The Red Army Faction, A Documentary History: Volume 2: Dancing with Imperialism

The long-awaited Volume 2 of the first-ever English-language study of the Red Army Faction—West Germany’s most notorious urban guerillas—covers the period immediately following the organization’s near-total decimation in 1977. This work includes the details of the guerilla’s operations, and its communiqués and texts, from 1978 up until the 1984 offensive.

“This collection is not simply a documentary of the West German revolutionary Left at a particular point in the Cold War 1970s. It is more important for the insights it provides into the challenges, obstacles, and opportunities of waging armed struggle within the context of a wealthy, well-resourced, Western capitalist state. In this, the experiences and activities of the RAF are unique in the lessons they might teach organizers in Western capitalist milieus. In our own context, it is likely that future conditions of radical social change, and certainly revolutionary struggles, will more closely approximate those engaged by the RAF in 1970s West Germany than the much more influential examples of Russia in 1917 or Spain in 1936.”
—Jeff Shantz, Upping the Anti

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Bicycle! reviewed in Urban Velo and Carbusters

"Bicycle mechanic Sam Tracy is no stranger to the urban cycling realm, he’s been at it as a ‘zine publisher since the early 1990s and wrote an early no-nonsense repair guide, the pictured out of print How to Rock and Roll – A City Riders Reapir Manual. Now he is back with the second edition of Bicycle! A Repair and Maintenance Manifesto, with the same mix of digestable DIY tech advice and humor. Sam isn’t scared to tell you to use a hammer and duct tape when called for — this isn’t the manual for those with plastic bikes and torque wrenches, this is more geared towards keeping your bike working in the real world, sometimes with scavenged parts, sometimes by forcing the issue to keep the wheels rolling. This book is more about low-cost and no-cost repairs than upgrades and weighing your bike. Make no mistake, Sam is an accomplished mechanic and his tech advice is spot on. An ideal book for novice mechanics put off by the tech jargon of other tech manuals, experienced wrenches will also find solid advice from his experience working in bicycle co-ops and in the less than ideal conditions of Mauritania."
—Urban Velo

Review: Carbusters
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S. Brian Willson Interviewed in The Sun

"Many of us are conditioned to be obedient to some master or ideology. The ideology usually includes a class structure in which some members of society are more privileged. You constantly have to demonize other people in order to justify such privilege. I had that conditioning. The lieutenant had it too. He was from an upper-class Vietnamese family that had collaborated with the French for many generations, and he’d been sent to a French school and also educated in the United States.

I was kind of a lower-middle-class kid who was trying to become rich and successful. The experience I had in Vietnam caught me by surprise. Before that, I’d been a creature of compliance, concerned with making money, saying the right things, dressing the right way.

The question is: What causes the break from that conditioning and the recovery of one’s empathy and sense of cooperation?"
—S. Brian Willson in The Sun, interviewed by Greg King

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C.L.R. Jame's A History of Pan-African Revolt in Publishers Weekly

This short, perceptive book—part history, part social critique—was first published in 1938 and later expanded in 1969. James (The Black Jacobins), a Marxist scholar, anti-colonialist, and noted black nationalist, explores race relations and black revolutions starting as far back as the 1789 uprising in San Domingo (now Haiti). Subversive and widely considered ahead of its time, the book offers an exacting critique of both imperialism and the Communist International. Pan-African liberation, James argues, can only be realized through bottom up nationalism, never through allegiance with Western capitalism or the international proletariat. USC History professor Robin D.G. Kelley provides a helpful introduction, which places both James and his works within a global context, illustrating the evolution and importance of his ideas. The book's central message, as Kelley puts it, is that "as long as black people are denied freedom, humanity, and a decent standard of living, they will continue to revolt [and] unless these revolts involve the ordinary masses and take place on their own terms, they have no hope of succeeding." History, as detailed by James, would back up this claim. More than an historical curiosity, James's work brims with transcendent ideas so adamant and clear they continue to read fresh today.
—Publishers Weekly, March 11th, 2013

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