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
BUFFO 1 & 2
A new, updated edition of Larry Law’s “amazing tales of political pranks and anarchic buffoonery.” Not mere jokes, although most of them are hilarious enough to stand on their own, but a chronicle of hundreds of incidents of how power and authority were undone with humor.
Spectacular Times 36 pp., $2.60
WHITEWASH: Australia’s Bicentenary—Another History
Was Australia a vast empty continent or were the aborigines brutally massacred? Is Australia a happy and multi-cultural society or one of the world’s most racist states? The Australian government gave one version during 1988; this is another.
Australian Syndicalist Federation 44 pp., $1.50
MY SUMMER VACATION IN CANADA by Kathy
A 16-page ‘zine which is a collection of press clippings of the mainstream media’s coverage of the 1988 Toronto Anarchist Gathering interspersed with an account of her arrest and imprisonment. This one week-end was enough to throw “gentle” Canada’s image in the toilet where it belongs.
Self-published 8 x 11 16 pp., $1
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., hardcover, $7
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., hardcover, pub. at $14; now $5
THE STRAIT: Book of Obenabi—His Songs
Tracing the history of the inhabitants of 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. 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.
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 Invader’s westward march. This account eloquently supports Fredy’s belief that to resist is to be human.
Black & Red 400 pp., $5
PERIODICALS:
Possessed no. 1 & 2 $1.00
Reality Now No. 8 $2.00
Kick It Over No. 22 $2.00
No Picnic No. 1, 2, 3 $1.50
Smile, no, 2 & 3 $1.00
Anarchy, Desire Armed 16, 17 $1.00
Here & Now, no. 5 & 6 $1.00
We are not necessarily in political agreement with everything which appears in these journals, but all contain excellent material.—The FE
I…RIGOBERTA MENCHU: An Indian Woman In Guatemala Edited by Elisabeth Burgos-Eebray
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 Guatemala. 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
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
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 ASSAULT ON CULTURE: Utopian Currents from Lettrisme to Class War by Stewart Home
A survey of the revolutionary art movements since World War II that range between the ones listed in the subtitle, but also include the Situationists, Fluxus, Auto-Destructive Art, punk, the Motherfuckers and Detroit’s own White Panther Party. The critiques remain on the terrain of culture without much indication of how these movements intersected concretely with moments of resistance, but they do suggest what is possible for artists other than subjection to the market.
Unpopular Books 115 pp., $6
BABYFISH LOST ITS MOMMA No. 2
From the domain of oppressive concrete and amid hyper-police state clampdown comes a “freak rising through subterranean mind food”: Babyfish Lost Its Momma magazine. Babyfish is a free-form journal of art, poetry, politics and music originating in Detroit’s Cass Corridor. This giant 152-page issue breathes an energetic, youthful and anti-authoritarian response to the amerikan empire in all its forms. Political coverage includes resistance to the Detroit Trash Incinerator, the Democrats at their circus in Atlanta and the Toronto anarchist gathering. The music explored includes the Layabouts, MDC, Orange Roughies, Tragic Mulatto, Forced Anger, Short Dogs Grow and the Grateful Dead.
Babyfish 152 pp., $3
ON GOGOL BOULEVARD: Networking Bulletin for Activists East and West Fall 1988
Gogol Blvd. is a favorite hang-out of Moscow’s youth and counterculture. A lively report of the Eastern bloc rebel/dissident scene with concentration on anti-authoritarian cultural and political opposition. Its editors say this will be the last issue unless they see more support.
Neither East Nor West, 24 pp., $1
or write: 151 1st Ave, No. 62, NY NY 10003
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
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 Beaudrillard, Langdon Winner and even a couple from the FE’s George Bradford. Section headings include: “Technology: Its 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
BEYOND GEOGRAPHY: THE WESTERN SPIRIT AGAINST THE WILDERNESS by Frederick Turner
Traces the “spiritual history” that led up to the European domination and decimation of the Western Hemisphere’s native peoples who were as rich in mythic life as the new arrivals were barren. Beginning with the first separation from the Wilderness in the days of the Israelites, and thus from the myths that had nurtured them and connected them with the land, and ending with Buffalo Bill’s hollow triumphs over his “Wild West,” Turner follows the unconscious desire in the Western invaders for the spiritual contentment they sensed in those “primitives” they encountered in their invasions:
Rutgers Press 329 pp., $12.00
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 (!)
ANTI-SEMITISM & THE BEIRUT POGROM by Fredy Perlman
A Fifth Estate reprint. “The long exile is over; the persecuted refugee at long last returns to Zion, but so badly scarred, he’s unrecognizable, he has completely lost himself; he returns as anti-Semite, as Pogromist, as mass murderer.”
