I very much enjoyed Eric Leif Davin’s memoir “Falling Furnaces,” as would anyone who lived in Pittsburgh in the late 70s and early 80s when the hinges came off the local steel industry. Davin, a journalist and a labor historian, draws on both strengths in this very personal account of the time. He relies heavily on contemporary accounts, many his own, that give the book a real “you are there” quality. This is raw history, unencrusted by the verdigris of revisionism and clouded memories of what must have been. The book includes his and others’ accounts of the Pittsburgh steel industry—some very early stuff I never knew about, some from that era that I had long forgotten. It brought back a lot of memories, some fond (like Peter Rosenfeld's resurrection of WYEP), some not so much (like children being sprayed with skunk oil and dead fish left in safety deposit boxes). I was an early editor of the Pittsburgh New Sun, whose demise Davin describes—he was editor when it foundered—and I knew personally many of the activists described: Joni Rabinowitz and the whole NAM crowd, Jim Ferlo, Chuck Honeywell, Pete Rosenfeld, Anita Alverio.

A great Christmas gift for any friends you know who lived here when the brown fields first sprouted in Pittsburgh, especially those who scattered during that great diaspora.

 My goodness, what a collection of stories, and what a life these authors have lived! From the story about Morgan and Eric's mom firing a gun in pursuit of their stepdad to Morgan and Lobo's absolutely bonkers experiences hitchhiking around the US, I was captivated. I also thought the oscillation between Eric's more political approach to revolution next to Morgan's street experiences made for a fascinating juxtaposition. I hope the authors continue to write down their memories. Especially when it comes to describing the Street People of the 1960's and 70's, Eric, Morgan and Lobo captured a fascinating slice of 20th Century America that I haven't seen much elsewhere. 

 Chris 

This is an amazing book written by two young brothers on different paths during the 70s. It is insightful and funny and very well written. I cannot recommend it enough

  Natasha Thomas 

 Gripping and well written. Highly recommended for anyone interested in the aspects of modern history that they don't teach in school... 

 KF 

 Partners in Wonder revolutionizes our knowledge of women and early science fiction. Contrary to accepted interpretations, women fans and writers were a welcome and influential part of pulp science fiction from the birth of the genre. Davin finds that at least 203 female authors, under their own female names, published over a thousand stories in science fiction magazines between 1926 and 1965. This work explores the distinctly different form of science fiction that females produced—one that was both more utopian and more empathetic than that of their male counterparts.

Partners in Wonder presents, for the first time, a complete bibliography of every story published by women writers in science fiction magazines from 1926 to 1965 and brief biographies on 133 of these women writers. It is thus the most comprehensive source of information on early women science fiction writers yet available and of great importance to scholars of women's studies, popular culture, and English literature as well as science fiction. 

 "Essential reading for all in order to dispel the myth that there was a bias against women writers before the 1960s. Davin proves that the sf fraternity welcomed the female contribution to the world." --Foundation 

 "A fascinating and superbly researched look at an area where for too long anecdotal evidence has been accepted in place of facts." --Dr. Jane Lindskold 

 "Systematically disproves many myths regarding SF women writers. The research is impressive, with the last 100 pages dedicated to a comprehensive bibliography of all women writers in the early SF magazines." --Journal of Popular Culture 

 "The amount of fiction by women Davin unearths...is phenomenal, even shocking...a treasure trove of material...his coverage is exhaustive. Anyone interested in science fiction must read this book." --Choice, May, 2006
 

 "...brushes away the dust of reconstructed history...to show that not only have women been writing SF since they arguable created the field, but that the real conspiracy has been to pretend it wasn't so." --SFRevu, February, 2006 

