Fifth Estate Books

Fifth Estate Books is located at 4632 Second Ave., just south of W. Forest, in Detroit, in the same space as the Fifth Estate Newspaper. Hours vary, so please call before coming by.

HOW TO ORDER BY MAIL

1) List the title of the book, quantity, and the price of each;

2) add 10% for mailing costs—not less than $1.05 U.S. or $1.60 foreign (minimum for 4^th class book rate postage);

3) total;

4) write check or money order to: Fifth Estate;

5) mail to: Fifth Estate, 4632 Second Ave., Detroit MI 48201 USA.

Phone (313) 831–6800 for hours and more information.

THE STORY OF TATIANA by Jacques Baynac

In 1906, in a Swiss luxury hotel, Tatiana Leontiev, a young, aristocratic intellectual assassinated a French businessman in the mistaken belief he was the Tsar’s Interior Minister. While tracing Tatiana’s life, the book evokes the repression, intrigue, and commitment leading up to the overthrow of Tsarism.

Black & Red 255 pp., $6

AN AMERICAN ANARCHIST: THE LIFE OF VOLTAIRINE DE CLEYRE by Paul Avrich

Avrich’s book on Voltairine de Cleyre (1866–1912) is the first full-length biography of a woman whose vision of a decentralized libertarian society, based on voluntary cooperation and mutual aid, has left a legacy to inspire new generations of young anarchists. The author is concerned with writing a biography that understands anarchists as human beings and to clear away the misconceptions that usually associate anarchism with terrorism, destruction, and chaos.

Princeton U. Press 265 pp. (hb), $14

AUTONOMOUS TECHNOLOGY: TECHNICS OUT-OF-CONTROL AS A THEME IN POLITICAL THOUGHT by Langdon Winner

Readers interested in technology, politics and social change will find Autonomous Technology a useful guide and a thoughtful inquiry into the relationship between technology and society. In it Winner outlines the paradoxes of technological development, the image of alienation and liberation evoked by machines, and he assesses the historical conditions underlying the exponential growth of technology.

M.I.T Press 386 pp., $11

THE OLD WAYS by Gary Snyder

The wisdom and skill of those who studied the universe first hand, by direct knowledge and experience for millennia, both inside and outside themselves, is what we might call the Old Ways. In these six essays, Black Mountain poet-alumnus, Gary Snyder explores the old ways via poetry, myth and sense of place. “Entering such paths we begin to learn a little of the Old Ways, which are outside of history and forever new.”

City Lights Books 96 pp., $6

ECSTATIC INCISIONS: The Collages of Freddie Baer

One day, art historians will comb through crumbling yellowing stacks of Fifth Estate and Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed hunting for Baers, the way they’re currently prospecting old Hearstian newsprint heaps for Windsor McKay or George Herriman. Forget the Spanish-American War! Give us more Krazy Kat! Forget Peoples’ Park, Tompkins Square, the Death of Communism—we want Baer!

—Peter Lamborn Wilson

AK Distribution 80 pp., $12

ANARCHY & ECSTASY: VISIONS OF HALCYON DAYS by John Moore

This sequence of speculative and analytical essays constitutes a body of visionary insights-uncovering beyond ideology, a field of infinite potentialities. Moore’s seven essays propose the development of a culture of anarchy: a culture aware of its roots in a genuinely halcyon society and confident of its future in a renewed earthly paradise.

Aporia Press 44 pp., $4

TRAPPED IN SPAIN by Carlotta O’Neil

An account of the Spanish novelist’s experiences during the 1936 revolution. The horror of the fascist victory, prison and finally flight are chronicled in a human manner often lost in historical narratives.

Solidarity Books 165 pp., $2.50

THE FINAL EMPIRE: THE COLLAPSE OF CIVILIZATION by Wm. H. Kotke

Kotke deals with the entire context of an ecological collapse already in progress, even though his target is the entire course of civilized human society over the past 10,000 years. Facing the final empire, the global corporate system and its last-gasp exponential curve toward complete ecological exhaustion, Kotke advocates planting seed communities, new human families based in Permaculture and working together to recover the complex relations with nature and each other, lost in civilization’s millennia of subjugating indigenous peoples.

Arrowpoint Press 396 pp., $15

T.A.Z.: ONTOLOGICAL ANARCHISM, POETIC TERRORISM, TEMPORARY AUTONOMOUS ZONE by Hakim Bey

This collection of beatific verse, post-situationist pronouncements, anarchist animadversions, and postmodern speculations register various figures of Utopia (the hermetic margins of the East, romantic experimental communities of Europe and early America and the dropout cultures of the recent past and present) that have, as we approach the millennium, become rootless and worldly. Bey demonstrates an anarchism conversant with the many influences and forces that make up “the history of its present.”

