|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
This page is edited by TAP's coordinator Nell Levin and webweaver Eric Schechter, pictured at left.
| A quarter of our society is insane, and Altemeyer has described the nature of the insanity. An "authoritarian" is a person who trusts and obeys authorities and who refuses to consider any evidence incriminating those authorities. This is similar to The True Believer described by philosopher Eric Hoffer in his book of 1951, but Altemeyer is, in addition to a philosopher, also a scientist. Armed with experimental surveys and correlative statistics, he goes way beyond Hoffer in methods and conclusions. Don't let my mention of statistics deter you; Altemeyer's exposition is friendly, light, and humorous, despite the fact that he is describing a terrible threat to our freedoms. This book excites me more than any other I've read in quite a long time, because Altemeyer's diagnosis fits what I see happening around us. If we can understand the widespread insanity a little better, we may be better equipped to try to heal it. Here is a link to a 100 minute audio file of Altemeyer discussing his work. |
Jerome Armstrong and Markos Moulitsas Zuniga. Crashing the Gate: Netroots, Grassroots, and the Rise of People-Powered Politics. Hardback and paperback.
| Markos and Jerome believe that politics is a battle of ideas, and they wield the keyboard like a sword. And this is what we want from our leaders: passion and positions that come from the heart, not from the pollsters. -- Joan Blades, coauthor of The Motherhood Manifesto and cofounder of MoveOn.org and MomsRising.org I haven't found any videos precisely about this book yet, but here is a ForaTV video of Zuniga talking about the blogosphere and Daily Kos, and another of him talking about the Meta Kos -- some sort of advanced blogging stuff that I haven't figured out yet.. |
Joe Bageant. Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War. Hardcover.
| Most or all of the essays in this book are available online, in the left column of Joe Bageant's web page. But you may want a copy of the book anyway. "This recounting of lost lives--of white have-nots in one of our most have-not states--has the power of an old-time Scottish Border ballad. It is maddening and provocative that the true believers in 'American exceptionalism' and ersatz machismo side with those stepping all over them. Bagaent's writing is as lyrical as Nelson Algren's, and if there's a semblance of hope, it's that he catches on with new readers thanks to the alternative media." -- Studs Terkel Excerpts from Michael Donnelly's review: Any urban, educated leftist who wonders why the great mass of meat hunting, NASCAR-loving, cryin'-in-your-beer, country music-loving, overweight, bible-thumping American bubbas continue to vote against their own self-interests and help the GOP purloin elections and man (and woman) the front lines of endless imperial wars will be smacked upside the head with the answers. ... This book answers the question What's the Matter with Kansas? ... The title refers to the religious pamphlets distributed to meat hunters by their fundamentalist preachers. Said tracts are read by meat hunters (as opposed to recreational and trophy hunters) while whiling away their time in blinds praying for Jesus to direct a deer into range. |
Peter Barnes, cofounder of Working Assets Long Distance. Capitalism 3.0: A Guide to Reclaiming the Commons, hardcover.
| Amazon's summary: In Capitalism 3.0, Peter Barnes redefines the debate about the costs and benefits of the operating system known as the free market. Despite clunky features, early versions of capitalism were somewhat successful. The current model, however, is packed with proprietary features that benefit a lucky few while threatening to crash the system for everyone else. Far from being "free," the market is accessible only to huge corporations that reap the benefits while passing the costs on to the consumer. Barnes maps out a better way. Drawn from his own career as a highly successful entrepreneur, the author's vision of capitalism includes alternatives to the current profit-driven corporate approach, new legal entities, and a more responsible use of markets and property rights. Capitalism 3.0 offers viable solutions to some of the country’s most pressing economic, environmental, and social concerns. |
Bruce Barry. Speechless: The Erosion of Free Expression in the American Workplace. Hardback.
| from the publisher's web page: Speechless takes on the state of free expression in the American workplace, exploring its history, explaining how and why Americans have come to take freedom of speech for granted, and demonstrating how employers can legally punish employees for speaking their minds. ... Bruce Barry shows how constitutional law erects formidable barriers to free speech in workplaces, while employment law gives employers wide latitude to suppress speech with impunity--even speech that is unrelated to the job or the company. ... Barry proposes changes both to the law and to management practice that would expand employees' expressive rights without jeopardizing the legitimate interests of employers. ... In defense of freer speech in and around the workplace, Barry argues that a healthy democracy depends in part on the experience of liberty at work. |
Albert K. Bates (from Tennessee's The Farm). Post-Petroleum Survival Guide and Cookbook: Recipes for Changing Times, paperback.
| In a recent posting on the Peace Coalition listserve, Bates said: When you have built your economic system like a house of cards -- mostly on faith -- it doesn't take a very big shock to knock it down. The third leg of the stool is petrodollars. Climate, Oil, Petrodollars. All of the legs are now wobbly. Any one could break first and knock the whole stool over. It is absurd that none of this is being discussed except in smoky back rooms by Neocons. |
Joan Blades (cofounder of MoveOn.org) and Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner. The Motherhood Manifesto: What America's Moms Want and What to Do about It. Paperback.
