Freedom News

The anarchist reading list: Summer 2019

Below is a brief run-down of a selection of books recently or soon to be published in the forthcoming months which we feel may be of interest to anarchists. Three main criteria are affordability, accessibility and availability. AK Press have a bumper selection lined up including: Down with the Law: Anarchist Individualist Writings from Early

Book Review: Anarchists Never Surrender

This book is a collection of new translations of articles by Victor Serge (1890-1947). by Victor Serge, edited by Mitchell Abidor ISBN: 978-1-62963-031-1 PP: 256 PM Press 2015 Review by Anarcho Born of Russian anti-Tsarist exiles in Belgium, Serge is of note for his odyssey from anarchism to Bolshevism, then from Trotskyism to some kind of libertarian Marxism. He is

Book Review: Divide and Conquer or Divide and Subdivide?

by Mark Leier ISBN: 978-1-62963-383-1 PP: 32 Publisher: PM Press 2017 £4.50 ($5.95) This pamphlet is by the author of the best biography of Bakunin, Bakunin: The Creative Passion, Mark Leier and covers the Marx-Bakunin conflict in the First International. It shares a cover picture with Wolfgang Eckhardt’s The First Socialist Schism: Bakunin vs. Marx in the International Working

Book review: Against Doom — A Climate Insurgency Manual

by Jeremy Brecher ISBN: 978-1-62963-385-5 PP: 128 Publisher: PM Press 2017 £11.99 Easy to read 100 page book about how to collaborate and proactively work to stop the end of the world — or at least the extermination of humanity — aka climate change. Clearly committed to non-violent direct action, there is a lot here that could be useful for anti-capitalists and anti-imperialists

Book review: The Science of Herself

by Karen Joy Fowler ISBN: 978-1-60486-825-8 PP: 128 Publisher: PM Press, 2013 £10.99 Fowler’s multiple short pieces make for a great introduction to her work, voice, and style. The opening and title piece, “The Science of Herself,” connects Jane Austen with a struggling, poor, and female fossil hunter in early 1900s England. Patriarchy, poverty, and perserverance. It’s

Book review: TVA Baby

by Terry Bisson ISBN: 978-1-60486-405-2 PP: 192 Publisher: PM Press, 2011 £13.99 Differentiating Bisson’s writing from his political work is hard. In his The Left Left Behind, Bisson states you can’t separate his politics from his writing (101). So maybe it’s normal that whenever I read Bisson, it’s always framed knowing he was involved with anti-imperialism and

Book Review: The Traffic Power Structure

by Planka.nu collective ISBN: 978-1-62963-153-0 PP: 96 Publisher: PM Press This is one of my favorite PM Press books. Compact, loaded, an accessible theoretical dynamite exploding US conceptions of identity and liberty based on automobiles. There are lovely indications of how constructions of liberty and freedom, driving fast on the road, are actually complete systems of domination

Book Review: New Taboos

by John Shirley ISBN: 978-1-60486-761-9 PP: 128 Publisher: PM Press John Shirley is one of the original “Dread Lords” of Cyberpunk who brought a new noir sensibility to science fiction and Fantasy in the ’90s. The opening piece, “A State of Imprisonment,” sticks with you. It’s brutal without unnecessary graphic details, kind of like a strong

Book Review: The Wild Girls

by Ursula Le Guin ISBN: 978-1-60486-403-8 PP: 112 Publisher: PM Press £9.99 With an epic author like Le Guin, I couldn’t help but go straight to her interview with Bisson. It’s solid. The more interviews I read from Bisson in the Outspoken Author series, the more I want to read. Tangent: I hope he and PM Press