In Jailbreak Out of History, revolutionary Amazon theorist Butch Lee shows how the anticolonial struggles of New Afrikan/Black women were central to the unfolding of 19th century amerika, both during and "after" slavery. The book's title essay, "The Re-Biography of Harriet Tubman," recounts the life and politics of Harriet Tubman, who waged and eventually led the war against the capitalist slave system. As Lee explains, "Harriet Tubman was a radical political figure, someone totally involved as a player in the great political ideas and military storms of her day. She was a guerrilla. Someone who lived and taught others to live by the communal and working-class New Afrikan culture that her people had planted in this difficult ground, and a Black Feminist to the end." At the same time, Lee exposes how the white supremacist patriarchy has distorted the truth of Harriet's life, by both trivializing and exceptionalizing her. Countering this disinformation, "The Re-Biography of Harriet Tubman" surveys the reality of struggle before and during the u.s. Civil War, showing how New Afrikan women were repeatedly taking up the task of smashing the slave system that confined them, on their own terms. Lee shows how what was special about Harriet was not that she was unique in resisting, but rather because of her military skill--"She was one of the most brilliant professional practitioners ever at the art of war. As a guerrilla, so elusive that she could strike fatal blows and never be felt. Lead battles and go unseen. As an Amazon, she conducted warfare in a zone beyond men's comprehension. But her blows still fell on point." Jailbreak Out of History's second essay, written in 2014, picks up the story where The Re-Biography leaves off, showing how New Afrikan women's labor and resistance remained central to how the global class struggle played out in the united states after the white men's Civil War came to an end. "The Evil of Female Loaferism" details New Afrikan women's attempts to withdraw from and evade capitalist colonialism, an unofficial but massive labor strike that threw the capitalists North and South into a panic. The ruling class response consisted of the "Black Codes," Jim Crow, re-enslavement through prison labor, mass violence, and ... the establishment of a neo-colonial Black patriarchy, whose task was to make New Afrikan women subordinate to New Afrikan men just as New Afrika was supposed to be subordinate to white amerika. "During the Civil War and after 1865, New Afrikan women led a limited strategy of rebellion both spontaneous and conscious. Away from patriarchal capitalism and its attempts to re-enslave them. Living their communal culture created for survival during captivity. Mass withholding of their labor from plantations, insistence on their right to reject fulltime wage labor, fighting to regain control over their bodies in production and reproduction both, New Afrikan women in particular cracked the old plantation system. For without the mass labor gangs the old plantation system couldn't work. The compromise they forced on the planter capitalists, even within the larger setback for liberation during the fall of Black Reconstruction, was the semi-feudal sharecropping system. Where families tilled fields and raised their children without white overseers although under the onerous class conditions of a defeated communal nation... "New Afrikan women's strategy back then grew spontaneously out of their daily lives, their experiences and needs. Not out of some textbook or some political protest routine. Stubbornly living communal culture and fighting capitalism is often ignored or dismissed as "impractical." Yet and again, it was that partial strategy by women back then that proved most useful in real life. Still, it did not make that very difficult hurdle from the level of spontaneous breakout to the level of conscious strategy. In which analysis, tentative strategic understanding, new tactics & practice, criticism of results, and then the emergence of new strategy, all flow in a continuous dialectical circle of struggle. And those partial women's struggles & victories, great as they were, underline the reality that if you don't have a strategy to end a war then someone else will usually end it for you. But you won't like it. "All these earlier battles throughout the New Afrikan nation still throw light for us on the latest battlefield. And on battles certain to come."

An ALA Top Ten Best Graphic Novel for Children The second book in this graphic nonfiction series about real FBI cases is a gripping account of an escape from Alcatraz, the infamous island prison. CASE NO. 002: THE ROCK June 12, 1962 SAN FRANCISCO BAY, CALIFORNIA 7:18 A.M. A corrections officer at Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary tries to awaken inmate AZ-1441, Frank Morris. But when he shakes the unresponsive man, his head rolls off the pillow and crashes to the floor! Soon the guards realize that Morris and two other inmates, brothers John and Clarence Anglin, had done the seemingly impossible: escaped from the notorious island prison. This is the incredible true story of the daring and inventive escape and a decades-long manhunt in a case that remains unsolved to this day. Comics panels, reproductions of documents from real FBI files, and photos from the investigation combine for a thrilling read for sleuths of all ages. This entry in the Unsolved Case Files series is just as compelling as the first book, Unsolved Case Files: Escape at 10,000 Feet, which Kirkus praised as "compulsively readable."

As one of America's most notorious prisons, Alcatraz has been a significant part of California's history for over 155 years. The small, lonely rock, known in sea charts by its Spanish name "Isla de los Alcatraces," or "Island of Pelicans," lay essentially dormant until the 1850s, when the military converted the island into a fortress to protect the booming San Francisco region. Alcatraz served as a pivotal military position until the early 20th century and in 1934 was converted into a federal penitentiary to house some of America's most incorrigible prisoners. The penitentiary closed in 1963, and Alcatraz joined the National Park Service system in 1972. Since then, it has remained a popular attraction as part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

Queues at Baby Frank's famous zoo are dwindling and there's only one person responsible . . . Meet Baby Bruce. He's greedy, fame-hungry and he's opened up a rival zoo nearby. The problem is, all the animals at Baby Bruce's zoo are unhappy. What's Baby Frank to do? Face his nemesis and stage an epic baby jailbreak, of course. Hold on, this is going to be one great escape! The dangerously good follow-up to Baby's First Bank Heist from a major new and exciting partnership - Stephen Collins is cartoonist of The Guardian Weekend magazine and Jim Whalley is a fresh writing talent.

