Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

V for Vendetta is, like its author's later Watchmen, a landmark in comic-book writing. Alan Moore has led the field in intelligent, politically astute (if slightly paranoid), complex adult comic-book writing since the early 1980s. He began V back in 1981 and it constituted one of his first attempts (along with the criminally neglected but equally superb Miracleman) at writing an ongoing series. It is 1998 (which... (more)

The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

by Robert A. Heinlein

Robert A. Heinlein was the most influential science fiction writer of his era, an influence so large that, as Samuel R. Delany notes, "modern critics attempting to wrestle with that influence find themselves dealing with an object rather like the sky or an ocean." He won the Hugo Award for best novel four times, a record that still stands. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress was the last of these Hugo-winning novels,... (more)

Fight Club

by Chuck Palahniuk

Chuck Palahniuk's darkly funny first novel tells the story of a disenfranchised young man frustrated with his bureacratic job and superficial relationships and disillusioned with the consumer culture's prepackaged pleasures. Relief for him and his peers comes in the form of Tyler Durden, the intensely charismatic inventor of Fight Club. Waiters, clerks, and middlemen seek out the visceral satisfaction of secret... (more)

Lords of the Underworld: Book 4

The Darkest Whisper

by Gena Showalter

Bound by the demon of Doubt, Sabin unintentionally destroys even the most confident of lovers. So the immortal warrior spends his time on the battlefield instead of the bedroom, victory his only concernâ€¦until he meets Gwendolyn the Timid. One taste of the beautiful redhead, and he craves more. Gwen, an immortal herself, always thought she'd fall for a kind human who wouldn't rouse her darker side. But when... (more)

The Anarchist Cookbook

by William Powell

I have recently been made aware of several websites that focus on The Anarchist Cookbook. As the author of the original publication some 30 plus years ago, it is appropriate for me to comment. The Anarchist Cookbook was written during 1968 and part of 1969 soon after I graduated from high school. At the time, I was 19 years old and the Vietnam War and the so-called "counter culture movement" were at their... (more)

Days of War, Nights of Love : Crimethink For Beginners

by Jeanette Winterson

Here is a review from Clamor Magazine. It sums up the general idea of the book pretty well, (and we know better than to try and describe it ourselves): "Less of a novel and more of an exploded manifesto, Days of War, Nights of Love might be just what we need. It is the type of book you'd thumb through in the store and actually want to buy (or steal). Avoiding the "thin gruel of narrative," the book instead... (more)

Living My Life: An Autobiography of Emma Goldman

Living My Life: An Autobiography of Emma Goldman

by Emma Goldman

Anarchist, journalist, drama critic, advocate of birth control and free love, Emma Goldman was the most famous—and notorious—woman in the early twentieth century. This abridged version of her two-volume autobiography takes her from her birthplace in czarist Russia to the socialist enclaves of Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Against a dramatic backdrop of political argument, show trials, imprisonment, and ... (more)

How I Live Now

by Meg Rosoff

“Every war has turning points and every person too.” Fifteen-year-old Daisy is sent from Manhattan to England to visit her aunt and cousins she’s never met: three boys near her age, and their little sister. Her aunt goes away on business soon after Daisy arrives. The next day bombs go off as London is attacked and occupied by an unnamed enemy. As power fails, and systems fail, the farm becomes more isolated.... (more)

Lord of the Flies

by William Golding

14.5 Million copies sold to date The classic, startling, and perennially bestselling portrait of human nature-now available as a Premium Edition with a stunning new cover and re-set, easy-to-read text.

Beyond Civilization: Humanity's Next Great Adventure

Beyond Civilization: Humanity's Next Great Adventure

by Daniel Quinn

In Beyond Civilization, Daniel Quinn thinks the unthinkable. We all know there's no one right way to build a bicycle, no one right way to design an automobile, no one right way to make a pair of shoes, but we're convinced that there must be only one right way to live -- and the one we have is it, no matter what. Beyond Civilization makes practical sense of the vision of Daniel Quinn's best-selling novel Ishmael.... (more)

The Society of the Spectacle

by Guy Debord

Few works of political and cultural theory have been as enduringly provocative as Guy Debord's The Society of the Spectacle. From its publication amid the social upheavals of the 1960s up to the present, the volatile theses of this book have decisively transformed debates on the shape of modernity, capitalism and everyday life in the late twentieth cenlury. Now finally available in a superb English ... (more)

Anarchism and the Black revolution, and other essaysLorenzo Komboa Ervin

Anarchism and the Black revolution, and other essays

by Lorenzo Komboa Ervin

Situationist International Anthology

by Ken Knabb

In 1957, a few experimental European groups came together to form the Situationist International. The name came from their aim of liberating everyday life through the creation of open-ended, participatory "situations" (as opposed to fixed works of art). Over the next decade the situationists developed a critique of the global "spectacle-commodity system," and their new methods of agitation helped trigger the May... (more)

Anarchy After Leftism

by Bob Black

A reply to, and an assault on, Murray Bookchin's 'Social Anarchism Or Lifestyle Anarchism,' Bookchin himself, Bookchinism, and so called 'anarcho-leftism.'

Expect Resistance: A Crimethink Field Manual

Expect Resistance: A Crimethink Field Manual

by CrimethInc. Workers' Collective

Expect Resistance is not one but three books, each of which may be read as a complete work unto itself. The first book, printed in standard black ink, continues the inquiry into modern life and its discontents begun in Days of War, Nights of Love . Just as that book included improved versions of texts originally published between 1996 and 1999, this book draws on CrimethInc. material from 2000 to 2004,... (more)

Re-Enchanting Humanity: A Defense of the Human Spirit Against Antihumanism, Misanthropy, Mysticism and Primitivism (Cassell Global Issues Series)Murray Bookchin

Re-Enchanting Humanity: A Defense of the Human Spirit Against Antihumanism, Misanthropy, Mysticism and Primitivism (Cassell Global Issues Series)

by Murray Bookchin

This work represents Murray Bookchin's riposte to the antihumanism, mysticism and antirationalism which are influencing many people's attitudes to environmental problems. Bookchin offers a critique of, among others, social Darwinists, deep ecologists, new agers, technophobes, Foucault, Derrida and Baudrillard. This intellectual tour-de-force offers a positive alternative approach to politics based on a refreshing... (more)

Blood and Rage

by Michael Burleigh

Blood and Rage is a sweeping and deeply penetrating work of history that explores the nature of terrorism from its origins in the West to today's global threat fueled by fundamentalists. Distinguished historian Michael Burleigh ("There are few better writers at work today" — The Sunday Times ) emphasizes the lethal resentments and the twisted morality that spawn terrorism rather than the ideological or religious... (more)

What Is Anarchism?: An Introduction

What anarchists believe; what anarchists do; how anarchists differ. An introduction by Donald Rooum, along with some classic texts from the likes of Malatesta, Kropotkin, Rocker, Ward, Berkman, Bakunin et al. A useful primer.

Anarchy In Action

by Colin Ward

Probably the best practical example of anarchist ideas in action. Highly recommended.

Ethics of Liberty

by Murray N. Rothbard, Hans-Hermann Hoppe

In recent years, libertarian impulses have increasingly influenced national and economic debates, from welfare reform to efforts to curtail affirmative action. Long out of print, Murray N. Rothbard's classic The Ethics of Liberty stands as one of the most rigorous and philosophically sophisticated expositions of the libertarian political position. What distinguishes Rothbard's book is the manner in which it... (more)

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Comic Book

by Alan Moore, David Lloyd