What is happening: CELEBRATION of three new books released by Charles H. Kerr Publishing Company, Chicago’s oldest book publisher (Established 1886).
Where: Sulzer Regional Library, 4455 N. Lincoln Avenue, Chicago, IL, 312-744-7616
When: November 5, 2005, 1pm

DON’T MISS this upcoming celebration featuring talks by the following authors: David R. Roediger, Franklin Rosemont, and Paul Garon.

●ON DAVID ROEDIGER'S HISTORY AGAINST MISERY

“In this terrific collection of essays, the great radical historian David Roediger digs deep into his engagement with surrealism, sports, and subversion. It is unusual to read someone so good on such a range of topics, from Travis Tritt to W.E.B. Du Bois, from André Breton to Bugs Bunny. Those familiar with his other books will find here Another Side of David Roediger, but in this book he brings it all back home.” —Eric Lott, author of Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class.
DAVID ROEDIGER teaches History and African American Studies at University of Illinois. He has taught labor, African American and Southern history at Northwestern, University of Missouri, and University of Minnesota. He has also worked as an editor of the Frederick Douglass Papers at Yale University. His books include Our Own Time, The Wages of Whiteness, and Towards the Abolition of Whiteness, all from Verso; Colored White from University of California Press; and Working Toward Whiteness from Basic Books. His edited books include an edition of Covington Hall's Labor Struggles in the Deep South (Kerr), and another of W. E. B. DuBois's John Brown (Random House), as well as Black on White: Black Writers on What it Means to Be White (Schocken). His articles appear in New Left Review, The Progressive, Arsenal/Surrealist Subversion, Tennis, Massachusetts Review, and elsewhere. He is an activist in labor, civil rights, peace, pro-planet and anti-miserabilist struggles.


●ON FRANKLIN ROSEMONT & DANCIN’ IN THE STREETS: ANARCHISTS, IWWs, SURREALISTS, SITUATIONISTS & PROVOS IN THE 1960s

“Here is the missing link of books on the Sixties, an essential text: It tells a lot of heretofore untold stories and fills in a lot of gaps.—Ron Sakolsky, editor of Surrealist Subversions. / “Dancin' has a certain surreal punch stemming from the exponential contrast between its pure youthful spirit and the current miserabilism. Anyone with any life in them will want to flip all the way back and pick up the lost thread of those days.”—Joseph Jablonski. / “Seems magically made for my class on counterculture”— Sheila Rowbotham / “Infectiously enthusiastic, spirited and interesting; I really appreciate its irreverence and playfulness”—MaximumRocknRoll

FRANKLIN ROSEMONT edited the Chicago-based IWW magazine The Rebel Worker (1964-67). His many books include What Is Surrealism? Selected Writings of André Breton (1978, still in print), An Open Entrance to the Shut Palace of Wrong Numbers (2003), and several volumes of poems. His books on the IWW include Juice Is Stranger Than Friction: Selected Writings of T-Bone Slim (1992) and Joe Hill: The IWW and the Making of a Revolutionary Workingclass Counterculture (2003), both from Charles H. Kerr.

●ON PAUL GARON’S WHAT’S THE USE OF WALKING IF THERE”S A FREIGHT TRAIN GOING YOUR WAY? BLACK HOBOES & THEIR SONGS

“Paul Garon has produced yet another masterpiece of cultural history. The stories and songs he gathers together in this remarkable book disrupt common notions of what we mean by ‘freedom’ when it comes to black folk. Hoboes represented a significant segment of the black working class, and their constant movements were both evidence of constraints and acts of freedom. And as he so eloquently demonstrates, the men and women who took to the road and their bards have much to teach us about America's ‘bottom rail.’”—Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination (2002)/
“What's the Use of Walking is a fascinating book in which Paul Garon has brought together a truly remarkable collection of blues and blues songs, created by African American hoboes and ex-hoboes, which reveals a new dimension of the personal and the experiential nature of the poetic spirit in the blues. The main motivation of the black hobo travelers was to find work, and the author has meticulously researched the nature and conditions of the lumber and turpentine industries, mining, levee-building and other employment that they sought, and about which they also sang. This is not a book solely for blues enthusiasts, for whom it is indispensable, but it is strongly recommended to all who are interested in popular culture, its forms, its expression and meaning.” —Paul Oliver, author of Blues Fell This Morning, The Story of the Blues, etc.

