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October
News at PM Press
This month we have three exciting new releases, including a collection of first-person accounts from the revolutionary Paris Commune of 1871 and two novels of "Spectacular Fiction." Plus we have one week remaining for our online fundraiser for
Understanding Jim Crow: Using Racist Memorabilia to Teach Tolerance and Promote Social Justice by David Pilgrim, founder and curator of the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia. This book is an essential and accessible resource and teaching tool to understand the historical and current climate of race relations and systemic racism in America. We need your support to get this amazing book printed and into as many hands as possible.
Historians view the Paris Commune of 1871 through their own prism, distant in time and space.
Voices of the Paris Commune, edited and translated by Mitchell Abidor, takes a different tack. In this book only those who were present in the spring of 1871, who lived through and participated in the Commune, are heard.
Damnificados, the first novel from JJ Amaworo Wilson, follows six hundred vagabonds and misfits
who take over an abandoned urban tower and set up a community complete with schools, stores, beauty salons, bakeries, and a rag-tag defensive militia. Their always heroic (and often hilarious) struggle for survival and dignity pits them against corrupt police, the brutal military, and the tyrannical "owners."
Diana Block's (author of
Arm the Spirit: A Woman's Journey Underground and Back) novel
Clandestine Occupations is a thought-provoking reflection on the risks and sacrifices of political activism as well as the damaging reverberations of disaffection and cynicism.
We have a plethora of great news, reviews, and events. We can't list everything happening in one email, but click on the relevant images for more info or check it all out
HERE.
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Voices of the Paris Commune
Edited and translated by Mitchell Abidor
Paperback
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ISBN: 9781629631004
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$14.95
The Paris Commune of 1871, the first instance of a working-class seizure of power, has been subject to countless interpretations; reviled by its enemies as a murderous bacchanalia of the unwashed while praised by supporters as an exemplar of proletarian anarchism in action. Historians view the working class's three-month rule through their own prism, distant in time and space.
Voices of the Paris Commune takes a different tack. In this book only those who were present in the spring of 1871, who lived through and participated in the Commune, are heard.
The Paris Commune had a vibrant press, and it is represented here by its most important newspaper,
Le Cri du Peuple, edited by Jules Vallès, member of the First International. Like any legitimate government, the Paris Commune held parliamentary sessions and issued daily printed reports of the heated, contentious deliberations that belie any accusation of dictatorship.
Voices of the Paris Commune also contains a selection from the inquiry carried out twenty years after the event by the intellectual review
La Revue Blanche, asking participants to judge the successes and failures of the Paris Commune. This section provides a fascinating range of opinions of this epochal event.
"The Paris Commune of 1871 has been the subject of much ideological debate, often far removed from the experiences of the participants themselves. If you really want to dig deep into what happened during those fateful weeks, reading these eyewitness accounts is mandatory."
----Gabriel Kuhn, editor of All Power to the Councils! A Documentary History of the German Revolution of 1918-1919
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JJ Amaworo Wilson
Paperback
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ISBN: 9781629631172
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$15.95
Damnificados is loosely based on the real-life occupation of a half-completed skyscraper in Caracas, Venezuela, the Tower of David. In this fictional version, six hundred "damnificados"
----vagabonds and misfits
----take over an abandoned urban tower and set up a community complete with schools, stores, beauty salons, bakeries, and a rag-tag defensive militia. Their always heroic (and often hilarious) struggle for survival and dignity pits them against corrupt police, the brutal military, and the tyrannical "owners."
Taking place in an unnamed country at an unspecified time, the novel has elements of magical realism: avenging wolves, biblical floods, massacres involving multilingual ghosts, arrow showers falling to the tune of Beethoven's Ninth, and a trash truck acting as a Trojan horse. The ghosts and miracles woven into the narrative are part of a richly imagined world in which the laws of nature are constantly stretched and the past is always present.
"Two-headed beasts, biblical floods, dragonflies to the rescue----magical realism threads through this authentic and compelling struggle of men and women----the damnificados----to make a home for themselves against all odds. Into this modern, urban, politically familiar landscape of the 'have-nots' versus the 'haves,' Amaworo Wilson introduces archetypes of hope and redemption that are also deeply familiar----true love, vision quests, the hero's journey, even the remote possibility of a happy ending. These characters, this place, this dream will stay with you long after you've put this book down."
----Sharman Apt Russell, author of Hunger: An Unnatural History
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Clandestine Occupations: An Imaginary History
Diana Block
Paperback
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ISBN: 9781629631219
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$16.95
A radical activist, Luba Gold, makes the difficult decision to go underground to support the Puerto Rican independence movement. When Luba's collective is targeted by an FBI sting, she escapes with her baby but leaves behind a sensitive envelope that is being safeguarded by a friend. When the FBI come looking for Luba, the friend must decide whether to cooperate in the search for the woman she loves. Ten years later, when Luba emerges from clandestinity, she discovers that the FBI sting was orchestrated by another activist friend who had become an FBI informant. In the changed era of the 1990s, Luba must decide whether to forgive the woman who betrayed her.
Told from the points of view of five different women who cross paths with Luba over four decades,
Clandestine Occupations explores the difficult decisions that activists confront about the boundaries of legality and speculates about the scope of clandestine action in the future. It is a thought-provoking reflection on the risks and sacrifices of political activism as well as the damaging reverberations of disaffection and cynicism.
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Clandestine Occupations is a triumph of passion and force. A number of memoirs by revolutionaries from the 1970s and '80s, including one by Block herself, have given us partial pictures of what a committed life, sometimes lived underground, was like. But there are times when only fiction can really take us there. A marvelous novel that moves beyond all preconceived categories."
