in a little each month...a little that adds up to a lot more revolutionary texts circulating through our society.

Friends of AK Press is how we keep publishing so many great books. It’s how we’ve put out huge anthologies of writings by important anarchist thinkers like Proudhon, Kropotkin, and Malatesta. It’s how we publish crucial anti-authoritarian analyses of current issues from queer liberation to housing struggles. It’s how we help today’s revolutionaries find new relevance in radical history.

We want to publish more. Some you’ll see on the forthcoming page in this catalog, some are in the works, others are just gleams in our eyes. An updated edition of Kristian Williams’s classic history of and polemic against policing in the US, Our Enemies in Blue. The first anthology of writing by the little-known American anarchist Hippolyte Havel. Jason Garner’s history of the relationship between communist-anarchists and syndicalists in the early-20th century. A translation of Osvaldo Bayer’s chronicle of Durruti & co.’s bank-robbing days in Latin America. The first new work from Harry Cleaver in years. And tons more, of course.

To be honest, our list of projects, both those underway and the ones in our heads, outstrips our ability to pay for them. So if you have anything to spare please take a look at the membership options at http://www.akpress.org/friends.html and help keep the presses rolling.

Cover design by Margaret Killjoy. Thanks to all our authors, designers, distributed publishers, and readers for a great year!

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AK PRESS n New Releases Dispatches Against Displacement field notes from san francisco’s housing wars

James Tracy (foreword by Willie Baptist)

$15.95 / isbn: 9781849352055 / 150 pp.

“James Tracy knows that our dysfunctional housing machine is working as it should: working for the rich. This important history throws sand into the gears of that machine.”

—Raj Patel, author of Stuffed and Starved San Francisco is being eroded by waves of cash from Silicon Valley. Evictions of long-time residents, outrageous rents and home prices, and blockaded “Google buses” are only the tip of the iceberg. James Tracy has been fighting the long, neoliberal march of gentrification and displacement over two decades of “dot. com” boom and bust. This book is a history of that struggle and a battle plan for the future.

It provides the analysis and tools for a radical urbanism in which our cities are developed by and for the people who bring them to life.

The Method of Freedom an errico malatesta reader

Errico Malatesta (edited by Davide Turcato)

$21.95 / isbn: 9781849351447 / 530 pp.

Errico Malatesta’s work has been woefully unavailable to English-language readers—limited to a few essays and Vernon Richards’s collection of fragments. AK Press aims to change that, starting with this hefty anthology (which will be followed by the ten-volume Collected Works).

The Method of Freedom presents the expansive range of Malatesta’s ideas, with new translations of existing works and a wealth of shorter essays translated here for the first time. It traces the evolution of Malatesta’s revolutionary thought over half a century of his anarchist propaganda, exploring themes of revolutionary violence and workplace democracy, the general strike and the limitations of trade unionism, propaganda by the deed, and the revolution in practice.

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AK PRESS n New Releases Educating for Insurgency the roles of young people in schools of poverty

Jay Gillen (foreword by Bob Moses) $15.95 / isbn: 9781849351997 / 180 pp.

Desegregation has failed. Schools filled with black and brown students have become plantations of social control, where policing behavior trumps expanding minds. Radical teachers and organizers in American public schools must help young people fashion an insurgency.

Jay Gillen writes with passion and compassion about the daily lives of poor students trapped in institutions that dismiss and degrade them.

He explains precisely what sort of insurgency is needed and how to create it: the tools and techniques for social, intellectual, and political power.

This poetic manifesto of revolutionary “educational reform” belongs in the pocket of anyone who currently works in, suffers through, or simply cares about public schooling in this country.

Underground Passages

anarchist resistance culture, 1848–2011

Jesse Cohn $22.95 / isbn: 9781849352017 / 430 pp.

What anarchists demanded from art, by and large, was what they demanded from all the forms and moments of their political lives: i.e., that it should, as much as possible, embody the idea in the act, the principle in the practice, the end in the means. If anarchism is “prefigurative politics,” striving to make the desired future visible in and through one’s actions in the present, then anarchist resistance culture had to somehow prefigure a world of freedom and equality. Poetry, song, literature, film, and illustration and design have played a major role in modern anarchist practice and created space for the radical “spirit” to survive underneath the world’s crushing weight.” Cohn’s wholly original book investigates and critiques these expressions as the movement itself has ebbed and flowed over the years.