 The Pirates of Penzance it’s not. Which is a very good thing.
A mixture of horror, the supernatural, bloody pirate violence, zombies, and populated with real persons and places, The Desperate and the Dead is both a novel for those interested in un-whitewashed pirates and history and a rollicking good read for all.
Eric Leif Davin's entertaining mashup is filled with larger-then-life (and death) characters, voodoo, historical people and places, and enough pirate lore to satisfy even the most discriminating reader. Gritty, violent, and, at times, not for the faint-of-heart, The Desperate and the Dead provides real thrills and chills and a few surprises along the way. It is a page-turner.
The “Desperate” of the title are the human characters, coexisting in a world where real zombies, those of the “Dead,” exist. Refreshingly, these zombies are not the more contemporary ones of the virus kind, though their bites do turn their victims into the undead. They are people risen from their graves by voodoo.
In the novel’s setting, the world has acclimated to zombies living among them. The Dead serve the living, working as servants, cooks, field hands, and ships’ crews, completely obeisant to their living masters (Again refreshingly, a couple of zombie characters turn out to be more than just a mindless automatons, one of which, in fact, becomes very heroic, in a scene which is nicely done).
But the famous pirate Blackbeard, has other ideas. Power-mad and psychopathically evil, he’s gathered a zombie army/navy and made a deal with the forces of darkness to release Hell’s demons from the “Deadpit” into the world through human sacrifice. And not just any human sacrifice, but that of young female virgins. Blackbeard wants the world destroyed so he can rule over what’s left.
It’s up to the “good” pirates Bartholomew Roberts (as in “The Dread” from The Princess Bride fame), Ann Bonny, Black Caesar, Calico Jack, and prostitute-turned-nun Sister Sierra to fight against the insane pirate captain.
But it comes down to the young girl, Catalina, Sister Sierra’s daughter who is marked for the requisite sacrifice, to stop Blackbeard’s mad plan. Raised in a brothel and witnessing first-hand the demons’ violent emergence from the Deadpit, Cat escapes from the unearthly attack with a pirate crew. It’s a decision which forever changes her life and those around her.
Well-described action, great dialogue, and settings run throughout the novel. And if you ever think of pirates in a kind of romantic, glorified fashion, read this book. You’ll never think that way again. Which is a very good thing.
Highly recommended. 

 Larry J. Ivkovich 

 A clever interweaving of pirate swashbuckling and zombie undead menace; with some subtle romance and family ties plot elements sprinkled in. Excellent action scenes; and some (maybe too strong for a few readers) over-the-top graphic violence. Highly recommended, and hope to see more from this author. 

 Reid Hastie 

 This collection of gems should be enjoyed by anyone interested in the history of science fiction. The author has already done scholarly work about the genre--his "Pioneers of Wonder" headlined the earliest editors and writers as no one else has, and his "Partners in Wonder" showed the influence of women in the field--but this one has no theme or chronology--you can jump in anywhere and enjoy these fun bits of wonder. Read how a B-movie pushed young Octavia Butler toward S-F, visit the homes of Poe and Serling, see why Conan looks as he does, learn how a "Chinese" proverb on interesting times emerged from a 1950 S-F story, interview Isaac Asimov, find out that kryptonite exists. These little essays are all over the place, and every one is fascinating. I just hope the author has more collections like this in the works. 

 Paul Dellinger 

 I really loved this book! It's a riveting true tale of adventure that I couldn't wait to crack open each night before bed. It gave me beautiful dreams of freedom, and brought back many great memories of my days living on the road in my 20's. Two thumbs up! ;) 

 Marguerite L. Bryant 

 This book really opens your eyes to what’s really going on in Vegas. The story of Pat’s journey is incredible thank you for sharing. A must have book. 

Wen

 Pat Morgan is the kind of boss everyone dreams of having. He was always smiling, in a good mood, and genuinely supportive. Even though he might not remember me among the many dealers he worked with, I definitely will remember him and appreciate everything he did. I first crossed paths with him when I was hired at Barbary Coast in 2006, and I especially recall the changes after it became Bill’s Gamblin’ Hall in 2007. Unfortunately, everything took a downturn in 2013 when Caesar’s Entertainment laid us off with a lot of promises but little to show for it, focusing more on bringing in new dealers rather than restoring the seniority of those who had been with them for years. As one of many Eastern European dealers, I had my share of experiences at the tables. I managed to enjoy a slice of the Barbary Coast’s history, witnessing the difference in the atmosphere. The stories I heard always painted a picture of happier times among the staff. My journey mostly involved Caesar’s Entertainment, which wasn't particularly positive; Pat often remarked in his book how they “stepped over dollars to pick up some pennies,” and that resonated with my own experiences. After my time there, I ended up at Michael Gaughan’s South Point, but I’m thankful to have eventually left the casino scene altogether. There’s a lot more behind that glitzy facade than most tourists realize, and Pat was always open about that, making it easier for us to get through the day-to-day grind. I devoured his book in just a few hours; it was an easy read filled with stories that truly captured the reality of working in Las Vegas. It’s been years since I moved away from Las Vegas, just like many of my colleagues. Being a dealer wasn’t my favorite job; I encountered rude customers all the time (one even asked me, “Are you pregnant or are you just fat?” when I was eight months along!). Dealing with smoke and noise wasn’t great either, but Pat always kept things lighter. I hadn’t stepped foot in what is now The Cromwell (soon to be Vanderpump) since I was laid off 13 years ago. Recently, I returned to Las Vegas out of curiosity to see what’s changed on the Strip. I quickly passed through The Cromwell and found it to be just another casino—gone was the unique vibe that Barbary Coast and Bill’s had. I worked alongside some amazing people, regardless of my feelings toward being a dealer. We even have a Facebook group called Barbary Coast/Bill’s Gamblin’ Memories, where we reminisce and share photos. Thank you, Pat, for everything you did for us and for sharing your life experiences in your book. It’s truly a must-read for anyone interested in what we went through, as those times will never come again. 

