1. A Language Older Than Words by Derrick Jensen (Context Books, $16) Description: A roller coaster ride through our historical, economic, and cosmological culture of denial.

2. Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser (Houghton Mifflin, $25) Description: We can hardly believe this book got published. Apparently, a lot can be told in the name of investigative journalism, and Schlosser tells all about that all-American monstrositythe fast food meal.

3. Days of War, Nights of Love by CrimethInc. Workers Collective (CrimethInc. Workers Collective, $9) Description: The folks who bring you Harbinger magazine lay it all out in this great collection of short essays.

4. A Peoples History of the United States: 1492-Present by Howard Zinn (Harper Perennial, $18) Description: If you havent read this yet, youre missing out on a classic! Zinn’s book fills in what your history classes left out.

5. Anarchism and Other Essays by Emma Goldman (Dover Press, $8.95) Description: Deported to the Soviet Union for fighting for workers and womens rights in the U.S., she ran afoul of Lenin and Trotsky, eventually finding herself a “premature anti-fascist” in revolutionary Spain battling Hitler and Mussolini, all the while combating the male chauvinism she found in the anarchist movement itself. Truly inspiring.

6. Pacifism As Pathology: Reflections on the Role of Armed Struggle in North America by Ward Churchill and Ryan Churchill (Arbeiter Ring, $9.95) Description: A powerful and incisive critique of the ideology of U.S. pacifism, persuasively arguing that U.S. pacifism remains essentially a counter-revolutionary movement, reinforcing and protecting the very status quo it professes to defy.

7. Our Word Is Our Weapon: Selected Writings of Subcomandate Marcos edited by Juana Ponce de Leon (Seven Stories, $27.95) Description: Marcos has proven himself an eloquent, inspiring, and humorous writer, all while conducting a seven-year “insurrection of hope.”

8. Cuban Anarchism: The History of a Movement by Frank Fernᮤez, translated by Chaz Bufe (See Sharp, $10.95) Description: An amazing book, starting with the importation of anarchist ideals during the mid-1800s and ending with an evaluation and criticism of Castros dictatorship.

9. Malatesta: Life and Ideas by Vernon Richards (Left Bank Books, $10) Description: Malatestas was the keenest mind to address the question of what a freer, more just society would look like and what exactly it would take to get there. Anarchist-communism rocks!

10. Upside Down: A Primer for the Looking-Glass World by Eduardo H. Galeano (Metropolitan Books, $24) Description: By the prolific novelist, poet, journalist, and historian whos best known for his classic Open Veins of Latin America. A series of “lesson plans,” his latest book offers a passionate and sometimes hilarious expose of First World privileges and assumptions.

11. Lockdown America: Police and Prisons in the Age of Crisis by Christian Parenti (Verso, $15) Description: Last year, the number of prisoners in America reached the two million mark. This book traces the political, economic, and social conditions that began the militarization of the police and the criminalization of a generation.

12. Taking Sides Against Ethnic Cleansing in Bosnia: The Story of the Workers Aid Convoys by Workers Aid for Bosnia (Workers Aid, $18) Description: The end of the Cold War has left some prey to gruesome depredations by aggressive neighbors. The most radical critics of this moment have proved to be not big name dissident intellectuals but human rights campaigners and humanitarian NGOs. This is their story.

13. The Case Against the Global Economy (And for a Turn Toward the Local) edited by Jerry Mander and Edward Goldsmith (Sierra Club Books, $17) Description: The premier dossier of the anti-globalization movement, with contributions from Wendell Berry, Vandana Shiva, Ralph Nader, William Greider, David Korten, and others revealing the devastating impact of the corporate agenda behind NAFTA, GATT, and the WTO.

14. Against Civilization: Readings and Reflections edited by John Zerzan (Uncivilized Books, $12) Description: Over 50 essays that throw light on the inner logic of civilization and its devouring course. Hesiod, Schiller, Paul Shepard, Kirkpatrick Sale, Fourier, Perlman, Sahlins, Bahro, Zerzan, the Unabomber, and more contribute to this expose of the foundations of todays crisis.

