CHICAGO — Just under 15,000 people attended the American Library Association’s 150th Conference in Chicago June 25-29, with 641 exhibitors coming from 61 different countries. The Pathfinder booth drew people interested in books on crucial questions facing workers today.
Pathfinder keeps in print the lessons of revolutionary working-class struggles by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels; leaders of the Bolshevik Revolution, like V.I. Lenin; Cuban revolutionaries Fidel Castro and Che Guevara; Malcolm X; as well as titles by leaders of the Socialist Workers Party.
Several young people who stopped at the booth bought armloads of books. One was Joanna Ruiz Legarda, a library science student at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. “Access to knowledge is essential to the class struggle,” she told the Militant.
Maxine Nebro, a young worker staffing a nearby booth, said that Washington’s recent threats against Cuba led him to “focus on learning about the history of socialism.” He bought 10 books about Cuba from Pathfinder, including Cuba and the Coming American Revolution by Jack Barnes, national secretary of the Socialist Workers Party.
“These books shed light on the support that the Cubans gave to other revolutionaries around the world,” he added. Nebro lives in New York and was interested in finding out about protests there calling for an end to Washington’s sanctions and threats against Cuba.
A prominent display of Pathfinder books printed in Spanish, as well as French, Arabic and Farsi, attracted the attention of many librarians who are looking to expand their Spanish-language collections.
A total of 114 books, seven subscriptions to the Militant and 25 single copies of the paper were sold at the booth.
Best-sellers included Cuba and the Independence War in Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde: The Fall of the Last Colonial Empire in Africa by Víctor Dreke; Cosmetics, Fashion, and the Exploitation of Women by Evelyn Reed, Joseph Hansen and Mary-Alice Waters; Labor, Nature, and the Evolution of Humanity: The Long View of History by Frederick Engels, George Novack, Karl Marx and Mary-Alice Waters; Thomas Sankara Speaks; and Women in Cuba: The Making of a Revolution Within the Revolution by Asela de los Santos, Vilma Espín and Yolanda Ferrer.
More than 75 librarians and others signed up to get more information on Pathfinder titles or to have a Pathfinder salesperson contact them after the conference.