A comprehensive look at white-power movements from the inside out. Through cartoons, pamphlets and other redneck-white-trash writings, this Village Voice political correspondent covers all the beauty of far-Right white hate. Contains genealogical diagrams of white-power groups from their inception, and coverage of David Duke’s “transformation” from Grand Wizard of the KKK into a mainstream, ostensibly toned-down, smarmy politico. Other chapters include “Worldwide Conspiracy,” “Resurgence,” “The Fifth Era,” “Posse Country” and “New White Politics.” MW

Publisher: Thunder's Mouth
Paperback: 223 pages
Illustrated

On February 21, 1965, Malcolm X was shot and killed, and the author of this book purports to know why. After 15 years of intensive research, including hundreds of interviews and the examination of 300,000 pages of declassified FBI and CIA documents, the author contends that it was the aforementioned agencies who bear the responsibility for Malcolm X’s death. The ubiquitous Hoover shows up everywhere as the master of puppets, a man who gloated over his victims, from John Dillinger to Malcolm X. Surprisingly, the author links the assassinations of both Malcolm X and George Lincoln Rockwell, the founder of the American Nazi Party, to the same source: COINTELPRO. Indeed, Rockwell received the greatest ovation of his career at a Black Muslim Rally in Washington in 1961. It is a compelling irony that neither Malcolm nor Rockwell were killed by white or black racists, respectively. As dynamic and charismatic figures, they were too much alike, thus, they were both recognized by the powers that be as a great danger to the status quo. “Officially” both men were assassinated by disgruntled former associates. Succinctly put by the author of the book: “I am convinced that Louis E. Lomax, an industrious Afro-American journalist who befriended Malcolm in the late 1950s, had practically solved the riddle of his assassination 25 years ago. Lomax, who died in a mysterious automobile accident while shooting a film in Los Angeles about the assassination, believed that Malcolm X was betrayed by a former friend who reportedly had ties to the intelligence community. In 1968, Lomax called the suspect ‘Judas.’” However, if Lomax was right, and Malcolm was betrayed, it was not with a kiss, as the book graphically demonstrates. JB

Publisher: Thunder's Mouth
Paperback: 405 pages
Illustrated

“Mark Lane, author of this book and the best-seller Rush to Judgement, as lawyer for the defense in the case Hunt vs. Liberty Lobby, won a verdict from a jury of our peers that upheld, against a claim of libel, a news story that Howard Hunt, a long-time Office of Strategic Services and CIA employee, was in Dallas on the day the president was shot. The testimony at that trial gave more credibility to the notion that the CIA was involved in the assassination. Did you read about that verdict in your local newspaper? Did you hear about that verdict on your favorite TV or radio network news program? Of course not. They are not allowed to write that. This book tells that story in a way that will make accounts of the historic ‘Scopes’ trial read like the story of ‘Little Red Riding Hood.’”—L. Fletcher Prouty

Publisher: Thunder's Mouth
Paperback: 351 pages

View, a magazine of the 1940s, defined the avant-garde movement in America. Established in New York, founded and edited by Charles Henri Ford, View first appeared in September 1940. It was the first art magazine to publish interviews with such artists as André Breton, Jorge Luis Borges, translator and longtime contributor Paul Bowles and many visual artists—Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, Georgia O’Keefe, Isamu Noguchi, Pablo Picasso, Man Ray and Yves Tanguy, to name but a few. Ford’s roster of artists was always impressive, and well ahead of its time. View established the avant-garde’s standards and claimed New York as its center.
“View is the impossible magazine of the arts no one could have dreamed,” said writer William Carlos Williams. The book gives a chronological presentation of Ford’s career, acquaintances, and influences. Surprisingly, even though View was distributed worldwide, its circulation “peaked at 3,000.” The intention of the magazine was not “to shock the bourgeoisie but to amass evidence that this (America) was not the land of Puritans and the American dream.” The magazine stands as a testament to its creed of “advocating nothing political other than individual resistance to all forms of authority.” The book also details historical events and social conditions in regard to homosexuality. View thrived with an intoxicating combination of wit, appetite for transgression, humor and business acumen. OAA

Publisher: Thunder's Mouth
Paperback: 287 pages
Illustrated

Waters, charming and elegant, obviously deranged, but harmless, was labeled by William Burroughs “the Pope of Trash.” Obsessed with taboos and the ultimate extremes in behavior, Waters has had a lifelong fascination with criminals, criminology, cult leaders and followers, and criminal trials. He takes everything to its utmost edge and is the American Pop incarnation of Buñuel, Godard, and Fellini. Here he discusses perversity, religion, sex, sexual deviance, his favorite cultural icons and the lewd, disgusting, high-camp satire of his own upbringing and background. Probing questions are posed by an obviously avid admirer, with whom Waters was very comfortable, full of weird references even Waters has to think about! Includes exclusive stills and posters; an in-depth interview; production notes and set design sketches for Hairspray; storyboards for Cry Baby; flyers for his early films such as Mondo Trasho and Female Trouble; a copy of a search-and-seizure notice for the confiscation of Pink Flamingos in adherence with Arizona obscenity laws; a copy of an autobiography Waters wrote at the age of 10; and a complete filmography. CF

