Peter Kropotkin 1887 387p 5 x 8 Nearly a century has passed since Kropotkin wrote In Russian and French Prisons, yet his criticisms of the penal system have lost none of their relevance. Prisons—far from reforming the offender, or deterring crime—are, in themselves, ‘schools of crime’. Every year, thousands of prisoners are … Continue reading In Russian and French Prisons
Body of Glass Marge Piercy 1991 448p 6 x 9 A dystopian future novel in the 22nd century where corporations control scarce world resources and remain luxurious, spick and span, while independent free zones remain in squalor but free and dangerous. The story follows Shira Shipman, working at one such corp called … Continue reading He, She and It
Edward Abbey 1969 269p MMPB Desert Solitaire is a collection of vignettes about life in the wilderness and the nature of the desert itself by the (at the time) park ranger and conservationist, Edward Abbey. The book details the unique adventures and conflicts the author faces, from dealing with the damage caused by development of … Continue reading Desert Solitaire
Antonin Artaud 2001 253p 5.5 x 8 “I am the man,” wrote Artaud, “who has best charted his inmost self.” Antonin Artaud was a poet who wanted to live in the infinite and asked that the human spirit burn in absolute freedom. To society, he was a madman. Artaud, however, was not insane but in … Continue reading Artaud Anthology
An Archealogy of Medical Perception Michel Foucault 1963 240p 5 x 8 In the eighteenth century, medicine underwent a mutation. For the first time, medical knowledge took on a precision that had formerly belonged only to mathematics. The body became something that could be mapped. Disease became subject to new rules of classification. And doctors … Continue reading The Birth of the Clinic
The Birth of the Prison Michel Foucault 1975 333p 5 x 8 Foucault suggests that such vaunted reforms as the abolition of torture and the emergence of the modern penitentiary have merely shifted the focus of punishment from the prisoner’s body to his soul. The four main parts include: torture, punishment, discipline and prison. $4-12 … Continue reading Discipline and Punish
Five Centuries of the Pillage of the Continent Eduardo Galeano 1971 317p 6 x 9 Rather than chronology, geography, or political successions, Eduardo Galeano has organized the various facets of Latin American history according to the patterns of five centuries of exploitation. Thus he is concerned with gold and … Continue reading Open Veins of Latin America
Against His-Story, Against Leviathan! Fredy Perlman 1983 296p 5 x 8 How Civilization encroached on free peoples. On every continent scribes, traders and kings promoted division of labor, professional armies, social discipline, national, ethnic and class fervor. Bastard Out of Carolina A Novel Dorothy Allison 1992 320p 6 x … Continue reading Recommended Reading
Women, The Body and Primitive Accumulation Silvia Federici 2004 393p 6.5 x 9.5 Marx says that Capitalism comes into the world dripping with blood from the enclosure of common lands, the enslavement of europeans to the wage and the extermination and enslavement of africans and native americans. Foucault looks … Continue reading Caliban and the Witch
An Autobiography Assata Shakur 1987 303p 6.5 x 9.5 Black radical, former panther, BLA member and all-around badass, this is Assata’s own story up until the late 1980s. From the afterward: “Through her eyes we have the chance to see so many social tensions at play. The obvious and … Continue reading Assata