15. We Owe You Nothing, Punk Planet: The Collected Interviews edited by Daniel Sinker (Akashic Books, $16.95) Description: An incredible compilation of “the best of the best of the best” interviews from Punk Planet magazine, painting a picture of why punk is and isnt an important movement, where it succeeded, and how it backfired.

16.Teenage Liberation Handbook: How to Quit School and Get a Real Life and Education by Grace Llewellyn (Grace Lowry House, $19) Description: Warning: This book is powerful. If your children read it, dont expect them to stay in school. Newly revised, updated, and expanded international edition of one of our favorite books.

17.You Cant Win by Jack Black (AK Press, $16) Description: A best-seller in 1926, this autobiography is a remarkable journey into a hobo underworld. Experience freight-hopping around the still-Wild West at the end of the century. A chunk of American history entirely left out of the history books.

18. Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James W. Loewen (Touchstone, $15) Description: Howard Zinn writes, “Every teacher, every student, every citizen should read this book. It is both a refreshing antidote to what has passed for history in our educational system and a one-volume education in itself.”

19. Undue Risk: Secret State Experiments on Humans by Jonathan D. Moreno (Routledge, $18.95) Description: Moreno, director of the Center for Biomedical Ethics at the University of Virginia, was appointed by Clinton to a presidential commission to investigate the U.S.s secret radiation experiments on its own citizens during the Cold War. He chose to broaden his research to include both chemical and biological weapons research by the U.S. and other governments. Publishers Weekly calls Undue Risk “a chilling, meticulously documented casebook.”

20. Democratizing the Global Economy: The Battle Against the World Bank and the IMF edited by Kevin Danaher (Common Courage, $15.95) Description: A collection of writings organized into three sections: “The Art and Science of Protesting Transnational Elites,” “Why the World Bank and the IMF Suck,” and “Where Does the Movement Go From Here,” with writings by Rober Naiman, Michael Albert, Noam Chomsky, Warren Bello, and many more.

21. King Leopolds Ghost by Adam Hochschild (Houghton Mifflin, $15) Description: At the turn of the century, as the European powers were carving up Africa, King Leopold II of Belgium carried out a brutal plundering of the territory surrounding the Congo river. Ultimately slashing the areas population by 10 million, he still managed to shrewdly cultivate his reputation as a great humanitarian.

22. Safe Area Gorazde by Joe Sacco, Introduction by Christopher Hitchens (Fantagraphics, $28.95) Description: In late 1995 and early 96, cartoonist/reporter Joe Sacco traveled four times to Gorazde, a UN-designated safe are during the Bosnian War. An account of a terrible siege, it also presents a snapshot of people slowly letting themselves believe a war had was ending and they had survived.

23. Blu Magazine $7.95 per issue Description: This periodical highlights cultures of resistance springing from Americas oppressed communities. Every issue features a free CD. Current issue focuses on women, with articles on African women publishers, hip-hop moms, and much more.

24. Feminism Is For Everybody: Passionate Politics by bell hooks (South End Press, $12) Description: hooks calls for a radical, practical feminism that is as accessible as it is necessary. She examines the intersections of gender, race, class, and sexuality to develop a unified and passionate front against sexist oppression.

25. No Trespassing: Squatting, Rent Strikes, and Land Struggles Worldwide by Anders Corr (South End Press, $17) Description: Which do you believe? 1: People who are homeless should fix up and live in vacant buildings 2: Leave vacant buildings boarded up; people can sleep outside. As long as there is private ownership of land there will always be homelessness. From the Brazilian Movement of Landless Rural Workers to the counter-cultural squatters of Denmark, No Trespassing traces the economic, legal, and cultural impetus of land revolt around the globe.

Visit Left Bank Books Collective at 92 Pike St., 622-0195.