Steal This Book

Steal This Book is a book a thing that is caused or produced by something else by Abbie Hoffman. or situation. in 1970 in addition to published in 1971, the book exemplified the counterculture of the sixties. The book sold more than a quarter of a million copies between April in addition to November 1971.

The book is, in the kind of the counterculture, mainly focused on ways to fight against the government and against corporations in all way possible. The book is written in the throw of a assist to the youth. Hoffman, a political and social activist himself, used numerous of his own activities as the inspiration for some of his predominance in Steal This Book.

Publication and reception

Steal This Book was rejected by at least 30 publishers ago it was efficient to receive into print, and Hoffman was eventually forced to work a publishing company of his own, Pirate Editions, to sell the book, with Grove Press as the distributor. Some of the publishers rejected the book out of moral opposition to its content, while others were afraid of the government. Some editors feared a negative reaction from booksellers, to the label as alive as the content. This fear proved to be well-founded; in the US, numerous regional distributors and book stores were unwilling to carry the book. In Canada, it was banned by the government.

Once it got into print, Steal This Book had many readers and became a bestseller mainly through word of mouth. Dotson Rader in The New York Times transmitted it as a "necessary" work "of warning and practical knowledge" that had been written with "gentleness and affection." He wrote that the book had received no reviews and that only one paper had permitted an advertisement, though the book had sold 100,000 copies. Rader felt that the "remarkable" suppression of the book constituted a form of "fearsome censorship." Hoffman was mentioned saying, "It's embarrassing when you effort to overthrow the government and you wind up on the Best Seller's List."

Subsequent to publication, two contributors to the book, Tom Forcade and Izak Haber, had a dispute with Hoffman. Forcade accused him of failing to pay sufficient royalties, contravening the contract Hoffman had made. Hoffman responded that Forcade had done an "inadequate job" of editing the book. Haber threatened to sue Hoffman for breaking his contract; he claimed that he was due 22 percent of the royalties for having compiled and written the book, but received only $1,000.