Steal This Book

Description

Steal This Book is largely a product of the hippie/yippie movements of the late sixties and onwards. Abbie Hoffman filled it with all kinds of information and how-to advice for aspiring young anarchists and rebels, making it a fantastic bit of history on the times. It clearly was meant to be completely up-to-date, at the time, however, including many phone numbers and active groups. It is a shame, though, that most of his information is completely obsolete, as Hoffman would have loved to be able to add sections on how to scam cell phone companies, as well as the old pay phone system, for example.

Steal This Book includes sections on getting welfare, maximizing unemployment payouts, guns, and bomb making. It isn't quite the anarchist's cookbook, though Hoffman does actually put in a handful of actual kitchen recipes. He also has a number of photos and cartoons illustrating various sections giving the book a more lighthearted feel. Not as light are the sections on street fighting that come before the sections on guns and bombs. Here Hoffman advises radicals to approach all demonstrations as potential street battles, and presents ways to prepare for such scenes. Apparently, hippies wearing army helmets and gas masks weren't always just interested in the spectacle, but actually needed them.

Aside from having to skim through long lists of organizations and phone numbers that probably no longer exist, I found Steal This Book to be a great read. Hoffman's descriptions of how to shoplift were hilarious, as well as his comments about how to dress while running different scams. Some of them honestly sound like way more work than actually working a regular job and buying things with money. But as Hoffman says in his introduction, "Smoking dope and hanging up Che's picture is no more a commitment [to revolution] than drinking milk and collecting postage stamps."