Milena

 Pat was one of my bosses while I dealt at the Gold Coast, and he usually had a smile on his face while he was there. I remember seeing many people who knew Pat and they always seemed to be joking. He’s a man of many talents and a great guy to hang out with. A wonderful book on the casino lifestyle and all the people you tend to run into. 

Amazon Customer

 Everyone knows life isn’t fair. Eric Davin is a world-class writer of popular fiction. His prose, images, plots, and characters are terrific. He also has a sophisticated and subtle knowledge of his historical contexts and even insights into the political historical dynamics of the places and times he writes about. However, his books are mostly self-published and sell to a small niche audience. All I can say is, I hope you discover Davin’s books and enjoy them. They are a delicious literary treat, and huge fun to read. And, Eric (where ever you are), I hope you keep writing for those of us who are hooked on your books. 

 Reid Hastie 

 Avast, me hearties! Eric Leif Davin’s follow-up to his pirate/zombie novel, The Desperate and the Dead, is here. The Scarlet Queen follows the further adventures of pirate captain Anne Bonny, the Scarlet Queen of the title (because of her red hair). She sails in a quest for revenge against King George and his British forces who are out to end piracy once and for all.

Having survived the final battle against the zombies and the demons from Hell in the first book, Anne, now captains the ship of the evil, demon-worshipping Blackbeard, “Queen Anne’s Revenge.” She returns to her pirating, marauding ways in a very big, bloody way.

Gathering a number of crews and a small armada of ships, Ann burns and pillages her way throughout the Caribbean. With her is Catalina Sierra, or Cat, also back from the first book, who has embraced the pirate life, or “sweet trade.” She admires Anne greatly and has become fiercely loyal to the Scarlet Queen.

Though no zombies or demons are present in this book, there is a vampire, who also becomes an important member of Anne’s crew on the Revenge. Appearing in the first book also, this character’s vampire aspect had never been revealed. It was thought by all she had died in the devastating zombie attack. But, she returns from certain death, as vampires do, and sets out to get her own revenge. And much more.

As in the first book, there’s plenty of action, killing, gore, cursing, and blood, which isn’t a bad thing. It’s hard to put the book down, being a real page-turner. Pirates are depicted here as unwashed, foul-breathed, foul-mouthed drunkards, and very fierce fighters. Though the characters all seem reckless and unforgiving with no redeeming qualities, Anne is anti-slavery and frees slaves wherever she sails. She urges to them to attack and overthrow their masters to regain their freedom. She also allows many to serve on her ships, which gives her personality a positive aspect.
As before, Davin intersperses the narrative with interesting bits of historical and geographic passages that never slow the story down but only enhance it. The sea battle scenes are well described and exciting. The three main characters, Anne, Cat, and the vampire, are all nicely drawn with their own distinct personalities.

Plus, there are pirate drinks, like “rumbo,” which are described and would really put hair on your chests! Consume at your own risk.

A fun read and great follow-up to the first novel. 

 Larry J. Ivkovich 

 Wow. There really is a whole hidden history of the United States that I didn't know about. After the 1960s, a whole bunch of radicals worked in electoral politics and made real changes at the local level. This book is hugely insightful and richly researched. I read the case studies quickly, and the intro and conclusion thoroughly. Part of what I thought was very insightful was the critique of leftists who run "educational" campaigns. The author says something like, after 100 years of "educational" campaigns, most Americans know nothing about socialism, and those who know something, know mostly misinformation. Perhaps educational campaigns aren't the way to go; perhaps thinking about what leftists can do, policy-wise, in this context, is important. It seems to me that, based on this book (and similar cases in Canada), where this was done, it was very positive and effective. A must-read book for political strategy. 

