Most publications receive more books for review than they can possibly do. What’s needed is an Anarchist Review of Books [now, there’s a project waiting to happen]. We are often disappointed, to say nothing of the authors, when we cannot find reviewers for excellent titles that are sent to us. Here are a selection of books we’ve gotten recently, and this isn’t a complete list.
Venezuela: Revolution as Spectacle by Rafael Uzcatagui, translated by Chaz Bufe, See Sharp Press, 2011, 224pp., $16.95, seesharppress.com. Uzcatagui is the editor of the Caracas-based, El Libertario, is a sharp critic of Chavismo. Walker Lane quotes him extensively in his articles about Venezuela in the Fifth Estate.
Conspiracy to Riot in Furtherance of Terrorism: The Collective Autobiography of the RNC 8, edited by Leslie James Pickering, forward by Tom Hayden, Arissa Media Group, 2011, 416pp., $14.95. Eight anarchists and activists describe their victory over the state of Minnesota in its attempt to criminalize dissent at the 2008 Republican National Convention.
The Unbearables Big Book of Sex, several editors, including Fifth Estate writer Jim Feast, Autonomedia/Unbearables, 2011, 640pp., $18.95, autonomedia.org. As the title suggests, sex is examined from the salacious to the scholarly. Several Fifth Estate writers appear in the pages including Walker Lane on Wilhelm Reich, and Peter Lamborn Wilson.
Debt. The First 5,000 Years, David Graeber, Melville House Publishing, 2011, 532pp., $32, mhpbooks.com. Graeber, bounced from his teaching position at Yale for his anarchist beliefs, has been called Occupy Wall Street’s most articulate voice although he would probably be the first to deny this. Debt lays out that it’s the rich that loans and the poor who pay, and the struggle it always entails.