There are no products in your shopping cart.
116 Third Avenue, Ottawa, Ontario
613-233-2589
octopus@octopusbooks.ca
251 Bank Street, Ottawa, Ontario 613-688-0752
251 Bank Street, Ottawa, Ontario 613-688-0752
Staff Pick
"HOME MADE blew readers away with its stunning package, delicious recipes, beautiful photos,...
Category: Political Action
$32.00
Balance
May 21, 2013 |
368 pages
Two forefront economics draw on illuminating examples from history to offer insight into why powerful nations and civilizations break down under the heavy burden of financial imbalance, offering sobering arguments about America's current vulnerabilities and the preventative steps they believe must... More Info
$18.95
Parecomic
March 12, 2013 |
224 pages
Parecomic is a graphic novel about something that affects us all: the system we live in--what's wrong with it, and how we might be able change it for the better. Written by Sean Michael Wilson, and drawn by Carl Thompson, Parecomic is about Michael Albert--the visionary behind "participatory... More Info
$22.95
Supply Shock
New Society Pub |
April 16, 2013 |
400 pages
The steady state revolution? navigating the end of economic growth.
More Info
$25.95
Creativity and Academic Activism
November 20, 2012 |
312 pages
This work explores in detail how innovative academic activism can transform our everyday workplaces in contexts of considerable adversity. Personal essays by prominent scholars provide critical reflections on their institution-building triumphs and setbacks across a range of cultural institutions.... More Info
$24.95
How Immigrants Impact Their Homelands
April 5, 2013 |
280 pages
How Immigrants Impact Their Homelands examines the range of economic, social, and cultural impacts immigrants have had, both knowingly and unknowingly, in their home countries. The book opens with overviews of the ways migrants become agents of homeland development. The essays that follow focus on... More Info
$29.95
Insurgent Encounters
Duke University Press Books |
April 12, 2013 |
464 pages
DIVInsurgent Encounters illuminates the dynamics of contemporary transnational social movements, including those advocating for women and indigenous groups, environmental justice, and alternative—cooperative rather than exploitative—forms of globalization. The contributors are politically... More Info
$24.95
Zapatistas
Zed Books |
March 15, 2010 |
223 pages
In the early hours of January 1, 1994 a guerrilla army of indigenous Mayan peasants emerged from the highlands and jungle in the far southeast of Mexico and declared "ĄYa basta!" - "Enough!" - to 500 years of colonialism, racism, exploitation, oppression, and genocide.
More Info
$27.50
The International Bank of Bob
Walker |
March 5, 2013 |
416 pages
Hired by ForbesTraveler.com to review some of the most luxurious accommodations on Earth, and then inspired by a chance encounter in Dubai with the impoverished workers whose backbreaking jobs create such opulence, Bob Harris had an epiphany: He would turn his own good fortune into an effort to... More Info
$18.00
The Price of Inequality
W. W. Norton |
April 8, 2013 |
560 pages
A forceful argument against America's vicious circle of growing inequality by the Nobel Prize–winning economist.
More Info
$24.95
No Billionaire Left Behind
April 17, 2013 |
280 pages
The first ethnographic study of how genre-bending satirical activists engage America's great wealth divide and the role of big money in politics.
More Info
The Bankers' New Clothes
Princeton University Press |
February 24, 2013 |
398 pages
Argues against the claim that a safer banking system would require sacrificing lending and economic growth.
More Info
$29.95
The Battle of Bretton Woods
Princeton University Press |
February 24, 2013 |
456 pages
Reveals how the blueprint for the post-World War II economic order was actually drawn.
More Info
$32.99
Sugar, Salt, Fat
Signal Books |
March 12, 2013 |
352 pages
From a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter atThe New York Timescomes the troubling story of the rise of the processed food industry -- and how it used salt, sugar, and fat to addict us. Sugar, Salt, Fatis a journey into the highly secretive world of the processed food giants, and the... More Info
$30.95
The Squeezed Middle
The Policy Press |
February 15, 2013 |
208 pages
The issue of living standards is arguably the biggest challenge facing economists and politicians in the United States and the United Kingdom today. The product of a year-long fellowship at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, The Squeezed Middle brings together leading experts from... More Info
$26.00
A World Without Wall Street?
December 15, 2012 |
224 pages
As the aftershocks of the latest economic meltdown reverberate throughout the world, and people organize to physically occupy the major financial centers of the West, few experts and even fewer governments have dared to consider a world without the powerful markets that brought on the crash. Yet,... More Info
$23.50
Value in Marx
April 1, 2013 |
208 pages
Long prone to dogmatic disagreement, the question of value in Marx's thought—what value is, the purpose it serves, its application to real-world capitalism—requires renewal if Marx's work is to remain vibrant. In Value in Marx, George Henderson offers a lucid rereading of Marx that strips value... More Info
The Revolution Starts at Home
May 24, 2011 |
325 pages
Breaking a dangerous silence, this highly anticipated collection ?needs to be read by all activists” (Feminist Review).