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AK PRESS n New Releases Drug War Capitalism Dawn Paley (foreword by Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera) $16.95 / isbn: 9781849351935 / 285 pp.

Drug Wars in Latin America are less about drugs than about social, economic, and territorial control. Combining on-the-ground reporting with extensive research, Dawn Paley moves beyond prepackaged narratives to show that there is no clear distinction between drug cartels, the state forces supposedly fighting them, and the expansion of transnational capital. North of the Rio Grande, bank accounts and prison cells are filled to bursting, and billions are made in the arms trade.

In the south, territory is cleared for foreign direct investment and the extractive industries through policy changes and a mix of militarization and paramilitarization. This book is indispensable in understanding the evolving architecture of social control in Mexico, Central America, and Colombia.

I Belong Only to Myself the life and writings of leda rafanelli

Andrea Pakieser $16.95 / isbn: 9781849351959 / 190 pp.

Leda Rafanelli (1880–1971) became an anarchist at the age of twenty in Italy. She developed her own uniquely social form of individualist anarchism, which shunned the egoist trappings of the times, and practiced a personal form of Islam even as she denounced religion.

She countered both patriarchy and bourgeois feminism with “feminility,” a concept that predates similar tenets of radical feminism by many decades. As some anarchists embraced futurism’s often-reactionary bravado, Rafanelli boldly declared herself a “Passist.”

Weaving excerpts from Rafanelli’s novels, poems, and essays (presented here for the first time in English translation) with extensive research, Andrea Pakieser has produced a biography as remarkable as its subject.

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AK PRESS n New Releases Grabbing Back essays against the global land grab

Edited by Alexander Reid Ross $20.00 / isbn: 9781849351942 / 355 pp.

Climate change ravages the earth, while wealthy elites try to grab as much of the world’s diminishing resources as possible. Land is life.

But land, and the struggle to possess it, is also power—colonial and corporate power, as well as the power of the dispossessed to rise up and end the global land grab.

Grabbing Back maps this struggle, bringing together analyses that uncover the politics of cultivation and control. In this unprecedented collection, grassroots activists join forces with critically acclaimed scholars to document the commodification and consumption of space— from foreclosed homes to annihilated rainforests, from ecotourism in Sri Lanka to the tar sands of Montana—and to outline the strategies and tactics to stop the destruction.

Direct Struggle Against Capital a peter kropotkin anthology

Peter Kropotkin (edited by Iain McKay) $24.95 / isbn: 9781849351706 / 720 pp.

“The enemy on whom we declare war is capital, and it is against capital that we will direct all our efforts, taking care not to become distracted from our goal by the phony campaigns and arguments of the political parties. The great struggle that we are preparing for is essentially economic, and so it is on the economic terrain that we should focus our activities.” —Peter Kropotkin Peter Kropotkin is anarchism’s most influential theorist, and this is the most extensive collection of his writings available in English. Over half the selections are translated for the first time or from out-of-print sources. The result is a volume that provides an introduction to classic texts, while showing new facets of a canonical figure. Fully annotated and featuring a lengthy historical introduction, biographical sketch, glossary, and index.

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AK PRESS n New Releases Life During Wartime resisting counterinsurgency

Edited by Kristian Williams, Will Munger & Lara Messersmith-Glavin $21.00 / isbn: 9781849351300 / 450 pp.

“Together, the writers sound a sobering warning: the American government is an iron fist in a velvet glove whose purpose remains preserving the status quo and enriching the rich.”

—Publishers Weekly The state has used counterinsurgency as an implicit domestic strategy for a generation. From Ferguson, Missouri to almost any urban center, that strategy is becoming more militarized and explicit. This book is a weapon for fighting back, a collection of essays in which fifteen writers examine how counterinsurgency tactics within the United States are structured and deployed. The purpose is to equip radicals with a more nuanced understanding of state repression in order to more effectively evade and/or combat it.

Against Equality

queer revolution, not mere inclusion

Edited by Ryan Conrad $15.00 / isbn: 9781849351843 / 260 pp.

