Quotation of the Week

"As to the Seven Deadly Sins, I deplore Pride, Wrath, Envy and Greed. Gluttony, Sloth and Lust I pretty much plan my day around."

—Robert Brault (attributed)

(Our Quotation of the Week is usually—but not this week—taken from The Heretic's Handbook of Quotations, Charles Bufe, ed. When we're in the mood, we change our Quotation of the Week between 15:00 and 18:00 GMT on Monday mornings; ditto for our Definition of the Week.)

Definition of the Week

INVERTEBRATE, adj. Having excellent prospects of a career in journalism.

Our Definition of the Week is taken from The Devil's Dictionaries (Second Edition, revised & expanded): The Best of The Devil's Dictionary, by Ambrose Biercee, and The American Heretic's Dictionary, by Chaz Bufe. This week's definition is by Bufe.

What's New

• Our next book will be Venezuela: Revolution as Spectacle, by Rafael Uzcategui. In it, Venezuelan anarchist writer/activist Rafael Uzcategui contrasts the reality of the "Bolivarian Revolution" as reflected in the daily lives of Venezuela's working class with the Potemkin Village-image projected by the Chávez regime and its supporters in the U.S. The author also strongly argues that the portrayal of the Chávez as dictatorial is simply deranged. He argues that there is a bottoms-up third path (neither mindless support nor opposition to Chávez) that will lead to fundamental social change. We'll be sending Venezuela to press in August, and it'll be available in October.

• Our next pamphlet will be Mark Twain's The War Prayer. It's the best short demystification of "patriotism" and militarism we've ever seen. We're publishing it as an extremely low-priced (50 cents) pamphlet, because there are, to the best of our knowledge, no other cheap print versions. We expect that it'll be available in late July. (A digital version of The War Prayer is now available via our free texts on line page.)

• We just updated our Links page. Among other things, we've added three new subsections: Astronomy, Humor, and Science Fiction.

• Bumper Sticker Blowout — We've reduced prices by 50% to 75% on over half of our bumper stickers. We've also added a number of new ones, with more to come.

• Our newest book, The Bassist's Bible: How to Play Every Bass Style from Afro-Cuban to Zydeco, by Tim Boomer, Mick Berry and Chaz Bufe, is a book/2-CD set that provides approximately 400 bass grooves written in standard notation, brief histories of all styles covered, and innumerable performance tips. The two CDs include performances of nearly 200 of the grooves with drum set accompaniment. Styles covered include blues, rock, jazz, salsa, bossa nova, samba, ska, rai, reggae, country, cajun/zydeco, funk, metal, polka, punk, surf, and klezmer. This encyclopedia of bass grooves is useful to everyone from beginning students to professional studio players. It's also a great song-writing aid.

• Our other recent music book, Making Musical Instruments with Kids, by Bart Hopkin, is a detailed construction guide that offers over 60 age-graded musical instrument construction plans for parents, teachers, youth group leaders and everyone else working with children. All instruments are easy to construct and use free or cheap, commonly available materials. The book also provides instructions on playing the instruments. The accompanying CD offers audio samples of all of the instruments. The author, Bart Hopkin, is also the author of our very popular Musical Instrument Design, which is a standard work in its field.

  The Marin Independent Journal did a very nice story on the book on the front page of its Features section a few months ago.

• Still another of our new books, Stage Fright, by Mick Berry and Michael R. Edelstein, PhD, contains a lengthy chapter outlining proven-effective strategies and techniques helpful in overcoming stage fright, and also contains at-length interviews with 40 actors, comedians, musicians, and other public figures on how they deal with stage fright, America's #1 fear. Those interviewed include Jason Alexander, Mose Allison, Maya Angelou, David Brenner, Phyllis Diller, Olympia Dukakis, Melissa Etheridge, Richard Lewis, Ron Paul, and Robin Williams. This book is not only a fascinating read, but it should also be of considerable use to everyone who has problems with stage fright—from professional football players who appear before tens of thousands to office workers making Powerpoint presentations before their coworkers.
• Our fourth recent release, Disbelief 101: A Young Person's Guide to Atheism, has been receiving favorable reviews, notably in Booklist, journal of the American Library Association. Another review states, "We've read a library-full of atheist books, and this is one of the best."

  Atheist and agnostic reviewers have almost universally loved this book while religious reviewers have universally hated it, labeling it, among other things, "abrasive . . . belligerent." (Kirkus)

• Decreased print-on-demand costs are allowing us to resurrect two out-of-print anarchist titles, African Anarchism and Cuban Anarchism. Both titles will be priced at $12.95, and we expect them to be back from the printer in September. (We still have a few copies of the first edition of Cuban Anarchism available at $10.95.)

• We're also bringing Alcoholics Anonymous: Cult or Cure? (revised & expanded ed.) back into print. It'll also be $12.95 and available in September.

• And we'll be keeping two books in print that we had announced that we reluctantly planned to retire: The Heretic's Handbook of Quotations and The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. Both books will remain at their current prices.

• We've reduced prices on all of our books, with every single See Sharp Press book ordered online now below amazon.com's prices. (Amazon often changes prices for newer books—sometimes more than once a week—so the preceding statement is true only about 95% of the time.)
  (Note to anyone interested in ordering bulk quantities: These discounted prices are only for direct sales to individuals. We apply standard discounts to cover price for bulk orders.)

• Because it's unnecessary and bad for the environment, we've stopped sending out print catalogs, except for folks without Internet access. All of our books, pamphlets, bumper stickers, and T-shirts are listed on this site.

• We're now offering individuals a 20% discount on small bulk orders — 5 or more of one title — of pamphlets and bumper stickers.