More Info
$29.95
The Last Gun
June 4, 2013 |
224 pages
Tom Diaz is a former gun enthusiast and an ex-member of the National Rifle Association whose first book, Making a Killing, is widely considered to be the most influential antigun book ever written. Its publication helped to spark a national media campaign around the machinations of the gun industry... More Info
$16.95
Living Room Revolution
New Society Pub |
April 16, 2013 |
224 pages
Let's talk! Coming together to create a new culture of caring, and collaboration.
More Info
$18.00
Life Inc
Random House Trade Paperbacks |
January 4, 2011 |
347 pages
This didn’t just happen. In Life Inc., award-winning writer, documentary filmmaker, and scholar Douglas Rushkoff traces how corporations went from being convenient legal fictions to being the dominant fact of contemporary life. Indeed, as Rushkoff shows, most Americans have so willingly adopted... More Info
$38.00
The Rumor of Globalization
March 30, 2013 |
217 pages
Drawing on recent theories of virtuality, performativity, and governmentality, and on post-colonial activist scholarship, this book presents a series of ethnographic and archival studies of what Mukhopadhyay terms 'vernacular globalisation' in India. The book's six provocative chapters cover a wide... More Info
$16.95
Generation Roe
March 26, 2013 |
288 pages
It is about time, forty years afterRoe v. Wade, to finally demystify abortion. One-third of all American women will have an abortion by the time they are 45, and most of those women are already mothers. Yet, the topic remains taboo. Even amidst MTV's16 & Pregnant, depictions of or even... More Info
$22.00
Towards Collective Liberation
Pm Press |
March 1, 2013 |
300 pages
Organized into four sections, this collection of essays is geared toward activists engaging with the dynamic questions of how to create and support effective movements for visionary systemic change. These essays and interviews present powerful lessons for transformative organizing. It offers a... More Info
$6.95
May Day: A Graphic
Between the Lines(CA) |
May 1, 2012 |
32 pages
Celebrating May Day and the historical struggles of workers to improve their lives
More Info
$18.00
Together
March 26, 2013 |
336 pages
Discusses why people tend to avoid social situations with those unlike themselves and offers a path toward greater interaction between people of different races, ethnicities, religions and economic classes.
More Info
$34.95
Geopolitical Economy
Pluto Press |
February 19, 2013 |
240 pages
Geopolitical Economy challenges two key concepts in international relations theory – "globalization" and "empire." Drawing on global traditions of contestation and dissent from below, Radhika Desai argues that these concepts have obscured our understanding of the evolution and dynamics of the... More Info
$29.95
The Stop
Random House Canada |
March 19, 2013 |
320 pages
It began as a food bank. It turned into a movement. In 1998, when Nick Saul became executive director of The Stop, the little urban food bank was like thousands of other cramped, dreary, makeshift spaces, a last-hope refuge where desperate people could stave off hunger for one more day with a... More Info
$20.95
Gross Domestic Problem
Zed Books |
February 26, 2013 |
224 pages
Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is arguably the most well-known statistic in the contemporary world. It drives government policy and sets priorities in a variety of vital social fields - from schooling to healthcare. Yet this it has come to be regarded by many as a "problem." Does our quality of life... More Info
$30.95
It's the Political Economy, Stupid
Pluto Press |
February 19, 2013 |
192 pages
It's the Political Economy, Stupid brings together internationally acclaimed artists and thinkers, including Slavoj Žižek, David Graeber, Judith Butler and Brian Holmes, to focus on the current economic crisis in a sustained and critical manner.Following a unique format, images and text are... More Info
$24.95
Peacemaking Circles
September 30, 2003 |
277 pages
"Peacemaking Circles - From Crime to Community is written by experienced circle practitioners. It reveals the values and principles of circles and how circles can be used to respond to crime, from attending to immediate hurts and needs to changing deeper causes, judges, defense attorneys,... More Info
$17.95
Oscar Lopez Rivera
Pm Press |
March 1, 2013 |
144 pages
The life story of Puerto Rican freedom fighter and leader Oscar López Rivera, outlined in this book, is one of courage, valor, and sacrifice. In 1981, Oscar was convicted of seditious conspiracy and other crimes for which he is still imprisoned, making him the longest-held political prisoner in... More Info
$17.00
End This Depression Now!
W. W. Norton |
January 28, 2013 |
304 pages
A New York Times best-selling call to arms from Nobel Prize–winning economist Paul Krugman.