Does gay marriage link access to basic human rights, like health care and economic security, to an inherently conservative tradition? Will queers fighting in imperialist wars help liberate and empower LGBT people around the world? Does hate-crime legislation affirm and strengthen historically anti-queer institutions like the police and prisons, rather than dismantling them?

The Against Equality collective asks some hard questions. These queer thinkers, writers, and artists are committed to undermining a stunted conception of “equality.” In this powerful book, they challenge mainstream gay and lesbian struggles for inclusion in elitist and inhumane institutions. More than a critique, Against Equality seeks to reinvigorate the queer political imagination with fantastic possibility!

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AK PRESS n Coming Soon!

Storm in My Heart

memories from the widow of johann most

Helene Minkin (edited by Tom Goyens) $17.95 / 9781849351973 / 180 pp. january

A woman writing herself back into anarchist history, this book is part memoir and part reaction and corrective to Emma Goldman’s Living My Life. First English translation!

Octavia’s Brood

science fiction stories from social justice movements

Edited by Walidah Imarisha & adrienne maree brown $18.00 / 9781849352093 / 285 pp. april

New worlds from the margins of the old! Radical sci-fi and visionary fiction written by organizers, activists, and thinkers building alternative realities.

Complete Works of Malatesta Vol. III a long and patient endeavour: the anarchist socialism of l’agitazione,

1897–1898

Errico Malatesta (edited by Davide Turcato) $24.95 / 9781849351478 /500 pp. february

Anarchist agitation from one of the movement’s most important thinkers. Part of AK Press’s ongoing ten-volume Complete Works of Malatesta.

Dixie Be Damned

300 years of insurrection in the american south

Neal Shirley & Saralee Stafford $20.00/ 9781849352079 / 280 pp. may

Insurrectionary people’s history at its best: slave revolts, multiracial banditry, labor battles, prison uprisings, urban riots, and more. Revolt in the US South!

Militant Anti-Fascism

a hundred years of resistance

M. Testa $18.95 / 9781849352031 / 320 pp. february

Strong medicine for dangerous times. An uncompromising history of the fight against fascism. Provocative, unapologetic, and based on extensive research.

We Do Not Fear Anarchy— We Invoke It the first international and the origins of the anarchist movement

Robert Graham $21.00 / 9781849352116 / 275 pp. may

An unprecedented analysis of an often-misunderstood history: How the anarchist movement arose out of the debates and conflicts within the First International.

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Last Supper

Aaron Cometbus $11.95 / 9781894037594 / arp books

arp nbooks AK PRESS New Releases

This poetry collection—the latest from the author of the legendary zine, Cometbus—is a love letter to the people who give the city its real charm.

Burning Daylight

Christine Fellows $17.95 / 9781894037556 / arp books

Poems and a song cycle examining—through a feminist lens—themes of dislocation, isolation, family, and frailty.

The Winter We Danced

voices from the past, the future, and the idle no more movement

The Kino-nda-niimi Collective $19.95 / 9781894037518 /arp books

A collection from voices of the Idle No More movement, a people’s movement, which formed around the same time as Occupy and is still going strong!

They Came From Within

a history of canadian horror cinema, 2nd edition

Caelum Vatnsdal $24.95 / 9781894037532 / arp books

This updated edition adjusts the focus in Canadian horror films, and unwinds the history of the genre.

AK DISTRO n Featured Publishers

The Worker Elite

notes on the “labor aristocracy”

Bromma $10.00 / 9781894946575 / kersplebedeb

“The main force for revolution will come from within the working class.… But it will not come from the privileged worker elite.”

Our Commitment Is To Our Communities mass incarceration, political prisoners, and building a movement for community-based justice

David Gilbert $5.00 / 9781894946650 / kersplebedeb

Gilbert discusses incarceration and the challenges that face our movements today.

Basic Politics of Movement Security

J. Sakai & Mandy Hiscocks $7.00 / 9781894946520 / kersplebedeb

Lively talks by two radical activists on the issue of movement security, successes, and failures.

Fire the Cops!

essays, lectures, and journalism

Kristian Williams $20.00 / 9781894946612 / kersplebedeb

kersplebedeb

An essay collection on killer cops and cop-killers, “police as workers” and police as soldiers, copwatching and counterinsurgency operations.

