The folks at Nabat Press, a subsidiary of everyone's favorite independent press - AK Press - have come up with a wonderful idea: to publish autobiographies of historic, true-life characters from the undergound, and they've crafted that idea beautifully.

Jack Black's You Can't Win is the story of a nameless wanderer, hobo, yegg, and opium addict, carving out a life at the turn of the century. Black's unrelentingly honest account of his life is a beatifully written story, a glimpse at a history almost buried, and a life-lesson for train-hopping philosphers everywhere. With colorful figures like Foot-and-a-half George and Sanctimonious Kid, Jack Black shares stories of lawless loyalty and underworld ethics. One of William S. Burroughs' favorite books, as well as an old anarchist favorite, You Can't Win is a must read.

Other Nabat Press gems include Sister of the Road, the autobiography of Boxcar Bertha, Bad, the autobiography of James Carr, and Memoirs of Vidocq: Master of Crime, the autobiography of Francois Eugene Vidocq.

Reviewed by Kristina Casto

While many news stories are being unreported by mainstream media sources, perhaps the most egregious offense being committed by the press is the lack of critical analysis concerning our presence in Iraq, and more specifically, the use of military force by the United States in pursuit of empire.

Discussions of domination of the developing world by the first world has used semantics such as globalization, the new economy, and other nebulous terms. While corporate hegemony and economic coercion are clearly allowing the expansion of American empire, there is no ultimate enforcement mechanism that allows corporations or trade agreements and, more specifically, the United States, to dominate less powerful countries.

Military force plays that role, and the importance of military power in expanding American empire is the subject of Rahul Mahajan's new book, Full Spectrum Dominance: U.S. Power in Iraq and Beyond.

Mahajan's account leaves nothing to chance. The presence of the U.S. military in Iraq is the central focus of the book, but examples of use of military force by the United States in pursuit of economic interests from every continent help illustrate Mahajan's essential argument: we must remove our military from Iraq if we are genuinely concerned about a just outcome for the Iraqi people. Bush's claims: that we are helping Iraqi people and that our mission is humanitarian are ludicrous given the deleterious effects of the United States sanctions on the Iraqi people.

Mahajan cites figures showing that sanctions caused the death of 500,000 Iraqi children under the age of five between 1991 and 1998. This is one of a litany of empirical illustrations presented in Full Spectrum Dominance that elucidate the ridiculous absurdity of the Bush administration's claims that we are helping free the Iraqi people. That claim is only believable if you feel like the Iraqi people now have nothing left to lose.

The book is replete with examples of countries where an economic interest was pursued through military operations. These examples include the establishment of Pinochet's regime in Chile, the support of a military coup in Brazil, and the establishment of military bases in Turkey.

Mahajan makes a clear case that humanitarian justifications being offered by adminstration officials are hollow and farcical. Rather, he offers analysis that fully illustrates why oil is a component of empire and why the administration's stated reasons for the invasion of Iraq were falsehoods. Mahajan explains that weapons inspections were working and the Bush administration took steps that subverted the process and actually gave Saddam Hussein reason to act in non-compliance.

Perhaps most disturbing are the implications of the pre-emption doctrine developed after September 11th. No longer content to seek military solutions against countries that exhibit clear threats to U.S. interest, which Iraq did not after 9/11, the United States will now, under the doctrine, take steps to ensure that countries will never develop the capacity to become threats. Mahajan considers this to be preventative war and blatantly in violation of international law.

Not that the United States seems to care about international law, especially if it would somehow prevent our contined imperial vision. This is a point Mahajan delineates explicitly, citing numerous examples of humanitarian resolutions developed by the United Nations that the United States refused to ratify. Or perhaps you need only consider the so-called Invade the Hague act to understand how the United States is acting unilaterally in perpetual attempts to dominate the globe.

Mahajan's book is easily understood and contains essential information for understanding the necessity of ending the American military's occupation of Iraq. The book is on sale at the Internationalist, including several copies signed by the author during his visit to the bookstore in October.

