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This collection of poetry is largely culled from the three labor journals that Ragnar Redbeard-inspired Wobbly activist Covington Hall edited from 1913 to 1916: The Lumberjack, The Voice of the People, and Rebellion. Hall was one of the top poets of the labor movement in the Progressive Era, and active writer and teacher for many decades until his death in 1951. Being a member of the Industrial Workers of the World, a labor organization known for pitched street fights and "direct action," in Hall we find the greatest advocate of the Chicago social-Darwinist Ragnar Redbeard, and his infernal book Might Is Right. That inspiring book was highly critical of any paid labor, much less Union organizing for workers as a class. Like so many radicals of the day, Hall looked past the conflicting parts to focus on the core message: the only foundation for right is the ability to enforce one's will on others.The poems contained within this booklet are mostly from the pen of Hall, but also others that he found worthy to print in his own journals, including Dadaist anarchist sculptor Adolf Wolff, and "Satanic Socialist" Henry M. Tichenor, author of The Sorceries and Scandals of Satan. They represent that curious melding of Might and Blasphemy and Labor in often stirring but sometimes satirical ways. Featuring an original introduction by editor-in-chief of UnionOfEgoists.com Kevin I. Slaughter, and a second by a contemporary of Halls, singing his praises as a poet of rebellion.

An ax murderer, two of the most brilliant scientific minds of the century, billions of dollars in profit, precedent-setting legal battles, secrets of life and death - all of these come together in the story of the first electric chair.In Blood and Volts, Th. Metzger creates a unique synthesis of scholarship, storytelling, and cultural critique. Though it draws from a number of disparate fields-true crime, history of technology, conspiracy theory, criminal law-Blood and Volts presents a clear and compelling story: America struggling to define itself through scientific innovation.At the dawn of the twentieth century, General Electric (using Edison's direct current) and Westinghouse (employing Tesla's groundbreaking alternating current) were locked in combat to determine which would dominate the electro-technical fate of the nation. Electricity was thought to be a highly ambiguous force: both godlike creative power and demonic destroyer of life. Metzger argues the electric chair was both harbinger and early pinnacle of modernity, the high altar of the rising cult of progress. In the popular imagination, Tesla and Edison were seen as nearly superhuman beings, and their struggle was not only for wealth and power, but to reshape the face of America.This is a second, revised edition.

"The radical transformation of life, the great metamorphosis I aspired to, could not be realized in reality because the crowds were gregarious, they could not exist without a shepherd, and they would not send him away except to put themselves under the tutelage of another. I should no longer hope for the social Muspell from whose flames the heroic youth of the unique one would be born, but rather consider anarchy as the eternal revolt of the irreducible individual against all societies that succeed in history. I had to understand that the Promethean exception is destined to fight not only the states and the authorities but also the conservative instinct of the crowds lying in a millennium-old habit of laziness. I had to-in the extreme resolution of my tragic despair-accept this eternal struggle of the reprobate against everyone and become intoxicated with the nepenthe that drips from its bosom."-from The Red Sect

HERE IS A MAN WHO WOULD NOT TAKE IT. We have forgotten about Everett True, a man who attended with prejudice to those most deserving-the daily pests. Sure, superheroes may have stopped crimes and Popeye may have known his share of dust-ups. But what about the million annoying twerps who don't break the law, but instead stomp on the social contract? When do they get theirs? Everett had no superpowers nor can of spinach, just a keen sense of human nature and the will to reward it but good. Everett True wished to live a simple life. He wished to go about his day without being unnecessarily bothered. His success then was not far from your own today. From loud-mouths in the theater to the overly pushy salesman, from the incessantly bothersome co-worker to the sidewalk hoggers, there's always some do-gooder who needs done in. You and I might take it on the chin, but Everett gives it on the noggin with interest. Outbursts of Everett True rarely strays from a natural formula: the pest impinges on Everett, Everett clobbers the pest. Far from repetitive, the rhythm reveals the timeless truth that the line between justice and revenge is a phantom's dream. Away with pity for the braggart, the inconsiderate, the assuming, the imposing, the blowhards, those cruel to animals and all the other pushy clods who would turn a perfectly pleasant day into a trial. Here are the best and brassiest Outbursts of Everett True. Many are reprinted for the first time since they were created by A. D. Condo and J. W. Raper, beginning in 1905. Outbursts of Everett True also packs the one-two punch of rare bibliographical information about the creators. Let Trevor Blake reintroduce our hero to a world ever more crowded with louts. Here is a man who stood up.

