World Food Books' programme is largely produced on Kulin Nation land. We acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation as the first and continuing custodians of this land, and pay respect to their Elders past, present, and emerging.
World Food Books is an arts and special interests bookshop in Naarm / Melbourne. Founded in 2010, World Food Books is devoted to the presentation of a rotating, hand-selection of international art, design, literary and counterculture publications with an emphasis on the anti-traditional, the experimental, the avant-garde, the heretic, the marginal.
Presenting new titles alongside rare and out-of-print books, catalogues and journals spanning the fields of modern and contemporary art, design, photography, illustration, film, literature, poetry, cultural theory, philosophy, sexuality, popular and underground culture in its many radical forms, World Food Books wishes to encourage adventurous, thoughtful and open-minded reading, looking, writing, and exchange of publishing and ideas, both current and historical.
As well as our bookshop, located in Melbourne's historical Nicholas Building, all of our inventory is available internationally via our online mail-order service.
World Food Books semi-regularly co-ordinates "Occasions", a programme of exhibits and events at the bookshop and in partnership with other hosts (such as museums and art galleries) that develop out of the activities, relationships and content of the bookshop itself.
World Food Books
The Nicholas Building
37 Swanston Street
Room 5, Level 6
Melbourne 3000
Australia
SHOP HOURS:
THU—FRI 12—6 PM
SAT 12—4 PM
WEB-SHOP OPEN 24/7
World Food Books
Postal Address:
PO Box 435
Flinders Lane
Victoria 8009
Australia
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All prices in AUD (Australian dollars)
Pick-Ups
Please note: The bookshop is closed until February 1, 2024.
Pick-up orders can be collected in our bookshop during opening hours after this date. Please collect any Pick-up orders within 3 weeks of ordering as we have limited storage space. Orders will be released back into stock if not collected within this time. No refunds can be made for pick-ups left un-collected.
Return Policy
All sales are final. We do accept returns (for refund, exchange) for items received in error. All our orders are packed with special care using heavy-duty padding and cardboard book-mailers or bubble mailers (for smaller books), using reinforcement where required. We cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels.
Insurance
Should you wish to insure your package, please email us directly after placing your order and we can organise this at a small extra expense. Although all standard/express tracked packages are very safe and dependable, we cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels. We recommend insurance on valuable orders.
Interested in selling your old books, catalogues, journals, magazines, comics, fanzines, ephemera? We are always looking for interesting, unusual and out-of-print books to buy. We only buy books in our fields of interest and specialty, and that we feel we can resell.
We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels. We offer cash, store credit, and can take stock on consignment. All
about 25% of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Sell your books any day of the week. You can drop them off and return later. If you have a lot of books, we can visit your Sydney home.
We buy books that we feel we can resell. We offer about 25 % of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Philadelphia Wireman
03 August - 01 September, 2018
World Food Books is proud to announce our next Occasion, the first presentation of sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman in Australia.
The Philadelphia Wireman sculptures were found abandoned in an alley off Philadelphia’s South Street on trash night in 1982. Their discovery in a rapidly-changing neighbourhood undergoing extensive renovation, compounded with the failure of all attempts to locate the artist, suggests that the works may have been discarded after the maker’s death. Dubbed the "Philadelphia Wireman" during the first exhibition of this work, in 1985, the maker’s name, age, ethnicity, and even gender remain uncertain. The entire collection totals approximately 1200 pieces, all intricately bound together with tightly-wound heavy-gauge wire (along with a few small, abstract marker drawings, reminiscent both of Mark Tobey and J.B. Murry). The dense construction of the work, despite a modest range of scale and materials, is singularly obsessive and disciplined in design: a wire armature or exoskeleton firmly binds a bricolage of found objects including plastic, glass, food packaging, umbrella parts, tape, rubber, batteries, pens, leather, reflectors, nuts and bolts, nails, foil, coins, toys, watches, eyeglasses, tools, and jewellery.
Heavy with associations—anthropomorphic, zoomorphic, and socio-cultural responses to wrapped detritus—the totemic sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman have been discussed in the context of work created to fulfil the shamanistic needs of alternative religions in American culture. Curators, collectors, and critics have variously compared certain pieces to sculpture from Classical antiquity, Native American medicine bundles, African-American memory jugs, and African fetish objects. Reflecting the artist’s prolific and incredibly focused scavenging impulse, and despite—or perhaps enhanced by—their anonymity, these enigmatic objects function as urban artefacts and arbiters of power, though their origin and purpose is unknown. Philadelphia Wireman, whatever their identity, possessed an astonishing ability to isolate and communicate the concepts of power and energy through the selection and transformation of ordinary materials. Over the course of the past two decades, this collection has come to be regarded as an important discovery in the field of self-taught art and vernacular art.
Presented in collaboration with Fleisher-Ollman Gallery, Philadelphia, and Robert Heald, Wellington.
Susan Te Kahurangi King
02 February - 10 March, 2018
Susan Te Kahurangi King (24 February 1951 - ) has been a confident and prolific artist since she was a young child, drawing with readily available materials - pencils, ballpoint pens and felt-tip markers, on whatever paper is at hand. Between the ages of four and six Susan slowly ceased verbal communication. Her grandparents William and Myrtle Murphy had developed a special bond with Susan so they took on caring responsibilities for extended periods. Myrtle began informally archiving her work, carefully collecting and storing the drawings and compiling scrapbooks. No drawing was insignificant; every scrap of paper was kept. The King family are now the custodians of a vast collection containing over 7000 individual works, from tiny scraps of paper through to 5 meter long rolls.
