50% off for May Day!

May 1st marks International Workers' Day, a festival of working-class self-organization stretching back over 130 years. It was originally inaugurated to commemorate the Haymarket Massacre of 1886 in Chicago, where a bomb thrown during a worker's strike kicked off a period of anti-labor hysteria.

May Day 2015 in London saw a rally of trade unions, migrant workers & London’s many communities and other organisations finishing in Trafalgar Square. 2016 demos include speakers such as Yannis Gourtsoyhannia (from the Junior Doctor’s dispute), Christine Blower (the General Secretary of the National Union of Teachers, to talk about the government’s attacks on education), Frances O'Grady (TUC General Secretary), Jeremy Corbyn, and John McDonnell. See the full details here!

In New York there's a rally and march in Union Square on Sunday starting at noon, in Los Angeles there's a May Day March and Bernie Sanders rally on Saturday starting at 3pm, and in Oakland there's a rally at the Fruitvale Bart starting at noon. See an incomplete list of May Day activities here.

This May Day we bring you the following reading list, AND we're doing a FLASH SALE with 50% off all of them! Don't forget - we have free worldwide shipping and free bundled ebooks where available!

The sale will end on Monday, May 2 at 11pm ET.



Crowds and Party 
by Jodi Dean

“Dean has a powerful point to make: political movements have to move beyond immediate expression— the crowd— and embrace long-term organization— the party.” – Open Letters Monthly

Crowds and Party channels the energies of the riotous crowds who took to the streets in the past five years into an argument for the political party. Rejecting the emphasis on individuals and multitudes, Jodi Dean argues that we need to rethink the collective subject of politics.

Red Rosa: A Graphic Biography of Rosa Luxemburg
by Kate Evans, Edited by Paul Buhle

“Utterly brilliant” – Guardian

“This book is hard to put down and contains a challenge that is impossible to turn away from: We could create a better world—peaceful, egalitarian, even joyful—if we are willing to learn from Red Rosa.” – Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Living with a Wild God

Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class
by Owen Jones

 

In this best seller called "a work of passion, sympathy, and moral grace" by the New York Times, Jones investigates the demonization of the working class, who went from “salt of the earth” to “scum of the earth.” It's no wonder that growing numbers of people, regardless of income, tend to identify as middle class. This book is a go-to for anyone interested in why people are afraid of identifying with the working-class, and by extension, working-class struggles. 

Serve the People: Making Asian America in the Long Sixties
by Karen L. Ishizuka
Foreword by Jeff Chang

“Serve the People describes beautifully not merely the making of a people but an entire era.” – Gary Y. Okihiro, author of American History Unbound: Asians and Pacific Islanders

Until the political ferment of the Long Sixties, there were no Asian Americans. There were only isolated communities of mostly Chinese, Japanese, and Filipinos lumped together as “Orientals.” Serve the People tells the story of the social and cultural movement that knit these disparate communities into a political identity, the history of how—and why—the double consciousness of Asian America came to be.

Fossil Capital: The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming
by Andreas Malm

“The definitive deep history on how our economic system created the climate crisis. Superb, essential reading from one of the most original thinkers on the subject.” – Naomi Klein, author of This Changes Everything and The Shock Doctrine

Sweeping from nineteenth-century Manchester to the emissions explosion in China, from the original triumph of coal to the stalled shift to renewables, this study hones in on the burning heart of capital and demonstrates, in unprecedented depth, that turning down the heat will mean a radical overthrow of the current economic order.

Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work
by Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams

“A fascinating book about an alternative to austerity.” – Owen Jones

Inventing the Future is a bold new manifesto for life after capitalism. Against the confused understanding of our high-tech world by both the right and the left, this book claims that the emancipatory and future-oriented possibilities of our society can be reclaimed.

A History of the Barricade
by Eric Hazan

In the history of European revolutions, the barricade stands as a glorious emblem. Its symbolic importance arises principally from the barricades of Eric Hazan’s native Paris, where they were instrumental in the revolts of the nineteenth century, helping to shape the political life of a continent.

Hazan traces the many stages in the barricade’s evolution, from the Wars of Religion through to the Paris Commune, drawing on the work of thinkers throughout the periods examined to illustrate and bring to life the violent practicalities of revolutionary uprising.

The “S” Word: A Short History of an American Tradition … Socialism
by John Nichols

“A chilling reminder of how much rich American history has been erased by shallow messaging. A crucial book.” – Naomi Klein

During the Cold War it became a dirty word in the United States, but “socialism” runs like a red thread through the nation’s history, an integral part of its political consciousness since the founding of the republic. In this unapologetic corrective to today’s collective amnesia, John Nichols calls for the proud return of socialism in American life. 

Outsider in the White House by Bernie Sanders
Afterword by John Nichols

“Bernie is the real thing. He’s about an unwavering commitment to basic justice, equality and sound financial sense.” – Ben Cohen, cofounder of Ben & Jerry’s and founder of Stampede: Stamp Money out of Politics

In this book, Sanders tells the story of a passionate and principled political life. He describes how, after cutting his teeth in the Civil Rights movement, he helped build a grassroots political movement in Vermont, making it possible for him to become the first independent elected to the US House of Representatives in forty years. The story continues into the US Senate and through the dramatic launch of his presidential campaign.

Disaster Capitalism: Making a Killing out of Catastrophe
by Antony Loewenstein

“A keenly observed and timely investigation into rampant resource plunder, privatized detention centers, and an array of other forms of corporate rapacity on four continents.” – Naomi Klein

What emerges through Loewenstein’s re­porting is a dark history of multinational corpo­rations that, with the aid of media and political elites, have grown more powerful than national governments. In the twenty-first century, the vulnerable have become the world’s most valu­able commodity.

Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital
by Jason W. Moore

“Moore’s radical and rigorous work is, and richly deserves to be, agenda-setting.” – China Miéville

Finance. Climate. Food. Work. How are the crises of the twenty-first century connected? Jason Moore argues that the sources of today’s global turbulence have a common cause: capitalism as a way of organizing nature, including human nature. Drawing on environmentalist, feminist, and Marxist thought, Moore offers a groundbreaking new synthesis: capitalism as a “world-ecology” of wealth, power, and nature.