BY SARA LOBMAN
"Someone just came in asking if I had anything on the stock market crash," the buyer at a small community college bookstore in Ohio exclaimed as a Pathfinder supporter showed her a copy of the Marxist magazine New International no. 10, with the article "What the 1987 Stock Market Crash Foretold." In addition to that title, she also ordered two copies each of Teamster Rebellion, by Farrell Dobbs, Pombo: A Man of Che's `guerrilla' and At the Side of Che Guevara by Harry Villegas, Guevara's Episodes of the Cuban Revolutionary War: 1956-58, Malcolm X Talks to Young People, and Cosmetics, Fashion, and the Exploitation of Women.

The visit was part of a successful week of sales organized by Pathfinder supporters in Cleveland to bookstores and libraries in the region. Luis Madrid, from Pathfinder's New York office, participated in the effort, which won four orders for a total of 112 books. Eight local supporters participated in the visits, several for the first time. The buyer for a store near Oberlin College ordered 70 books and pamphlets. After saying she wanted to expand the section on the labor movement, she ordered The Changing Face of U.S. Politics by Jack Barnes and the Teamster series by Farrell Dobbs. She also ordered three copies each of Pombo: A Man of Che's `guerrilla' and The Bolivian Diary by Ernesto Che Guevara, and two copies each of New International nos. 8 and 10 and placed advance orders for two new titles by Frank Kofsky, John Coltrane and the Jazz Revolution of the 1960s and Black Music, White Business, which will be available soon.

She ordered several pamphlets, including At the Side of Che Guevara and Europe and America: Two Speeches on Imperialism by Leon Trotsky, noting that booklets were popular and affordable for students. She plans to place some of these face out on display so they are more visible and do not get lost among the larger books.

At another campus, this one in Cleveland, the buyer did not want to talk much. He carefully read through many of the book descriptions in the catalog, marking the order form as he went. In the end he placed an order for 19 books, including To Speak the Truth: Why Washington's `Cold War' against Cuba Doesn't End, by Fidel Castro and Guevara, The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State by Frederick Engels, and Sexism and Science by Evelyn Reed.

The Cleveland trip was part of a regular series planned by the Pathfinder staff to complement and boost the efforts by local supporters to get Pathfinder books and pamphlets into as many bookstores and libraries as possible and to introduce the titles to professors who might be interested in using them for their classes. In September and October for the first time in many months, sales to these non-Pathfinder accounts were higher than for the same period a year ago. Local supporters who are interested in hosting a trip by someone from Pathfinder can call the New York office at (212) 741-0690.  
 
 
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