This is a great bathroom book. It is full of amazing little pieces on a wide variety of topics, which are for the most part quite compelling. (All but two of these pieces are reprinted from the Loompanics catalog.) It can prove maddening if one is hoping for a logical progression from piece to piece or even a loose grouping of articles into subject categories. The design lacks consistency and occasionally even feels padded. But if one takes the short-attention-span route, skipping around it like a magazine, the yields can be most rewarding and suitable for a variety of moods. The writing is consistently competent and frequently excellent.
The subjects that are covered include: things to know if you are planning to serve on a jury, how to survive in prison, covering your tracks if you are using a fake ID, drug testing, how the tabloids operate and how they effect the “mainstream” press, an assortment of cyber issues, home schooling, renegade WW II GIs, energy farming and other Green stuff, class struggle, Holocaust survivors with guns, war as entertainment, National Health Care, 12-step mania, assorted fiction and a whole lot more. A piece on the Jim Rose Circus and a short story by convicted serial killer G.J. Schaefer were commissioned especially for this book. SA

Publisher: Loompanics
Paperback: 200 pages
Illustrated

What one should know about speaking to the FBI, changing identities, writing checks, anarchism, alternative health, media control and hype, pirate broadcasting, “paranoid theories,” squatting and much more. Featuring previously unpublished articles by Gregory Krupey, as well as contributions by Bob Black, Richard Geis, Michael E. Marotta, Ben G. Price and a full array of others. TD

Publisher: Loompanics
Paperback: 300 pages
Illustrated

Hidden methods of world domination exposed! Pseudo-handbook for budding Armand Hammers, with instructive commentary from David Rockefeller, et al.

Publisher: Loompanics
Paperback: 62 pages

Devastating attacks on the crumbling institutions of government, law, school, medicine, science, religion and work, in the venerable tradition of Stirner, Nietzsche and Crowley. AK

Publisher: Loompanics
Paperback: 252 pages

Outlaw literature from a New England “horse thief, bigamist, burglar, adulterer, con man, scoundrel, counterfeiter, deserter and common criminal who roamed the American colonies in the late 1700s, visiting several jails and escaping from most of them, before writing his autobiography.” First published in 1807, the unapologetic narrative so enraged the reading public, they set fire to the book’s print shop.

Publisher: Loompanics
Paperback: 312 pages
Illustrated

An alphabetical encyclopedia of female multiple murderers. The two implied selection criteria are telling: These women have all killed more than once, and they’ve all been caught—eventually. Most of the murderesses killed several husbands or children, most of them for insurance money, and an impressive number of them were not caught until they’d committed a half-dozen glaringly identical crimes. It leaves one with a picture of feminine evil: women tend to poison instead of shooting; they kill with calculation, not from passion; and they usually get away with it—why else would so many women here be caught on only their fifth or sixth husband-drugging? How many others managed to kill off just the one husband undetected? Reading this catalog, one realizes that women can be just as deadly as men, but that they get away with it more often. HJ

Publisher: Loompanics
Paperback: 205 pages

Not quite the how-to manual the title would suggest, but chock-full of fun facts and conversation starters like: Did you know prison guards commonly force those who are to die by electrocution to wear special diapers or even tie their penises with rubber hose to contain urine involuntarily released? Or that the first guillotine was built by a German harpsichord maker? Or that guards during the Inquisition took special delight in raping women during execution by the “peine forte et dure” (“pain both long and hard”) because of the extreme vaginal tension produced by the piling of rocks upon a victim’s torso? And so forth. Obligatory lamentation over the squeamishness of juries and “bleeding hearts” who pooh-pooh the direct correlation between capital punishment and deterrence. Rommel concludes that “executions will never go out of style” and sees hope for the future in new technologies, such as his own brainchild: a “zapper box” for microwaving the head of the condemned. RA

Publisher: Loompanics
Paperback: 119 pages

Compendium of 20th-century serial killers, from Atlanta to Zodiac. “We are caught up in the midst of what one expert calls an ‘epidemic of homicidal mania,’ victimized by a new breed of ‘recreational killers’ who slaughter their victims at random, for the sheer sport of killing.” Statistics: 13 victims each day are dispatched by motiveless murderers throughout in the world. The United States boasts 74 percent of the world’s total serial killers. They are grouped in three general categories: territorial (the Night Stalker, the Hillside Stranglers), who stake out a town or county; nomads (Ted Bundy and Henry Lee Lucas), who travel in stalk of their prey; and stationary (Ed Gein, John Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer), who attend to their killing from one central location. Brief case histories, some photos. GR

Publisher: Loompanics
Hardback: 353 pages
Illustrated

“Regardless of the Geneva Convention and other laws and protocols, each commander must decide whether the use of force to obtain information from a hostile source is appropriate based on the circumstances at hand… . This volume is intended to supplement existing field manuals and to provide information on effective applications of force to a hostile subject… Men’s tolerance for humiliation and pain differ—often markedly. You must be prepared to try a variety of techniques until you find an effective one. Analysis of character before starting will help eliminate nonproductive techniques without trying them. A subject may have a great tolerance for physical pain but be absolutely broken by a hypodermic needle piercing his testicle. He may take hours of pounding with fist when he is allowed to bounce around a room, only to become thoroughly terrified when he is first immobilized with ropes before being beaten. He may be able to endure the actual touch of a hot iron to his flesh better than the sight of it hovering centimeters from his skin, waiting to cause an agonizing burn. He may be able to tolerate any amount of pain as long as he has reason to think he will survive it, but give in if he is genuinely threatened with severe mutilation or death. Conversely, he may welcome death as an end to the torture and give in only when he realizes that he will be kept in constant pain and not allowed to die.”

Publisher: Loompanics
Paperback: 93 pages
Illustrated

Since 1900, serial crimes have gone from less than 50 in a decade to more than 300 by the year 2000. Who are the creeps that are lustmording our citizenry? Find out in this in-depth sequel to Hunting Humans. “A behind-the-screams look at America’s murder epidemic… Using case histories of more than 800 serial killers, the author looks for patterns and answers… Includes the word-for-word statements of convicted serial killers talking about sex, murder, life and death.” Plus the actual forms used by the FBI to profile murderers. GR

Publisher: Loompanics
Paperback: 165 pages
Illustrated