An updated edition (first, 1991) of comprehensive scope, covering everything from anatomy and hormones to STDs, gender roles, sexual abuse, and communication in a manner that is scientifically-based yet warm. Includes a study guide, ample references, and a glossary. Straightforward bandw illustrations, with a few in color. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

A reply to, and an assault on, Murray Bookchin's essay "Social Anarchism Or Lifestyle Anarchism", Bookchin himself, Bookchinism, and so called "anarcho-leftism". A brilliant, incisive - and often humoristic - essay, by one of the most prominent contemporary anarchist writter.

Comprehensive account of the great revolutions that swept over Europe and America.

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Attempts by people to enact their political beliefs in their daily lives have become commonplace in contemporary US culture, in spheres ranging from shopping habits to romantic attachments. This groundbreaking book examines how collective social movements have cultivated individual practices of "lifestyle politics" as part of their strategies of resistance, and the tensions they must navigate in doing so. Drawing on feminism and other movements that claim that “the personal is political,” the book explores how radical anarchist activists position their own lifestyles within projects of resistance. Various lifestyle practices, from consumption to personal style to sexual relationships, are studied to address how identity and cultural practices can be used as tools of political dissent. An accessible and provocative text, Lifestyle Politics and Radical Activism blends theory with empirical materials to highlight issues that are important not only to anarchists, but also to anyone struggling for social change. This unique analysis will contribute to the development of anarchist theory and practice and will appeal to anyone interested in political activism and social movements.

Murray Bookchin’s frank assessment of the disaster we are heading toward at increasing speed is as much a work of ethics as it is of environmentalism. The four essays that comprise it share the view that, as he puts it, “our ideas and our practice must be imbued with a deep sense of ethical commitment.” Whether he is critiquing the market economy, the state, or the idea—common to both capitalists and certain left materialists—that human beings are motivated solely by greed and self-interest, Bookchin ever reminds us of the ineffable values of freedom, self-consciousness, and social harmony. Though first published in 1986, Bookchin’s framework still applies. The moral relativism of the 1980s—the politics of lesser-evils and risk vs benefit calculations—has morphed into what we now refer to as “both-sidesism” and the risk vs benefit calculations of yesterday are the 100,000 acre burn scars seen throughout the American west today. Beyond moral relativism or moral absolutism is an ecologically based ethics—one that sees our selfhood, reason, and freedom as stemming from nature’s variety and resilience. Bookchin’s social ecology refuses to separate society from nature. As such one can consider it a philosophy of participation—we cannot develop ecocommunities that aren’t participatory. We can’t save ourselves and the planet without an ethics of freedom. This edition, with a new introduction by Bookchin scholar Andy Price, is a breath of fresh air for a left that seems to have forgotten basic truths.

This collection provides an overview of the thought of the foremost social theorist and political philosopher of the libertarian left today. Best known for introducing ecology as a concept relevant to radical political thought in the early 1960s, Murray Bookchin was the first to propose, in the innovative and coherent body of ideas that he has called "social ecology", that a liberatory society would also have to be an ecological one. His writings span five decades and encompass subject matter of remarkable breadth. Bookchin's writings on revolutionary philosophy, politics and history are far less known than the specific controversies that have surrounded him, but deserve far greater attention. Despite Bookchin's critical engagement with both Marxism and anarchism, his political philosophy, known as libertarian municipalism, draws on the best of both for the emancipatory tools to build a democratic, libertarian alternative. His nature philosophy is an organic outlook of generation, development, and evolution that grounds human beings in natural evolution yet, contrary to today's fashionable anti-humanism, places them firmly at its summit. Bookchin's anthropological writings trace the rise of hierarchy and domination out of egalitarian societies, while his historical writings cover important chapters in the European revolutionary tradition. Consistent throughout Bookchin's work is a search for ways to replace today's capitalist society--which disenchants most of humanity for the benefit of the few and is poisoning the natural world--with a more rational and humane alternative. The selections in this reader constitute a sampling from the writings of one of the most pivotal thinkers of our era.

Understanding an infamous political movement's grounding in festivity and defiance Beer and Revolution examines the rollicking life and times of German immigrant anarchists in New York City from 1880 to 1914. Offering a new approach to an often misunderstood political movement, Tom Goyens puts a human face on anarchism and reveals a dedication less to bombs than to beer halls and saloons where political meetings, public lectures, discussion circles, fundraising events, and theater groups were held. Goyens brings to life the fascinating relationship between social space and politics by examining how the intersection of political ideals, entertainment, and social activism embodied anarchism not as an abstract idea, but as a chosen lifestyle for thousands of women and men. He shows how anarchist social gatherings were themselves events of defiance and resistance that aimed at establishing anarchism as an alternative lifestyle through the combination of German working-class conviviality and a dedication to the principle that coercive authority was not only unnecessary, but actually damaging to full and free human development as well. Goyens also explores the broader circumstances in both the United States and Germany that served as catalysts for the emergence of anarchism in urban America and how anarchist activism was hampered by police surveillance, ethnic insularity, and a widening gulf between the anarchists' message and the majority of American workers.