The scrapbooks and diaries reveal Myrtle to be a woman of great patience and compassion, seeking to understand a child who was not always behaving as expected. She encouraged Susan to be observant, to explore her environment and absorb all the sights and sounds. Myrtle would show Susan’s drawings to friends and people in her community that she had dealings with, such as shopkeepers and postal workers, but this was not simply a case of a grandmother’s bias. She recognised that Susan had developed a sophisticated and unique visual language and sincerely believed that her art deserved serious attention.
This was an unorthodox attitude for the time. To provide some context, Jean Dubuffet coined the term Art Brut in 1945 to describe work created by self-taught artists – specifically residents of psychiatric institutions and those he considered to be visionaries or eccentrics. In 1972 Roger Cardinal extended this concept by adopting the term Outsider Art to describe work made by non-academically trained artists operating outside of mainstream art networks through choice or circumstance. Susan was born in Te Aroha, New Zealand in 1951, far from the artistic hubs of Paris and London that Dubuffet and Cardinal operated in. That Myrtle fêted Susan as a self-taught artist who deserved to be taken seriously shows how progressive her attitudes were.
Susan’s parents Doug and Dawn were also progressive. Over the years they had consulted numerous health practitioners about Susan’s condition, as the medical establishment could not provide an explanation as to why she had lapsed into silence. Dawn educated herself in the field of homeopathy and went on to treat all twelve of her children using these principles – basing prescriptions on her observations of their physical, mental and emotional state.
Doug was a linguist with an interest in philosophy who devoted what little spare time he had to studying Maori language and culture. To some extent their willingness to explore the fringes of the mainstream made them outsiders too but it was their commitment to living with integrity and their respect for individuality that ensured Susan’s creativity was always encouraged.
Even though Susan’s family supported her artistic pursuits, some staff in schools and hospitals saw it as an impediment to her assimilation into the community and discouraged it in a variety of ways. Her family was not always aware of this and therefore did not fully understand why Susan stopped drawing in the early 1990s. However, rather than dwell on the challenges that Susan faced in pursuit of her artistic practice, they prefer to highlight her achievements. In 2008 Susan began drawing again in earnest, after an almost 20 year interruption, and her work is now shown in galleries around the world.
Susan grew up without television and has been heavily influenced by the comics she read as a child. She is absolutely fearless in the appropriation of recognizable characters, such as Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse, in her work. She twists their limbs, contorts their faces, compresses them together, blends them into complex patterned backgrounds - always imbuing them with an incredible energy. Although Susan often used pop culture characters in her work they are not naive or childlike. These are drawings by a brilliant self-taught artist who has been creating exceptional work for decades without an audience in mind.
Mladen Stilinović
"Various Works 1986 - 1999"
02 February 16 - September 10, 2016
Various works 1986 - 1999, from two houses, from the collections of John Nixon, Sue Cramer, Kerrie Poliness, Peter Haffenden and Phoebe Haffenden.
Including: Geometry of Cakes (various shelves), 1993; Poor People’s Law (black and white plate), 1993; White Absence (glasses, ruler, set square, silver spoon, silver ladel with skin photograph and wooden cubes), 1990-1996; Exploitation of the Dead (grey and red star painting, wooden painting, black spoon with red table, red plate), 1984-1990; Money and Zeros (zero tie, paintings made for friends in Australia (Sue, John, Kerrie), numbers painting), 1991-1992; Words - Slogans (various t-shirts) - “they talk about the death of art...help! someone is trying to kill me”, “my sweet little lamb”, “work is a disease - Karl Marx”; Various artist books, catalogues, monographs, videos; Poster from exhibition Insulting Anarchy; "Circular" Croatian - Australian edition; Artist book by Vlado Martek (Dostoyevsky); more.
Thanks to Mladen Stilinović and Branka Stipančić.
Jonathan Walker
Always Will Need To Wear Winter Shirt Blue + Ochre Small Check Pattern
21 August - 21 September, 2015
Untitled
I am not a great reader of poetry but I always return to the work of Melbourne poet, Vincent Buckley (1925- 1988). Perhaps I find his most tantalising piece to be not a finished poem but a fragment left on a scrap of paper discovered on his desk after the poet’s death.
The poetry gathers like oil
In the word-core, and spreads
It has its music meet,
Its music is in movement.
This fragment is more the shell left behind from a volatile thought than a finished poem. I find the last two lines honest but awkward whereas the first two lines work like an arrow. Most likely he could not find a resolution so it was left. Still, in its present form, it remains an eloquent testimony to the ultimate failure of a medium to express mobile thought and sensation, in Buckley’s case, through verbal language. It’s an important matter because this is something all artists have to deal with regardless of the medium.
I have never written a poem, however, I am forever copying fragments from books on paper scraps in a vain effort to fix certain notions in my head. At first, they function as bookmarks that are sometimes returned to when I open the book. But before long, as they accumulate, they fall out littering the table interspersed with A4 photocopies, bills, books and medications.
To return to Buckley’s fragment, the first two lines very much evoke how I paint nowadays. As you age, detail diminishes and patches of light become more luminous and float. I feel the most honest way of dealing with this is by smearing the oil paint on the canvas with the fingers and working close-up, blind. Only if the patches coalesce into an approaching image can the work gain a life.
-
Jonathan Walker was born in Melbourne, Australia and brought up on a dairy farm in Gippsland. In the 1970’s he studied painting at RMIT and won the Harold Wright Scholarship to the British Museum, London. During the 1980’s he exhibited at Pinacotheca Gallery, Richmond and had work shown at the NGV and Heidi City Art Gallery. Over the same period he designed the cover for the “Epigenesi” LP by Giancarlo Toniutti, Italy and conducted a mail exchange work with Achim Wollscheid, Germany. The work with artists through the post resulted in an article published in the bicentenary issue of Art and Australia 1988. He showed in artist run spaces such as WestSpace in the 90’s and 2000’s, and until 2012, taught painting at Victoria University, which is where we (Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford) as organisers of the exhibition, among many others, had the privilege of being his student.