Review by Charlie St. Clair

In many ways, the story of Helen Keller's life has been sanitized for public consumption, confined to images of The Miracle Worker and to passages from her early debut in the Ladies Home Journal. Her story is so remarkable because she went on to become a noted speaker and author, despite her loss of both sight and hearing at the age of two. While we all know that Helen Keller went on to become a public figure and advocate for the blind, less remembered is her radical social vision, her opposition to World War I, her support of workers' and women's rights, her outspoken defense of socialism. The fact that Keller could speak and write at all has somewhat overshadowed the subjects of her speeches and writings, which were largely radical and controversial. Some excellent selections of these have recently been collected and published in Ocean Books' Rebel Lives series, which features a title on Helen Keller. Contained within this collection are excerpts from speeches and private correspondance, and articles on class and disability, socialism, war and women's liberation.

Helen Keller's life has often been the subject of politically conservative myth-making, an object lesson for overcoming the odds of disability and disadvantage to attain success: the ultimate American dream. In reality, Keller was deeply opposed to the idea that equality could realistically exist in a capitalist society, believing "that the power to rise is not within the reach of everyone", that social inequality, war, and exploitation of human life were all symptomatic of a fundamentally corrupt economic system based on greed and the relentless pursuit of profit. Miss Keller was, quite simply, a red: first in public, later mostly in private, always adamant. In a statement reminiscent of Orwell's socialist hero Gordon Comstock (Keep the Aspidistra Flying), Keller's quote on the back cover defines her vision: "I have entered the fight against the economic system in which we live. It is to be a fight to the finish and I ask no quarter".

Funny, then, that Alabama should have chosen Helen Keller to grace its quarter dollar coin.

Reviewed by Joe Brown

Here They Come tells the story of a poor family's coming-of-age in 1970s New York from the point of view of an unnamed thirteen-year-old girl who can bend spoons with her mind. Idiosyncratic characters illustrate the story of a family looking for their deadbeat dad: the narrator's equally precocious sisters, Jody and Louisa; her unnamed suicidal musician brother, who keeps a shotgun in his room; her depressed but strong-willed mother; her ailing and confusedly nostalgic grandmother Ma Mere, and John, the hotdog vendor on the corner who trades Hershey bars for a chance to cop a feel), Through poetic language and scenes that border on the surreal, Yannick has created an amazing novel.

I can't imagine a better introduction to labor history than this book written by a labor lawyer during the depths of the late 80s labor nightmare (originally published in 1991). It's now back in print with a long afterword by the author. This is not a textbook - Geoghegan gives us a very personal, street level view of what it was like in the bizarre world of labor politics in the 70s, 80s and 90s. Somewhere in between he also tells his own version of labor history in the first half of the 20th century. Geoghegan is hilarious, iconoclastic and opinionated but not party-line.

If you don't want to buy the whole thing, sit down in Ibooks and read the afterword - which lays out the current state of labor and proposes some solutions better than anything else I've ever read.