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Class Wargames

AK PRESS n New Releases

ludic subversion against spectacular capitalism

Richard Barbrook $40.00 / 9781570272936 / minor compositions

minor compositions

A strategic and tactical manual for subverting the economic, political, and ideological hierarchies of early-21st century neoliberal capitalism.

State in Time

Edited by IRWIN $32.00 / 9781570272769 / minor compositions

Essays on the NSK State in Time, a state without territory, which for two decades has pushed the boundaries of artistic and political practice.

Precarious Communism

manifest mutations, manifesto detourned

Richard Gilman-Opalsky $23.00 / 9781570272929 / minor compositions

A book-length détournement of The Communist Manifesto—a loving blasphemy, a grateful revolt, both for and against the original text.

Lives of the Orange Men

a biographical history of the polish orange alternative movement

Major Waldemar Fydrych $24.00 / 9781570272691 / minor compositions

From 1981–1989 in Poland, the art-activist group Orange Alternative mobilized to (successfully) destabilize the Communist government.

AK DISTRO n Featured Publishers

A Politics for the 99%

Marco Rosaire Conrad-Rossi $7.95 / 9788293064329 / new compass press

Occupy succeeded in capturing public imagination in hope of a new kind of a politics. Why did it flounder?

The Anthropology of Utopia

on social ecology and community development

Dan Chodorkoff $19.95 / 9788293064305 / new compass press

This book surveys alternative ways of life that can help us create an ecological society. The solutions to our crises are within our grasp.

Communalism as Alternative

Eirik Eiglad $7.95 / 9788293064282 / new compass press

What defines Communalism? What distinguishes it from other radical ideologies? What social and political alternatives does it offer?

Toward Climate Justice

perspectives on the climate crisis and social change, 2nd edition

Brian Tokar $19.95 / 9788293064084 / new compass press

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A new, fully revised edition, explaining the case for Climate Justice and exploring why the advance of climate policies has been obstructed.

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Anarchists in the Boardroom

how social media and social movements can help your organisation to be more like people

Liam Barrington-Bush $20.00 / 9780992680305 / more like people press

AK DISTRO n New Arrivals

A book about social change, technology, and how lessons from our most meaningful relationships can alter how we relate to the world.

Captive Nation

black prison organizing in the civil rights era

Dan Berger $34.95 / 9781469618241 / university of nc press

A bold reconsideration of 20th-century black activism, prisons, and the origins of mass incarceration in the U.S.

Support

Cindy Crabb $4.00/ 9781939202109 / doris press

A pamphlet collecting writings exploring, with eloquence and sensitivity, the many ways that we can support people who have experienced sexual abuse.

Jack Costa

the true tale of giovanni dalla costa

Dario De Bortoli $16.95 / 9781570272882 / autonomedia

Detailing sixty years of struggle, this is the story of Giovanni (Jack) Dalla Costa, who emigrated from Italy to play a part in the Alaskan gold rush.

The Society of the Spectacle

Guy Debord (translated & annotated by Ken Knabb) $15.00 / 9780939682065 / bureau of public secrets

The only fully annotated edition of this classic work

by Guy Debord, the most influential figure in the Situationist International.

Another Politics

talking across today’s transformative movements

Chris Dixon $27.95 / 9780520279025 / uc press

Drawing from activist organizers across North America, this book explores what shapes many struggles today.

Workers’ Self-Management in the Caribbean the writings of joseph edwards

Joseph Edwards (edited by Matthew Quest) $14.99 / 9780985890964 / on our own authority!

An anarchistic collection of writings by Jamaican refrigerator mechanic, labor organizer, and theorist, Joseph Edwards (AKA George Myers).

The Best of Social Anarchism

Edited by Howard J. Ehrlich & a.h.s. boy $24.95 / 9781937276461 / see sharp press

As you’d guess, the finest pieces from Social Anarchism, covering education, theory, practice, historical figures, and contemporary voices.

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Managing Democracy, Managing Dissent

capitalism, democracy and the organisation of consent

Edited by Rebecca Fisher $16.00 / 9781907738098 / corporate watch

Genuine democracy and capitalism exist in contradiction—one sustained by the co-optation, marginalization, and repression of dissent.

