What Are You Reading?

What's the Marazzi book like?
Looks interesting.
I think I may have reccomended the Fisher book to you. It had a couple of neat bits but generally it was a bit pointless.

Can someone please tell me where i can get a copy of Eichmann's Commandos?

Just finished Divorcing Jack. Not a bad book but Bateman basically writes the same story every time, so nothing special.

Wallace - Getting Darwin Wrong
Fodor - The Mind Doesn't Work That way

Beevor's Spanish Civil War book is excellent as is his previous book on Stalingrad.However the Spanish book is refreshing in that it treats the Anarchists role in the war very fairly and with respect.

I just met this really curious little guy called Michel Foucault. Reading "Discipline and Punish", an interesting book to say the least. Really brings some light about the methods they use to make my life shit in school (and other places), but brings little light as to the agents/social reasons for that other than "control".

Useful reading though, brings some good discussions into light.

I read multiple different books, pamphlets and websites at the same time, rarely finishing any of them. I believe I have some kind of condition. Currently though...

Endnotes 1 - a comrade in WRC borrowed my copy so I feel obligated to read it so we can discuss it

Insurgent Notes 1 - still getting through the first one and the second one just came out

Storming Heaven - have started this book 4 times and got to around the part where students become more of a subject and then I lost interest

Reading Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, Revolutionary Unionism in Latin America and The Universal Baseball Association by Robert Coover.

A Very British Strike by Anne Perkins, all about the 1926 general strike.

I can't vouch for the latter, but Shirer's Rise and Fall is very readable and I'd recommend it. He was stationed in Germany during the 30s and 40s so his first-person account is really interesting.

Just finished:

David Montgomery, Fall of the House of Labor
Mao Zedong, On Contradiction (!!!)

Reading:
Michael Denning, The Cultural Front
Steven Fraser, Labor Will Rule about Sidney Hillman and the Amalgamated Clothing Workers
Dobofsky, We Shall Be All: A History of the Industrial Workers of the World

Next on the agenda:
Jefferson Cowie, Stayin' Alive: The 1970s and the last days of the working class

I'm about half way through this and I can't recommend it enough. Although I was a kid in school during the 70s, this is the era I lived through and the working class defeats of the 2nd half of the decade really shaped the consciousness and sense of hopelessness of my generation. Even though I was in junior high, everyone was talking about the huge banner headlines on the front page of The Daily News in New York on October 30, 1975 that read: “FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD” -- as the U.S. president refused to bailout the city, which set the stage for the first domestic experiment of an IMF-style structural adjustment austerity program like the one implemented 2 years before in Chile.

I haven't read fiction for some time now, but I'm glad I picked up Manuel Rojas' "Born Guilty" (the English title of "Hijo de ladron", his best known novel). It is gritty and realist and deals with the ills of proletarian life (Rojas was a prominent figure in Chilean anarchism) without being boringly descriptive. Really enjoying it so far.

Just picked up this book at the weekend.

Yeah, I only pieced through the intro, but the Cowie looks great. I'm going to read his Capital Moves: RCAs 70 year quest for cheap labor too.

The NYC fiscal crisis is a fascinating episode. I didn't live a single day in the 70s, but growing up here in the 80s the whole event was kind of in the collective memory of residents. The headline was mentioned a lot, but pretty much just as highlight of the general 'troubles' of the 1970s. In fact, as you said, the imposition of austerity shows the class-based nature of the assault and represents the death of what Kim Moody calls the 'unique social democratic polity' of NYC.

Isn't it William Tabb that connects Chile to NY in The Long Default? I haven't read it, but I hear it's good. Do you know of other works that make this connection?

Some interesting books on NYC in the 70s are:
Kim Moody - Welfare State to Real Estate
Joshua Freeman - Working Class New York
Robert Fitch - The Assassination of New York

and especially

Eric Lichten - Class, Power and Austerity: The New York Fiscal Crisis.