The transformation to a neo-colonial world has only begun, but it promises to be as drastic, as disorienting a change as was the original european colonial conquest of the human race. Capitalism is again ripping apart & restructuring the world, and nothing will be the same. Not race, not nation, not gender, and certainly not whatever culture you used to have. Now you have outcast groups as diverse as the Aryan Nation and the Queer Nation and the Hip Hop Nation publicly rejecting the right of the u.s. government to rule them. All the building blocks of human culture-race, gender, nation, and especially class-are being transformed under great pressure to embody the spirit of this neo-colonial age. The definitive analysis of postmodern capitalism, the decline of u.s. hegemony, and the need and possibilities for a revolutionary movement of the oppressed to overthrow it all. -bell hooks: Night-Vision was so compelling to me because it has a spirit of militancy which reformist feminism tries to kill because militant feminism is seen as a threat to the liberal bourgeois feminism that just wants to be equal with men. It has that raw, unmediated truth-telling which I think we are going to need in order to deal with the fascism that's upon us- -- bell hooks

Edgar Award Finalist: The story of the infamous escape attempt and bloody siege at Alcatraz. In 1946, six men attempted to break out of Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary, a maximum-security prison on an island off the coast of San Francisco. Their bloody siege lasted two days, and ended with five dead and fifteen wounded—plus two of the perpetrators executed for their role in the endeavor. In Six Against the Rock—the basis for a TV movie—an award-winning crime writer tells the story of this notorious event and the inmates who were involved, supplemented with vivid dramatic recreations that place the reader in the center of the conflict. “The personal clash between Coy and Cretzer over leadership of the desperate little band provides much of the suspense; Alcatraz itself, that logistical marvel of a fortress, provides the rest. And for a backdrop there are two platoons of Marines firing bazookas as well as something of the grim history of that most forbidding prison.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review

A hilarious, heartfelt, and refreshingly honest memoir and New York Times bestseller by the beloved comedic actress known for her roles on Freaks and Geeks, Dawson’s Creek, and Cougar Town who has become “the breakout star of Instagram stories...Imagine I Love Lucy mixed with a modern lifestyle guru” (The New Yorker). There’s no stopping Busy Philipps. From the time she was two and “aced out in her nudes” to explore the neighborhood (as her mom famously described her toddler jailbreak), Busy has always been headstrong, defiant, and determined not to miss out on all the fun. These qualities led her to leave Scottsdale, Arizona, at the age of nineteen to pursue her passion for acting in Hollywood. But much like her painful and painfully funny teenage years, chasing her dreams wasn’t always easy and sometimes hurt more than a little. In a memoir “that often reads like a Real World confessional or an open diary” (Kirkus Reviews), Busy opens up about chafing against a sexist system rife with on-set bullying and body shaming, being there when friends face shattering loss, enduring devastating personal and professional betrayals from those she loved best, and struggling with postpartum anxiety and the challenges of motherhood. But Busy also brings to the page her sly sense of humor and the unshakeable sense that disappointment shouldn’t stand in her way—even when she’s knocked down both figuratively and literally (from a knee injury at her seventh-grade dance to a violent encounter on the set of Freaks and Geeks). The rough patches in her life are tempered by times of hilarity and joy: leveraging a flawless impression of Cher from Clueless into her first paid acting gig, helping reinvent a genre with cult classic Freaks and Geeks, becoming fast friends with Dawson’s Creek castmate Michelle Williams, staging her own surprise wedding, conquering natural childbirth with the help of a Mad Men–themed hallucination, and of course, how her Instagram stories became “the most addictive thing on the internet right now” (Cosmopolitan). Busy is the rare entertainer whose impressive arsenal of talents as an actress is equally matched by her storytelling ability, sense of humor, and sharp observations about life, love, and motherhood—“if you think you know Busy from her Instagram stories, you don’t know the half of it” (Jenni Konner). Her conversational writing reminds us what we love about her on screens large and small. From “candid tales of celebrity life, mom life, and general Busy-ness” (W Magazine), This Will Only Hurt a Little “is everything we’ve been dying to hear about” (Bustle).

The Greatest Escape: A True American Civil War Adventure tells the story of the largest prison breakout in U.S. history. It took place during the Civil War, when more than 1,200 Yankee officers were jammed into Libby, a special prison considered escape-proof, in the Confederate capitol of Richmond, Virginia. A small group of men, obsessed with escape, mapped out an elaborate plan and one cold and clear night, 109 men dug their way to freedom. Freezing, starving, clad in rags, they still had to travel 50 miles to Yankee lines and safety. They were pursued by all the white people in the area, but every Black person they encountered was their friend. In every instance, slaves risked their lives to help these Yankees, and their journey was aided by a female-led Union spy network. Since all the escapees were officers, they all could read and write well. Over 50 of them would publish riveting accounts of their adventures. This is the first book to weave together these contemporary accounts into a true-to-life narrative. Much like a Ken Burns documentary, this book uses the actual words the prisoners recorded more than 150 years ago, as found in their many diaries and journals.

A collection of essays, most from the 80s, but with one "post-Iraq," looking at how, in a man's world, women can make revolutionary change. "Now in this exploration, we are moving onto the ground of meta-politics. Wild, vast and more primal than the little fenced-in suburban plots of what amerikkka calls 'politics'. From the rape bordellos of the Balkans to the mass murder by AIDS in Afrika, women are being pushed to understand men's society and, most importantly, ourselves, in a different way. The longest Amazon journey begins today."