Justin Podur

‘Street Fighting Days’ overlays violence of 1970s on a still-familiar geography of Harvard Square

By Marc Levy

Saturday, April 19, 2025

Marc Levy

You could pair your next $40 lobster roll in Harvard Square with a pour of 2011 Domaine Fontaine-Gagnard La Grande Montagne – or something far more bracing: a first-person account of the square in the 1970s, when feral 15-year-olds hurled rocks at cops in antiwar demonstrations, looked for places to sleep off acid trips and, in the morning, panhandled long enough for the $1.25 needed to get eggs, bacon, toast and coffee at a 24-hour restaurant.

That’s the world of “Street Fighting Days: A Street Memoir of Cambridge in the Seventies,” over and over again until it exhausts itself after just 86 pages. It is an absolutely wild, true small book that will astonish in its comparison of eras, the recognizability of turning a corner in the text to find 200 riot cops running straight at you and realizing you’re on the street with, in 2025, an $18 kale Caesar salad where the closest thing to violence in the past month has been a disagreement over mimosas about the last good Weezer album.

While the action can be followed page by page overlaid on a Google map just by squinting and applying a Technicolor filter, the brutality and relationship with police feels strange. Even in the worst current critiques, our police force is unrecognizable from the shock troops of the book and the casual violence and contempt they have for the homeless kids of the early 1970s. Part of the tension is around the 1972 death of a 17-year-old named Larry Largey after a beating by police and a cover-up – news that led to five nights of rioting at the Roosevelt Towers public housing.

For a sense of how disorienting this is, here’s some reporting from early in the text that follows the bombing of Harvard’s Center for International Affairs at 6 Divinity Ave. – now the Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East. The culprits were the Proud Eagle Tribe, an all but forgotten offshoot of the Weathermen, itself a faction of Students for a Democratic Society that the FBI called domestic terrorists. Authors Lobo and Morgan M. Morgan, writing with Eric Leif Davin, are helped along with their memories by the reporting of The Harvard Crimson:

As the invaders finished trashing the center and fled the building, they left behind a small paper fire burning on the second floor and water gushing from an open pipe. Then, the Crimson said, the leadership of the march cried, “on to IBM,” and the crowd surged toward the nearby IBM building on Cambridge Street next to the Cambridge High and Latin School. There, they smashed windows and prepared to invade the building for more trashing. “Their plans were interrupted,” continued the Crimson, “when a Cambridge police car screamed west on Cambridge Street and its driver jumped out and fired two shots into the air with his service revolver.”

The mind reels that this action was the product of teens too young to have even graduated the high schools they weren’t attending. Though the pretext for all of this is demonstrating against the Vietnam War, the authors don’t disguise the pleasure they took in sleeping rough, antagonizing “the pigs” and the sheer thrill of a lifestyle of revolt, if not the piety of its moral underpinnings. “We were already rebelling against society,” Morgan writes. “Now, though, we were more than just criminal gangsters. The radicals put a label on us, telling us we were actually revolutionaries.” (This is from a section that begins: “The best riot I was ever in …”)

“It’s shocking collection of stories, I agree, but it rings true,” says Charlie Sullivan, executive director of the Cambridge Historical Commission, who picked up a copy when asked about its veracity. “There really was a contingent of street kids – some from Cambridge, some not – who got into continual trouble during that period. They weren’t politically inclined, but loved causing mayhem on the fringes of the serious antiwar agitation of the era.”

To Sullivan’s reading of the news from the time of the Largey death and Roosevelt Towers riots, the book’s recollections “seem accurately described,” and he recalls the repeated antiwar marches and their local results. 

“The trashing that occurred during the marches was the reason that until fairly recently almost every storefront between here and Boston had roll-down steel grates,” Sullivan says. 

He does have one cautionary note from a historian’s perspective: “While the authors make it seem like the violence was widespread, habitual and almost continuous, probably only a small minority of demonstrators acted out that way,” Sullivan says. “The ones that did, though, were really into it – and so were some of the cops.”

“Street Fighting Days: A Street Memoir of Cambridge in the Seventies” is $12.50 to $14 through lulu.com and can be read in a Cambridge public library.