Fifth Estate Books is located at 4632 Second Avenue, just south of W. Forest, in Detroit, in the same space as the Fifth Estate Newspaper. Hours vary, so please call before coming by.
HOW TO ORDER BY MAIL
1) List the title of the book, quantity, and the price of each;
2) add 10% for mailing costs—not less than $1.24 U.S. or $1.60 foreign (minimum for 4th class book rate postage);
3) total;
4) write check or money order to: Fifth Estate;
5) mail to: Fifth Estate, 4632 Second Ave., Detroit MI 48201 USA.
Phone 313/831-6800 for hours and more information.
AGAINST THE MEGAMACHINE: ESSAYS ON EMPIRE & ITS ENEMIES by David Watson
The long-promised collection of essays by FE collaborator David Watson has finally arrived. Many of the essays, dating from 1981 to 1996, have been substantially revised, and some have never appeared in the FE. Most of the key themes covered in this paper—mass technics, the ecological crisis, the critique of civilization, reason and spirit, war and empire—are represented, including “Stopping the Industrial Hydra,” “Civilization in Bulk,” “Looking Back on the Vietnam War,” “Homage to Fredy Perlman,” a completely revised “Against the Megamachine,” and many more. In his introduction to the book, Richard Drinnon praises “Watson’s goal of an anarchism shorn of progressivism and reunited with the forgotten lore that was ‘anarchist’ eons before the term was coined”—an attempt “to have us look at the world with our eyes wide open.” “David Watson is one of the handful of thinkers who have managed to address technology in all its dimensions…and only through works like this will we understand the subject well enough to act.”
—Jerry Mander
“Lucid, caring, visionary, David Watson’s voice defies a decade of cyberpunk noise.”
—Ariel Salleh
Autonomedia 334 pages $14
Also by David Watson
BEYOND BOOKCHIN:
Preface for a Future Social Ecology
by David Watson
Besides providing a thorough critique of Murray Bookchin’s narrow version of social ecology, this wide-ranging essay explores new paths of thinking about the prospects for a radical ecological and anti-imperial politics. “…Serious revolutionaries should read it.” —Murray Bookchin(“Whither Anarchism?”)
“A brilliant, carefully argued critique…..” —John Clark
Autonomedia/B&R 256 pages $8
HOW DEEP IS DEEP ECOLOGY? With an Essay-Review on Woman’s Freedom
by David Watson
Written under the pen-name George Bradford, this influential essay, which first appeared in the Fall 1987 Fifth Estate, critiques some of the assumptions and politics of deep ecologists and Earth First! activists at that time. Though EF! has evolved considerably since then, this small book remains a useful guide to important themes in ecological politics. Price also includes FE issue #331 containing Watson’s essay, “Return of the Son of Deep Ecology,” an answer to his critics.
Times Change Press 86 pp. $5.50
New Titles
ESCAPE FROM THE 19TH CENTURY by Peter Lamborn Wilson
If to know “History” as tragedy is to escape its repetition as farce, then perhaps we need to look more deeply at this Past that won’t stop haunting us. Fourier, Nietzsche, Marx and Proudhon are enlisted in the break-out plan. “Wilson really does turn the world upside down.” —Christopher Hill
Autonomedia 205 pages $12
ANARCHIST PORTRAITS by Paul Avrich
A stirring biography of many known (and unknown) anarchists in Europe, U.S., Russia, Brazil and beyond. A landmark of a book by American anarchism’s most prominent historian, tearing through time and space with incisive vision. Includes biggies like Bakunin, but also profiles the likes of J.W. Fleming. A must read for all those who want a sense of anarchist history.
Princeton Paperbacks 316 pp. $19
DISPATCH DETROIT 1 & 2
A new, perfect bound, handsomely laid out and illustrated Detroit poetry magazine. Issue #1 features poetry by FE staff member Marilynn Rashid and FE contributors Mick Vranich and Ken Mikolowski; also Glen Mannisto, Lolita Hernandez and others. #2 features poems by FE staff member David Watson, as well as work by Bill Harris, Tyrone Williams, Chris and Julian Tysh, and Christine Monhollen’s lyrical tribute and threnody to Paul Schwarz, whose work on #2, including the cover art, was his final project.
Doorjamb Press $10 each issue
ALL THINGS CENSORED: Radio Commentaries by Mumia Abu-Jamal
A CD with text originally produced in 1994 for All Things Considered, but the liberals at NPR crumbled under pressure from the cops and politicians and these powerful messages from Death Row were never aired. When you hear the message Mumia brings in these three-minute epistolaries on American justice and culture, you know why the forces of authority are so anxious to kill him. Also, comments by Alice Walker, Cornel West, Martin -Sheen, William Kunstler, Ramona Africa, Judi Bari, Howard Zinn and others.
