We just received Flight (Make it Work!) in the mail and promptly started on a project! We are homeschoolers and always looking for fun ways to learn. This book really impressed me. The projects are colorful and interesting, and captured my children's interest immediately. As I write my 9 year old son is making the cannon - page 12. Now that is high praise!

This book is full of great do-it-your-self projects for kids (and adults) to build. Great stuff for cub scouts. I especially enjoyed the space shuttle/rocket booster powered by air preasure.

This isn't a book about being in jail. Instead, it is a book about continuing to fight. Inside prison, Cannon and the others educated themselves about Marxism, discussed plans to explain the workers movement when they got out of prison, surveyed the changes in the world that World War II brought, and fought the pessimism that the war, Stalinism, and imprisonment had brought to some of them. Cannon, as always, is humorous, insightful, and just plain wise

In 1944-45 James P. Cannon and 17 other leaders of the Socialist Workers Party and the Minnesota truck drivers union were imprisoned for opposing Washington's imperialist aims in World War II, convicted under the thought-control Smith Act. In his prison journal, Cannon addresses key questions of building, organizing, and educating a communist party capable of preparing for the explosive working-class battles that would follow the war. A traveling organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World before and during World War I, James P. Cannon was a leader of the Communist Party in the United States following the Russian revolution of October 1917. He was expelled from the Communist Party in 1928 for supporting Leon Trotsky's fight to continue V.I. Lenin's revolutionary course. A founding leader of the Socialist Workers Party, Cannon served as its national secretary and then national chairman until his death in 1974. From the introduction by Jack Barnes: "Growing numbers of young people have begun to reject the evils of capitalist America - war, racism, poverty, its sick culture. They want to replace capitalism with a better system. But how is this to be done? What kind of organization must be built to lead this struggle? What kind of men and women will the job require? These are the very questions discussed in Letters from Prison." (from the back cover)

El ocaso de la revolución nicaragüense ni fue inevitable, ni fue porque la falta de la conciencia política de los obreros y campesinos nicaragüenses, ni tampoco porque los mismos trabajadores se dejaron engañar por el hambre y así votar a favor de la representativa de los ricos. No, no fue así. El liderazgo del Frente Sandinista con su política de "concertación" con los capitalistas domésticos de la ciudad y del campo desmoralizó al pueblo trabajador, y aún así no ganaron ¡ni una concesión de los imperialistas yanquis como prometió el mismo liderazgo del FSLN al pueblo nicaragüense! El pueblo trabajador que yo encontré en Nicaragua durante la guerra con la "contra" en 1986 estaba dispuesto a sacrificar cualquier cosa en defensa de SU gobierno obrero y campesino nicaragüense como existió entonces, de bajo del liderazgo del FSLN,que fue un liderzgo revolucionario entonces. El pueblo fue traicionado por sus propias dirigentes que tenían y tienen hasta hoy más fe en el capitalismo que confianza en los trabajadores. Las lecciones de la degeneración del FSLN y la derrota del gobierno obrero y campesino que se trata en este libro son basadas en las experiencias de un partido revolucionario obrero en los EE.UU. que defendió a la revolución a través de su periodismo socialista con un buró permanente en Managua durante todos los años de la revolución. Las lecciones son de igual importancia que las lecciones de la victoriosa revolución socialista en Cuba. Todavía nosotros, los trabajadores aquí en Norteamérica podemos aprender mucho del curso del FSLN en su época revolucionaria, como también podemos aprender de la obra del comandante Carlos Fonseca, fundador del FSLN, sobre el camino al poder, que también se incluye aquí.

He encontrado en las revistas de política y teoría marxista Nueva Internacional una fuente indispensable de información, análisis y orientación política. Como indica su título, las revistas de dedican a educar y forjar una nueva vanguardia de la clase obrera a nivel mundial. Bien vale el tiempo necesario para leer y estudiarlas y compartir los artículos con otros trabajadores.

Este número ofrece un análisis a fondo de la revolución sandinista en Nicaragua, presentando documentos adoptados por el Partido Socialista de los Trabajadores en el curso de la revolución. Su propósito era explicar la revolución y orientar a militantes y activistas a defenderla contra los ataques del imperialismo norteamericano. Para mí --igual de muchos de mi generación-- la revolución nicaragüense fue muy importante e inspiradora, y este libro me ayudó mucho en entender y aprender de la experiencia.

Explica el desarrollo de un gobierno revolucionario de los trabajadores y campesinos, de la lucha por tumbar la dictadora somocista, y del comienzo de luchas anticapitalistas y en contra del dominio norteamericano en la región. Analiza la reforma agraria, indispensable para forjar una duradera alianza obrero-campesina; y el proceso de autonomía de los pueblos indígenas de la Costa Atlántica-- incluso la rectificación de errores iniciales cometidos por la dirigencia sandinista.

Son imprescindibles las explicaciones del las raíces de la caída del gobierno revolucionario en su negativa a finales de los 1980s a luchar contra el poder económico de los capitalistas, y la subsiguiente desmoralización de muchos obreros y campesinos revolucionarios.

