Steal This Book by Abbie Hoffman

Steal This Book

by Abbie Hoffman
Four Walls Eight Windows · 2002 · Paperback

Abbie Hoffman's 1971 manual for surviving outside the system, a radical guide to getting by without money, permission or an address.

Hoffman began writing it in 1970 in Cook County jail, awaiting the Chicago Seven trial. The book is split into three sections, Survive!, Fight! and Liberate!, and lists ways to get free food, clothing, housing, transportation, medical care and communication, and how to run a guerrilla movement. The final pages give specifics for New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and San Francisco, and a list of other books worth stealing. It was first issued under the Pirate Editions label and distributed by Grove Press, expanding an earlier privately published pamphlet, Fuck the System (1967). This printing carries a foreword by Lisa Fithian and an introduction by Al Giordano.

Hoffman was a political theatre artist and activist. Steal This Book followed Revolution for the Hell of It and Woodstock Nation, and its title and instructions drew scandal on publication.

Details

Publisher Four Walls Eight Windows
Year 2002
ISBN 9781568582177
Format Paperback
Pages 318
Dimensions —
Language English

Notes

Catalogued as the Four Walls Eight Windows paperback with the Fithian foreword and Giordano introduction (ISBN 9781568582177, 318 pages), dated 2002 by a bookseller listing and the Internet Archive record; Open Library dates the same ISBN 1996. Other editions: Four Walls Eight Windows 1995 (ISBN 9781568580531, 25th anniversary printing, 308 pages, black cover); later printings of the same ISBN listed under Da Capo and Grand Central Publishing; Pirate Editions / Grove Press, 1971. The Internet Archive record names Thunder's Mouth Press for the 2002 text. The publisher link goes to the Open Library record. Identified from a spine photograph; edition not checked against the copy.

Contributors

Contributors Izak Haber (Co-conspirator); Bert Cohen (Accessory after the fact); Lisa Fithian (Foreword); Al Giordano (Introduction)

Tags

Activism Counterculture Radical Politics 1970s Survival Guide Anarchism Surveillance
From the record Manual