Prison Radio/Quixote $10
GOD AND THE STATE by Mikhail Bakunin
Classic anarchist text with introduction by anarchist historian Paul Avrich; from Emma Goldman’s 1916 Mother Earth edition.
Dover 89 pp. $6.00
A PEOPLE’S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 1492-PRESENT, by Howard Zinn
Zinn’s text has sold an astounding 500,000
copies. This newly revised and updated edition is current through the Gulf War and the Clinton administration. “Zinn has written a brilliant and moving history of the American people from the point of view of those who have been exploited politically and economically and whose plight has been largely omitted from most histories.”
—Library Journal.
HarperPerennial 675 pp. $18
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. Turner follows the unconscious desire for contentment they sensed in the primitives they destroyed. This new edition, prepared for the Columbus quintcentennial, includes a new foreword and a new preface by the author.
Rutgers University Press 329 pp. $17
MARXISM, FREEDOM, AND THE STATE by Michael Bakunin
In the more than a century since these passages were written, the worship of the state has become a religion over the globe. We have seen in practice the fulfillment of Bakunin’s gloomy forebodings on the destination of Marxist Socialism.
Freedom Press 63 pp. $3.75
CHUMBAWAMBA / NOAM CHOMSKY: For A Free Humanity: For Anarchy
A double CD featuring the now-famous pop band from Leeds on disc 1. “Showbusiness” was recorded live in 1994 and contains their best pre-“Tubthumping” anarchist material. Previously available only as a limited edition expensive import. Disk 2 is a Chomsky lecture-“Capital Rules”-a portrait of a two-tier society with islands of wealth in a sea of poverty. A 24-page booklet is included with extensive interviews with Chomsky and the band.
AK Press Double CD & Booklet $18
Back In Stock
PRISON MEMOIRS OF AN ANARCHIST by Alexander Berkman
“Berkman’s fourteen years in prison turned him into a man of exceptional maturity and wisdom and his memoirs are the record of the reformation of a personality in a way quite the opposite to that intended by the prison system. However, the book is considerably more than that. It is by far the most honest story of prison life written up to its time.”
—Kenneth Rexroth
Frontier Press 538 pp. $13
THE MACHINE AGAINST THE GARDEN by Fredy Perlman
Written a few months before his death for the Fall 1985 Fifth Estate, this is Fredy’s angry reply to an essay by literary academician Leo Marx. Fredy vehemently objects to Marx’s attempts to turn critics of American society into its celebrants, specifically, Nathaniel Hawthorne. In Fredy’s introduction to these two essays, he insists that “Melville, Hawthorne and Thoreau were profound critics of the technological society.” Edited with an introduction by John Moore.
Aporia Press 28 pp. $6
SACCO AND VANZETTI: The Anarchist Background by Paul Avrich
Actually less about the oft-told story of the frame-up of Sacco and Vanzetti, and more about the vibrant revolutionary context in which they lived. Avrich brings alive the rich, day-to-day activities of an immigrant rebel community whose struggles on the job and in the streets had a multi-layered political and cultural dimension to it. A wide-spread bomb plot resides easily, next to radical theater and publications. A model of how an ideal motivated a whole community—young and old, children and parents—to work for a new society.
Princeton University 265 pp. $15
OBJECTIVITY & LIBERAL SCHOLARSHIP by Noam Chomsky, Introduction by Peter Werbe
Taken from Chomsky’s 1969 American Power and the New Mandarins, this thin volume exposes his colleagues’ cooperation with the imperial slaughter in Southeast Asia. Written while the Vietnam war was raging, he demonstrates how the same ideology distorts the work of scholars who analyzed earlier conflicts. His critique of historians of the Spanish Revolution and Civil War includes a stirring account of the anarchist participation which is either ignored or falsified by liberals and stalinists alike. This is the best short history of the Spanish anarchists’ triumphs and defeats.
Black & Red 142 pp. $6
NEW PERIODICALS
LIVE WILD OR DIE #7
32-pages of wilderness anarchy too radical for the Earth First Journal! News, raves, poetry. Graphic heavy pages. No computers used in production. Available from us or at Box 204, 2425-B Channing Way, Berkeley CA 94704
LWOD $3
MINUS TIDES: FOR THOSE ON THE SIDE OF LIFE (Winter 1997-98 issue)
A Canadian radical journal full of essays, short stories, poetry, reviews, art and a book catalogue. Also contains a pamphlet/insert, “First People’s Spirituality and the Marketplace, excerpts from Ward Churchill’s Fantasies of the Master Race.”
Magazine format $3
For a complete list of available FE issues, request it with your book order, or send an SASE.