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The Fall of Paris: The Siege and the Commune 1870-71
From Alistair Horne’s grand trilogy on French history—two magisterial works now back in print In 1870, Paris was the center of Europe, the font of culture, fashion, and invention Ten months later Paris had been broken by a long Prussian siege, its starving citizens reduced to eating dogs, cats, and rats, and France had been forced to accept the humiliating surrender terms dictated by the Iron Chancellor Bismarck. To many, the fall of Paris seemed to be the fall of civilization itself. Alistair Horne’s history of the Siege and its aftermath is a tour de force of military and social history, rendered with the sweep and color of a great novel..
Price: $9.13
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Notes from Nethers: Growing Up In A Sixties Commune
This is a unique and honest account of the author's childhood growing up in a commune in rural Virginia in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Nethers, as the commune came to be called, was started by Eugster's "liberal, radical, union organizing mother," Carla. Committed to radical social change and caught up in the fervor of counterculture, Carla, separated from the father of her three children, unilaterally sold their middle-class house in Baltimore, and moved to a rural area. They moved in 1969, when Eugster was 9 years old. The culture shock was difficult for Eugster's two older sisters, but for the 9-year-old Eugster it was especially confusing and frightening. She recounts the difficult transition from a traditional family life to one in a communal setting. Eventually, Carla was able to buy a large farmhouse with acres of land around it, and this became the commune. An array of colorful characters drifted into the commune, and Eugster writes sensitively about being a child in the midst of all this. She accurately depicts communal living in all its complexity, describing weekly consensus meetings, days of silence, and quarterly sweat-hut rituals. This is essentially the dramatic story of a young girl given complete freedom in a communal setting, which at many times felt to her like abandonment. Notes from Nethers is a riveting look at a time and place long gone. It is an important piece of American cultural history, and the history of efforts to create a utopian society, underscoring the fact that no matter how ideally a societal structure is conceived, its enactment cannot escape the imperfections of humans who embody it..
Price: $11.69
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My Life in Orange: Growing Up with the Guru
At the age of six, Tim Guest was taken by his mother to a commune modeled on the teachings of the notorious Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh The Bhagwan preached an eclectic doctrine of Eastern mysticism, chaotic therapy, and sexual freedom, and enjoyed inhaling laughing gas, preaching from a dentist's chair, and collecting Rolls Royces. Tim and his mother were given Sanskrit names, dressed entirely in orange, and encouraged to surrender themselves into their new family. While his mother worked tirelessly for the cause, Tim-or Yogesh, as he was now called-lived a life of well-meaning but woefully misguided neglect in various communes in England, Oregon, India, and Germany. In 1985 the movement collapsed amid allegations of mass poisonings, attempted murder, and tax evasion, and Yogesh was once again Tim. In this extraordinary memoir, Tim Guest chronicles the heartbreaking experience of being left alone on earth while his mother hunted heaven. .
Price: $0.89
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New Buffalo: Journals from a Taos Commune (Counterculture)
New Buffalo was one of the most successful of the collective farms that dotted the country in the 1960s and 1970s. Arthur Kopecky's journals take us back to that era as he and his comrades wend their way to the area near Taos, New Mexico, where they encounter magic, wisdom, a mix of people, the Peyote Church, planting, and hard winters. The journals trace the group’s evolution to adulthood as the party mood of the early 1970s gives way to the concerns of maintaining a growing farm. By 1975, several hundred people had called New Buffalo home and the business turned away from their counterculture goats, focusing, instead, on dairy cows. “New Buffalo was emblematic of any number of communes where people came together by happenstance and ‘grew’ a life together. The struggle and costs, the hard work, the endless labor and attention required to be self-sufficient; the learning of new skills, social and physical, that made every day an adventure are all here. . . . Remember or learn what it felt like to be young, optimistic, empowered and dedicated to making a better life. You will be amazed to see what persistent, dedicated, selfless, hard work can accomplish.”—Peter Coyote, actor, activist, and former resident of the Olema commune Visit Kopecky's web site at www.arthurkopecky.com .
Price: $2.02
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Anarchy and Art: From the Paris Commune to the Fall of the Berlin Wall
One of the powers of art is its ability to convey the human aspects of political events. In this fascinating survey on art, artists, and anarchism, Allan Antliff interrogates critical moments when anarchist artists have confronted pivotal events over the past 140 years. The survey begins with Gustave Courbet's activism during the 1871 Paris Commune (which established the French republic) and ends with anarchist art during the fall of the Soviet empire. Other subjects include the French neoimpressionists, the Dada movement in New York, anarchist art during the Russian Revolution, political art of the 1960s, and gay art and politics post-World War II. Throughout, Antliff vividly explores art's potential as a vehicle for social change and how it can also shape the course of political events, both historic and present-day; it is a book for the politically engaged and art aficionados alike. Allan Antliff is the author of Anarchist Modernism. .
Price: $11.99
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Bordeaux and its Wines: Classified in Order of Merit within Each Commune (Under the direction of Bruno Boidron)
"One of the most influential wine books of all time" (Lawrence Osborne, The Accidental Connoisseur) Bordeaux and Its Wines, now in its seventeenth edition, is the ultimate book on the most legendary of all wine regions Since 1846, "the classic reference work on Bordeaux wines" (Jancis Robinson, The Oxford Companion to Wine) has guided wine connoisseurs, wine professionals, and vineyard investors through this complex region, providing detailed information on every one of its 1,800 vineyards, more than 14,500 wine brands, and 200 wine merchants. No other title comes close to the comprehensive information on Bordeaux wines and wineries presented in this book. While 'Feret', as it is colloquially known, is used by professionals for its comprehensive treatment of all facets of the Bordeaux wine region and industry, there is also information on the art of selecting, drinking and storing Bordeaux. Bordeaux and Its Wines is indispensable for the serious wine enthusiast..
Price: $110.55
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Memories of Drop City: The first hippie commune of the 1960's and the Summer of Love
Memories of Drop City follows a group of people and their radical movement, in the Southwest and on both coasts, in a decade that shaped the rest of the century “John Curl’s characters in Memories of Drop City aspire to be ‘100 years’ ahead of the rest of us, but Curl shows, through his highly crafted and brilliant novelistic memoir, that they often succumb to the same social flaws as the rest of us. This might be the most balanced memoir or novel yet published about the Sixties.” Ishmael Reed, National Book Award nominee “With this compelling evocation and portrayal of breathing people, John Curl unpacks the boxed lunch myth of America’s alternative lifestyle Sixties, and restores the day to day flavor of a deeply fabled era still key to understanding the way we live (and don’t live) now.” Al Young, poet laureate of California ”Memories of Drop City is an extraordinary book which brings the Sixties back to life in vivid detail and conveys the spirit of the Sixties better than almost anything else I’ve read.” Gerald Nicosia, author of Memory Babe ”Memories of Drop City brings vibrantly to light the flower children who returned to the land seeking peace and by that act were committing revolution. John Curl captures the idealism of a generation and their demonstrations against war in a revolution with a smile..” Floyd Salas, author of Tattoo the Wicked Cross .
Price: $12.47
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