A driving force behind the social revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, Hoffman inspired a generation to challenge the status quo. Meant as a practical guide for the aspiring hippie, Steal This Book captures Hoffman's puckish tone and became a cult classic with over 200,000 copies sold. Outrageously illustrated by R. Crumb, it nevertheless conveys a serious message to all would-be revolutionaries: You don't have to take it anymore. "All Power to the Imagination was his credo. Abbie was the best." — Studs Terkel
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Review
Excerpt: Steal This Book is, in a way, a manual of survival in the prison that is Amerika. It preaches jailbreak. It shows you where exactly how to place the dynamite that will destroy the walls. The first section--SURVIVE!--lays out a potential action program for our new Nation. The chapter headings spell out the demands for a free society. A community where the technology produces goods and services for whoever needs them, come who may. It calls on the Robin Hoods of Santa Barbara Forest to steal from the robber barons who own the castles of capitalism. It implies that the reader already is ideologically set, in that he understands corporate feudalism as the only robbery worthy of being called crime, for it is committed against the people as a whole. Whether the ways it describes to rip-off shit are legal or illegal is irrelevant. The dictionary of law is written by the bosses of order. Our moral dictionary says no heisting from each other. To steal from a brother or sister is evil. To not steal from the institutions that are the pillars of the Pig Empire is equally immoral.
--This text refers to the
Kindle Edition
edition.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
75 of 82 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
don't buy this book, anyone who buys it does not have what it takes to read it, get it here and read online! http://www.tenant.net/Community/steal/steal.html
24 of 24 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Abbie Hoffman's "Steal This Book" is generally a survival guide on how to live in the U.S. that is divided into 3 parts. The first chapters on how to get free stuff is brilliant. Some ideas in order to gain free service or items area so ironic, you'd probably not think of it yourself. In section two, Hoffman describes how to take action against oppression and what to prepare for. Bomb making, first aid, and the introduction to new common sense is delivered straight from the mind of Hoffman. The third section is the shortest, but if you happen to live in the big urban and metropolitan areas, it locates address and phone numbers on where to get free stuff in a more specific sense overall toward the book. Even if "Steal This Book" is mainly outdated, it comprises on a guide to a life in the U.S. and words of wisdom he used and recommends.
41 of 45 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Go there and view the book yourself...
http://www.instinct.org/texts/steal_this_book/
http://www.instinct.org/texts/steal_this_book/
Most Recent Customer Reviews
What has become of our nation?
On a recommendation, I bought this book for the sole purpose of getting an inside look at how the counter culture thinks and operates. Read more
Published 1 month ago by SayinItLikeItIs
Did Just That
When I first saw this book it had a picture of Abby Hoffman on the cover stuffing it into his shirt:-)
so I "Did Just That". Read more
so I "Did Just That". Read more
Published 3 months ago by David L. Jones
Postive to negative review ratio is very misleading
First, I am not nor have I been a nationalist, suit(I don't even own a tie), or a cop. I was not alive at the time of the hippie movement. Read more
Published 4 months ago by S. Mills
Found this as a PDF online
Steal This Book! by Abbie Hoffman is a good study of the spirit of the Yippie movement. The freeloading methods are quite creative, though some are now outdated with the... Read more
Published 6 months ago by Cammy P
throw this book in trash
what a waste of time ..unless you are interested in being and puppet for an crazy hippy that likes having a following to command ....well then maybe this book is for you. Read more
Published 7 months ago by red
Great nostalgic book
This is a great book about the Woodstock generation, and it also has the BEST home made bread recipe out there!
Published 19 months ago by suze214
Actually, Steal Everything
Steal This Book is largely a product of the hippie/yippie movements of the late sixties and onwards. Read more
Published 20 months ago by R. Zoellner
.
The book is out-dated but the philosophy is and always will be applicable.
At times I would smile to myself while fondly thinking of how technology has made things so... Read more
At times I would smile to myself while fondly thinking of how technology has made things so... Read more
Published 22 months ago by Christy Leigh Stewart
I can't believe this crap circulated in my school when I was growing...
I'm glad I lived long enough to re-read this and to revisit the buffoon this person was. Many peoples' earliest memories are this guy and his friends burning and bombing and... Read more
Published on April 25, 2010 by jenna randolph
He talks a good game, but...
This well-meaning yippie who probably felt guilty about being from an affluent white family talked a good game. Read more
Published on January 27, 2010 by Sasha Lazarios
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Introduction (From Wikipedia)
Steal This Book is a book written by Abbie Hoffman. Written in 1970 and published in 1971 the book exemplified the counter-culture of the sixties. The book sold more than a quarter of a million copies between April and November 1971. The book, in the style of the counter-culture, mainly focused on ways to fight the government, and against corporations in any way possible. The book is written in the form of a guide to the youth. Hoffman, a political and social activist himself, used many of his own activities as the inspiration for some of his advice in Steal this Book.
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Steal This Book. Amazon is not affiliated with, and neither endorses, nor is endorsed by Wikipedia or any of the authors who contributed to this article. The Wikipedia content may be available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, version 3.0 or any later version, available at: CC BY-SA. Additional or other terms may apply. See Wikipedia Terms of Use for details.