Walker’s knowledge was imparted to students through the careful selection of music, literature, and artists found in books that he himself had ordered for the library. Walker’s strategy was the generosity of sharing his vast knowledge with references specific to each student and their context.
Walker’s paintings share a similar focus and intimacy.
This exhibition presents a small selection of recent paintings alongside a publication that includes Walker’s writing. Observational and analytical, Walker’s work is a type of material notation — the time of day, colour and how it is blended, the both specific and fleeting location of a reflection on lino or the question of whether a chair leg should be included in a painting.
Please join us on Friday August 21 between 6-8pm to celebrate the opening of the exhibition.
Curated by Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford.
B. Wurtz
Curated by Nic Tammens
March 26 - April 4, 2015
B.Wurtz works from a basement studio in his home on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
This local fact is attested to by the plastic shopping bags and newsprint circulars that appear in his work. As formal objects, they don’t make loud claims about their origins but nonetheless transmit street addresses and places of business from the bottom of this long thin island. Like plenty of artists, Wurtz is affected by what is local and what is consumed. His work is underpinned by this ethic. It often speaks from a neighborhood or reads like the contents of a hamper:
“BLACK PLUMS $1.29 lb.”
“Food Bazaar”
“USDA Whole Pork Shoulder Picnic 99c lb.”
“RITE AID Pharmacy, with us it’s personal.”
“H. Brickman & Sons.”
“Sweet Yams 59c lb."
Most of the work in this exhibition was made while the artist was in residence at Dieu Donne, a workshop dedicated to paper craft in Midtown. Here Wurtz fabricated assemblages with paper and objects that are relatively lightweight, with the intention that they would be easily transportable to Australia. This consideration isn’t absolute in Wurtz’s work, but was prescriptive for making the current exhibition light and cheap. Packed in two boxes, these works were sent from a USPS post office on the Lower East Side and delivered to North Melbourne by Australia Post.
Wurtz appears courtesy of Metro Pictures, New York.
Thanks to Rob Halverson, Joshua Petherick, Sari de Mallory, Matt Hinkley, Helen Johnson, Fayen d'Evie, Ask Kilmartin, Lisa Radon, Ellena Savage, Yale Union, and "Elizabeth".
John Nixon
"Archive"
December 15 - January 20, 2014
The presentation of John Nixon's archive offered a rare showcase of this extensive collection of the artist's own publications, catalogues, posters, ephemera, editions and more, from the mid 1980s onwards, alongside a selection of his artworks.
Organized by John Nixon, Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley.
"Habitat"
at Minerva, Sydney (organised by Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley)
November 15 - December 20, 2014
Lupo Borgonovo, Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley,
Lewis Fidock, HR Giger, Piero Gilardi, Veit Laurent Kurz,
Cinzia Ruggeri, Michael E. Smith, Lucie Stahl, Daniel Weil, Wols
Press Release:
“...It contained seven objects. The slender fluted bone, surely formed for flight, surely from the wing of some large bird. Three archaic circuitboards, faced with mazes of gold. A smooth white sphere of baked clay. An age-blackened fragment of lace. A fingerlength segment of what she assumed was bone from a human wrist, grayish white, inset smoothly with the silicon shaft of a small instrument that must once have ridden flush with the surface of the skin - but the thing’s face was seared and blackened.”
William Gibson, “Count Zero”, 1986
"Autumn Projects Archive"
Curated by Liza Vasiliou
March 6 - March 15, 2014
World Food Books, in conjunction with the Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival 2014, presented the Autumn Projects archive, consisting of a selection of early examples in Australian fashion with a particular interest in collecting designers and labels from the period beginning in the 1980’s, who significantly influenced the discourse of Australian Fashion.
Curated by Liza Vasiliou, the exhibition provided a unique opportunity to view pieces by designers Anthea Crawford, Barbara Vandenberg, Geoff Liddell and labels CR Australia, Covers, Jag along with early experimental collage pieces by Prue Acton and Sally Browne’s ‘Fragments’ collection, suspended throughout the functioning World Food Books shop in Melbourne.
H.B. Peace
presented by CENTRE FOR STYLE
November 14, 2013
"Hey Blinky, you say chic, I say same"
Anon 2013
H.B. Peace is a clothing collaboration between great friends Blake Barns and Hugh Egan Westland. Their pieces explore the divergences between 'character’ and ‘personality’ in garments....etc
Special Thanks to Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley of WFB and Gillian Mears
and a Very Special Thank you to Audrey Thomas Hayes for her shoe collaboration.
Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley
"Aesthetic Suicide"
May 10 - June 8, 2013
The first of our occasional exhibitions in the World Food Books office/shop space in Melbourne, "Aesthetic Suicide" presented a body of new and older works together by artists Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley, including videos, prints, a wall work, and publications.
During shop open hours videos played every hour, on the hour.