The history of the German editions of Stirner's Der Einzige und sein Eigentum (The Ego and His Own) is by no means a dull subject. It is characterized by the fact that the two main initiators of the so-called Stirner renaissances were surprisingly staunch opponents of Stirner. Paul Lauterbach, the editor of the Reclam editions from 1892 onwards, was an enthusiastic follower of Nietzsche, and Hans G. Helms, who edited the first (heavily abridged) edition of Der Einzige und sein Eigentum after 1945 in 1968, was a doctrinaire Marxist (like Ahlrich Meyer, who edited and annotated the unabridged Der Einzige und sein Eigentum, which has been published by Reclam since 1972). Of particular interest here are: 1) What motives did these men have to passionately advocate for the publication of a work they considered extremely dangerous, and each of which was almost forgotten? 2) How can their activism be sensibly interpreted as evading Stirner?Stirner's Der Einzige und sein Eigentum, without becoming a bestseller, was not only a bookseller's success, but also -- if one understands "success" in the true sense as a hit or strike -- an intellectual hit, and here now in the full sense of the word, a secret one. Because since its first appearance, it caused intellectual upheavals both among its most important direct recipients (Feuerbach, Ruge, Engels, especially Marx) and among many of its later readers, upheavals that they carefully concealed from the public (and eventually, repressing, also from themselves).German scholar Bernd A. Laska completed his sesquicentennial "edition history" of Der Einzige in 1994, and the Union of Egoists is pleased to present the first English translation of that work, making a fascinating history of the Unique book more acessible.

Two-fisted essays on Satanism and the application and explication of the world's most feared religion. This collection of more than sixty no-nonsense pieces by Magister Michael Rose features writing from various independent periodicals covering more than two decades, and finished with a Satanic ritual dedicated to Sir Francis Dashwood of the infamous Hellfire Club. Featuring an introduction from the High Priest of the Church of Satan, Peter H. Gilmore, Infernalia has been revised and expanded into this third edition.

SUBLIMITY is that which transcends circumstance by an act of beauty or sacrifice. Walter DeCasseres was the Sublime Boy. He walked in the few years of his life with the Crazy Beauty which hallucinated the souls of Shelley, Keats, Poe, Blake and Heine. He walked out of life with a gesture of sublime disdain that raised him to the shining summits of the Morning Star, where the souls of all child-gods go. The fury of a Titan foiled of his heaven, the frenzied paroxysms of a star-traveling eagle trying to gnaw its way out of its cage of flesh and bone, the rage of Ixion as he picks up the stone that he is doomed to roll forever and hurls it with imprecations against the ramparts of the gods: that was Walter DeCasseres, who, in his eighteenth year, went with the same passionate hurry and joy to the Everlasting Sleep as Youth hurries to the breasts of Venus. He was a boy who spurned his manhood before he had lived it. He abridged the agony of years; he curtailed his Drama to a curtain-raiser; he compressed life to a song and a curse. He came, he saw, he yawned. He was the mystery of precocious and elemental genius. There was a colossal mirror in his brain that reflected the hells of the Past and the grinning disillusions of the Future. On the exquisite keyboard of his nerves Satan and Medusa executed in thunder-tones the Ninth Symphony of Pain. His heart was the Mystical Rose stuck in a dung-heap.

