The FE Bookstore is located at 4632 Second Ave., just south of W. Forest, in Detroit. We share space with the Fifth Estate Newspaper and may be reached at the same phone number: (313)831-6800. Visitors are welcome, but our hours vary so please call before dropping in.
HOW TO ORDER BY MAIL:
1) List the title of the book, quantity wanted, and the price of each;
2) add 10% for mailing costs—not less than $.90 U.S. or $1.34 foreign (minimum for 4th class book rate postage);
3) total;
4) write check or money order to: The Fifth Estate;
5) mail to: The Fifth Estate, P.O. Box 02548, Detroit MI 48202 USA
THE STRAIT: BOOK OF OBENABI—HIS SONGS by Fredy Perlman
This is Book One of the two-volume novel that Fredy Perlman began working on ten years ago; this part was complete at the time of his death in 1985.
Tracing the history of the inhabitants of the woodlands around the Strait (now Detroit) from pre-history to the 1830s, the encroachment of European Civilization is examined from the perspective of the victims rather than the victors. The book concentrates on the variety of forms that resistance to the Invader took. These forms of resistance are what interested Fredy as he saw many parallels between contemporary encroachments and the history of the Invaders’ westward march. This account eloquently supports Fredy’s belief that to resist is to be human.
Black & Red 400 pp. $5
IN SEARCH OF THE PRIMITIVE: A CRITIQUE OF CIVILIZATION by Stanley Diamond
Diamond is critical of the discipline of anthropology and of the civilization that produced it. He views the anthropologist who refuses to become a critic of civilization as a tool of it. Diamond rejects the notion of the superiority and searches for the primitive as an alternative and superior mode of intersecting with the world.
Transaction Books 385 pp. $19
THE BLACK FLAG: A Look Back at the Strange Case of Sacco and Vanzetti by Brian Jackson
Accused of murder and robbery the two Italian immigrants were executed in 1927 after a universally recognized unfair trial. “Both were guilty—and proudly so—of a cultural crime. They were foreign, working-class, armed and anarchist…. In the end, it was for this that the State executed them.” from the text.
RKP 208 pp.(???) [sic; as in print original]
THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE by B. Traven
Traven’s novel surpasses John Houston’s fine film version by its stinging critique of property and how ownership erodes the basis of human solidarity. Not preachy at all and creates the basis for the suspense-filled, compelling film which starred Humphrey Bogart. Highly recommended
Farrar Straus Giroux 300 pp. (????) [sic; as in print original]
FIELDS, FACTORIES AND WORKSHOPS TOMORROW by Peter Kropotkin
An anarchist classic out of print in England for over 50 years. “Here is a suppressed tradition of philosophy and politics, which, as Marxist and capitalist ideology disintegrate or ossify, more and more people will be wanting to consider.” Peter Abbs in The Ecologist. “The ways that Kropotkin suggested, how (wo)men can at once begin to live better, are still the ways; the evils he attacked are…still the evils.” P. Goodman
Freedom Press 205 pp. $7.00
SEA OF SLAUGHTER by Farley Mowat
The “Sea” of the title is the northeastern seaboard of Canada and United States—the sea and adjoining lands from the coast of Labrador down to Cape Cod. This region, once incredibly rich in the variety and quantity of its animal life, was the first area to be ravaged by Europeans in their history of exploitation of the North American continent.
Atlantic Monthly Press 425 pp. Orig. $25 now $7
SOCIAL ANARCHISM: A Journal of Practice & Theory No. 13
Articles, reviews and poetry. The aesthetics of work, communal families as an alternative, statutory rape, a review of Andrea Dworkin’s controversial essay, Intercourse and other articles.
Social Anarchism 93 pp. $3.00
ELEMENTS OF REFUSAL by John Zerzan
First comprehensive collection of Zerzan’s writings, many of which first appeared in the Fifth Estate. Daily life, with its intensifying alienations and psychopathology, becomes more spectacular and bizarre. We grow more dependent on glitter and diversion to fill the void where all that is human is gutted. The word “survive” displaces the word “live” in everyday speech as if they were equivalent. A kind of special terror permeates everything, a commonplace in our lives. But there is hope. Zerzan sees the “work-buy-consume-die” paradise teetering on the brink of collapse.
Left Bank Books 263 pp. $9.00
THE RUSSIAN TRAGEDY by Alexander Berkman
What went wrong in Russia? How did the successful attempt to overthrow the old dictatorship of the Tsarist system only lead to the new dictatorship of the Communists? Berkman answers these questions from the view of a participant having arrived in the Soviet Union after being deported from the U.S. following a long imprisonment for an assassination attempt on an industrialist.
Phoenix Press 91 pp. $5.00
MALATESTA: HIS LIFE & IDEAS Compiled & Edited by Vernon Richards
The life and thought of the Italian anarchist who Vernon Richards describes as a “giant” of the “giant-studded 19th century revolutionary movement.” Passages culled from articles he wrote are organized under specific titles such as Mutual Aid, Or Organization, Property, Crime & Punishment, Anarchism and Science, Workers and Intellectuals. Also, a short appreciation by Peter Kropotkin, “Recollections and Criticisms of an Old Friend.” Concludes with a section on Malatesta’s relevance for anarchists today by the editor.
