Publisher of Renegade Titles Dies at 83: “In his first career as a journalist in the 1940’s and 50’s, Mr. Stuart clashed with the powerful columnist Walter Winchell and supported Fidel Castro. In his second, as a publisher, he was notorious for The Anarchist Cookbook. Written by William Powell, the book, which included instructions on making bombs and homemade silencers for pistols, was first released in 1970 at the height of antiwar and anti-establishment protests. Web sites inspired by the book are still proliferating.
Mr. Stuart published the book against his own staff’s wishes. ‘I liked it, but nobody else did — and of course no other publisher would touch it,’ he told an interviewer in 1978. In 2000, the author, Mr. Powell, told The Observer of London that he disavowed the book, written when he was 19; later, in an open letter on Amazon.com, he called it ‘a misguided product of my adolescent anger at the prospect of being drafted.’ But Mr. Stuart, who held the copyright, continued to publish it.
He courted controversy again in 1996 when he reissued The Turner Diaries, an anti-government novel self-published by a neo-Nazi in 1978. It is said to have been a favorite of Timothy J. McVeigh, executed for killing 169 people with a truck bomb in Oklahoma City in 1995.
Mr. Stuart was also famous for knowingly publishing one of the most sensational literary hoaxes of the time: Naked Came the Stranger (1969), a sex novel written by ‘a demure Long Island housewife,’ the dust jacket said. It was actually written by 25 reporters from Newsday, intent on proving the public would buy anything, in a kind of relay race of bad prose. The book became an immediate best seller before the hoax was revealed and stayed on the list long after.” (New York Times )
Daily Archives: 26 Jun 06
U.S. General in Iraq Outlines Troop Cuts
Details leaked from a classified Pantagon briefing by General George Casey, reported in the New York Times, outline a concept of how to cut US troop strength in Iraq approximately in half by December, 2007, with the first brigades withdrawn early this fall. The Republican response in last week’s debates to Democratic calls for a phased withdrawal, which all but the most hardened chicken hawks consider inevitable, was to say we needed to hear from the military. Now we have it, from the top commander in Iraq. But coincidentally enough, the proposed withdrawal is timed precisely to have maximal impact on the Nov. 2006 midterm elections and the 2008 Presidential campaign. Families of US troop casualties from here on out should feel proud that the death or maiming of their loved ones will have served a good cause — not the war effort but the Republican reelection effort and the culture war on the ground at home.
Feingold On the Emergence of Somali Al Qaeda Leader
The‘Insanity’ Of Misplaced Priorities: “This morning on NBC’s Meet the Press, Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) argued that the broader al Qaeda network is gaining strength as a result of the Iraq war.
Feingold cited Somalia, where an individual listed by the U.S. State Department as a suspected al Qaeda collaborator was yesterday named as the new leader of a militia that has seized control of Somalia’s capital.” (Think Progress)
