In the mid 80s I discovered a wonderful mail order place that sold all kinds of counter culture books. Titles like:
How to adopt a phoney name and then get birth certificate, driver license, social security card, passport and all kinds of other ID.
How to live off the grid.
How to become a professional assassin.
How to use guns and do all kinds of things with various weapons.
How to pick up girls.
The “how to pick up girls” may look a little strange. But this place sold all kinds of books that were very unusual but could also be very helpful.
Does anyone know what ever happened to them? I can’t find them anywhere today. I would imagine that someone must still be offering these kinds of books.
Many of the titles were anti-government and maybe even concerned with how to overthrow the govt. So I don’t expect Amazon.com would sell many of these books.
You might want to try Amazon.com, despite your reservations about their inventory. I looked for the first title you mentioned. I couldn’t find that exact title but they do have “Modern Identity Changer: How To Create And Use A New Identity For Privacy And Personal Freedom”.
I think you’d be surprised at what Amazon sells, then. Between the self-published Kindle content, third party sellers listing books Amazon has never sold themselves (I found a crazy pamphlet titled, Milk: Friend or Fiend that I ran into when I was a kid), and things that they offer through their normal channels (they’ll happily sell you the Turner Diaries) I don’t know that there’s all that much in your list that you can’t find there.
Alternatively, there are websites devoted to the topics you listed. I don’t think Googling for them would be too much of a challenge. I would bet that’s probably what happened to the mail order place you’re looking for, though: the internet made them obsolete.
I instantly thought of “the Anarchist Cookbook” from your description. You can wikipedia it for some information as the publication has changed hands a couple of times. It currently is being offered by Delta Press which can be found with a simple Google search.
Perhaps you were looking for this Delta Press organization.
Pretty sure the OP means Loompanics. Which, as a portmanteau of weaving together Loon and Panic is a pretty good thumbnail of their mindset and offerings.
He’s definitely thinking of Loompanics. I have a copy of How to Start Your Own Country. It has an interesting rundown of various failed attempts to build new countries. The author is a bit scary, however, in that he appears to be quite keen on the idea of acquiring nukes and using them to blackmail established nations into leaving you alone.
Perhaps the Whole Earth Catalog? Though they were more the 60s, and more hippy-dippy rather than 80s/assassins. But the WEC was sporadically published throughout the 80s. I’m just throwing the idea out there.
Paladin Press is the publisher of most of these books you are thinking of, and in fact, has acquired the rights to many of the original Loompanics titles. They have also had a number of legal problems over their book ‘Hitman’, which resulted in them being sued since the book was used as a resource in a number of actual murders:
Oh man… I discovered the Whole Earth Catalog in grade 10 and was just amazed. The issue of CoEvolution Quarterly that talked about electric light rail replacing the highways into Yosemite Park (and the book it was based on, “YV88”) was a major influence on me, artistically and academically.
That name seems to ring a bell. Would you happen to know where they were located when they sold by mail order? If I recall, the place I bought from was in one of the western states - Washington, Oregon or possibly California.
Loompanics is no longer in business. It closed in 2008 and before it did, in 2006, it sold the rights to 40 of its titles to Paladin Press. You can go to the Paladin website and see what they have available.
Delta Press is also a small publisher of off-beat bookshttp://www.deltapress.com
Frankly, in my experience, most of what all of these companies sell is junk. They have few up to date publications and the majority of what they print is well known to the authorities or is completely useless.
If you don’t want to pay full price for these “works” they are often on the used book sites like alibris.com.You can also search online as many of these books have been bootlegged so if you are “on a budget” you can get them from torrent sites.
There is one book that I’d very much like to get. Unfortunately, I can’t remember it’s name.
Maybe someone here can help me?
It was about some elderly master of an Eastern self-defense art. According to the writer, this man knew several techniques to instantly disable an attacker. If someone was bothering him in a public place and began to assault him, apparently he could make one quick move and the attacker would be flat on the ground.
The title may have been something like, “Twelve moves to instantly disable an attacker”, but I strongly doubt that was it.
I’m interested in learning some self-defense techniques. I have a neighbor who is a bully and has had problems with some of the other people living in my building and has threatened me.
The management of the building just tells me to call the police. The police tell me that without any witnesses or proof there is nothing they can do.
I’d like to learn some basic self-defense just in case this lout ever does take things past the talking stage.
One story from the early 70’s I love, and do wish I had kept notes:
Small town (in the Ozarks (IIRC)) had your basic small-town bully - big guy with a bad attitude.
Town was too small to have its own police, so they relied on the County Sheriff for law enforcement.
Bully lived on the outskirts and came into town about once a week or so for provisions.
One bright, sunny Saturday, about noon, as he was getting into his truck, a 12-ga did the town a favor.
No one saw anything
No one heard anything
No one had ever heard of anyone disliking the bastard.
The only person upset by the lack of prosecution was his widow - who just went from top of the heap to lowest.
Yes. They were the ones that sold “The Paper Trip,” a book explaining how to get real IDs under a different name, which was a technique that foreign agents actually used, until computerized cross checking of death and birth records, as well as county restrictions of birth certificate access.