1989, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 52 pages, 26 x 18.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Village Press / Tokyo
$80.00 - Out of stock
First 1989 edition of Japanese photographer Jun Abe's first photo book, Creaturers [sic], an incredibly melancholic masterpiece of ghostly black and white images of animals "captured" in artificial environments — zoos, aquariums, arboretums, lab cages, the urban street, exhibited at Picture Photo Space in Osaka in 1989. Abe's haunting, spectral images are an unsettling reminder of the cold alienating reality of man's interference with mother nature. During the time he produced these images of animals, Jun Abe (b. 1955) was the official photographer of the butoh dance group Byakko-sha. Unlike the lazy comparisons to Winogrand's The Animals, Abe depicts no humorous animal/human interactions, because Abe depicts no humans. He does not need to. In depicting his creatures he reflects man's cruelty directly back at him. This death dance of captivity is far more attuned to the concerns of butoh's "body on the edge of crisis". Abe's dark, cold, dreamlike imagery of animals and plants here are both quietly beautiful and desperately sorrowful, abstract and emotionally direct. An outstanding documentary photographer, Abe went on to become well known for his street photography of people, including Citizens: 1979–1983, which won the Society of Photography Award. He has an almost uncanny ability to seek out – and capture – those moments in the chaos of everyday life which can tell entire stories in the frame of a photograph. Creaturers is no different in this regard, yet here there is a pervasive presence of a second aperture beyond the lens that frames the subject in every image, that of man's built-world to dominate the natural one. A very under-rated Japanese photo book. At times even slightly foreshadowing Jochen Lempert's work to come.
"In Abe-chan's photographs ... a feeling of endless suspension ripples, as if something created by God were changing within a man-made landscape created by urban humans — a zoo — and continuing its journey between the extremes of God and man, like a circus tightrope walker on a taut steel rod, on a precarious tightrope where you never know when you might fall."—Isamu Osuga (rough translation from book essay)
Fine copy.
1975 / 1995, English
Softcover, 320 pages, 23.5 x 15.5 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Pimlico Books / London
$40.00 - In stock -
1995 UK second edition of Australian philosopher Peter Singer's groundbreaking book, Animal Liberation, first published in 1975. Considered to be the founding philosophical statement of the ideas behind the animal liberation movement, Animal Liberation exposed the realities of life for animals in factory farms and testing laboratories and provided a powerful moral basis for rethinking our relationship to them.
"An extraordinary book which has had extraordinary effects. It galvanised a generation to action. Groups sprang up around the world, equipped with a new vocabulary, a new set of ethics and a new sense of mission...Singer's book is widely known as the bible of the animal liberation movement."—Independent on Sunday
Immensely influential and powerful, Animal Liberation is also highly unusual. A comprehensive analysis of conditions in factory farms and animal laboratories, it compellingly argues that we should stop eating meat. A work of philosophy, it includes recipes for vegetarian food. In this revised edition, Peter Singer discusses the evolution of the animal rights movement and the extent to which his own views have changed since first publication. He also graphically updates his account of what is being done to animals in the name of scientific, military and commercial research.
"A reasoned plea for the humane treatment of animals that galvanised the animal-rights movement the way Rachel Carson's Silent Spring drew activists to environmentalism."—New York Times
"Important and responsible...Everyone ought to read it."—Richard Adams, English novelist and writer of the books Watership Down, Maia, Shardik and The Plague Dogs
Good—VG copy with tanned pages (usual with this edition).
1976, Japanese
Softcover (staple-bound), 20 pages, 29.5 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Toho / Tokyo
toho
$50.00 $15.00 - Out of stock
Wonderful, rare Japanese souvenir photo booklet for the acclaimed 1976 South Australian drama film Storm Boy, directed by Henri Safran and based on the 1964 book of the same name by Colin Thiele, about a lonely boy (Greg Rowe) and his pet pelicans living in a coastal wilderness with his reclusive father, 'Hide Away' Tom (Peter Cummins). In search of friendship, Mike encounters another recluse in the wilderness, Fingerbone Bill (David Gulpilil), an Aboriginal man estranged from his tribal people. Fingerbone names Mike "Storm Boy" and enlists the child's help caring for three orphaned pelican chicks. It was the third feature film made by the South Australian Film Corporation, and is a highlight of the New Wave of Australian Cinema from the 1970s. Heavily illustrated throughout with glossy colour and b/w stills from the film, alongside texts in Japanese about the film, cast, and production information.
Good—Very Good copy. Some pinching to spine otherwise VG.
1999 / 2005, English
Softcover, 260 pages, 21.5 x 13.2 cm
Published by
Feral House / Los Angeles
$35.00 - In stock -
Against Civilization, first published in 1999 by Uncivilized Books and out of print for several years, is the well-regarded primer to Green Anarchism, Anarcho-Primitivism and the most radical but relevant form of anarchism to develop in the past decade. Anarcho-primitivism is a shorthand term for a radical current that critiques the totality of civilisation from an anarchist perspective and seeks to initiate a comprehensive transformation of human life. Revised and expanded edition.
1976, English
Softcover, 362 pages, 21 x 13 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Sargent Porter / Massachusetts
$50.00 - Out of stock
First 1976 English edition of Kropotkin's Mutual Aid : A Factor of Evolution, published by Extending Horizons / Sargent Porter, Massachusetts. The fascinating work of a Russian prince-turned-anarchist, Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921), Mutual Aid is a pioneering treatise on cooperation and reciprocity, from the major anarchist thinker.
"Don't compete! - competition is always injurious to the species, and you have plenty of resources to avoid it!"
Welcome to the anarchist history of the world. In this lively, provocative work, Peter Kropotkin argues that 'mutual aid' is a natural instinct in all of us, animal and human. Cooperation, reciprocity, support: these, for Kropotkin, are the overlooked foundations of our history.
From the earliest days of evolution through to artisanal guilds, indigenous nomads and even the Royal National Lifeboat Association, it is a pragmatic, mutually beneficial bond to our fellow humans that has allowed us to survive. In this, Kropotkin challenges all the major orthodoxies of his age, from individualism and social Darwinism to Marxist theories of the saviour state. Instead, these essays insist that a better life for all of us - and our planet - begins when we reject competition, and embrace the local, the mutual and the collective.
