Ozersky is a critic and historian. In this essay, Ozersky looks at Steal This Book as a product of the late 1960s and its author, Abbie Hoffman, as a romantic icon of the time.

Students coming to Steal This Book for the first time may find themselves a little perplexed. The current edition of the book begins with three separate introductions, each testifying to Abbie Hoffman's inspirational courage as a revolutionary. Steal This Book is said to be "his most widely read" and "his most notorious." In Hoffman's introduction, he speaks of Steal This Book as "a manual of survival in the prison that is Amerika." What follows is a breezy guide to shoplifting, freeloading, and milking the system, peppered with cartoons. There are sections on building bombs, guerrilla broadcasting, and street fighting, but these are short and not particularly useful. (Hoffman's advises would-be knife fighters to...