FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Barnes & Noble presents an evening of actors, artists, poets, professors reading from BOB AVAKIAN's memoir From Ike to Mao and Beyond: My Journey from Mainstream America to Revolutionary Communist

Chicago, December 6. Join guest readers at Barnes & Noble reading from Bob Avakian's provocative and moving memoir, From Ike to Mao and Beyond. Guest readers include David Shapiro, actor; Susan Nussbaum, disability rights activist and playwright; Dread Scott, artist; Jaafar Aksikas, Ph.D.; and Jose Guerrero, artist/muralist. Event also includes a discussion with Raymond Lotta about "and beyond." Readings include Avakian's experiences while living in Chicago area.

Tuesday, December 6 at 6:00 p.m. at Barnes & Noble DePaul Center, 1 E. Jackson in Downtown Chicago.

ABOUT THE BOOK AND AUTHOR
Howard Zinn says the book is, “a humanizing portrait of someone who is often seen only as a hard-line revolutionary.” Cornel West recommends Bob Avakian’s memoir and says, “Bob Avakian is a long distance runner in the freedom struggle against imperialism, racism and capitalism. His voice and witness are indispensable in our efforts to enhance the wretched of the earth. And his powerful story of commitment is timely.”


Travel with readers through three unique but interwoven stories. The first tells of a white middle- class kid growing up in ‘50s America who goes to an integrated high school and has his world turned around; the second of a young man who overcomes a near-fatal disease and jumps with both feet into the heady swirl of Berkeley in the ‘60s; and the third of a radical activist who matures into a tempered revolutionary communist leader. Avakian lived in Chicago in the 1970s, and the book also contains details of his life in Chicago. Preview Chapter 4 - "High School"

In discussing the book, Martha Quetzal Ceja, Managing Editor of Insight Press, said “For those who think about the past or urgently care about the future, they will not want to miss this book event. The author is a unique voice of utter realism and deep humanity. This book is for those who dare to have their assumptions challenged and their stereotypes overturned.”

Lenny Wolf in the preface of the book says, “Whatever you may expect in picking up this book – I guarantee you’ll be surprised. . . There is breadth to this man. And if you thought that ‘communism is dead’ or that all those who continue to uphold it conform to stereotypes of ‘dogmatic totalitarianism,’ you are in for a real jolt!”

Bob Avakian is the leader of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA. And he is more than that: he’s an innovative and critical thinker who has taken Marxism to a new place; he’s a provocative commentator on everything from basketball to religion, doo-wop music to science; and he’s a pit- bull fighter against oppression who’s kept both his solemn sense of purpose and his irrepressible sense of humor. MORE ABOUT BOB AVAKIAN

Learn more about the guest readers

BOOK INFORMATION

From Ike to Mao and Beyond
ISBN 0-9760236-2-8
Retail: $18.95
Books available at Barnes & Noble DePaul Center, Amazon.com and bookstores throughout Chicago, or through the publisher, Insight Press.
Insight Press’s books will be distributed by IPG beginning Spring 2006.


Insight Press www.insight-press.com