| Happy January, folks! We hope you’re all staying warm, and spending your winter months catching up on your reading… We are putting the finishing touches on a few long-awaited books: Property is Theft! A Pierre-Joseph Proudhon Reader; Autonomy, Solidarity, Possibility: The Colin Ward Reader; and Marshall Law: The Life and Times of a Baltimore Black Panther. Stay tuned: they’ll be available for preorder as soon as we send them off to the printer! With so many books in the works, now would be a great time to sign up as a Friend of AK Press, don’t you think? Just saying. And if you haven’t already, we’d also encourage you to check out the “Top 10″ lists on our blog and stock up on 2010′s most popular new titles from AK Press Publishing and AK Press Distribution! Now for the other good stuff… |
| New Titles at AK Press Distro | |
 PREORDER NOW!The Autobiography of America’s Master Swindler J.R. Weil · AK Press / Nabat · $13.50 Finally, a new book in our popular Nabat series! Bilked bankers, grifted gamblers, and swindled spinsters. Welcome to the world of confidence men. Joseph “Yellow Kid” Weil was born in 1877 to German immigrant grocers in Chicago. He worked a number of odd jobs before executing a startling number of scams, primarily in the Chicago area but all over the world. He lived to be 101, and is said to have stolen over eight million dollars in total. This is his story! Return of the Cake Scoffer Cheap ‘n’ Easy Vegan Cooking Ronny · Active Distribution · $3.50 The classic Cake Scoffer is back in a new edition with 25 new recipes! Included for your dessert pleasure are recipes for Berry Ginger Cheesecake, Foxy Brownies, Date slices, Truffles, French Apple Pie, Vanilla Pecan Parcels, and more! “The essential antidote to health foods for vegans, trainee vegans, relatives of vegans, kitchen scientists, and curious cooks wanting to know how vegans ‘do it’ without eggs and cow extracts.” Be sure to also check out the All-Day Breakfast Scoffer!  Post-Car AdventuringJ· Post-Car Press · $8.00 This first guidebook in an exciting new series features hand-drawn maps, original photography, and concise information and suggestions for each trip. This is your car-free guide to the region, from well-known destinations like Yosemite to off-the-beaten path places like Tassajara Hot Springs. Includes basic tips and techniques for successful post-car travel, like how to travel with your bicycle on buses and trains. Great for both residents of and visitors!  About a Mountain John D’Agata · W. W. Norton · $14.95 When John D’Agata helps his mother move to Las Vegas one summer, he begins to follow a story about the federal government’s plan to store high-level nuclear waste at a place called Yucca Mountain, a desert range near the city of Las Vegas. As the contradictions inherent in Yucca’s story are revealed, D’Agata’s investigation turns inevitably personal. Here is the work of a penetrating thinker whose startling portrait of a mountain in the desert compels a reexamination of the future of human life.  2011 Calendars So Many Magazines and Journals… We’re pleased to announce lots of new issues in stock: Cultural Survival Quarterly, Left Turn, Fire to the Prisons, Monthly Review, Show Me the Money… plus special 30th Anniversary issues of both Earth First! and World War 3 Illustrated, and (great) recent issues of Upping the Anti and Perspectives on Anarchist Theory! | |
| 25% Off: Mark Batty Publisher | |
Lucky you, you’ve still got another week to take advantage on the 25% discount on all titles from our January Publisher of the Month, Mark Batty Publisher! To find out more about who they are and what they publish, check out our conversation with them on the AK Press blog! Below are a few of our bestsellers and personal favorites, but also be sure to check out all Mark Batty titles. They’re all on sale until the end of January!  Protest Graffiti Mexico: Oaxaca · Mark Batty Publisher · $20.96 The graffiti that has overwhelmed Oaxaca over the last five years constitutes the protest art of a community rising up. Graffiti has become a way of achieving justice through community organization, creating and facilitating an ongoing dialogue of rage. And because teachers in Mexico are primarily women, the graffiti is very much inspired by and made by women. Depicting oppression, empowerment, and the messages of struggle and revolt, this graffiti echoes universal desires, making for stunning and poignant visuals that remind readers: “We Are All Oaxaca!”  Urban Guerrilla Protest · Mark Batty Publisher · $20.96 All over the world, activists have disseminated their messages by using an array of “media-guerrilla” methods to grab the attention of the public, as well as the perpetrators of the actions that have instigated the protests. Berlin-based graphic designer Ake Rudolf has compiled an international collection of successful and poignant actions; this deluxe bilingual English/German book includes the work of Reverend Billy, the Yes Men, The Institute for Applied Autonomy, The Billboard Liberation Front, The Ruckus Society, Yomango, Surveillance Camera Players and more than 90 other examples from all over the world.  