Steal This Book

Steal This Book is a book written by Abbie Hoffman in 1970 and published in 1971. It includes advice on such topics as growing marijuana, starting a pirate radio station, living in a commune, stealing food, shoplifting, stealing credit cards, preparing a legal defense, making pipe bombs, and obtaining a free buffalo from the U.S. Department of the Interior. It discusses various tactics of fighting as well as giving a detailed list of affordable and easy ways to find weapons and armor that can be used in the event of a confrontation with law enforcement. The book advocates rebelling against authority in all forms, governmental and corporate.

The book's reflexive title is a classic example of Yippie culture jamming. Many bookstores refused to carry the book, because some patrons followed the advice of the book's title. [1]

As the book ages, the specific information it contains has become largely obsolete, but the book captures the yippie zeitgeist.

On the success of the book, Hoffman was quoted as saying, "It's embarrassing when you try to overthrow the government and you wind up on the Best Seller's List." Hoffman would not respond to accusations that he had plagiarized the book, as published in a detailed article in Rolling Stone magazine (No. 92, 10 September 1971), entitled "How Abbie Hoffman Won My Heart and Stole Steal This Book."

References in popular culture

Mona Simpson, hippie mother of Homer Simpson, is seen reading Steal This Book in an episode of The Simpsons. In addition, Steal This Book is one of the banned books seen during a discussion in Bart Simpson's classroom in the Simpsons episode "The PTA Disbands".

Both The Coup and System of a Down released CDs titled Steal this Album in reference to this book. The band The Suicide Machines released a record called Steal This Record. The band The Explosion has also created an EP simply called "Steal This" in response to attempts to sue.

The BitTorrent tracker website The Pirate Bay made a series of documentary films about pirating and downloading movies called Steal This Film.

The website for the roleplaying game Dungeons & Dragons has a series of articles called Steal this Hook!. A footnote explains that Hoffman's book has nothing to do with Dungeons & Dragons, but that they stole the title anyway.

In episode 205 "That Was Then, This Is Dumb" of the animated television show Daria, Jake Morgendorffer talks to himself in a mirror, saying "Once you could fit all your worldly possessions into a backpack. Pair of jeans, a few T-shirts, a copy of Steal This Book."

In the late 1990s, Steal This Radio, a pirate radio station, operated at 88.7 FM in the Lower East Side of New York City. The station shut down in 1998.[2][3]

In 1999, Ben Stiller and Janeane Garofalo co-authored a self-help parody titled Feel This Book.

John Mendenhall compiled two collections of copyright-free clip art titled Scan This Book (1991) and Scan This Book Two (1996).

In 2000, Robert Greenwald directed a film based on Abbie Hoffman's life titled Steal This Movie, starring Vincent D'Onofrio as Hoffman.

As of 2006, the composition of a Wiki-based version of this work for a new generation was started. The project has been named Steal This Wiki. An alpha version of the final product was compiled and released on July 4, 2007.

In 2007, the Ben and Jerry's ice cream company sent out a book of coupons called Eat This Book.

Bibliographical data

Written by Abbie Hoffman "Co-conspirator": Izack Haber "Accessories after the fact": Tom Forcade and Bert Cohen Published by Pirate Editions (New York) Distributed by Grove Press Year of publication: 1971 308 pages +xii, illustrations, bibliography[4] 25th anniversary edition - ISBN 1-56858-053-3