AK Press New Title Roundup: 2011 (So Far)!

We’ve just closed out the first half of 2011, and at a time like this I think it’s always nice to look back and give ourselves a pat on the back for all the good work. Not to mention—for you dedicated readers, and you bookstores stocking our books, it’s a good chance to look back and make sure you haven’t missed anything.

We would be remiss not to say a big THANK YOU to the Friends of AK Press for your continued support. We couldn’t do it without you! If you’re not already a Friend of AK Press and you like what you see here, please consider signing up. We’ve already got another great season of books in the works—beginning with Bifo’s After the Future, David Price’s Weaponizing Anthropology, Abel Paz’s Story of the Iron Column, our long-awaited Colin Ward Reader, and Captive Genders! Sign up now and you’ll get them all, and more…

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AK PRESS NEW RELEASES—First Half of 2011:



Fear of the Animal Planet: The Hidden History of Animal Resistance

Jason Hribal

In the most provocative book on animal rights since Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation, historian Jason Hribal argues persuasively that escapes and attacks by animals in captivity are deliberate, that the animals are acting with intent, and that they are asserting their own desires for freedom. Fear of the Animal Planet is a harrowing, and curiously uplifting, chronicle of resistance against the captivity and torture of animals.

“Yellow Kid” Weil: The Autobiography of America’s Master Swindler

J.R. “Yellow Kid” Weil, as told to W.T. Brannan

The latest addition to our popular Nabat Series! Bilked bankers, grifted gamblers, and swindled spinsters: welcome to the world of confidence men. You’ll marvel at the elaborate schemes developed by The Yellow Kid: fixed horse races, bad real-estate deals, and even a money-making machine! Dozens of schemes are laid out in full detail, told with wit and style—you won’t be able to put it down!

Oppose and Propose: Lessons from Movement for a New Society

Andrew Cornell

The second book in the Anarchist Interventions series, co-published with the Institute for Anarchist Studies!

Many ways of doing radical politics pioneered by Movement for a New Society in the 1970s and 1980s have become central to anti-authoritarian social movements: consensus decision making, spokescouncils, communal living, unlearning oppressive behavior, and co-operatively owned businesses. Andrew Cornell uses the story of the Movement for a New Society to raise crucial questions for activists today.

Property Is Theft!: A Pierre-Joseph Proudhon Reader

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon’s social and economic ideas have been a source of inspiration and debate since 1840. Mikhail Bakunin called Proudhon “the master of us all,” while for Peter Kropotkin he laid “the foundations of anarchism.” Property Is Theft! collects his most important works in one (giant!) volume, making many available in English for the first time. Extensively annotated and introduced by editor Iain McKay (author of An Anarchist FAQ)!

Marshall Law: The Life and Times of a Baltimore Black Panther

Marshall “Eddie” Conway & Dominque Stevenson

In 1970, the feds framed Eddie Conway for the murder of a Baltimore City Police officer. Forty years later, still incarcerated for a crime he didn’t commit, Eddie Conway continues to resist. Marshall Law is a poignant story of strength and struggle. From his childhood in inner-city Baltimore to his political awakening in the military, from the rise of the Black Panther Party to the sham trial, the realities of prison life, escape attempts, labor organizing on the inside, and beyond, Eddie’s autobiography is a reminder that we all share the responsibility of resistance, no matter where we are.

Zapatista Spring: Anatomy of a Rebel Water Project & the Lessons of International Solidarity

Ramor Ryan

Eight volunteers converge to help campesinos build a water system in Chiapas—a strategy to bolster the Zapatista insurgency by helping locals to assert their autonomy. These outsiders come to question the movement they’ve traveled so far to support—and each other—when forced into a world so unlike the poetic communiqués of Subcomandante Marcos; a world of endemic rural poverty, parochialism, and shifting loyalties to the movement. From the author of Clandestines!

The Right to Be Lazy: Essays by Paul Lafargue

Paul Lafargue

At once a masterpiece of critical theory and rip-roaring radical humor, this is one of the most spirited attacks on the notion of the “work ethic” ever to be published! This collection also includes four of Paul Lafargue’s lesser-known critiques, as well as a biographical sketch by Wobbly organizer Fred Thompson,and a new introduction by editor Bernard Marszalek. Released in collaboration with Kerr Company to celebrate their 125th anniversary year, and including a tribute to Kerr by labor journalist Kari Lydersen.

Revolt and Crisis in Greece: Between a Present Yet to Pass and a Future Still to Come

Edited by Antonis Vradis & Dimitris Dalakoglou

How does a revolt come about and what does it leave behind? This timely new volume traces Greece’s long moment of transition from the revolt of 2008 to the economic crisis that followed. In its twenty chapters, authors from around the world—including those on the ground in Greece—analyze how December became possible, exploring its legacies, the position of the social antagonist movement in face of the economic crisis and the arrival of the IMF, and the potentialities that have opened up in face of the crisis.

I Mix What I Like!: A Mixtape Manifesto

Jared A. Ball

In a moment of increasing corporate control in the music industry, where three major labels call the shots on which artists are heard and seen, Jared Ball analyzes the colonization and control of popular music and posits the homemade hip-hop mixtape as an emancipatory tool for community resistance. Blending together elements from internal colonialism theory, cultural studies, political science, and his own experience on the mic, Jared suggests that the low-tech hip-hop mixtape may be one of the best weapons we have against Empire.

Peace, Love & Petrol Bombs: A Novel

D.D. Johnston

Wayne Foster is fed up. How long can you work in a dead-end job as a full-time burger-flipper in a small town in Scotland before you start to wonder what comes next? Add a likeable geek with a love of Karl Marx, an angry French anarchist, and a country schoolteacher’s daughter in search of excitement, and soon you’ll have a rebellion on your hands. Rife with dry wit and disaffected humor, Peace, Love & Petrol Bombs is the modern working-class novel, and the perfect antidote to “serious” political fiction.