One of the world's first international celebrities, Kropotkin was known as a brilliant scientist, famous for his work on animal and human cooperation, but also for his role as a founder and vocal proponent of anarchism. Kropotkin's path to fame was unexpected and labyrinthine, with asides in prison, breathtaking 50,000-mile journeys through the wastelands of Siberia, and banishment, for one reason or another, from most respectable Western countries of the day. In his homeland of Russia, Peter went from being Czar Alexander II's favored teenage page, to a young man enamored with the theory of evolution, to a convicted felon, jail-breaker and general agitator, eventually being chased halfway around the world by the Russian Secret police for his radical - some might (and did) say enlightened - political views.
Both while in jail, and while on the run when he was entertaining and enlightening huge crowds, Kropotkin found the energy and concentration to write books on a dazzling array of topics: evolution and behavior, ethics, the geography of Asia, anarchism, socialism and communism, penal systems, the coming industrial revolution in the East, the French Revolution, and the state of Russian literature. Though seemingly disparate topics, a common thread - the scientific law of mutual aid, which guided the evolution of all life on earth - tied these works together. This law boils down to Kropotkin's deep-seated conviction that what we today would call altruism and cooperation - but what the Prince called mutual aid - was the driving evolutionary force behind all social life, be it in microbes, animals or humans. Today, anthropologists, political scientists, economists and psychologists publish hundreds of studies each year on human cooperation, and researchers in these fields are just beginning to realize that so many of the topics they are investigating were first suggested and promulgated by Peter Kropotkin.
Good copy with general age wear. Previous owners name.
2011, English
Softcover, 520 pages, 28 x 22 cm
Published by
WarCry / US
$65.00 - Out of stock
Underground: The Animal Liberation Front in the 1990s compiles the rare first 15 issues of Underground, the magazine of the North American Animal Liberation Front Supporters Group. With over 500 pages of A.L.F. news and action reports, this landmark compilation offers the most comprehensive look available on the Animal Liberation Front at the end of the 20th century.
For most of the 1990s, Underground proudly documented the work of the Animal Liberation Front, a clandestine group that carries out illegal raids to rescue animals and sabotage the businesses that profit from their exploitation. A.L.F. activity peaked in the 1990s, and for that decade Underground was the #1 source for A.L.F. news.
Compiled from rare copies of the legendary magazine, this massive collection serves as a powerful animal rights movement history lesson and in-depth look at the Animal Liberation Front.
Underground: The Animal Liberation Front in the 1990s is a vital read for anyone interested in the animal rights movement, and the misunderstood work of those who risk their freedom to save animals.
Included in Underground:
A.L.F. interviews
A.L.F. action reports
Essays by Rod Coronado, Jonathan Paul, and other convicted A.L.F. members
Anonymous "how it was done" accounts of landmark A.L.F. raids
Detailed info on A.L.F. rescue and sabotage tactics
Over 500 pages of Animal Liberation Front history
2019, English
Softcover, 108 pages, 21.6 x 27.9 cm
Published by
WarCry / US
$25.00 - In stock -
Together in one professionally-bound book, for the first time.
The Militant Vegan was a low-production-value, limited-circulation, photocopied publication that ran from 1993 to 1995, and never enjoyed a wide audience. This is the complete collection of the animal liberation zine covering direct action, animal rights activism, and the Animal Liberation Front (ALF).
To understand The Militant Vegan is to understand the historical context from which it arose: By 1993, the Animal Liberation Front had carried out its most strategic campaign to date, targeting weak points in the fur industry in a multi-state liberation and arson spree called Operation Bite Back. The media was all but silent. There was no internet, so activists outside the small media markets where these raids happened were unaware this campaign was underway, and many of the raids weren’t reported by the media at all. The Animal Liberation Front (again, pre-internet) had little-to-no platforms to which they could disseminate their communiques, rally the movement to join them in taking action, or let the world know of their victories.
It was from this void The Militant Vegan emerged. To quote issue #1, “The Militant Vegan is being released because there has been a media blackout on direct action on behalf of enslaved animals.” Before the internet, animal liberation news could only be spread through photocopied documents like The Militant Vegan, distributed person-to-person, and seen by few. While dominated by re-purposed material (such as ALF primers and newspaper clippings), there is also notable content, ALF history, and other direct-action themed rarities contained in these pages. Some of it never to be found elsewhere. The Militant Vegan published some of the first publicized fur farm addresses - several of which would go on to be raided by activists. A communiqué for the Malecky Mink Farm arson (also part of Operation Bite Back) is a rare piece of ALF history. And even the grainy newspaper article reprints can’t be downplayed, in a time when to not live in an area where an ALF action had occurred was to never know it happened at all - were it not for The Militant Vegan.
In the mid-1990s, reading The Militant Vegan was like a window to a secret history you watched unfold in its pages.
2022, English
Hardcover, 200 pages, 29.5 x 27.5 cm
$95.00 - In stock -
FAMILY: THE SOURCE FAMILY SCRAPBOOK provides an immersive view into the public and private world of the Southern California occult commune The Brotherhood of the Source. This lavishly illustrated book reproduces 200 original scrapbook pages assembled by family historian Isis Aquarian from 1972-1977, documenting the group's dramatic rise and fall, from their time living together in the Hollywood Hills operating their wildly popular Source vegetarian restaurant on the Sunset Strip to their exodus to Hawaii and San Francisco as the group began to unravel. Copious unpublished photographs, newspaper clippings, letters, manifestos, album art and flyers, augmented by descriptive captions by Isis Aquarian, reveal the Source Family's astonishing trajectory, from controversial leader Father Yod's spiritual awakening to the group's wild musical and social experimentations, to the provocations that led to the group's paradise lost. These pages provide a revelatory, firsthand view into the widely misunderstood phenomenon of new religious movements and cults of the 1960s and 70s.