Saltus's first two novels bear the imprint of the kind of diffident, decadent pessimism The Philosophy of Disenchantment elaborates. Indeed, the sensitivity requisite for the recognition that life has no value informs Mr. Incoul's Misadventure, the first novel, while the delusion that life has value motivates the action of the obtuse hero of the second novel, The Truth about Tristram Varick. -David Weir, Decadent Culture in the United States, 2008 Though any adjective would suit it better than "delightful," the strongest novel of the past twelve months is Edgar Saltus's The Truth about Tristrem Varick. It is a book for our atrabiliar moods, when life seems to be all cant and hypocrisy, fair at the surface, rotten at the core, and we long for some one with strength and sincerity enough to reveal the hideous, latent truth. These moods pass away, and our liking for Tristram Varick may pass with them, but not our admiration for the perfection of its style, the brilliancy of its epigrams, and the exquisite art with which a most repulsive and unpleasant story has been handled. -Lippincott's Monthly Magazine Tristrem Varick is the greatest novel that ever came from the pen of an American-a fable, a philosophy and an enormous chunk of life. It is a tale of the pursuit of the Ideal by Man-and the end is a badly lighted room in the Tenderloin police station. -Benjamin DeCasseres, Forty Immortals Mr. Incoul's Misadventure leaves one with a sickening sense of disgust with the world and everything in it. We do not condemn the book because it deals with vice and hypocrisy, for vice and hypocrisy exist, and it may be well for us to know something of them outside of our own experience. It is possible to believe in an excuse for Zola; and it is certain that he offends less than Mr. Saltus; for he reveals depths of iniquity where you would expect iniquity to be-where you know it must be; and while you deprecate and decry, you are not sure but somebody may be moved by one of his stories to a crusade against such vice. But Mr. Saltus leads you to look for iniquity of the most hideous kind where faith and love, honesty and truth, loveliness and virtue seem walking hand in hand. He makes you distrust the blush on a young girl's cheek, doubt the loyalty of the lover at your side, the fidelity of the wife beside your hearth, the honor of your dearest friend, the sincerity of the noblest man or woman you know. He makes you feel contaminated, till you shudder at yourself as part of this hideous human nature; not, mind you, with a healthful shudder at the self-revelation which is sometimes salutary, but with the shudder of an innocent victim who suddenly discovers a plague spot upon himself. You are stirred to no honorable crusade against vice: you are made to feel the hopelessness of vice. "Sit still," is practically Mr. Saltus's advice; "there is nothing you can do to help it. But look at this procession of horrors!" To paraphrase from Browning, Zola poisons the air for healthful breathing, but Mr. Saltus leaves no air to poison. There is a spark of originality and power in Mr. Incoul's discovery that the pistol-shot is inadequate as a method of revenge, because of the extreme speed with which the victim is released from his suffering, and his studying up a more complete and subtle revenge than could be attained by simply putting his enemy to death. -The Critic

Ironist, Critic, Poet, Nietzschean, Anarch. Friend of H.L. Mencken, Charles Fort, Jack London and relative of Baruch Spinoza. Published in periodicals ranging from the radical anarchist Liberty, to the mainstream Life, his work is now mostly lost and forgotten save a mention every decade or so by scholars or writers who have stumbled across him. This volume contains the known poetry of Benjamin DeCasseres (1873-1945) outside of his ANATHEMA! Litanies of Negation and the few poems written in tribute to his brother Walter, contained in The Sublime Boy. 129 poems in verse and prose, collected from two published volumes (The Shadow-Eater and Black Suns) and culled from dozens of periodicals over the first half of the 20th century.

This is the saga of Madame Rosenbloom's fashionable establishment in Chicago and of the ladies in her domain. And here is the Jim Tully of "Circus Parade", the forthright Tully whose language is as frank as life itself. Tully does not pull his punches. The big men and the little ladies for whom Madame Rosenbloom's house is a social center are portrayed with vigor and honesty. The novel is crammed with incident and penetrating word pictures. It is not a story for the squeamish. But if life itself, that robust, lusty segment of life that is here so honestly and brilliantly depicted, does not frighten or shock you, this novel will hold your deepest interest. Upon initial printing of this book in 1935, copies were seized from the publisher and destroyd by police based on allegations that the material was obscene and blasphemous. It is unknown how many copies survived. This is the first printing since that time.

A long-form poem of negation and egoism, of scorn and cynical delight. Included is a URL for a free full audiobook read by Kevin I. Slaughter. Benjamin DeCasseres (is) the Pontius Pilate of America. -H.L. Mencken A passionate, erratic poet... strives to shake the foundation of the world. -The Saturday Review of Literature He occupies a niche that is all his own and asks space to stand for no other man . -The Nation DeCasseres is the most fiery and independent writer that I know of. -Remy de Gourmont There is but one Benjamin DeCasseres. And he is perhaps the one living wonder of the literary world. It is fortunate that such an one must be born, that he cannot be made; especially that he cannot be imitated, for if every one wrote like DeCasseres readers would go mad. That he can keep in any semblance of thought-order such whirls of words is something to marvel at. Yet to read him once, twice, is to experience the greatest mental exhilaration. -New York Times

There is only one Malfew Seklew and Sirfessor Wilkesbarre is His Prophet. The polemical writings by and about Sirfessor Wilkesbarre: a Chicago Radical, Social Aristocrat and Egoist Superman of the early 20th Century. Companion of Ragnar Redbeard, frequenter of the Dil Pickle Club, and a man too magnificent for one moniker. Fred Wilkes (1864 - 1930) traversed in the mind through Socialism into a Sardonic Nietzschean Egoism as he made his way in the flesh from England to Chicago and New York. Founder of the Society of Social Aristocrats, selling Salvation to All and One through pamphlets, radio presentations and soap-box lectures on Love, Laughter, Wit and Wisdom. With an introduction by Trevor Blake, author of Confessions of a Failed Egoist, gathering never before published biographical details of Wilkesbarre and the radical milieu he circulated in. Fortified by fancies from his time as Associate Editor of the egoist journal The Eagle and The Serpent, pamphlets co-written with the infamous author of Might Is Right, and selections from Hobohemian Chicago newspaper The Day Book. In addition, the editors have produced over 250 elucidating footnotes and gathered a number of illustrations judiciously arranged throughout the book. As Seklew himself says: "Are you a Simpoleon or a Supercrat? A Peter-pantheist or a Personality? Are you a Bromide or a Sulphide? A nonentity or a reality? Are you an unripe ego or an unfinished organism with underdone understanding and hard boiled beliefs, pingpong principles and petrified prejudices? Do you amble through the atmosphere with the courage of a carrot, the consciousness of a cabbage, the turpitude of a turnip, the pep of a prune, the punch of a parsnip and the psychology of a Sundowner in the swamps of Hobohemia, or do you dash through space with the courage of a Conqueror and the wisdom of a Will-to-Power Man? If not, massage your Mentoids, and be saved-from yourself at your worst."

Explication, rumination and fulmination from Portland author Trevor Blake. Sixteen selections range from a critique of Objectivism to the career of filmmaker Nabil Shaban (focusing on The Skin Horse, a documentary on the sex lives of cripples). In addition there is a history and usage of Multiple Names (popular from obscure art movements like Neoism to common folk mythologies), a biographical sketch of Baltimore native and mutant tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE, among other topics. Putting the "I" in "history", the author touches on a cultural history of Egoism, a personal "trajectory" through Anarchism, and his personal shift on 9/11 are also detailed herein. "Confessions of a Failed Egoist is somewhere at the crossroads between The Satanic Bible and Prometheus Rising. Everything you know is wrong, but don't worry: It's just the punchline to the great epistemic joke. Blake's book is a throwback to the days of H.L. Mencken mercilessly skewering sacred cows on the left and right, while firmly rooted in our present day victimology industry conundrums. Blake's book provides inspiration for thought. Bring it up at your next boring work party and scare your colleagues." -Nick Pell

"I wrote The Philosophy of Disenchantment, which is, I think, the gloomiest and worst book ever published. Out of sheer laziness, I then produced a history of atheism, The Anatomy of Negation, which has been honored by international dislike. Need I state that of all my children it is the one that I prefer?" -Edgar Saltus"Returning to an estimate of Saltus, let us sum up by saying we have in him a temperament saturated with pessimism which expresses itself by the beautiful decoration of sinister themes. To see grandeurs in vast horrors is the last thing a commonplace person can do. Neither can commonplace persons accumulate effortlessly a legend about themselves. This Edgar Saltus has done... In The Philosophy of Disenchantment and The Anatomy of Negation he has written two compact readable and scholarly resumes of pessimism and of skepticism-perhaps the best handbooks ever published on these subjects" -Broom, Vol. 2The Philosophy of Disenchantment. "Mr. Saltus is a scientific pessimist, as witty, as bitter, as satirical, as interesting and as insolent to humanity in general as are his great teachers, Schopenhauer and Von Hartmann. there is a prodigious and prodigal display of genius in his work that is a history of antitheism from Kapila to Leconte de Lisle." -Worcester SpyThe Anatomy of Negation."A whole library of pessimism compressed into one small volume by a writer whose understanding of the value of words amounts almost to genius." -Chicago Herald "The work is remarkable in every way and its originality and power will compel for it more than an ephemeral existence, for independently of the force with which it deals with its theme its literary merits are of a high order, and its reflections are those of a bold, brilliant and able thinker." -Boston Saturday Review

A revised edition of the 1985 underground work by Gerald B. Lorentz (October 1915 - April 2007) featuring a new introduction and afterword. One of his last public announcements was about this reissue of his life's work. "History clearly proves that man is a plunderer, a killer, and a hypocrite.He cannot face the reality of his own despicable nature. Even when he kills he fancies that he performs a service to God or country. Capitalism satisfies all the predatory instincts natural to man in the economic purlieu; that is, satisfies his need to plunder, prey, defend; and to mask his predations with euphemisms and hypocorisms... Predation is normal and natural for the human species. Capitalists, actors, athletes, and rock musicians do not think of themselves as plunderers of the fruits of the labors of working people, nor do union workers think of themselves as plundering from nonunion workers. Plundering has always been perfectly natural and ethical for the human animal, only the rules governing predation change." This new edition is published jointly by APOP Records and Underworld Amusements.

There is no irony in the fact that H.L. Mencken is a tall figure in the history of letters, and Robert Rives La Monte is wholly forgotten. La Monte, who worked at the Baltimore News as well as being an editor for the International Socialist Review, was a true believer in the promise of Socialism. Here he writes six letters trying to convince H.L. Mencken to reject his selfish ways and become a comrade in the revolution, to usher in a perfect world of total equality and universal brotherhood. Mencken, long time writer for the Baltimore Sun, editor of The American Mercury, and prolific author and essayist, was the absolute worst choice of target for an evangelist of the common man. There have been few who were as openly resolved to a robust Nietzschean individualism. And so, in one of the turn of the last centuries greatest "flame wars," we have the Bard of Baltimore's six responses to those appeals. The battle of the "collective good" versus "individual liberty" still rages in pitched battles. La Monte's voice is rightfully now just one of many faceless advocates of class-warfare, and Mencken's personality survives as the greatest advocate of social Darwinism and thus ultimately Mencken's own views. "(It) shows how (Mencken's) political thinking had solidified-hardened, really. The law of the survival of the fittest, he declares, is "immutable," thus making socialism an absurdity; human progress is the product of the will to power, and all social arrangements failing to take this fact into account are doomed to failure; inequality is natural, even desirable, both in and of itself and as an alternative to mob rule; the world exists to be run by "the first-caste man." -Terry Teachout, The Skeptic: A Life of H.L. Mencken "The argument of Men versus the Man is one we are still having today. The content of the argument is the relative desirability of two approaches to our social life. On the one hand is proposed a society of men: a society in which none is allowed to rise too high above another, a society that subtracts great resources from the more able in an effort to raise up the less able. On the other hand is a society of the man: a society in which individuals are left to do what they can with their inherited capabilities, in conditions of maximum personal freedom and minimal state control." -John Derbyshire, from the preface

Is it possible that the famous duel between Hamilton and Burr was part of a judgment against the two by a secret society they formed decades prior to create an American shadow government? This story, telling of the lives of two great rivals, lies somewhere between a Robert E. Howard pastiche and a Yankee version of Thomas Dixon Jr. Rival Caesars is a fantasy Revolutionary War tale by the man who penned the infamous philippic titled Might is Right.Arthur Desmond, who wrote as Ragnar Redbeard, here uses the nom de guerre Desmond Dilg. Might is Right ends thus: "P.S. Book II will be issued when circumstances demand it." The 1903 novel Rival Caesars is that book. Preceding his time as one of the earliest proponents of an American Nietzscheanism, Desmond was an Antipodean radical, fighting in the streets alongside anarcho-communists and trade unionists. He stood for election as a labor candidate and promoted Georgism to both Māori and Europeans in New Zealand and Australia. Fleeing the law, he settled in America among the Chicago bohemian scene, and his radicalism turned from collective rights to individualist might.While Might is Right was intended as an awakening call for "mighty men of valor," Rival Caesars is the plan of action, plotted out under the guise of a historical romance. This novel is nothing short of a rallying cry to an American Caesar to claim their share of pelf, prominence, and prestige in the vein of Napoleon or Cecil Rhodes.Incredibly rare for nearly a century, here, finally, is an accessible and beautifully designed paperback edition, with an authoritative introductory essay by Darrell W. Conder. While it will never be as infamous as its predecessor, Rival Caesars is the ultimate book by the man known as Ragnar Redbeard.

Inspired by Ambrose Bierce's The Devil's Dictionary, L.A. Rollins first unsheathed his lexicographer's lance in the pages of marginal political periodicals during the mid-1980s. At a time when Objectivist orthodoxy and Cold War political theater dominated libertarian discourse, Rollins' distinctive brand of irreverent irony stood out. He skewered shibboleths and dethroned dogmas from all quarters, and his trenchant jeu de mots made a lasting impression in the minds of many readers. In 1987, Loompanics Unlimited released the first edition of Lucifer's Lexicon, a freewheeling compilation of Rollins' satirical definitions--including content deemed too inflammatory for less adventurous publishers. Though the book would become a cult classic, Rollins' contrarian take on certain closely guarded historical and religious taboos chafed the sensibilities of some gatekeepers. Following its release, Rollins--who had previously courted controversy for his incisive critique of natural rights theory--was marked a pariah. The present edition is the first in a series of portable paperbacks being published by Nine-Banded Books and Underworld Amusements to chronicle the work of L.A. Rollins. With slight revision, it incorporates the "canonical" Loompanics text, now extensively supplemented to include never-before-published material that Rollins produced until his death in 2015. It is presented with a new introduction by individualist-anarchist blogger and Attack the System co-editor MRDA and a publisher's preface.

Las Escrituras Satánicas transmite el ingenio, sabiduría y perspectiva diabólica del Sumo Sacerdote de la Iglesia de Satán, el Mago Peter H. Gilmore. Estos ensayos, artículos y diatribas, se han recopilado entre los escritos que por más de veinte años ha hecho el Sumo Sacerdote para su conciliábulo infernal, algunos de ellos editados originalmente en las páginas de publicaciones disponibles sólo para miembros. Desde la magia de los juguetes hasta las técnicas para viajar en el tiempo, el Mago Gilmore conduce al lector por el Sendero Siniestro, en donde unos pocos encontrarán lo que esperan. El Diablo siempre tiene las mejores melodías y ahora escucharás, de un Maestro satánico, cómo el Señor Oscuro ha influenciado compositores y músicos mucho antes del advenimiento de las guitarras eléctricas y los conciertos en estadios. El Mago Gilmore revela principios del ritual satánico, en una discusión franca en torno a ritos prohibidos. ¿Qué es un funeral satánico? ¿Cómo se casan los satanistas? Descúbrelo ahora, ya que estas ceremonias profanas nunca antes se habían divulgado por fuera de la jerarquía infernal de la Iglesia de Satán. He aquí la filosofía para aquellos lo bastante intrépidos para ser sus propios dioses -- o Demonios.

Benjamin DeCasseres (1873-1945) was an Ironist, Critic, Poet, Epigrammist, Polemicist, God. He announced his candidacy for mayor of New York as a "Cubist Candidate" in 1913, vowing to "legalize human frailties," among other fine ideas. He was a comrade of H.L. Mencken, Charles Fort, James Huneker, George Sterling, Don Marquis and is a distant relative of Spinoza. His writing was published in a wide range of periodicals from Benjamin Tucker's radical anarchist Liberty, to the mainstream Life. He could be found in the pages of the New York Times, among other newspapers, and even on the radio. This is a collection of his writing solely focused on New York, but mostly about booze.Peggy Nadramia was born in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan, was the editor of the award-winning horror publication GRUE Magazine, is one of the mixologists behind Cocktail Vultures, and also the current High Priestess of the Church of Satan.