History
AK was originally founded in Stirling, Scotland by Ramsey Kanaan in 1987 as a small mail order outlet, named after his mother Ann Kanaan. The project soon expanded, venturing into independent book publishing, and AK Press also now has a branch in Oakland, California. Kanaan and several other members of AK Press left in 2007 to form a new radical publishing company PM Press. AK Press is organized as a workers' co-operative, which means that it is owned by all members of the collective and works without bosses, every member having equal say and equal pay. It operates online through akpress.org in the United States, and akuk.org in Europe. In the US its bookmobile travels around the country (to protests, activist conferences, etc.; mostly by request). In the United Kingdom, they run stalls at similar events. Its books - on topics including anarchism, globalization, and animal rights, among others - are often difficult to find through mainstream outlets. Works published by AK Press include reprints of radical classics as well as original works (see list below).
It also sells clothing, buttons, stickers, and various "anarchist props" like an upside down map of the world and the red and black flag of anarcho-syndicalism. AK Press has released spoken word albums by distinguished radicals such as Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Jello Biafra, Arundhati Roy and Mumia Abu-Jamal and music by artists including David Rovics and Utah Phillips.
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“The history of this country was made largely by people who wanted to be left alone. Those who could not thrive when left to themselves never felt at ease in America.”
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“History has neither the venerableness of antiquity, nor the freshness of the modern. It does as if it would go to the beginning of things, which natural history might with reason assume to do; but consider the Universal History, and then tell us,—when did burdock and plantain sprout first?”
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“History takes time.... History makes memory.”
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