I’ve wanted to reformat and redesign Recipes for Disaster for more than five years. Shortly after the dust had settled from the second printing, I had enough distance from working on the first edition to start noticing its flaws, or, more accurately, the mistakes I’d made. However, recognizing imperfections and failed objectives isn’t the same as finding solutions, and for years I’ve lived with the book, handling it nearly every day, sending out tens of thousands of copies to people and coordinating subsequent printings—all the while feeling like it wasn’t the absolute best version we could make. I made notes, registered feedback from readers, tinkered with prototype templates in InDesign, and—more than anything else—fretted. Today we announce the availability of the newly redesigned second edition, and holding it in my hands fills me with more than just relief, but also the sweet feeling of satisfaction. We really got it right.

What follows is a beyond-nerdy breakdown of the changes made in the second edition, the reasoning behind the changes, and a look into what led to the shortcomings of the first edition. To do that we’ll have to travel back to 2004, but first we’ll show off a few of the improvements . . .

Continue reading →

For many weeks now, our classic all-purpose anarchist cookbook, Recipes for Disaster has been out of stock. We’ve just received a flawless printed sample and are relieved to report that on September 24, a reformatted and enhanced second edition of the cookbook will be available.

Meanwhile, our Russian comrades have published their own version of Recipes for Disaster, which is available for free downloading. They have added many of their own recipes and adjusted others based on experience. Here, in their own words, are the contents of their version, which provide as entertaining a glimpse into the Russian anarchist context as the time capsule of our 2004 version offers into our own past:

Continue reading →

We won’t mince words, this issue of Rolling Thunder is very, very late. All we can offer is our sincere apology, and an assurance that it was not due to negligence—in the past year we’ve had both a death and a birth here at Far East HQ as well as truly dark times in our personal lives, and our operation, already pushed to the limits of human capacity, suffered greatly. While we’ve managed to keep on top of mailorder and the website, other projects like Rolling Thunder, the Recipes for Disaster redesign and reprint, and others yet to be revealed, have suffered setbacks and delays. Throughout it all, y’all have been very patient and understanding, and for that you have our true gratitude—it made a trying situation more bearable. Thank you.

We’ve struggled to find an equilibrium and while not there yet, the thread is in our grasp. We’re beginning to catch up and we can promise an action-packed last third of 2012 beginning now. To begin, we are releasing Rolling Thunder #10 today, which you can read about above. As a token of appreciation and thanks to all of those who subscribed to Rolling Thunder, we are sending this issue free to all current subscribers; in other words, if you subscribed to Rolling Thunder before today, your four issue subscription has just turned into a five issue subscription. It’s the least we could do to reward you for your support in light of the delay.

Speaking of transitions, Rolling Thunder is undergoing one itself. Our initial vision was a mass-distributed, inexpensive but high-quality journal that would come out in a timely manner and be a project that simply broke even for us financially. We tried to will it into existence by mass-producing it right from the get go, and offering it at a break even price, however sales never reached the needed levels to be sustainable—as the currently available ancient back issues will attest. RT is still very important to us, so rather than give it up, we’ve decided to print 33% less copies, at the same high-quality, and charge more, which is necessary because as the print-run lowers, cost-per-issue goes up. We believe this model will enable us to keep publishing it until there is no need for RT in this world.