Left Bank Books 16 pp., $1.00
TOWARD A NEW COLD WAR: Essays on the Current Crisis & How We Got There by NoamChomsky
An account by the noted linguist and libertarian historian of the movement towards a new Cold War which has culminated in the Reagan administration’s policies. He contrasts the old with newly emerging Cold Wars, and explores the changes in American global power and ideology since WW II. The essays are a panorama of America’s futile violence, intellectual dishonesty and political immorality which analyzes the contradictions between establishment ideology and reality.
Random House 498 pp., $10
THE MIRROR OF PRODUCTION by Jean Baudrillard
Examines the lessons of Marxism which has created a productivist model and a fetishism of labor. Asserts that Marxism reflects “all of Western metaphysics” and that it remains within the restrictive context of political economy whence it was born.
Telos Press 167 pp., $5.50
THE MAY DAYS: BARCELONA 1937 Contributions by Augustin Souchy, Jose Peirats, Burnett Bolloten & Emma Goldman
Many consider the murderous Communist Party-led assault on Anarchist positions in Barcelona to be “a minor incident in the Spanish Civil War.” In reality, the armed conflict took over 500 lives—more than during the first week of the military uprising on July 19, 1937. The heroic defense of the anarchists’ revolutionary gains against the physical attack by stalinism recounted from several perspectives.
Freedom Press 128 pp., $5.00
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
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
DREAMTIME: CONCERNING THE BOUNDARY BETWEEN WILDERNESS AND CIVILIZATION by Hans Peter Duerr
Duerr burns, he shines, he soars. A major book along the lines of Turner’s Beyond Geography, Perlman’s Against Leviathan, Diamond’s In Search of the Primitive and other related work. Dreamtime reveals how profoundly primitivism is corroding the pillars of rationalism, empiricism and objective science that buttress the modern megamachine. Earth goddesses, witches’ salves, night travellers, wild women and werewolves, talking vultures and coyotes, nightshade spirits and flying shamans all make their appearance as this anthropologist-turned-hobgoblin turns the world upside down so that we might see what really lies in its depths and heights.
Basil Blackwell Books 462 pp. $15
NO PICNIC, Autumn 1988
Anti-authoritarian, anti-technology tabloid from Vancouver, BC. Articles on resistance to logging, local issues, prison struggles, sexuality, Chile are featured.
No Picnic 36 pp., tabloid $1
THE TRAFFIC IN WOMEN & Other Essays On Feminism by Emma Goldman with a biography by Alix Kates Shulman
Besides her classic lead essay, ones on “Marriage” and “Women Suffrage” are included in this volume. Shulman’s short biographic sketch places this revolutionary anarchist within an historical context.
Times Change Press 63 pp., $3
ANGRY WORKERS’ BULLETIN No. 2
The unruly ultras are at it again. AWB No. 2 contains a special section on the capitalist nature of the Eastern Bloc. Q: Why is the USSR not capitalist; A. Because they have pictures of Lenin on their money! Anti-drug mania in the U.S. and various other indignities against rulers everywhere.
AWB 46 pp., $2
THE KRONSTADT UPRISING by Ida Mett
The sailors, soldiers and workers who made up the Krondstadt garrison outside of Petrograd were the last to assert the power of the workers councils and factory committees which were the authentic Russian revolution. The Bolshevik massacre and suppression of the defenders of Krondstadt in 1921 meant an end to organized resistance to the leninist program of state capitalism and rule. Mett’s classic work contains a moving introduction by Murray Bookchin as well as several prefaces from earlier editions.
Solidarity (London) 93 pp., $3
P.S. If FE readers still have any leninist friends left unconvinced as to the counter-revolutionary natures of the communists in the Russian Revolution, may we also suggest the following title:
The Bolsheviks &Workers’ Control: 1917-1921 by Maurice Brinton
Solidarity/B & R 90 pp., $2.25
THE LAST DAYS OF CHRIST THE VAMPIRE by J.G. Eccarius
One of the most wildly blasphemous books we have seen since the classics of sacrilege. The book jacket states: “Christ the Vampire. He rose from the dead…His power grew over the ages. Enslaving minds and bodies through both religious hierarchies and direct telepathic control, Jesus Christ the Vampire promises people eternal life for the price of their minds.
Always people have fought back, but now with the power of the Christians multiplied by TV, government and nuclear weapons, Christ the Vampire and his undead followers are preparing the Apocalypse.”
When Professor Holbach stumbles upon the truth he and his friends must flee for their lives. Can a few teens, outcasts and anarchists foil the Christians’ plan for Armageddon? “Read the book. Soon you will see the grafitti; then you will live the reality.”
111 Publishing 180 pp., $6
ASSEMBLY LINE by B. Traven
A basket weaver in Mexico (but it could be any peasant culture) makes tiny, creative representations of his earthly world. An American sees the opportunity to make a profit from this Indian’s poetic creations. Also, an article on the author by Jonah Raskin entitled “Labor, Mystery and Rebellion.”
No pub. listed 28 pp., $1.50