2014, English
Softcover, 496 pages, 15.2 x 22.9 cm
Published by
Pm Press / Oakland
$46.00 - Out of stock
The Day the Country Died features author, historian, and musician Ian Glasper (Burning Britain) exploring in minute detail the influential, esoteric, UK anarcho punk scene of the early Eighties.
If the colorful '80s punk bands captured in Burning Britain were loud, political, and uncompromising, those examined in The Day the Country Died were even more so, totally prepared to risk their liberty to communicate the ideals they believed in so passionately.
With Crass and Poison Girls opening the floodgates, the arrival of bands such as Zounds, Flux of Pink Indians, Conflict, Subhumans, Chumbawamba, Amebix, Rudimentary Peni, Antisect, Omega Tribe, and Icons of Filth heralded a brand new age of honesty and integrity in underground music. With a backdrop of Thatcher's Britain, punk music became self-sufficient and considerably more aggressive, blending a DIY ethos with activism to create the perfectly bleak soundtrack to the zeitgeist of a discontented British youth.
It was a time when punk stopped being merely a radical fashion statement, and became a force for real social change; a genuine revolutionary movement, driven by some of the most challenging noises ever committed to tape. Anarchy, as regards punk rock, no longer meant "cash from chaos." It meant "freedom, peace, and unity." Anarcho punk took the rebellion inherent in punk from the beginning to a whole new level of personal awareness.
All the scene's biggest names, and most of the smaller ones, are comprehensively covered with new, exclusive interviews and hundreds of previously unseen photographs.
2021, English
Softcover, 254 pages, 23.5 x 15.6 cm
Published by
Critical Editions / US
$28.00 - Out of stock
The fascinating work of a Russian prince-turned-anarchist, Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921). Kropotkin one of the world's first international celebrities. In England, Kropotkin was known as a brilliant scientist, famous for his work on animal and human cooperation, but Kropotkin's fame in continental Europe centered more on his role as a founder and vocal proponent of anarchism. In the United States, he pursued both passions. Tens of thousands of people followed ex-Prince Peter during two speaking tours in America.
Kropotkin's path to fame was unexpected and labyrinthine, with asides in prison, breathtaking 50,000-mile journeys through the wastelands of Siberia, and banishment, for one reason or another, from most respectable Western countries of the day. In his homeland of Russia, Peter went from being Czar Alexander II's favored teenage page, to a young man enamored with the theory of evolution, to a convicted felon, jail-breaker and general agitator, eventually being chased halfway around the world by the Russian Secret police for his radical - some might (and did) say enlightened - political views.
Both while in jail, and while on the run when he was entertaining and enlightening huge crowds, Kropotkin found the energy and concentration to write books on a dazzling array of topics: evolution and behavior, ethics, the geography of Asia, anarchism, socialism and communism, penal systems, the coming industrial revolution in the East, the French Revolution, and the state of Russian literature. Though seemingly disparate topics, a common thread - the scientific law of mutual aid, which guided the evolution of all life on earth - tied these works together. This law boils down to Kropotkin's deep-seated conviction that what we today would call altruism and cooperation - but what the Prince called mutual aid - was the driving evolutionary force behind all social life, be it in microbes, animals or humans. Today, anthropologists, political scientists, economists and psychologists publish hundreds of studies each year on human cooperation, and researchers in these fields are just beginning to realize that so many of the topics they are investigating were first suggested and promulgated by Peter Kropotkin.
1970, English
Softcover, 88 pages, 21.5 x 14 cm
Signed by author,
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
The Bookworks / Berkeley
$65.00 - Out of stock
Lovely copy of the first edition of Jeanie Darlington's classic organic gardening book, Grow Your Own : An Introduction to Organic Gardening, published independently in 1970 by Bookworks, Berkeley, California. This copy with neat dedication from author Jeanie Darlington to Dr. Kaa thanking them for for their advice. Darlington, a folk musician who performed with/as Sandy & Jeanie, The Harmony Sisters, and The Delta Sisters, wrote this lovely book (with illustrations also by Jeanie) about her experience with organic gardening in a small backyard garden that she begun in the Spring of '68. From compost to Sunflowers, Grow Your Own "is meant to tell you the basics of what you need to know to garden organically on a small scale family basis". ""Life is to live, Gardens are to grow, Friends are to love, Food is to eat, Grow your own, Share with your friends, Eat and enjoy".
Very Good, signed copy of the first edition.
1973, English
Newspaper, 24 pages, 43 x 30 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Cosmos Periodicals / Cremorne
$60.00 - Out of stock
Scarce inaugural issue (June 1973) of Cosmos, The Living Paper, published in Cremorne, Victoria in the 1970s and edited by leading Australian occultist Nevill Drury with Peter Glasson. A magazine dedicated to "the other side" of the counter-culture, "seeking to change society, not by forcibly ramming its ideas into unwilling minds, but by peacefully stressing the need for change in each and every individual as a prescription to the world's ills". Each issue is packed with articles and artwork around subjects such as cosmic music, occultism, ecology, astrology, organic gardening, alternative living, sexuality, theosophy, the arts, literature, politics, and awakened, back-to-the-earth Australia. A wonderful historical piece of Australian counterculture publishing. "From Soil to Psyche."
Good copy with fold and edge wear, tanning (which looks worse in our images than in person).