The Do-It-Yourself Guide to Fighting the Big Motherfuckin’ Sad Adam Gnade $7.00 / 9781939899217 / pioneers press

Looks at the root causes of sadness, anxiety, and malaise and offers point-by-point suggestions and pep talks!

Choosing to Be Free

a life story of rick turner

Billy Keniston $20.00 / no isbn / eberhardt press

Rick Turner—­­­one of South Africa’s most powerful thinkers—played an important role in the opposition to apartheid until has assassination in 1978.

Midnight Notes Goes to School report from the zapatista escuelita

Peter Linebaugh, George Caffentzis, Riley Linebaugh & Dan Coughlin $6.95 / 9781570272974 / autonomedia

Learn about Chiapas, and the project to build Zapatista Autonomous Good Governance— separate from the state and the capitalist market.

Agents & Assets

witnessing the war on drugs and on communities

Los Angeles Poverty Department $12.95 / 9781570272912 / autonomedia

Re-enacts a 1998 House of Representatives hearing investigating alleged CIA involvement in crack cocaine trafficking into the Los Angeles area.

For Love and Liberty

artist tom manning: freedom fighter, political prisoner

Tom Manning $25.00 / 9780979078934 / freedom archives

Short essays complement the vibrant, full-color paintings of freedom fighter, political prisoner, and prolific artist, Tom Manning.

You Have to Fucking Eat

Adam Mansbach $14.95 / 9781617753787 / akashic books

The long-awaited sequel to the wildly popular Go the Fuck to Sleep. Need we say more? Sure to be a big hit.

Los Maños

the lads from aragon; the story of an anti-franco action group

Mariano Aguayo Morán $4.50 / 9781873605318 / kate sharpley library

The story of a group of friends who joined the anarchist resistance and fought alongside Sabaté and Facerías.

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Letters of Insurgents

Fredy Perlman $20.00 / 9780939306053 / left bank books

AK DISTRO n New Arrivals

One-time lovers with libertarian ideals find themselves on either side of the Iron Curtain.

These letters record their experiences.

Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism

Rudolf Rocker $10.00 / 9781904491224 / freedom press

The abridged version of Rudolf Rocker’s major, classic work—Anarcho-Syndicalism— in a new edition with extensive notes.

Hearts and Hands

creating community in violent times

Luis J. Rodriguez $19.95 / 9781609805531 / seven stories press

Concrete suggestions on how we can create nonviolent opportunities for youth, and redirect kids into productive and satisfying lives.

The Ring of Fire Anthology

E.T. Russian $20.00 / 9780939306008 / left bank books

An anthology of the zine from the late 1990s by ET Russian (aka Hellery Homosex), including many pages of never-before-published material.

Brew It Yourself

professional craft blueprints for home brewing

Erik Spellmeyer $11.95 / 9781621066651 / microcosm publishing

Professional advice on how to start home-brewing, explaining industry jargon and terminology, providing clear instruction and delicious recipes.

Museum of Mistakes the fart party collection

Julia Wertz $24.00 / 9780978656966 / atomic books

The Fart Party omnibus collects two previous volumes plus numerous pages of early comic work, previously uncollected comics, stories, and more.

Anarchy and Society

reflections on anarchist sociology

Dana Williams & Jeff Shantz $28.00 / 9781608463848 / haymarket books

Explores the ways in which the discipline of sociology and the philosophy of anarchism are compatible.

The Scallywags of Nobody’s Island

John Withee $15.00 / 9781938660122 / combustion books

Heavily illustrated fiction for the third to fifth grader in your life. Shipwrecked sailors must learn to cooperate and break the rules!

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AK DISTRO n 2015 Calendars & Organizers

The Bottled Wasp Pocket Diary The Escape Committee $8.00 / 9781939202093

Justseeds/Eberhardt Press Organizer (in two sizes!)

Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative eberhardt press $11.00 (lg) • $8.00 (sm)

Freedom for Political Prisoners Calendar Certain Days $12.00 / 9780988128323

Slingshot Collective $12.00 (lg.) • $6.00 (sm.)

“Solidarity Forever” Labor History Calendar

Colors from Palestine Calendar Resistance Art $20.00

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Slingshot Desk Planner & Pocket Organizer

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IWW Hungarian Literature Fund $15.95 / 9781939202086

Calendar of Revolt

Subversive Historian $12.95 / 9780939202079

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