Tear Gas: From the Battlefields of WWI to the Streets of Today
by Anna Feigenbaum
An engrossing century-spanning narrative, Tear Gas is the first history of this weapon, and takes us from military labs and chemical weapons expos to union assemblies and protest camps, drawing on declassified reports and witness testimonies to show how policing with poison came to be.
To host a book talk, media appearance or RiotIDing workshop, please get in touch with Anna Feigenbaum afeigenbaum [at] bournemouth.ac.uk or Anne Rumberger anne [at] versobooks.com.
BOOK TOUR DATES
November
1st BBC Radio 4 – Thinking Allowed
8th Brooklyn, USA – Verso Loft
9th New York, USA – Jackson McNally
29th Cardiff, UK – Cardiff University, JOMEC/Data Justice Lab
30th Bristol, UK – Hydra Books
December
4th London, UK – Royal Holloway, New Political Comm Seminar Series
10th Leicester, UK – Human Rights Festival, Secular Society (to be rescheduled)
January
16th London, UK – Virtual Futures
17th Durham, UK – Durham University
19th Edinburgh, UK – Lighthouse Books
25th Manchester, UK – Partisan Collective
31st London, UK – Housman’s books
February
7th Brooklyn, USA – Mixer Reading and Music Series, Our Wicked Lady
8th Philadelphia, USA – Wooden Shoe books
9th Philadelphia, USA – Temple University Geography and Urban Studies
16th New Brunswick, USA – Media, Techno-Political Action and Social Justice Symposium, Rutgers University
28th Washington DC, USA – University of District of Columbia
March
1st Washington DC, USA – The Potter’s House
7th Tampa, FL, USA – University of Southern Florida
10th Miami, FL, USA – Books and books
20th Toronto, Canada – InfoScape Lab, Ryerson University
21st Kingston, Canada –Surveillance Studies Centre, Queens University
22nd Ottawa, Canada – Carleton University
22nd Ottawa, Canada – Octopus Books
with Minute Works and Gavin Grindon
27th Montreal, Canada – Media at McGill, Public Talk at McGill University
28th Montreal, Canada – Media at McGill, Workshop at McGill University
April
with Minute Works and Gavin Grindon
5th Brooklyn, USA – Interference Archive Talk
7th Brooklyn, USA – Interference Archive Workshop
12th New Orleans, USA – American Association of Geographers Conference
16th Los Angeles, USA – USC Annenberg
23rd Seattle, USA- Left Bank Books (TBC)
Reviews
“A vivid history of the time and also – as good radical accounts should be – a source of encouragement to those fighting all too similar battles today”
– Hilary Rose
“There is something epic about Anna Feigenbaum’s Tear Gas, its scope and intensity, the way that chemistry — the orienting science of the industrial revolution — provides the material to manage that revolution’s epic collapse . . . There is crucial knowledge to be found here.”
– Joshua Clover, author of Riot.Strike.Riot
“A passionately argued history of the development and gradual spread of tear gas around the world . . . a clarion call for reassessment of the widespread availability and misuse of tear gas.”
– Patrick Wicklen, Researcher on Arms Control and Human Rights at Amnesty International
“Fascinating, deeply researched and lucid . . . We have become so accustomed to the use of tear gas during protests that it comes as a shock when we realize, in reading this book, how little we know about the longer-term effects of what is in some ways a chemical weapon.”
– Laleh Khalili, author of Time in the Shadows