1973, English
Newspaper, 24 pages, 43 x 30 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Cosmos Periodicals / Cremorne
$60.00 - Out of stock
Scarce second issue (August 1973) of Cosmos, The Living Paper, published in Cremorne, Victoria in the 1970s and edited by leading Australian occultist Nevill Drury with Peter Glasson. A magazine dedicated to "the other side" of the counter-culture, "seeking to change society, not by forcibly ramming its ideas into unwilling minds, but by peacefully stressing the need for change in each and every individual as a prescription to the world's ills". Each issue is packed with articles and artwork around subjects such as cosmic music, occultism, ecology, astrology, organic gardening, alternative living, sexuality, theosophy, the arts, literature, politics, and awakened, back-to-the-earth Australia. A wonderful historical piece of Australian counterculture publishing. "From Soil to Psyche."
Good copy with fold and edge wear, tanning (which looks worse in our images than in person).
1974, English
Newspaper, 16 pages, 43 x 30 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Cosmos Periodicals / Cremorne
$50.00 - Out of stock
Scarce April 1974 issue of Cosmos, The Living Paper, published in Cremorne, Victoria in the 1970s and edited by leading Australian occultist Nevill Drury with Peter Glasson. A magazine dedicated to "the other side" of the counter-culture, "seeking to change society, not by forcibly ramming its ideas into unwilling minds, but by peacefully stressing the need for change in each and every individual as a prescription to the world's ills". Each issue is packed with articles and artwork around subjects such as cosmic music, occultism, ecology, astrology, organic gardening, alternative living, sexuality, theosophy, the arts, literature, politics, and awakened, back-to-the-earth Australia. A wonderful historical piece of Australian counterculture publishing. "From Soil to Psyche."
Good copy with fold and edge wear, tanning (which looks worse in our images than in person).
1977, English
Newspaper, 20 pages, 43 x 30 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Cosmos Periodicals / Cremorne
$60.00 - Out of stock
Scarce August 1977 issue of Cosmos, The Living Paper, published in Cremorne, Victoria in the 1970s and edited by leading Australian occultist Nevill Drury with Peter Glasson. A magazine dedicated to "the other side" of the counter-culture, "seeking to change society, not by forcibly ramming its ideas into unwilling minds, but by peacefully stressing the need for change in each and every individual as a prescription to the world's ills". Each issue is packed with articles and artwork around subjects such as cosmic music, occultism, ecology, astrology, organic gardening, alternative living, sexuality, theosophy, the arts, literature, politics, and awakened, back-to-the-earth Australia. A wonderful historical piece of Australian counterculture publishing. Includes cover feature on Christiania, the intentional 'Free Town' commune in Copenhagen, Australian ancient indigenous art, and animal liberation, and much more! "From Soil to Psyche."
Good copy with fold and edge wear, tanning (which looks worse in our images than in person).
1995, English
Softcover, 392 pages, 23.5 x 16 cm
Published by
Duke University Press / North Carolina
$64.00 - Out of stock
Animals and Women is a collection of pioneering essays that explores the theoretical connections between feminism and animal defense. Offering a feminist perspective on the status of animals, this unique volume argues persuasively that both the social construction and oppressions of women are inextricably connected to the ways in which we comprehend and abuse other species. Furthermore, it demonstrates that such a focus does not distract from the struggle for women’s rights, but rather contributes to it.
This wide-ranging multidisciplinary anthology presents original material from scholars in a variety of fields, as well as a rare, early article by Virginia Woolf. Exploring the leading edge of the species/gender boundary, it addresses such issues as the relationship between abortion rights and animal rights, the connection between woman-battering and animal abuse, and the speciesist basis for much sexist language. Also considered are the ways in which animals have been regarded by science, literature, and the environmentalist movement. A striking meditation on women and wolves is presented, as is an examination of sexual harassment and the taxonomy of hunters and hunting. Finally, this compelling collection suggests that the subordination and degradation of women is a prototype for other forms of abuse, and that to deny this connection is to participate in the continued mistreatment of animals and women.
1978, English
Newspaper, 16 pages, 43 x 30 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Ziriuz Publications / Frankston
$45.00 - Out of stock
Scarce copy of the first 1978 issue of Ziriuz, "Australia's New Age Alternatives Monthly" newspaper. Published monthly in Frankston, Ziriuz was packed with articles on subjects from the stars and the soil — eco-activism, witchcraft, astrology, organic gardening, accompanied by illustrations and amazing period adverts from 1970's back-to-the-earth Victoria. This issue featuring a cover story and interview with Mary Bailey, leader of the Arcane School, an occult organization founded by Theosophist Alice A. Bailey and her husband, Foster Bailey, plus bio-dynamic planting, skin health, Sagittarius, sun herbs, colour healing, nutrition, astrology, "foon and spork" jewellery, and much more!
Good copy with general age wear and tanning (looks worse in our images than the real thing).
1978, English
Newspaper, 20 pages, 43 x 30 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Ziriuz Publications / Frankston
$45.00 - In stock -
Scarce copy of the second issue of Ziriuz, "Australia's New Age Alternatives Monthly" newspaper. Published monthly in Frankston, Ziriuz was packed with articles on subjects from the stars and the soil — eco-activism, witchcraft, astrology, organic gardening, accompanied by illustrations and amazing period adverts from 1970's back-to-the-earth Victoria. This issue featuring interview with yogi Brahma Kumaris Janki, skin health, Aquarius, Yoga, cooking with grains, organic gardening, moon herbs, Austrian moor muds, eye exercises, the ills of sodium chloride (salt), vegetarian future food, "The Smog Game', healing, stories, astronomy, and much more!
Good copy with general age wear and tanning (looks worse in our images than the real thing).