More Info
$21.00
The Thieves of Bay Street
Vintage Books Canada |
March 5, 2013 |
320 pages
A newsmaking exposé about why Canada's financial industry is a haven for fraud. Beneath the veneer of stability that saw Canada's banking sector through the financial crash of 2008, investigative reporter Bruce Livesey has uncovered a rampant failure of epidemic proportions. Though no large... More Info
$28.95
The Power and the People
Cambridge University Press |
January 31, 2013 |
416 pages
This book is about power. The power wielded over others - by absolute monarchs, tyrannical totalitarian regimes and military occupiers - and the power of the people who resist and deny their rulers' claims to that authority by whatever means. The extraordinary events in the Middle East in 2011... More Info
$32.00
With Charity for All
Doubleday Books |
February 26, 2013 |
272 pages
A former head of a major nonprofit reveals surprising failings in the charitable world while outlining a new paradigm for charitable activities in America, sharing insights into the unique marketplace incentives and flaws of nonprofit organizations based on his tours of unaccountable U.S.... More Info
$30.00
World Report 2013
February 5, 2013 |
688 pages
The 23rd edition of an annual report on the conditions of human rights around the world summarizes the treatment of people in more than 90 countries and discusses the positive or negative influence of their key public figures. Original.
More Info
$24.95
Great Recession-Proof?
December 1, 2012 |
282 pages
The articles and interviews collected here problematize prevailing characterizations of recession and recovery. Rather than focusing on narrowly economistic measures, the contributors challenge standard explanations of the Great Recession drawing attention to the classed, ethno-racial and gendered... More Info
Why It's Still Kicking Off Everywhere
Verso Books |
March 12, 2013 |
334 pages
The world is facing a wave of uprisings, protests and revolutions: Arab dictators swept away, public spaces occupied, slum-dwellers in revolt, cyberspace buzzing with utopian dreams. Events we were told were consigned to history—democratic revolt and social revolution—are being lived by... More Info
Change the world without taking power
Pluto Pr |
October 15, 2010 |
296 pages
This new edition of John Holloway's contemporary classic, Change the World Without Taking Powerincludes an extensive new preface by the author. The wave of political demonstrations since the Battle of Seattle in 2001 have crystallised a new trend in left-wing politics. Modern protest movements are... More Info
$22.00
Why Your World Is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller
Vintage Canada |
September 28, 2010 |
336 pages
What do subprime mortgages, Atlantic salmon dinners, SUVs and globalization have in common? They all depend on cheap oil. And in a world of dwindling oil supplies and steadily mounting demand around the world, there is no such thing as cheap oil. Oil might be less expensive in the middle of a... More Info
$19.00
The Comingled Code
MIT Press (MA) |
January 11, 2013 |
250 pages
The interaction of open source and proprietary software and the implications foreconomic development.
More Info
$26.95
Anarchy and art
Arsenal Pulp Pr Ltd |
June 15, 2007 |
213 pages
One of the powers of art is its ability to convey the human aspects of political events. In this fascinating survey on art, artists, and anarchism, Allan Antliff interrogates critical moments when anarchist artists have confronted pivotal events over the past 140 years. The survey begins with... More Info
$29.95
Only a Beginning
Arsenal Pulp PressLtd |
November 15, 2004 |
406 pages
Drawing on a wide range of anarchist publications,Only a Beginningis the first comprehensive overview of anarchist theory and practice in North America from 1976 to the present. Compiled and edited by Allan Antliff, it documents over a quarter-century of grassroots activism, including protests and... More Info
$21.95
Yarn Bombing
Arsenal Pulp PressLtd |
September 1, 2009 |
231 pages
A guide to covert textile street art offers tips on how to design unique graffiti tags, advice on coordinating large-scale projects, and includes twenty pattens for items to adorn public spaces.
More Info
$21.50
Queer America
New Pr |
March 15, 2011 |
304 pages
Placing GLBT people at the center of the history of the twentieth century, Vicki L. Eaklor’s Queer America: A People’s GLBT History of the United States is a major new effort to popularize a long-overlooked chapter in the American experience.
More Info
$34.95
The Canadian War on Queers
University of British Columbia Press |
July 1, 2010 |
554 pages
From the 1950s to the late 1990s, agents of the state spied on, interrogated, and harassed gays and lesbians in Canada, employing social ideologies and other practices to construct their targets as threats to society and enemies of the state. Based on official security documents and interviews with... More Info
Confessions of an economic hit man
Plume Books |
May 26, 2013 |
303 pages
Updated with an all-new epilogue, a provocative study by a former consultant to the U.S. government reveals the inner workings of the high-stakes economic game that encourages third world economies to borrow money so that major corporations like Halliburton end up getting the lucrative contracts.... More Info
$15.95
Occupy the Future
MIT Press (MA) |
January 4, 2013 |
192 pages
The Occupy Wall Street movement has ignited new questions about the relationshipbetween democracy and equality in the United States. Are we also entering a moment in history inwhich the disjuncture between our principles and our institutions is cast into especially sharprelief? Do new... More Info
Why Nations Fail
Crown Pub |
March 20, 2012 |
529 pages
An award-winning professor of economics at MIT and a Harvard University political scientist and economist evaluate the reasons that some nations are poor while others succeed, outlining provocative perspectives that support theories about the importance of institutions.
More Info
Pages
Octopus Books
116 Third AvenueOttawa, Ontario, Canada
K1S 2K1
613-233-2589
Under One Roof
251 Bank Street
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
K2P 1X3
613-688-0752