Italo Calvino 1979 260p 5 x 8 If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler turns out to be not one novel but ten, each with a different plot, style, ambience, and author, and each interrupted at a moment of suspense. Together they form a labyrinth of literatures, known and unknown, alive and extinct, through which … Continue reading If on a winter’s night a traveler
A Memoir of Disintegration David Wojnarowicz 1991 288p 5 x 8 Written in the ’80s when Wojnarowicz and his friends were sick and dying of AIDS, this is a powerful, tragic — yet beautiful — memoirs. A collection of essays dealing with death, sickness, the sexual freedoms of queer … Continue reading Close to the Knives
Marge Piercy 1976 384p MMPB Connie Ramos, a woman in her mid-thirties, has been declared insane. But Connie is overwhelmingly sane, merely tuned to the future, and able to communicate with the year 2137. As her doctors persuade her to agree to an operation, Connie struggles to force herself … Continue reading Woman on the Edge of Time
The Life and World of Ben Reitman, Chicago’s Celebrated Social Reformer, Hobo King and Whorehouse Physician Roger A. Burns 2001 368p 6 x 9 Biography of “the hobo doctor” who road the rails and treated the elements of the working class many other physicians refused to, including performing abortions which were illegal … Continue reading The Damndest Radical
David Wojnarowicz 1997 227p 5.5 x 8 Before his death from AIDS in 1992, David Wojnarowicz became known in the 1980s as an outspoken AIDS activist, anti-censorship advocate, artist, and writer. Written as short monologues, each of these powerful, early works of autobiographical fiction is spoken in the voice … Continue reading The Waterfront Journals
Dennis Danvers 2002 368p 5 x 8 In 1921 Russia, a mysterious visitor from the far future comes to Peter Kropotkin’s deathbed and offers the world-renowned anarchist philosopher a new life. Kropotkin — the one-time prince who renounced wealth and privilege to embrace the cause of anarchy, the dying … Continue reading The Watch
Jean Genet 1949 272p 5 x 8 The man Jean Cocteau dubbed France’s ‘Black Prince of Letters’ here reconstructs his early adult years — time he spent as a petty criminal and vagabond, traveling through Spain and Antwerp, occasionally border hopping across the rest of Europe, always one step … Continue reading The Thief’s Journal
The IWW and the Making of a Revolutionary Workingclass Counterculture Franklin Rosemont 2003 650p 5 x 8 A massive and thorough take on the life of Joe Hill (1877-1915), one of the best-known figures in the heroic history of the Industrial Workers of the World. U.S. labor’s most world-renowned … Continue reading Joe Hill
Jon Krakauer 1996 207p 5 x 8 Krakauer’s version of Alexander Supertramp’s adventurous and, ultimately, tragic life. Disillusioned with his middle class life, after graduating college Supertramp drops off the map and strikes off on an ascetic adventure: hitch-hiking across the country, canoeing to mexico, train-hopping up and down … Continue reading Into the Wild