1979, English
Newspaper, 20 pages, 43 x 30 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Ziriuz Publications / Frankston
$45.00 - In stock -
Scarce copy of March 1979 issue of Ziriuz, "Australia's New Age Alternatives Monthly" newspaper. Published monthly in Frankston, Ziriuz was packed with articles on subjects from the stars and the soil — eco-activism, witchcraft, astrology, organic gardening, accompanied by illustrations and amazing period adverts from 1970's back-to-the-earth Victoria. This issue featuring communicating with dolphins, the Dolphin Embassy, aura reading, mummification, colour breathing, 3CR community radio, magic, astrology, natural debugging, vegetarian cooking, the herbs of Mars, breast care, Pisces, herbal tinctures, fasting, and much more!
Good copy with general age wear and tanning (looks worse in our images than the real thing).
1979, English
Newspaper, 20 pages, 43 x 30 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Ziriuz Publications / Frankston
$45.00 - In stock -
Scarce copy of June 1979 issue of Ziriuz, "Australia's New Age Alternatives Monthly" newspaper. Published monthly in Frankston, Ziriuz was packed with articles on subjects from the stars and the soil — eco-activism, witchcraft, astrology, organic gardening, accompanied by illustrations and amazing period adverts from 1970's back-to-the-earth Victoria. This issue with a cover feature and interview with the great Jim Cairns, left politician, anti-war activist, Deputy Prime Minister in the Whitlam Labor government, author, and founder of the Down to Earth festival, plus Veganism ("living with compassion"), homemade soaps, conserving Earth's soil, "The Milk Myth", Astgma, Jupiter herbs, alchemy, astrology, colour therapy, tarot, and much more!
Good copy with general age wear and tanning (looks worse in our images than the real thing).
1979, English
Newspaper, 24 pages, 43 x 30 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Ziriuz Publications / Frankston
$45.00 - In stock -
Scarce copy of September 1979 issue of Ziriuz, "Australia's New Age Alternatives Monthly" newspaper. Published monthly in Frankston, Ziriuz was packed with articles on subjects from the stars and the soil — eco-activism, witchcraft, astrology, organic gardening, accompanied by illustrations and amazing period adverts from 1970's back-to-the-earth Victoria. This issue featuring a cover story and interview with semi-recluse sculptor William Rickett on his sanctuary and battle against deforestation, the occultists' Tetragrammaton, music therapy, the hairy-nosed wombat, Virgo, Pan and Diana, hand reading, solar power, homeopathy, cooking, numerology, and much more!
Good copy with general age wear and tanning (looks worse in our images than the real thing).
1979, English
Newspaper, 24 pages, 43 x 30 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Ziriuz Publications / Frankston
$45.00 - Out of stock
Scarce copy of October 1979 issue of Ziriuz, "Australia's New Age Alternatives Monthly" newspaper. Published monthly in Frankston, Ziriuz was packed with articles on subjects from the stars and the soil — eco-activism, witchcraft, astrology, organic gardening, accompanied by illustrations and amazing period adverts from 1970's back-to-the-earth Victoria. This issue featuring the battle to save Terania Creek Basin forest from logging, Equinox and Australian magic rituals, witchcraft, computerised society, CIA mind control, organic gardening, Aboriginal dreaming, the Tarot and the ocean, vegetarian cooking, Saturn herbs, home births, healing, poems, and much more!
Good copy with general age wear and tanning (looks worse in our images than the real thing).
1980, English
Newspaper, 24 pages, 43 x 30 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Ziriuz Publications / Frankston
$45.00 - Out of stock
Scarce copy of February 1980 issue of Ziriuz, "Australia's New Age Alternatives Monthly" newspaper. Published monthly in Frankston, Ziriuz was packed with articles on subjects from the stars and the soil — eco-activism, witchcraft, astrology, organic gardening, accompanied by illustrations and amazing period adverts from 1970's back-to-the-earth Victoria. This issue featuring 1980's doom prophecies, psychic mushrooms, herbal wine and beer making, Tai Chi, Iran, colour healing, Saturn/Uranus, vegetarian tacos, reincarnation, solar power, poetry, numerology, astronomy, and much more!
Average-Good copy with general age wear and tanning (looks worse in our images than the real thing). Has some spotting, also.
2016, English
Softcover, 224 pages, 13.3 x 20.3 cm
Published by
University of Minnesota Press / Minnesota
$40.00 - In stock -
Electrifying, provocative, and controversial when first published thirty years ago, Donna Haraway's "Cyborg Manifesto" is even more relevant today, when the divisions that she so eloquently challenges--of human and machine but also of gender, class, race, ethnicity, sexuality, and location--are increasingly complex. The subsequent "Companion Species Manifesto," which further questions the human-nonhuman disjunction, is no less urgently needed in our time of environmental crisis and profound polarization.
Manifestly Haraway brings together these momentous manifestos to expose the continuity and ramifying force of Haraway's thought, whose significance emerges with engaging immediacy in a sustained conversation between the author and her long-term friend and colleague Cary Wolfe. Reading cyborgs and companion species through and with each other, Haraway and Wolfe join in a wide-ranging exchange on the history and meaning of the manifestos in the context of biopolitics, feminism, Marxism, human-nonhuman relationships, making kin, literary tropes, material semiotics, the negative way of knowing, secular Catholicism, and more.
The conversation ends by revealing the early stages of Haraway's "Chthulucene Manifesto," in tension with the teleologies of the doleful Anthropocene and the exterminationist Capitalocene. Deeply dedicated to a diverse and robust earthly flourishing, Manifestly Haraway promises to reignite needed discussion in and out of the academy about biologies, technologies, histories, and still possible futures.