You want to fight but your union's too weak and buddy-buddy with management...everyone sits in their own language groupings in the cafeteria - will people ever get together?...how can we get out of the mess that lay-offs and soaring cutbacks in social services are making of our lives? This book is a fantastic handbook for those of us who want to figure out what step to take next. It isn't an easy recipe for bandaids. It lays out that we have to be worldly-wise strategists who understand that unity forged through struggle is key. The prize: taking political power like working people did in Cuba over 40 years ago. We have to use the tools we have - the unions, for example, exasperating though they may be -- to reach each other and create a political party, a real fighting communist party, that can lead us to help transform all of society. Thought-provoking and concrete. A real treat.

Este libro cuenta la historia de los jóvenes militantes socialistas norteamericanos que unieron con otros para realizar acciones en defensa de la soberanía cubana y de su revolución, tanto durante la invasión de la Playa Girón (llamada por acá la "Bahía de Cochinos") como durante la crisis de octubre de 1962 (acá "la crisis de los mísiles"). Lo más importante es que este libro plantea la experiencia de unos militantes proletarios que construyen un partido obrero como parte del movimiento laboral, con la perspectiva de ayudar a dirigir un movimiento de millones a hacer una revolución aquí. Sí, aquí, -en las entrañas de la bestia imperial-. Explica la etapa actual de la crisis económica mundial del capitalismo, entrado ya en depresión mundial, la guerra de los superricos en contra los trabajadores en los EE.UU. y en contra de los trabajadores y campesinos del mundo entero, el crecimiento permanente de resistencia. Plantea un programa de acción de aquí y ahora para unir los trabajadores y agricultores pequeños de los EE.UU. con nuestros hermanos y hermanas de clase en el dizque "Tercer Mundo". Por supuesto se trata de la necesidad del movimiento laboral norteamericano por ser el defensor de las nacionalidades oprimidas, los trabajadores inmigrantes y de las mujeres. Como dijo un líder socialista norteamericano: cuando se alza, la clase trabajadora norteamericana podrá levantar el mundo.

v To those who think that the idea of replacing the system died with the mass movements of the 1960s, to workers who want to see a way out of the constant grinding down of our standard of living and conditions, to young people who want to understand a way forward to education, to people of the world who want to get up out of the poverty and oppression that we all face. THIS IS THE BOOK. This the book that tells us where we have come, even though it was written several years ago. This is the book that puts these things in perspective not of our job, our school, our neighborhood, but of the world, of history, of working people, farmers, youth. No one can really understand our time in history without reading this book written from the standpoint of working people. It is not the product of the author alone, but of the collective discussion and experience of fighting, thinking, struggling Marxist workers, farmers, youth, and intellectual around the world

The strike that took place at Eastern Airlines from 1989 to 1991 is usually considered a total failure. After all, in the end, Eastern Airlines was forced out of business and Eastern workers lost their jobs. But the beauty of this book is it shows just how much the strikers at Eastern accomplished in their battle with Frank Lorenzo and his attempt to de-unionize the airline industry. It shows how the Eastern strikers reached out in solidarity to other workers, including coal miners at Pittston Coal, who were also on strike. And it shows that despite a Machinists union top leadership, which had accepted concession after concession from Eastern, the rank- and-file workers in Miami and New York and other cities were able to wage an impressive fight against Lorenzo and finally drive him out of the airline business. The book also has a great collection of photos from the strike as well as a very helpful detailed chronology. This book tells the real story of this strike. Don't miss it!

Talk about history that's relevant for today! The unrelenting drive in the 1980s by employers to bolster profits by cutting wages and jobs, weakening or eliminating workers' unions, and using bankruptcy and the federal courts to blackmail and pressure workers... and the determined resistance and 22-month long strike by airline workers who had had enough and decided to fight back.

This is the story of the Machinists union members who did what they said they'd do-- last "one day longer" than Frank Lorenzo, the union-busting CEO of Eastern Airlines. It focuses on the strength the rank-and-file Machinists found they had when they organized together and reached out for support from and giving solidarity to other working people in the United States and around the world.

It also includes an important background article, "Capitalism's March Toward War and Depression," by socialist leader Jack Barnes.

Every worker should read and discuss this book. Help us chart a way forward for the labor movement in the 21st century!

When strikes and other labor activities take place, if they are recorded at all, they are told as some kind of sociological history for college professors, or some kind of economic development for business people who want to get more money out of our labor. This book explains how IAM workers fought back union busting at Eastern Airlines and stopped Lorzeno from building a scab airline, from the workers point of view. Ernie Mailhot was a strike leader who worked on the ramp for years at Eastern in Miami and New York and was a strike coordinator in New York. He explains the fight, what it means for workers then and now.

I Used this book in researching for my term paper which was on NY Politics from Roosevelt to Roosevelt. While it was not very good for the subject I found the book very interesting. Mr. Issacson's wrighting kept the book interesting.