The spellbinding true story of the infamous Ukrainian anarchist and revolutionary.

In early 20th century Ukraine, freedom fighter Nestor Makhno, the son of peasants, was among the most heroic and colorful figures of the Russian Revolution, encouraging his people to find and embrace social and economic self-determination. This is his story, of a military strategist who tirelessly defied both the Bolsheviks and the Germans to protect his homeland.

The phenomenal life of Ukrainian peasant Nestor Makhno (1888-1934) provides the framework for this breakneck account of the downfall of the tsarist empire and the civil war that convulsed and bloodied Russia between 1917 and 1921. Mahkno and his people were fighting for a society "without masters or slaves, with neither rich nor poor." They acted towards that idea by establishing "free soviets." Unlike the soviets drained of all significance by the dictatorship of a one-party State, the "free soviets" became the grassroots organs of a direct democracy - a living embodiment of the free society - until they were betrayed, and smashed, by the Red Army. Delving into a vast array of documentation to which few other historians have had access, this study illuminates a revolution that started out with the rosiest of prospects but ended up utterly confounded. More than just the incredible exploits of a guerilla revolutionary par excellence, Skirda weaves the tale of a people, and the organizations and practices of anarchism, literally fighting for their lives.

It was in prison in 1911 that Peter Arshinov established a close personal and political friendship with Makhno, which continued after their release following the February Revolution in 1917. In 1919 Arshinov became Makhno’s secretary, and remained with the Makhnovists until 1921. In 1922 he settled in Berlin and published the Russian edition of his story. Arshinov’s history of the Makhnovists is undoubtedly the most important source work available. Includes an introduction by Voline, and excellent prefaces by Fredy Perlman (the original translator, and publisher, of the work in English), and Nicolas Walter (to the original Freedom Press edition). It’s about time this was available again!

The leftist forces are retreating north as Franco's army advances with the help of German and Italian aviation. Max Friedman approaches the front, posing as a photographer in a small group of foreign journalists. He flashes back to battles fought with his old comrade Guido Treves, who has gone missing and is the object of his mission. Amidst the ruin of war, Claire, the pretty Belgian reporter who got Max his press credentials, is developing a strong attraction to him, arousing the jealousy of her fellow reporter and would-be-boyfriend, Phil Lester. Caught in the middle of a retreat, Max and Claire get separated from the rest of their group. They have to cross a mountain pass and take shelter in a hut -- the romantic tension builds, but gets snuffed by the urgent need to press onward.

Human rights activist and historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz has been described as “a force of nature on the page and off.” That force is fully present in Blood on the Border, the third in her acclaimed series of memoirs. Seamlessly blending the personal and the political, Blood on the Border is Dunbar-Ortiz’s firsthand account of the decade-long dirty war pursued by the Contras and the United States against the people of Nicaragua. With the 1981 bombing of a Nicaraguan plane in Mexico City—a plane Dunbar-Ortiz herself would have been on if not for a delay—the US-backed Contras (short for los contrarrevolucionarios) launched a major offensive against Nicaragua’s Sandinista regime, which the Reagan administration labeled as communist. While her rich political analysis of the US-Nicaraguan relationship bears the mark of a trained historian, Dunbar-Ortiz also writes from her perspective as an intrepid activist who spent months at a time throughout the 1980s in the war-torn country, especially in the remote northeastern region, where the Indigenous Miskitu people were relentlessly assailed and nearly wiped out by CIA-trained Contra mercenaries. She makes painfully clear the connections between what many US Americans today remember only vaguely as the Iran-Contra “affair” and ongoing US aggression in the Americas, the Middle East, and around the world—connections made even more explicit in a new afterword written for this edition. A compelling, important, and sobering story on its own, Blood on the Border offers a deeply informed, closely observed, and heartfelt view of history in the making.

The firsthand account of an unlikely friendship between a visiting nurse and her special patient, Josephine.