Autonomedia 141 pp., $6

HISTORY OF THE MAKHNOVIST MOVEMENT by Peter Arshinov

History of the anarchist peasant revolution in the Ukraine with telling revelations about the nature of “revolutionary” Bolshevik military and social policy. Written by a participant in the Makhnovist movement.

Freedom Press 284 pp., $11

ECO-DEFENSE: A Field Guide to Monkeywrenching edited by Dave Foreman and Bill Haywood

This new, revised and enlarged second edition contains everything the wilderness defender needs to know about how to disable, dismantle, blow-up, tear down, break, burn or otherwise stop the commerce-driven, state-reinforced juggernaut that destroys the earth. Sabotage techniques are richly detailed with diagrams, first hand accounts and “field notes.”

Ned Ludd Book 311 pp., $20

GOD AND THE STATE by Michael Bakunin

A classic text that has been a basic anarchist and radical document for generations. It is a clear statement of anarchist philosophy stating that authoritarianism and religion entail the impoverishment, enslavement and eventual annihilation of human community.

Dover Publ. 89 pp., $5

THE HAYMARKET TRAGEDY by Paul Avrich

In this moving appraisal of the infamous Haymarket bombing and the trial that followed it, Avrich shows how eight Anarchists who were blamed for the bombing at a workers meeting near Chicago’s Haymarket Square became the focus of a variety of passionately waged struggles

Princeton U. Press 535 pp., $13

ABC OF ANARCHISM by Alexander Berkman

A key text in the development of anarchist ideas first published in 1929. Contains gripping accounts of the Haymarket Martyrs, the case of Mooney and Billings, of Sacco and Vanzetti, and his eyewitness account of the tragic Communist destruction of the Russian Revolution.

Freedom Press 86 pp., $5

POLL TAX REBELLION by Danny Burns

This is the inside story of the biggest mass movement in British history, one which at its peak involved over 17 million people. Using the voices of those involved, it describes the everyday organization of the local Anti-Poll Tax Unions. It chronicles in detail the demonstrations and riots of March 1990, culminating in the massive battle of Trafalgar Square. It shows how the courts were blocked, the bailiffs resisted and the Poll Tax, in its original form, destroyed. The final chapter draws on this experience to present a radically new vision of change from below.

AK Press 202 pp., $8

BI ANY OTHER NAME: Bisexual People Speak Out edited by Loraine Hutchins and Lani Kaahumanu

Rejected by both Gay and Straight worlds, bisexuals have been a community in exile. With this rich and varied collection, however, bisexual women and men step forward into their own historical spotlight. The writing here can only deepen our discussion about passion and politics

Alyson Publ. 379 pp., $12

THE BRAVE COWBOY by Edward Abbey

The hero of this anarchist fable, Jack Burns, is a loner who refuses to accept the tyranny of the twentieth century. He rides his horse down the main street of Duke City and refuses to carry a draft card or any other form of identification. His stubbornness makes him intolerable to the forces of law and order that control the new West.

Univ. New Mexico Press 285 pp., $11

PROPAGANDA by Jacques Ellul

“The theme of Propaganda is quite simple...that when our new technology encompasses any culture or society, the result is propaganda. Ellul has made many splendid contributions in this book.”

—Marshall McLuhan

Vintage 131 pp., $9

BISEXUALITY: A Reader and Sourcebook ed. Thomas Geller

“Traverses a wide spectrum of writing styles from the creatively playful to the highly academic, examining the personal, political and scientific aspects of the issues which is perhaps best described as ‘trying to live a both/and life in an either/or world”

—from Spring 1991 FE

Times Change Press 186 pp., $11

Appendix to Anarchists in the Spanish Revolution by Jose Peirats

An appendix to Peirats’ exhaustive study of the events he took part in. A brief account of the Spanish anarchist groups in exile after the revolution of 1936–39, relating their conflicts, perspectives and personalities. Also includes a short biography of the late author.

Black & Red 29 pp., $1.25

A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn

A brilliant and moving history of the American people from the point of view of those who have been exploited politically and economically and whose plight has been largely omitted from most histories.

Harper & Row 614 pp., $12

GONE TO CROATAN: ORIGINS OF NORTH AMERICAN DROP-OUT CULTURE edited by Ron Sakolsky &James Koehnline

America was founded as a land of dropouts, and began to produce its own crop of dissidents, visionaries, utopians, escaped slaves, white and black “Indians,” sailors and buccaneers, tax rebels, angry women, “tri-racial isolate” communities—all on the lam from Babylon. 25 essays tell a hidden history of this continent.

Autonomedia-USA 382 pp., $12