Stencil Graffiti Capital: Melbourne · Mark Batty Publisher · $20.96 Stencil graffiti has found its heart in Melbourne, Australia. No other city boasts such quantity and quality of stencil art. This is the first book to explore the city’s thought provoking, visually rich stencil graffiti scene, and the politics that it is largely centered around. Nearly 500 full color images document the beauty and breadth of the work produced. Art, interviews and profiles of artists including: Psalm, Phibs, Sixten, Meek, Rone, Prism, Sync, Meggs, Banksy and more make this an essential book for anyone with an interest in street art, design and contemporary popular culture.  Los Angeles Graffiti· Mark Batty Publisher · $20.96 From intricately tagged walls that seem to grow out of blooming roadside flower beds to spray-painted palm trees, see how the landscape of America’s anti-city has fomented a distinct brand of graffiti, recognized the world over. Compiled by Roger Gastman (editor of Enamelized and Morning Wood from Gingko Press), this colorful book documents the history of the unique, world-class graffiti scene that thrives in Los Angeles. | |
| 50% Off: Featured AK Press Titles | |
You’ve also still got another week to take advantage of a 50% discount on a selection of AK Press titles! You can read more about this month’s selections on our blog, but here are the discounted titles for the month of January:  Noam Chomsky · AK Press · $9.48 Editor C.P. Otero sets out to “provide relatively easy access to Chomsky’s libertarian philosophy and political analysis.” Taken from a wide variety of sources and spanning four decades, this collection provides a truly comprehensive window into Chomsky’s anarchist convictions which, while ever-present in his analysis, are left largely misunderstood or ignored.  Jumping the Line· AK Press · $7.48 A vivid first-hand account of Left culture in America’s heady days of the 1920s through the 40s. William Herrick provides colorful reminiscences of riding the rails with other hobos during the Depression, of organizing sharecroppers in the South, of his time on the anarchist collective Sunrise Farm, where his political ideals of communal living and self-sufficiency were tested by the very real demands of agricultural work on a city boy, and his involvement during the Spanish Civil War.  Wasting Libby The True Story of How the WR Grace Corporation Left a Montana Town to Die (and Got Away With It) · AK Press/Counterpunch · $7.97 The heart-wrenching story of a small Montana town where the W.R. Grace Company ran a vermiculite mine that supplied the world with insulation, fireproofing, and gardening materials for nearly 30 years. Grace’s vermiculite was laced with a virulent form of asbestos, and in its quest for profits the company betrayed this rural community, spreading a legacy of death and disease. Libby’s story is ultimately the tale of the families who fought Grace for justice, who refused to sacrifice their dignity even as they lost their lives.  Constituent ImaginationMilitant Investigations, Collective Theorization · AK Press · $10.98 What is the relationship of radical theory to movements for social change? In a world where more and more global struggles are refusing vanguard parties and authoritarian practices, does the idea of the detached intellectual, observing events from on high, make sense anymore? In this powerful and unabashedly militant collection, over two dozen academic authors and engaged intellectuals (including Antonio Negri and Colectivo Situaciones) provide some challenging answers. In the process, they redefine the nature of intellectual practice itself.  Real Utopia Participatory Society for the 21st Century · AK Press · $10.98 What if we had direct control over our daily lives? What if society’s defining institutions were based not on competition, individual ownership, and coercion, but on self-management, equity, solidarity, and diversity? Real Utopia identifies and obliterates the barriers to an egalitarian, bottom-up society, while convincingly outlining how to build it. Instead of simply declaring “another world is possible,” the writers in this collection engage with what that world would look like, how it would function, and how our commitments to just outcomes is related to the sort of institutions we maintain.  Dispersing Power Social Movements as Anti-State Forces Raúl Zibechi · AK Press · $7.97 |
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 Friends of AK Press There’s no time like the present to become a Friend of AK Press? It’s a great way to support AK Press’s publishing work, and in return you get every new book we publish, delivered right to you. Sign up now, and get a stylish tote bag featuring the Friends of AK logo designed by Josh MacPhee! If you’re already a Friend, just refer someone else, and if they mention you when they sign up, you’ll both get a tote bag. And that’s not all-if you keep referring more people after your first, you’ll get a $20 AK Press gift certificate for each additional new Friend you sign up! |