Currently, Im reading Worker's Councils and Assata. WC is an awkward read. I think its the translation. Assata is a fun interesting read even though I dont agree with her politics.

Remainder by Tom McCarthy. Life threatening accident results in a man having a scattered memory and £8.5 million from a settlement to re-enact the most mundane remembered and half remembered memories complete with behind the scenes staff, actors and buildings.

bolsheviks comes to power - rabinowitch

it was great!

The Resurrectionist - not bad but ultimately dissatisfying book about a body-snatcher. So many modern novelists don't seem to worry about the ending.

The Clearing - Book about a WWI veteran and his brother in a logging camp in the south. A lot of interesting details about the two in a decent story.

The Production of Space by Lefebvre. And Redesvouz With Rama by Arthur C. Clarke.

Re-reading 'The IWW: Its First 100 Years" By Thompson and Bekken as research for an article I'm writing on emryonic American soviets and proto-soviets formed after 1917 (several books recommended to me on the subject by members here are on their way from Amazon- Roots Of American Communism, Labors Untold Stories, Strike!).

Still reading The Golden Bough slowly.

Gangs of New York - Herbert Asbury. Interesting stuff, I think I preferred Gem of the Prairie (about chicago) a bit more.

I just finished Flash: A Novel, by Jim Miller from AK Press. Fast and fun read about a journalist researching the 1913 San Diego Free Speech fight. Also just finished Iron Council by China Mieville, which I really enjoyed.The love story of Judah, Ann Hari and Cutter is moving.

And, I'm very slowly plowing through Absalom, Absalom by William Faulkner. Rose, the old woman who is the principal narrator, sounds like my grandmother in my head.

Finished re-reading 'The Industrial Workers Of The World: Its First 100 Years", now about half way through Roots Of American Communism by Draper (recommended to me by Leo in the 'American Workers Councils' thread). It's an excellent book- very quick read with lots of anecdotes and a unique insight into the communist movement. It's a large, thick book but it's hard to put it down. I recommend it to anyone interested in the development of American communism and the Comintern.

I'm reading Queer Theology, which has been quite interesting.

While sitting in a Borders on Black Friday, I started reading The Marx-Engels Reader. Slowly going through this and taking notes. This is something I used to do, but stopped when access to appealing books exploded when I moved to a university town.

Just began Durruti In the Spanish Revolution. 2 years ago or so, I read the smaller version that was translated from the French version. This is the expanded AK Press one translated from the original Spanish. 800 freakin pages.

After libcom alerted me to its existence, I found States of Emergency: Cultures of Revolt in Italy from 1968 to 1978 at the university library. Had to check it out, even though I'm reading two lengthy books already.

Last week I went through parts of The Subversion of Politics: European Autonomous Social Movements and the Decolonization of Everyday Life. Mainly through the Italian stuff, and little on the Autonomen. I found the author's writing style really annoying. Negri influenced post-autonomist writers I don't think can be trusted when it comes to writing history. Since their revolutionary subject is so vague and broad, they see the seeds of revolution in everything. Because of this, I always feel like they are exaggerating stuff, so I become suspicious of the validity of any history they write.

Read chunks of specific FAI related stuff in Anarchist Organization: The History of the FAI. Will come back to it in the future. Didn't trust aspects of Staurt Christie's FAI book, so thought I'd check this out more.

It's published by an ISO publishing house and the author seems to be party affiliated.

The Clearing sounds interesting. I've started reading Faulkner, got my toes wet with an anthology of short stories and novel excerpts, then plowed straight into Absalom, Absalom about the rise and fall of a Mississippi plantation family. I've been told it's considered his most difficult work, I can see why. It's not a nice neat straight story line with a single narrator. Well worth the effort though. It's no "Happy slaves singing on the levee until the damn yankees came" picture of the south, Faulkner shows the south as a culture that placed itself under a curse due to the cheating and theft of land from the Indians and slavery.