Freedom Press 309 pp. $6
ONCE UPON A TIME THERE WAS A PLACE CALLED NOTTING HILL GATE by Paddington Bear
A 20 year history of the Notting Hill Gate district of London focusing on the annual carnivals which often turn riotous. The area contains the elements of resistance which so often come into being and gives Bear the jumping off point for a look at contemporary English society.
BM Blob 70 pp. $2.00
WARTIME STRIKES by Martin Glaberman
A long-time Detroit resident chronicles the struggle against the no-strike pledge in the UAW during World War II. An exciting account of autonomous organizing which had to take on the union and the state.
Bewick Editions 158 pp. $6.00
SIMULATIONS by Jean Baudrillard
“The very definition of the real has become that of which it is possible to give an equivalent reproduction…The real is not only what can be reproduced. But that which is always already reproduced. The hyperreal…which is entirely in simulation.”—from the text.
Semiotext(e) 159 pp. $4.00
BOLO BOLO by P.M.
Bolo’ Bolo ranges somewhere between a satirical sci-fi novel and a (non-violent) battle plan for the “substruction of the capitalist and/or socialist Planetary Work Machine.” P.M. devises a time table and even a language for the transition to a world of Bolos—small tribal sized units based on common interests rather than nation states.
Semiotext(e) 198 pp. $5.00
AUTONOMOUS TECHNOLOGY: Technics-outof-Control as a Theme in Political Thought by Langdon Winner
MIT Press $9.95
QUESTIONING TECHNOLOGY: A Critical Anthology Edited by Alice Carnes & John Zerzan
This is the first explicitly anti-technology collection. As the introduction states, “This book presents only one side-the other side.” Included are essays from Mumford, Ellul, Stanley Diamond, Jean Baudrillard, Langdon Winner and even a couple from the FE’s George Bradford. Section headings include: “Technology: It’s History & Our Future,” “Computers & The Informed Individual” and “Technology: The Web of Life.” An excellent introduction to an investigation of technology’s inherent hierarchal and destructive nature.
Freedom Press 222 pp. $10
I, RIGOBERTA MENCHU: An Indian Woman In Guatamala, Edited by Elisabeth Burgos-Debray
After the coming to power of the Garcia Lucas regime in 1978, her brother, father and mother were all killed in separate, horrifying incidents of savagery on the part of the army. Undeterred, Rigoberta became a leader of the struggle against the dictatorship and her words evoke the realities of social and political life in Guatamala. Also covered are the different functions of religious and superstitious belief and the development of a feminist and liberatory philosophy within the context of her peasant roots.
Verso 250 pp. pub. $12 now $10
SEMIOTEXT(E) USA: A Psychotopographical Projection
A huge compendium of works in American psychotopography—areas not found on the official map of consensus perception. Maps of energies, secret maps of the USA in the form of words and images. Sermons, rants, broadsheets, crackpot pamphlets, manifestoes, xerox and mimeo zines, punkzines, mail art, kids’ poetry, subverted ads, American samizdat. Large format, startling graphics collection from the underground of American publishing.
Semiotext(e) 352 pp. $9
SOCIETY AGAINST THE STATE by Pierre Clastres
Can there be a society that is not divided into oppressors and oppressed, or that refuses coercive state apparatuses? In this beautifully written book Pierre Clastres offers examples of South American Indian groups that, though without hierarchical leadership, were both affluent and complex. In so doing he refutes the usual negative definition of tribal society and poses its order as a radical critique of our own western state of power. “We conventionally define the state as the regulation of violence; it may be the origin of it. Clastres’ thesis is that economic expropriation and political coercion are inconsistent with the character of tribal society-which is to say, with the greater part of human history.” -Marshall Sahlins.
Zone Books 224 pp. $18.95 cloth
THE FUTURE OF TECHNICS AND CIVILIZATION by Lewis Mumford, Introduction by Colin Ward
This is the second half of Mumford’s classic text, Technics and Civilization. In it he “observed the limitations the Western European imposed upon himself in order to create the machine and project it as a body outside his personal will.. ..We have seen the machine arise out of the denial of the organic and the living.” Mumford calls for the “rebuilding of the individual personality and the collective group” in order to reorient human activity toward life. This republication celebrates Mumford’s 90th birthday and Freedom Press’ centenary. Mumford’s work is seminal to almost all critical thought about the modern world.
Freedom Press 184 pp. $7.00
SPECTACULAR TIMES: The Bad Days Will End compiled and written by Larry Law
“The real state secret is the secret misery of daily life. Almost everything we care about has been turned into a commodity. We have to resist allowing the spectacle to define our hopes. We have to learn to play with our desires.” —from the text
Spectacular Times 28 pp. $1
STRIKE! by Jeremy Brecher
An exciting history of mass labor insurgence from 1877 to the present. No dull workerist account, but showing movements of workers unrestrained by union, state and capital as having the potential for authentic revolution.
South End Press 330 pp. $9
ANARCHY COMIX 1-4
All four wild, wacky and politically relevant comics done by a talented assembly of international cartoonists. Can’t read thick theory? Here’s the easy way.
Last Gasp all 4 issues, reg. $9; special at $8
ON ORGANIZATION by Jacques Camatte
We announced last issue that this definitive dispatch of the notion that human affairs can be administered through organizations was outof-print, but were promptly mailed about 30 copies of it. We were going to send them all to Minneapolis, but decided to offer them to our readership first.
Anonymous 40 pp. $1