PAUL GARON—poet, historian, storyteller, theorist—has been writing on blues for forty years, and has been active in the Surrealist Movement in the U.S. since 1968. In addition to the books he has written or co-edited (see list on copyright page), he has also contributed articles to many others, including Haymarket Scrapbook, Blackwell’s Guide to Blues Records, Backwoods Blues, Nothing But the Blues, Write Me a Few of Your Lines: A Blues Reader, the Encyclopedia of the American Left, and the Encyclopedia of Blues. He co-founded and continues to write for Living Blues. His articles have also appeared in Blues Unlimited, Arsenal/Surrealist Subversion, Radical America, City Lights Anthology, Cultural Correspondence, Firsts, and Race Traitor. He lives in Chicago.

●NOW HEAR THIS! STUDS TERKEL ON CHARLES H. KERR BOOKS! “We may be suffering from a national Alzheimer’s Disease—forgetful of what happened yesterday, let alone years ago in our history. I suggest the perfect cure: Read the books published by Charles H. Kerr of old-time dissenters, muckraking journalists, and all-around troublemakers. You’ll find these works an exhilarating tonic.”

Charles H. Kerr Publishing Company is located at 1740 West Greenleaf, Chicago, IL 60626

FURTHER INFORMATION: Laura Valentine 773-465-7774 or 773-262-1329


A few words about the
CHARLES H. KERR
Publishing Company

“The Charles H. Kerr Company is a truly extraordinary example of living history. Here is the publisher of Gene Debs, Clarence Darrow, Mother Jones, Mary Marcy, Jack London, Carl Sandburg and hundreds of other outstanding figures—still at it, still fighting the good fight after a hundred glorious years. The American labor movement has a great heritage, and the Charles H. Kerr Company is a precious part of it. It deserves every support.”—Studs Terkel

“What a remarkable history! How can it ever be estimated, the influence of the Kerr Company over all these years? Above all in this era of communication and the rising of the people all over the world, such a bond with expressions and education of the people must be truly celebrated—more than a statue of liberty: the Kerr Company is a true beacon.”—Meridel LeSueur

“Charles H. Kerr has a magnificent record . . . . More importantly, it continues that tradition of courageous publishing in these difficult times. Kerr’s list of titles provides us with excellent material to continue the fight for a just society.”—Dennis Brutus

The son of militant abolitionists, Charles Hope Kerr was a libertarian socialist, antiwar agitator, author, translator, vegetarian, and scholar. The publishing firm he founded in Chicago in 1886, a few weeks before Haymarket, is today the oldest alternative publishing house in the world. Many books recognized as classics in the fields of labor, socialism, feminism, history, anthropology, economics, civil liberties, animal rights and radical ecology originally appeared under the Charles H. Kerr imprint.
Devoted to publishing controversial books that commercial publishers tend to avoid, the firm has shared the ups and downs of American radicalism. Because of Kerr’s outspoken opposition to World War I, many of its publications were suppressed by the U.S. government under the notorious Espionage Act.
At nearly 120 years old, the Kerr Company—a not-for-profit, worker-owned cooperative educational association—is not only a living link with the most vital radical traditions of the past, but also an organic part of today’s struggles for peace and justice.
Unlike most other alternative publishers, the Kerr Company has never been subsidized by any political party, never had an “angels,” never received any “grants.” Our aim today remains what it always has been: to publish books that will help make this planet a good place to live!
As always we need all the help we can get! If you would like to help the Charles H. Kerr Company, write today!

Publishers of Anti-Establishment Literature Since 1886
Charles H. Kerr Publishing Company
1740 West Greenleaf Avenue / Chicago, Illinois, 60626
& visit our website at www.charleshkerr.org