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You can search our online inventory for books currently in stock, or read some of our reviews of the books we carry below. If you have questions or suggestions, please email books@redemmas.org. If you need to order books for a reading group, let us know - we like to support people getting together to read books by offering discounts on special orders.
Reviews
Everywhere All the Time: A New Deschooling Reader
by Matt Hern
Over the course of the past decade, there has been a marked increase in skepticism toward current models for public and private schools, and a renewed interest in alternative models for education. Why? The simple answer is that many of our educational institutions fail to offer kids the skills they need to be healthy, self-directed life-learners. They stifle creativity, and encourage conformity of thought. They utilize draconian disciplinary measures and a one-size-fits-all approach to learning. And government control of, and corporate intrusion into education has been a further disaster for communities concerned with the welfare of their youngsters.more >>
The Shock Doctrine (in paperback!)
by Naomi Klein
We're really happy to see the hot-off-the-presses paperback edition of Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine hit the shelves here at Red Emma's. Really one of our favorite books of the past year - a sweeping, ultra-accessible overview of neoliberalism's project of profitably managed global catastrophe - one of the few things we could fault the book for was its $28 hardcover price. Strangely enough, many people who are deeply concerned about the negative effects of neoliberal economic policies tend to be on the side of the class equation that makes that a little steep! The paperback, on the other hand, is a much more reasonable $16. more >>
Muqtada!: Muqtada-al-Sadr, the Shia Revival, and the Struggle for Iraq
by Patrick Cockburn
The name sake of this book is not introduced until over halfway through the book. Before this, we are treated to the context in which the Shia--primarily the poor Shia--found themselves at the end of Saddam's rule. Particularly relevant is the history of martyrs the Shia revere and the recent history of Shi'ism in Iraq. This book should be read by anyone professing to have current knowledge of Iraq.
Currently, there are three main Shia factions in the Iraqi government:
more >>
Two new books on organizing and activism
by v/a
We've just got in Amy and David Goodman's Standing Up to the Madness: Ordinary Heroes in Extraordinary Times - while it's great that we here in Baltimore can now listen to Democracy Now! easily every morning on WEAA (88.9FM), it's also cool to see a lot of the material that passes through the show each day getting a more thematic and thorough treatment in book form. While Amy and David's last book focused on what's wrong with the US political and media landscapes, this
new one looks at what's right - namely widespread grassroots resistance from "ordinary" people.
And if Standing up to the Madness is your cup of tea, you'll also want to check out We Make Change: Community Organizers Talk About What They Do--and Why, a new book by Kristin and Joe Szakos, which is an amazing compilation of 81 interviews with people who've committed to a life of grassroots activism at the community level.
The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media
by Walter Benjamin
This new thematic collection of Benjamin's writings includes at its heart the second, expanded version of his seminal "Work of Art" essay - formerly known as "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction". Like the title, Benjamin's essay has been subject to significant re-interpretation, especially with the publication of the second version, which, aside from investigating the end of aura in an age of copies, also points toward the utopian possibilities in mechanized media like film. We're also quite fond of the included essay "Little History of Photography", which is up there with Barthes' Camera Lucida as an essential piece of photographic criticism. Beyond that, there's 400 pages of short essays and fragments in here (some appearing in English for the first time), on everything from folk art to Chaplin and Mickey Mouse.more >>
Taking art seriously (in two different directions)
by v/a
New at the store this week are two amazing just released art titles. First up is Reproduce and Revolt: A Graphic Toolbox for the 21st Century Activist edited by Josh MacPhee and Favianna Rodriguez. This one's the practical one - 200 pages of easy to reproduce radical graphic art, ready to be dropped into your agitprop. If (like us) you've been looking desparately for the comprehensive, stylish, and inspiring clip-art-for-the-revolution collection that would make your poster-making life easier, and had almost given up in despair, get down here and pick this up.
The other title is a little more on the theoretical/historical side: Branden Joseph's Beyond the Dream Syndicate
Tony Conrad and the Arts after Cage. Not so much a biography of Conrad, as much as an excavation of the minor art of the American avant-garde through the lens of Conrad's trajectory as musician and filmmaker, this sprawling, nearly 600 page monster from the theory heads at Zone Books looks like an essential instant classic of underground aesthetic history.
Digital Media and Democracy: Tactics in Hard Times
by Megan Boler (editor)
Just in is this brand new anthology of essays centered around the problematic posed to media activists trying to engage today's media landscape tactically. In an age where rampant media consolidation shares the stage with horizontally structured spaces of potential media freedom --- the so-called Web 2.0 technologies like blogging, video sharing, social networks --- and where the power of corporate and military elites to use the media as elements of a propaganda strategy nevertheless seems undiminsihed and even augmented, we're very happy to see this book, which meets these and other questions head-on, with work from, among many many others, Amy Goodman, Deepa Fernades, Geert Lovink, and Brian Holmes.
more >>Farimani: Art Critical/Aesthetic Theory Music
by Amir Mogharabi (editor)
We're so thrilled when we manage, in the chaotic world of small presses, ephemeral distribution, and lackadasical pr to discover a new journal in its first issue. And often confused - how did we stumble across Upping the Anti (the smartest political journal coming out of Canada, now in it's fifth issue) for the first time? If we didn't know the editors, would we have had Steampunk Magazine from the beginning (check out the latest, issue #4)? What about all the editors we don't know, producing amazing underground publications we don't even realize exist? It's enough to keep a radical bookstore worker up at night!
Luckily, we stumbled across Issue #1 of Farimani at the recent NYC Anarchist Bookfair, and brought back a couple of copies for the store - the front cover's pretty unassuming, but the back cover lists the contributors: Ikue Mori, Fred Frith, Felix Guattari, Slavoj Zizek, Slyvere Lotringer...this is definitely one to look out for!
more >>
The Yage Letters: Redux
by William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg
A reprint of the momentous shlepping of William "Lee" Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, this tome expands one's understanding re: the letters of the saints.more >>
A People's History of American Empire
by Howard Zinn, with help from Paul Buhle and Mike Konopacki
If you happened to see Paul Buhle speak last week at 2640, you may have seen him waving a draft copy of a comic book version of Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States. Well, we just got this in - $17 gets you a 250+ page comic rendition of Howard's Zinn absolutely essential retelling from below of US history. Now, you might be tempted to say that Howard Zinn is already amazingly accessible, that People's History is one the most engaging and readable texts to ever come out the US left, and thus wonder why you'd need it in comic form - and we'd answer that A People's History of American Empire isn't just a retelling of the history of the US, but is framed by a general introduction to Howard Zinn's politics, his critique of current US warmongering imperialism, and his inspiring philosophy of resistance and hope, all in comic-form, mind you. more >>
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