What a Great Time to be a Friend of AK!
Hi folks,
We are happy to announce that there’s three new AK Press books at the printer right now. We sent them all off over the last few days and they will be trickling in in mid-March. So all those lucky Friends of AK subscribers will hit paydirt when their April shipment arrives.
First up is We Are an Image From the Future: The Greek Revolt of December 2008. It’s edited by A.G. Schwarz, Tasos Sagris, and the Void Network. Here’s what we say about it:
What causes a city, then a whole country, to explode? How did one neighborhood’s outrage over the tragic death of one teenager transform itself into a generalized insurrection against State and capital, paralyzing an entire nation for a month?
This is a book about the murder of fifteen-year-old Alexis Grigoropoulos, killed by the police in the Exarchia neighborhood of Athens on December 6th, 2008, and of the revolution in the streets that followed, bringing business as usual in Greece to a screeching, burning halt for three marvelous weeks, and putting the fear of history back into the bureaucrats of Fortress Europe and beyond.
We Are an Image From the Future delves into the December insurrection and its aftermath through interviews with those who witnessed and participated in it, alongside the communiqués and texts that circulated through the networks of revolt. It provides the on-the-ground facts needed to understand these historic events, and also dispels the myths activists outside of Greece have constructed around them. What emerges is not just the intensity of the riots, but the stories of organizing and solidarity, the questions of strategy and tactics: a desperately needed examination of the fabric of the Greek movements that made December possible.
“If protest is when I say I disagree and resistance is when I do something about it, then insurrection is when everyone else is on-board too. So it was in December of 2008, when Greece burned. Behind the spectacular street uprising is years of organizing and a deeply embedded anti-authoritarian culture of emancipation. We Are an Image from the Future is a quintessential portrait of revolution in action. The coming global insurrection has already begun.”—Ramor Ryan, author of Clandestines—The Pirate Journals of an Irish Exile.
“What the Zapatista uprising of 1994 was to the antiglobalization movement, the Greek uprising of 2008 could be to the demise of capitalism itself.”—CrimethInc. Ex-Workers’ Collective
“This book is just what Dr. Fucking Anarchy ordered. How to turn insurrection into revolution. The Greek revolt will inspire a generation as Paris ’68 did 40 years earlier.”—Ian Bone, class warrior and author of Bash the Rich
“This dazzling collection is not a book about the great insurrection of 2008—it is a living piece of it that can become a part of us, and through us, it opens the prospect of a universe we might never otherwise have imagined possible. Future historians may well conclude that the Revolution finally began in 2008. If they do, this book will have played a crucial role in that realization.”—David Graeber, author of Direct Action: An Ethnography
Cover design by Kate Khatib:
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Next is the first book in the AK Press / Institute for Anarchist Studies “Anarchist Interventions Series,” Anarchism and its Aspirations, by Cindy Milstein.
From nineteenth-century newspaper publishers to the participants in the “Battle of Seattle” and the recent Greek uprising, anarchists have been inspired by the ideal of a free society of free individuals—a world without hierarchy or domination. But what exactly would that look like, and how can we get there? Anarchism and Its Aspirations provides an accessible overview of an often-misunderstood political philosophy, highlighting its principles and practices as well as its reconstructive vision of a liberatory society.
“A brilliant primer of anarchist politics.” —Matt Hern, author of Common Ground in a Liquid City
“I expect Anarchism and Its Aspirations to become the introduction to anarchism of the next decade.” —Gabriel Kuhn, editor of Gustav Landauer’s Revolution and Other Writings
“A road map to the many social and cultural movements that anarchism has traversed . . . a testimony to its continuing ability to capture the radical imagination.” —Silvia Federici, author of Caliban and the Witch
“Uncompromising, practical, and hopeful, this book is essential reading for all who are taking on climate change, war, or corporate capitalism.” —David Solnit, coauthor of The Battle of the Story of the “Battle of Seattle”
Cover design by Josh MacPhee:
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And finally, formerly available as a $200 hardcover (under the name Class, Culture and Conflict in Barcelona)—but worth every penny—is our reasonably priced Anarchism and the City by Chris Ealham. This one is published by AK Press in conjunction with The Cañada Blanch Center for Contemporary Spanish Studies and includes a prologue by Paul Preston. Here’s what we’re saying:
“A magnificent, revelatory history of a city of slums and a proletariat of hope. The best book that I’ve read in the last decade.”―Mike Davis, author of City of Quartz, Planet of Slums, and Buda’s Wagon
Between 1898 and 1937, competing interests from the national government, the regional industrialists, and the working class, fought for control of Barcelona. The social realities of Barcelona―as Spain’s economic, cultural, social, and political capital―provided a perfect backdrop for battle over the urban future. Chris Ealham explores these complex and often violent relationships, utilizing an innovative blend of history, urbanism, sociology, and cultural studies. No other work digs this deep into the composition of an urban working class movement―and certainly not with such a sympathetic eye for the aspirations of its anarchist denizens.
“Scrupulously researched and well written, this is the finest study of working-class anarchist life and culture since Paul Avrich’s The Haymarket Tragedy. Not only a study of working-class Barcelona, Anarchism and the City is the story of anarchists organizing themselves where they lived, and of the militant culture they were a part of and helped to create. Ealham’s book draws on a marvelous array of sources, and offers a picture of anarchism in Spain that is both groundbreaking, honest, and, yes, inspirational. This is the history of the barris coming alive in your hands. Put simply, no future study of anarchism can ever ignore this book, which comes closer than any other English-language work in understanding what anarchism and its practice meant to Spanish working-class people at the time.”―Barry Pateman, Associate Editor at the Emma Goldman Papers and editor of Chomsky on Anarchism
Cover design by John Yates:
