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    A Study Guide for Abbie Hoffman's "Steal This Book"
    A Study Guide for Abbie Hoffman's "Steal This Book"
    A Study Guide for Abbie Hoffman's "Steal This Book"
    Ebook34 pages29 minutes

    A Study Guide for Abbie Hoffman's "Steal This Book"

    By Gale and Cengage

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    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for Abbie Hoffman's "Steal This Book," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Nonfiction Classics for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Nonfiction Classics for Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateSep 20, 2016
    ISBN9781535834117
    A Study Guide for Abbie Hoffman's "Steal This Book"

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      Book preview

      A Study Guide for Abbie Hoffman's "Steal This Book" - Gale

      1

      Steal This Book

      Abbie Hoffman

      1971

      Introduction

      In the introduction to Steal This Book, famous 1960s protest organizer Abbie Hoffman describes the work as a manual for survival in the prison that is Amerika, spelling the country's name incorrectly to show disrespect for the law. First published in 1971, it was rejected by over thirty publishers and then went on to become a best-seller when Hoffman published it himself. The book is a compendium of methods that individuals can use to live freely, without participating in the social order. These tips range in levels of legality from addresses of free health clinics and inexpensive restaurants to ways of cheating pay phones and methods for making explosive devices.

      Even in its day, Hoffman's advice was of questionable practicality. Some of his tips, the more complicated ones, involve multiple identities and underworld connections; others, such as switching price labels while shopping, are so obvious that they seem hardly worth writing. As time has passed, most of the loopholes Hoffman exploits in this book have been closed, due in part to the attention this book brought to them. Still, Steal This Book is an important historical document, a lively example of a time when America's youth felt at war with the status quo, and petty crime was considered a justifiable way to stand up against the corruption of the system.

      Author Biography

      Abbott Abbie Hoffman was born November 30, 1936, in Worchester, Massachusetts. His family was solidly American middle class: his father John worked as a pharmacist before opening a successful medical supply distribution company, and his mother Florence was a homemaker. For the early part of Hoffman's life, he followed the social mainstream. He graduated from Brandeis University in 1959 with a degree in psychology and then earned a master's degree at Berkeley. In 1960, at the age of twenty-three, he

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