One of America�s largest industries is the business of pleasure. Porn, coke and rock n� roll. Advertising works by convincing us that our yearning for freedom can be satisfied by a new car, our hunger for friendship with a cell phone and our desire for excitement with liquor. What Crimethinc does is reveal the perversity of this situation; they claim that our desires can only be met by real human liberation.

Using the methods of advertising, they subvert it. They draw out the germ of revolutionary content latent in pop culture, proposing to �hijack the brief moments of authentic living we�re permitted and turn them upon the status quo that circumscribes them.�

Crimethinc is the American heir to situationism, born in punk shows and hopped trains instead of caf�s and garrets. They have yet to inspire a May �68 but in their second book, Recipes for Disaster, they move from their previous manifestos and pamphlets to suggestions for taking action. They offer up a �moveable feast,� with 61 recipes ranging from �Antifascist Action� to �How to Make a Bicycle into a Record Player� to �Squatting.� All are forms of direct action, or �acting directly to meet needs.� (This book turns �just do it� into an anarchist slogan.) And nearly all take the status quo as a given.

You can�t dumpster-dive if people aren�t wasting food, you can�t make newspaper wraps if there are no newspapers and you can�t shoplift if there are no more stores. Recipes for Disaster is an inspiring and occasionally brilliant primer in how �not to be conquered by the conquered territory in which you lead your life� but is far less helpful if your goal is to change the territory, not just carve out autonomous pockets or liberated areas. It offers a politics of liberation that doesn�t actually bother with the boring business of politics or mass liberation.

The provocateurs behind Crimethinc are the poets of the North American anarchist movement. Even as they embody some of this movement�s best traits, they also embody some of its worst. Their inability to formulate a program for mass action mirrors the failure of the anti-authoritarian left to play a major role in organizing against the Iraq war and the failure of direct action tactics to make an impact at the Republican National Convention.

But what Recipes for Disaster lacks in political program, it makes up in spunk. Crimethinc isn�t operating a one-stop shop for all your revolutionary needs, but they don�t have to. Through their writings, they remind us that emancipatory change is not just about redistribution of wealth or power but about a transformation in the way people live their lives. The desire for life to be exciting and meaningful is a revolutionary desire. Moreover, in an affluent society, the demand for a realization of freedom in everyday life may be the only demand that can�t be met short of revolution.

If Crimethinc has anything to do with it, everyone will be dancing when the second American Revolution comes.