Publisher: Thunder's Mouth
Paperback: 176 pages
Illustrated

The king of raunchy, campy B films, Waters tantalizes the reader with obscure facts about his cast of society’s outcasts. Many of Waters’ characters resemble those one might have found in the O.C. Buck shows, which toured the United States in the ‘50s and ‘60s. If only Waters had met the Alligator Man and the Bearded Lady! Waters’ descriptions read like a bastardized Lamparski’s “What Ever Happened To?” series. Consider the following: “The man with the singing asshole from Pink Flamingos is currently a married computer programmer living in Baltimore… A few years ago, a representative from a Boston rock club called me trying to find the singing asshole to hire him… I called and explained the offer to my old friend, and he was naturally hesitant. “Well, the muscles ain’t what they used to be,” he confided… But after thinking it over, the ‘Garbo of anal openings’ decided to pass.” JB

Publisher: Thunder's Mouth
Paperback: 243 pages
Illustrated

Contains three of Waters’ scripts. Pink Flamingos, the original midnight movie, is the story of the filthiest people alive who strive for infamy and succeed when the outrageous Divine devours dog poop! Desperate Living tells the twisted fairy tale (even without Divine) of Mortville as ruled by Queen Carlotta (Edith Massey), her daughter Princess Coo-Coo (Mary Vivian Pearce) and Dreamlanders Mink Stole and Susan Lowe—mental anguish, lesbianism and political corruption. Flamingos Forever, the unmade sequel to Pink Flamingos, has Divine’s character and clan return to Baltimore to a horde of followers. Here she is confronted by her new rivals, Vera and Wilbur Venninger, owners of a funeral home who abduct children and force them to smoke, drink and shoot heroin. John Waters spent seven long years trying unsuccessfully to get funding for this script. In the meantime, sadly, the actors Divine and Edith Massey passed away. John Waters recommends readers to “Act it out alone or with friends—endless fun!” Includes great, never-before-published stills and the actors’ current whereabouts. CF

Publisher: Thunder's Mouth
Paperback: 259 pages
Illustrated

“I don’t really feel all these people with me every day at the Factory are just hanging around me, I’m more hanging around them… I like being a vacuum; it leaves me alone to work… anybody who comes by here is welcome, it’s just that we’re trying to do some work here.”—Andy Warhol
How is it that looking at pictures of some of the most utterly bored-looking people in the history of recorded time never itself seems to get boring? What was it about the crushing ennui of the denizens of Andy Warhol’s Factory that remains so damn compelling today? Perhaps it’s because the sense of passive detachment, smart-assed irony and fun-tinged alienation captured by photographer Stephen Shore’s lens was so shockingly new at the time, so incredibly vital, that it was, and remains, positively electric. Shore’s remarkable collection of photographs taken at the Factory between 1965 and 1967, along with writer Lynne Tillman’s interviews with many of the surviving participants, provide a delicious voyeur’s-eye view of what was undoubtedly one of the seminal breeding pools of postwar American pop culture, a scene which forged the look and attitude of so much that would come after. They’re all here in gorgeous black and white—Andy, Gerard Malanga, the Velvets, Billy Name, Ondine, Nico, Edie Sedgwick, Ingrid Superstar, Ultra Violet and Paul Morrissey. AD

Publisher: Thunder's Mouth
Paperback: 176 pages
Illustrated

John Gilmore, the dysfunctional spawn turned actor of an LAPD cop dad, long ago abandoned the fictions of the silver screen to delve into the darker dementia of true-crime writing, authoring books on Charles Schmid (Cold Blooded), Charles Manson and the Family (The Garbage People) and the Black Dahlia Murder (Severed) that have become widely regarded as classics of the genre. Marked by a rare kind of up-close intensity and subjective intimacy that persistently rejected the obvious and easy histrionic vitriol and posturing that is the common province of mass media moralisms in favor of more empathetic, humanistic insights into the savage side of desire, need and compulsion, Gilmore has now focused his tremendous skills as an investigative reporter and acuity as a chronicler of events onto the far more personal topography of his own experiences. The results come in a most startling new volume of recollections on his old friend, the gloriously and gorily deceased teen icon James Dean.
Long tapped as an inside source on Dean’s private life and obsessions by myriad biographers over the years, Gilmore finally reveals the most sordid secrets left for nearly a half-century to the idle speculations of insider gossip. Enriched not only by a keen understanding of the art and personality that made young Jimmie so memorable but a wealth of anecdotal contributions from the various lovers, friends, colleagues and cohorts left in his tragic wake, Live Fast, Die Young paints a full and lurid picture of the actor and the animal thrashing about within that superbly beautiful physique. By understanding Dean’s immense need for greatness and recognition, Gilmore provides a deeper comprehension of the failures and frustrations that engendered his death fixation and ultimately brought about his untimely end.
But the book’s real payoff is the true dirt it delivers on the unimaginably perverse nature of Gilmore and Dean’s association. We find out how they shared the same woman and compared notes, and most amazingly about the ongoing series of eroticized escapades the two of them enjoyed. If you like to hear about how two essentially heterosexual men can have truly unfulfilling bad sex attempts—hey that hurts!—this is definitely the book for you. Hopefully, some Hollywood degenerate will get the movie rights to this most prurient text, if for no other reason than for audiences to see some pretty boys enact the classic scene contained therein where Jimmie has John put on a pair of funky panties he’s recently taken off some anonymous female sweetheart. CM

Publisher: Thunder's Mouth
Hardback: 256 pages
Illustrated