----Margaret Randall, author of Che on My Mind
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PM Combo Packs!
For frugal PM shoppers, we've teamed up some of our bestselling items in discounted "Combo Packs" of like-minded books, CDs, and DVDs. You can choose from a wide range of groovy Combos that save up to 50% on the list price, including the Autonomous Art Combo, the Outspoken Authors Combo, the Big Noise
Dispatches DVD Combo and more.
See the Combo Packs HERE.
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Paperback Plus! e-Book Bundles Now Available
Our print books now come with a
free downloadable e-Book edition. When you purchase the hardcopy book online from PM Press, you'll receive an email with instructions on how to download the e-Book. For technophiles, paper savers, and those without much shelf space, PM releases are also available separately as instantly downloadable e-Books. We are adding new PDF, ePUB, and MOBI files daily to work with all e-Book readers and personal computers. Read about our e-Books and file formats
HERE and see the latest releases
HERE
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PM Press is on Twitter and Facebook
PM Press is now Twittering HERE. Also stay up to date by following us on Facebook. |
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PM Press Catalog
We have a new PM Press catalog! So take a look, and start working on your wish lists now. Full color, 24 pages, viewable and downloadable online or request a free print copy
HERE for yourself, or multiple copies to distribute at your workplace, bookstore, school, or gigs.
To view upcoming releases, including Spring and Fall 2016, please visit the "Upcoming" section of our webstore
HERE.
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Sisters of the Revolution on Bitch Media
Interview by Sarah Mirk
At the same time as the status of women and people of color is raging in sci-fi fandom, editors Ann and Jeff VanderMeer have published a compelling new anthology of feminist science fiction.
Sisters of the Revolution collects short stories published over the past 40 years, showing the impact feminist sci-fi has been making for decades. The anthology includes work from 24 authors including stand-bys like Octavia Butler, Angela Carter, and Ursula K. Le Guin as well as relatively newer writers like Nnedi Okorafor.... I talked with Ann VanderMeer about the climate of science fiction these days.
Read the full interview
HERE.
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Jewish Noir on Booklist
Review by Barbara Bibel
Editor Kenneth Wishnia offers readers a first-rate collection of short stories dealing with traditional noir subject matter and tone but offering Jewish variations on the theme.... The stories deal with a variety of familiar topics but bring the noir perspective to bear on each: assimilation and adjustment to a new land, ethnic identity, sexism and gender roles, the Holocaust and its aftermath, the state of Israel, religious alienation, and, of course, anti-Semitism.... A fine anthology, true to both the noir frame and the Jewish theme.
Read the full review
HERE
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Strike! in Marx and Philosophy Review of Books
Review by Mark Bergfeld
Jeremy
Brecher details "the times of peak conflict" largely written out of US history: the Great Upheaval in 1877, the strikes of 1886, the May Day massacre, the general strikes at the end of World War I and II, the Teamster strikes of 1934 and the rank and file rebellions of the 1960s and 70s. His narrative is exciting and accessible.... For this new edition, Brecher has re-written the final three chapters. Here he combines his insights on the state of the contemporary labour movement, how it has sought to renew itself through forming labour-community coalitions and worker centres,... and the Occupy movement.
Read the full review
HERE
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The Vegetarian Myth Recommended by Alice Walker
The Vegetarian Myth by Lierre Keith has taken a drubbing by some vegans and vegetarians but I think it is a brilliant book about the reality of eating on this planet. I read it when it came out a few years ago and recently listened to it on audio. A very worthwhile immersion. You don't have to agree with everybody about everything in order to become more deeply thoughtful and informed. In some ways, I consider it a book about growing up.
Read more about the book
HERE.
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My Life, My Body Reviewed in Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
This pithy collection of essays and poems condenses Marge Piercy's sharp wit and ruthless clarity into a crystalline set of provocations brimming with earthy good sense, social awareness, and "the dignity of necessary work." She demands art and literature that will "change consciousness a tiny bit at a time." Her prose is lean, efficient, and full of muscle, tearing through the tissue of illusion around gentrification, censorship, fame, and Marilyn Monroe, while the counterpoised poetry, unabashedly and urgently political, lobs cannonballs from the side of the disenfranchised and invisible.
Read the full review
HERE.
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George Caffentzis, Silvia Federici, and Peter Linebaugh
on Gods & Radicals
Article by James Lindenschmidt
After this all-too-brief look at the Midnight Notes Collective itself, I now want to turn to 3 new books, published by PM Press, from three of the most important voices within Midnight Notes. While George Caffentzis and Peter Linebaugh have been involved with Midnight Notes from its earliest days, it is important to note that Silvia Federici has remained a bit more aloof from the collective over the years. While she was part of the collective for a few of the later original Midnight Notes publications, and her writings appear in
Midnight Oil and
Auroras of the Zapatistas, she is not listed as a member of the collective in either of those books....
Read the full article
HERE.
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Fundraiser for Understanding Jim Crow
There is one week remaining for our online fundraiser for
Understanding Jim Crow: Using Racist Memorabilia to Teach Tolerance and Promote Social Justice by David Pilgrim, founder and curator of the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia. This book is an essential and accessible resource and teaching tool to understand the historical and current climate of race relations and systemic racism in America. We need your support to get this amazing book printed and into as many hands as possible.
See more about the book and the online fundraiser
HERE.
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Friends of PM allows you to directly help impact, amplify, and revitalize the discourse and actions of radical writers, filmmakers, and artists. It provides us with a stable foundation from which we can build upon our early successes and provides a much-needed subsidy for the materials that can't necessarily pay their own way.
To join the Friends of PM click here.
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