Review by Phil Blank

Book #1 Contributors: AIDS WOLF, AP, JOHN ARGETSINGER (photographer, musician: The Scarecrow Frequency, blog), ART OF BLEEDING, DEVENDRA BANHART, ALICCIA BERG (musician: SLUMBER PARTY),Blackbird, DON BOLLES (artist, musician: THE GERMS, 45 GRAVE, VOX POP, CELEBRITY SKIN, NERVOUS GENDER), MATT BRIGGS (author: Clear Cut Press), MELISSA BURCH (poet), STEPHEN BUSH (writer), BRIAN CANNING (musician: IRVING), ELI CHARTKOFF (artist, musician: THE MONOLATORS), MICHAEL CORMIER (musician: THE VOLTA SOUND), MATT CRONK (writer, actor, musician: QUI, THEE L.A. GENTLEMEN CALLERS), R.L. CRUTCHFIELD (writer, musician: Dark Day, DNA), KEVIN DARQUIEN / 333 EMPIRE (artist, entity), DAEDELUS, DEER FOLKLORE, DICK'S JANE, DUNGEON MAJESTY, P. GENESIUS DURICA (writer), COBY ELLISON (artist), FAST FRIENDS INC. / JASON YATES (entity, artist), ROB FISKE (artist, musician: 7 YEAR RABBIT CYCLE), JOSEPHINE FOSTER, (musician, also of BORN HELLER), HEATHER GOLDBERG (artist, musician: THE IDAHO FALLS), DAVID GREENHILL (musician: THE DOUBLE), BRYAN GUDMUNDSON (artist), HAWNAY TROOF, HOLY ANNE, JIM JAMES (musician: MY MORNING JACKET), JANE'S DICK, JEFF JANK (artist, Stones Throw Records Art Director), MEL KADEL (artist), MEGAN KAMINSKI (poet, writer, journalist), ALLEN KARPINKSKI (musician: THE SIX PARTS SEVEN, BEATEN AWAKE), PAUL KELLY (writer), TEX KERSCHEN (musician: INDIAN JEWELRY), JOEL LARDNER (artist), HEATHER LARIMER (writer, musician: EUX AUTRES), KEVIN LASTING (musician: WOMEN AND CHILDREN), CHRISTOPHER LEPKOWSKI (writer, publisher: Narrow Books), LESLIE Q (FEAST, TO LIVE AND SHAVE IN LA, LIQOURBALL, TEMPLE OF BON MATIN, JACKIE O. MOTHERFUCKER), STACEY LEVINE (author: Clear Cut Press), LION FEVER, LITTLE CLAW, LOVE, CHRISTINE, CHRISTINA MACK (writer, artist), Eleni Mandell (also of The Grabs), JASON MASON (artist, DJ, musician: FUTURE PIGEON, WISKEY BISCUIT), KRISTEN D. McNAMARA (writer), HARRY MERRY, KYLIE MICHEL (writer, poet, artist), TRAVIS MILLARD (artist, FUDGE FACTORY COMICS), MONSTER, NEKO MOORE (writer), MARISSA NADLER, NINJA ACADEMY, ORGAN ARTS, ADAM PAYNE (musician: RESIDUAL ECHOES), RAYMOND RICHARDS (musician: THE IDAHO FALLS), SEAN RIPPLE (musician: THE AMERICAN ANALOG SET. painter/writer: FlatLife.net, blog. author: Episodic Attempts for Interim Respect. photographer.), ARIEL ROSENBERG (artist, aka ARIEL PINK), RUA MINX, MARTY SCHNAPF (artist), SO & SO JOHNSON, SOLVEIG (poet), JAMIE STEWART (musician: XIU XIU), MICHAEL STOCK (DJ, co-founder of PART TIME PUNKS), JASON BURKE SUTTER (writer), RICHARD SWIFT, JEAN SEBASTIEN TACHER (writer), TARANTULA AD (now known as Priestbird), STEVE TOUCHSTON (musician: XBXRX, Kit, Double Rainbow, Warbler, Snowsuit*), MICHAEL TURNER (artist, musician: WARMER MILKS), STEVEN WISHNIA (musician: FALSE PROPHETS, writer: The Indypendent, author: Cannabis Companion), KRISTIN WITHERS (artist), ALLEN RICHARD YELENT (writer)

UNC Sociology professor Christian Smith focuses on three largely unexamined national "faith-based" campaigns against Reagan's wars in Central America: Witness for Peace, the Sanctuary movement, and the Pledge of Resistance. Sanctuary mobilized tens of thousands of U.S. citizens and their churches to break federal immigration laws by sheltering refugees from Central America. Witness for Peace coordinated groups to travel to Nicaragua and ran political campaigns to oppose Reagan's support for the Contras, and more than a thousand Pledge of Resistance supporters were arrested for civil disobedience at protests against Reagan's war policies throughout the 1980s. Smith poses the question, "perhaps social scientists studying the relationship of faith and politics in the 1980s were too preoccupied with the fanfare surrounding the New Religious Right to notice the faith-based protests at the other end of the political spectrum."