The Dwelling Portably series returns with Holly and Bert’s newest contribution to their fourth decade of DIY homesteading. The 2009-2015 collection assembles their correspondence and what they’ve picked up over the last six years, lovingly crafted on manual typewriters from a remote Oregon outpost. The tips and tricks presented here are practical and useful—pertaining to things like biking, permanent camping, alternative communities, DIY healthcare, disaster preparation, eating off the land, and MacGyver-like skills to prepare you for any and all situations. Whether you’re planning to step off the grid or just simplify your life a little, Dwelling Portably has something for just about everyone.

Through hundreds of exclusive and original interviews, Punk USA documents an empire that was built overnight as Lookout sold millions of records and rode the wave of the second coming of punk rock and introduced a teenaged Green Day to the world. In 1987, Lawrence Livermore founded independent punk label Lookout Records to release records by his band The Lookouts. Forming a partnership with David Hayes, the label released some of the most influential recordings from California’s East Bay punk scene. Originally operating out of a bedroom, Lookout created “The East Bay Punk sound,” with bands such as Crimpshrine, Operation Ivy, The Mr. T Experience, and many more. The label helped to pave the way for future punk upstarts and as Lookout grew, young punk entrepreneurs used the label as a blueprint to try their hand at record pressing. As punk broke nationally in the mid 90s the label went from indie outfit to having more money than it knew how to manage. 

Kaycee Eckhardt created the reading program for innovative New Orleans charter school Sci Academy where students’ reading levels improved by an average of over 3.5 years. Eckhardt was the Louisiana Charter Teacher of the Year in 2009. She has gone on to do national education, Common Core advocacy, and teaches literacy development. She was interviewed by Brian Williams on NBC’s Teacher Town Hall and the subject of the viral documentaries School Works: The Committed Teacher and America Achieves: Symbolism in the Lottery. She continues to work in education policy and lectures to motivate and inspire first year teachers. This is her story.

 motivate and inspire first year teachers. This is her story.

Brew it yourself is a DIY home-brewing guide, which outlines the key methodologies of the two most common home brewing techniques: extract and all-grain brewing. Erik Spellmeyer provides professional advice on how to get started from square one at home, introducing the reader to the industry jargon and terminology, while providing clear instruction on the formalities of home brewing. Equipped with illustrations, images, glossary, photography, and step-by-step assembly instructions for building your own equipment, Brew it Yourself is an all-in-one guide to getting started, no matter where you are in your brew knowledge.

A David and goliath story, On The Books is the first-hand comic strip account of the labor struggle at NYC’s legendary Strand bookstore in the summer of 2012. Told by Greg Farrell—an employee of the store who interviewed numerous other members of the staff—the book examines the motives and actions of those involved, including the store, the staff, the union local, and the people of New York City, as understood by the author. Through interstitial comic portraits, Farrell gives voice to his comrades, who often share a nuance of the story that would have otherwise gone overlooked, and provide a depth of opinion and fairness to accompany Farrell’s often very personal interpretation of events. In it’s ten short chapters the book explores at once the inner workings of our national retail environment, the inner struggle to exist within it as a young working person, the current state of the book trade, and what happens when that no longer seems possible.

Since 1999, Davida Gypsy Breier’s review zine, Xerography Debt might be best summarized as an obsession for all involved, or as she puts it: “The review zine with perzine tendencies.” Billy da Bling Bunny Roberts recently said “It’s the glue that holds the zine community together.” Maintaining three issues per year, the 35th issue of Xerography Debt is still the same ol’ charming personality, allowing a hand-picked cast of contributors to wax philosophical about both the zines they love and where those zines find them in their lives. Rather than spending time and ink bashing things (other than Amazon, which this issue picks on a bit) or being forced to write about something they don’t care about, the reviewers hand-select hundreds of zines to write about and the result is enthusiastic, satisfying, and under-saturated! In an age of blogs and tweets, Xerography Debt is a beautiful, earnest anachronism, a publication that seems to come from a different era, but is firmly entrenched in the now. And they want to review your zines in future issues: Davida Gypsy Breier / PO Box 11064 / Baltimore, MD 21212

The collected graphic novel of the greatest love story ever told features twenty short stories about the domestic life of “Henry” and “Glenn” as well as their neighbors “Daryl” and “John.” Digging beneath Glenn’s bricks in the front yard, Henry uncovers Glenn’s mother, freshly unearthed, moves in with him and Henry. Without giving too much away, [spoiler alert: Glenn has mommy issues] Glenn’s mommy issues come to the surface as she critiques his art, replaces his wardrobe, scrubs their dungeon, and recalls his childhood. Glenn tries to sell his signature to a UPS driver, takes a punch, and has some daydreaming adventures with a plunger. Henry, “a loud guy with a good work ethic,” shows his darker side and indifference to a fan as he drinks black coffee and bonds with Glenn over their distaste for their own bands; two men who suffer best alone together. Henry and Glenn go to therapy together, battle an evil cult in the forest, and profess their love between dealing with repeated jealousy and normal relationship problems while trying to figure out if their soft-rocking neighbors are actually Dungeons and Dragons playing Satanists. It’s a true testament to the power of love to overcome even the biggest, manliest egos of our time. The book also features dozens of pin up art and full color covers from the original serialized series.