Content (From Wikipedia)
Steal this Book is broken up into three sections, “Survive!”, “Fight!”, and “Liberate!”. Each section has several sub-chapters each pertaining to its section. The section “Survive!” is all about getting “free” things and as its title indicates, surviving. It includes chapters on how to acquire food, clothing, furniture, transportation, land, housing, education, medical care, communication, entertainment, money, dope, and other assorted items and services. The section “Fight!” is all about the counter-culture imperative of rebelling against the government and corporations. It includes chapters on starting an underground press, guerrilla radio, guerrilla television, what to bring to a demonstration that’s expected to be violent, how to make an assortment of home-made bombs, first aid for street fighters, legal advice, how to seek political asylum, shoplifting techniques, stealing credit cards, monkey warfare, gun laws, and identification papers. This section also includes advice on such topics as growing cannabis, living in a commune, and obtaining a free buffalo from the Department of the Interior. It discusses various tactics of fighting as well as giving a detailed list of affordable and easy ways to find weapons and armor that can be used in a confrontation with law enforcement. The section advocates rebelling against authority in all forms, governmental and corporate.The third section is “Liberate!” with the chapter headings: Fuck New York, Fuck Chicago, Fuck Los Angeles, and Fuck San Francisco. The book also includes an appendix that lists approved of organizations and other books worth stealing.
As the book ages, the specific details of the various techniques and advice Hoffman gives have become largely obsolete for technological or regulatory reasons, but the book iconically reflects the yippie zeitgeist.
The "Pig Empire"
In the book, Hoffman referred to America as the "Pig Empire" and stated that it was not immoral to steal from it. In fact, Hoffman wrote, it was immoral not to do so. The term was picked up by the Yippies, and was widely used by what became known as the "Woodstock Nation".
Attribution: The information appearing above in this tab is from Wikipedia:
Steal This Book. Amazon is not affiliated with, and neither endorses, nor is endorsed by Wikipedia or any of the authors who contributed to this article. The Wikipedia content may be available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, version 3.0 or any later version, available at: CC BY-SA. Additional or other terms may apply. See Wikipedia Terms of Use for details.
Origins (From Wikipedia)
The main author of the book, Abbie Hoffman was one of the most influential and recognizable American activists of the twentieth century. Abbie Hoffman was born in 1936 in Worcester, Massachusetts. Hoffman wrote several books and other works such as Steal This Urine Test: Fighting Drug Hysteria in America, Revolution For the Hell of It, and The Autobiography of Abbie Hoffman. He died in 1989 from an overdose of barbiturates. Aside from Hoffman, several others were involved in the compilation of Steal this Book including Izak Haber who is listed as “co-conspirator” and Bert Cohen who is listed as “accessory after the fact” on the cover. Tom Forcade was not credited in the book, but Hoffman later admitted that he had taken part in some of the editing before being replaced by Bert Cohen. Steal this Book was written in the climate of the counter-culture, in which opposition to tradition and government was rampant, and experimentation with new forms of living was encouraged. In short, it was written in the time of “sticking it to the man.” Although the book was published in the seventies, it is truly a relic of the sixties. When the book was published It took hold among the new left, especially among students on college campuses, such as Brandeis, the school where Hoffman had earlier attended.
Attribution: The information appearing above in this tab is from Wikipedia:
Steal This Book. Amazon is not affiliated with, and neither endorses, nor is endorsed by Wikipedia or any of the authors who contributed to this article. The Wikipedia content may be available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, version 3.0 or any later version, available at: CC BY-SA. Additional or other terms may apply. See Wikipedia Terms of Use for details.
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Inside This Book
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First Sentence:
"In a country such as Amerika, there is bound to be a hell-of-a-lot of food lying around just waiting to be ripped off." Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
underground papers Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
New York, San Francisco, National Park, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Government Printing Office, National Forest, New Mexico, Santa Cruz, Village Station, Yellow Pages, Ann Arbor, Department of the Interior, Fifth Ave, Pig Empire, Southeast Asia New!
Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
"In a country such as Amerika, there is bound to be a hell-of-a-lot of food lying around just waiting to be ripped off." Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
underground papers Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
New York, San Francisco, National Park, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Government Printing Office, National Forest, New Mexico, Santa Cruz, Village Station, Yellow Pages, Ann Arbor, Department of the Interior, Fifth Ave, Pig Empire, Southeast Asia New!
Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 31
books:
See all 31 books this book cites
100
books
cite this book:
See all 100 books citing this book
- Woodstock Nation by Abbie Hoffman in Front Matter (1), and Front Matter (2)
- Human Ecology: The Story of Our Place in Nature from Prehistory to the Present by Bernard Campbell in Back Matter
- Allstate Motor Club National Park Guide 1990 by Michael Frome in Back Matter
- Guerrilla Street Theatre by Henry Lesnick in Back Matter
- Death Valley (Apache) by William M. James on page 45
See all 31 books this book cites
- For the Hell of It: The Life and Times of Abbie Hoffman by Jonah Raskin on 6 pages
- Communities of the Air: Radio Century, Radio Culture by Susan Merrill Squier on page 16, page 32, and page 33
- Liberty at Risk by Gary DeMar on page 184, page 185, and page 190
- Rock 'Til You Drop: The Decline from Rebellion to Nostalgia by John Strausbaugh on page 85, and Back Matter
- Abbie Hoffman: American Rebel by Marty Jezer on page 262, and Back Matter
See all 100 books citing this book
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