BY SARA LOBMAN
Pathfinder, located in New York with distributors in Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom, publishes books and pamphlets by revolutionary and working-class leaders. Pathfinder bookstores are listed in the directory on page 12.
Pathfinder supporter Ellie García reports from Long Island City, New York, that sales of Pathfinder books and pamphlets have been brisk the first three weeks on her new job. So far, three co-workers at the United Auto Workers-organized shop have bought a total of four titles. A worker from the Dominican Republic bought Nueva Internacional no. 2, with articles on "Che Guevara, Cuba, and the Road to Socialism." Another worker, from Haiti, bought a copy of Le socialisme et l'homme a Cuba, the French- language edition of Socialism and Man in Cuba. A worker from Honduras purchased the same pamphlet in Spanish from García and then attended a Militant Labor Forum at the Pathfinder bookstore in Brooklyn on the Russian government's invasion of Chechnya, where he picked up The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels in Spanish.
García has also brought several of Pathfinder's Russian- language titles in to show co-workers who recently immigrated from that country.
The Brooklyn Pathfinder bookstore, like others across the United States, is increasing the hours it is regularly open each week. On the first evening of the new schedule, four people came into the store in a three-hour period. One young man, who had called the night before to find out when the bookstore would be open, purchased The Leninist Strategy of Party Building by Joseph Hansen. The others were heading home from work or school when they passed the bookstore and noticed the window displays featuring "The Opening Guns of World War III" in New International, The Truth about Yugoslavia, Episodes of the Cuban Revolutionary War, and other titles.
Pathfinder has a new Spanish-language promotional piece. The brochure features "La marcha del imperialismo hacia el fascismo y la guerra" (Imperialism's March toward Fascism and War) by Jack Barnes, the lead article in Nueva Internacional no. 4; En defensa del marxismo, Pathfinder's new Spanish-language edition of In Defense of Marxism by Leon Trotsky; and El socialismo y el hombre en Cuba (Socialism and Man in Cuba) by Guevara and Fidel Castro. It also highlights The Communist Manifesto, titles by Nelson Mandela, Malcolm X, V.I. Lenin, and more. It is available to local distributors around the world at a cost of 20 cents each.
Volunteers around the world are pitching in to digitize - transfer from paper to computer files - all of Pathfinder's more than 300 titles. Storing the text for the books in this way means that new, upgraded editions of each title can be produced more quickly, with more readable type, additional annotation, and attractive designs.
Ruth Cheney and Jerry Gardner, from California, write that 14 friends of Pathfinder in San Francisco and Oakland have completed work on the first volume of Revolutionary Continuity: Marxist Leadership in the United States by Farrell Dobbs. After the paper pages from an old copy of the book were scanned into a computer, a process that translates the written words into a computer document, the volunteers proofread the new text, entered corrections, and proofread it again. They're ready to begin work on their next two books-Teamster Power and Teamster Bureaucracy, both by Dobbs-which have already been scanned by another volunteer. So far, 81 Pathfinder titles have been digitized. Anyone interested in participating in this project can contact Pathfinder at (212) 741-0690.
Pathfinder is on the lookout for interesting anecdotes for future columns, particularly those that highlight sales of revolutionary books and pamphlets through Pathfinder bookstores, to workers on the job, at plant gates, in working-class communities, and at political events.
Write also to let us know about the efforts of local sales representatives to get Pathfinder titles onto the shelves of bookstores, libraries, and universities around the world.
Material for the Pathfinder around the World column should be marked as such and sent to Pathfinder, 410 West Street, New York, NY 10014. The fax number is (212) 727- 0150. Letters can also be sent via electronic mail: by CompuServe to "73321,414"; by the Internet to "pathfinder@igc.apc.org".
Don't forget to order your upgraded or new edition of The Revolution Betrayed, The Communist Manifesto, and The Politics of Chicano Liberation.
Pathfinder also has a limited number of posters available for Black History Month. They cost 50 cents each and will be distributed on a first come, first served basis.