| A straightforward agenda by political activists Blades and Rowe-Finkbeiner advocates a seriously thought-out, workable scheme for empowering mothers at home and in the workplace. The book is snappily structured in chapters that correspond to the letters making up the word mother: M is for "Maternity/Paternity Leave"; O for "Open Flexible Work"; T for "TV You Choose and Other After-School Programs"; H for "Healthcare for All Kids"; E for "Excellent Child Care"; and R for "Realistic and Fair Wages." In order to drive home these demands, the authors sound some alarming facts and statistics: although nearly three-quarters of American mother have jobs outside of the home, they tend to earn 27% less than men, while single moms earn 34%-44% less. The national scandal of skyrocketing health care costs bankrupts families and pushes moms into marginalized jobs, while working mothers leave children home to unsupervised TV watching and substandard child care. The authors propose family-friendly flexible work schedules and offer compelling employer success stories. -- from Publishers Weekly Here is an interview on Alternet. And here is the website for Moms Rising, an organization created by the authors of this book. That website includes a free copy of the first chapter of the book. |
Robert Creamer. Listen to Your Mother: Stand Up Straight!: How Progressives Can Win. Paperback.
| Notes from Eric, your webmaster: I haven't read this book, but I watched Creamer talk about it on BookTV. His lecture is available for viewing online at this link. I would describe it as a sort of "Cliff's Notes on Lakoff and Waldman." It does not go into the depth of Lakoff or Waldman -- at least, the lecture didn't; I can't say whether the book differs -- but it was simple, direct, clear, easy to understand. |
John Egerton (a member of the TAP advisory board). Ali Dubyiah and the Forty Thieves. Available in hardcover or ebook.
| Excerpt from Maria Browning's review in the Nashville Scene: The book, told as a fable, begins in "the night-darkened end of the third millennium" when a mysterious figure named Ibrahim Barzouni recounts the story of an ancient American king, Fratbush, who came to power unexpectedly, and by questionable means. His cronies include Dick "The Mole" Chaingang, Donald "Dr. Toughlove" Rumsfailed and Karl "Babyface" Machiavrovelli. As Ibrahim Barzouni tells the story, Fratbush (a.k.a. Ali Dubyiah) embarks on a power-mad quest for global domination, driven by a combination of unfettered ego and primitive religious ideology. He begins his stomp across the globe in pursuit of (who else?) former ally Osama bin Hiden, now an avowed enemy of America and leader of a "soulless band of homicidal fanatics." ... |
Barbara Ehrenreich. Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America. Available in hardback.
| "With some 12 million women being pushed into the labor market by welfare reform, [Ehrenreich] decided to do some good old-fashioned journalism and find out just how they were going to survive on the wages of the unskilled -- at $6 to $7 an hour, only half of what is considered a living wage. So she did what millions of Americans do, she looked for a job and a place to live, worked that job, and tried to make ends meet. ... Even in her best-case scenario ... she has to work two jobs, seven days a week, and still almost winds up in a shelter. As Ehrenreich points out with her potent combination of humor and outrage, the laws of supply and demand have been reversed. Rental prices skyrocket, but wages never rise. Rather, jobs are so cheap as measured by the pay that workers are encouraged to take as many as they can. Behind those trademark Wal-Mart vests, it turns out, are the borderline homeless. With her characteristic wry wit and her unabashedly liberal bent, Ehrenreich brings the invisible poor out of hiding and, in the process, the world they inhabit--where civil liberties are often ignored and hard work fails to live up to its reputation as the ticket out of poverty." -- Lesley Reed, reviewer for Amazon.com |
Joshua Farley and Herman E. Daly. Ecological Economics: Principles And Applications. Hardcover.
| A number of good progressive books on economics are available today, and we'll probably a few more of them to this web page before long. But most of them are just essays. This one is a college textbook, intended to replace Econ 101's traditional neoclassical Samuelson whose adherents are widening the have/have-not gap while destroying our planet. This textbook was brought to my (the webclerk's) attention by Vancouver economist Tom Green in the January 2007 Adbusters. Daly and Farley do not discard neoclassical economics completely, but they do criticize it severely and introduce alternatives. Green's second choice is Microeconomics in Context, by Neva Goodwin et al. Green says it "looks sufficiently like a mainstream textbook that some profs might be able to teach from it without the department chair noticing that a heretical text had made it into the building." |
Thomas Frank. What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America. Hardcover and paperback. | A heartland populist, Frank is hilariously funny on what makes us red-staters different from those blue-staters (not), and he actually knows evangelical Christians, antiabortion activists, gun-nuts, and Bubbas. I promise y'all, this is the only way to understand why so many Americans have decided to vote against their own economic and political interests. And Frank explores the subject with scholarship, understanding, passion, and - thank you, Mark Twain - such tart humor. -- Molly Ivins, columnist |
The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule (Hardcover). | Eric's review: I was shocked to learn of Bush's lies about global warming and about reasons for invading Iraq, but those were rather short-term lies, propagated by a few people over a few years. In this book, Thomas Frank describes his perception of a much more massive deception that has been going on for decades. "The Washington conservatives aim to make liberalism irrelevant not by debating, but by erasing it. Building a majority coalition has always been a part of the programme, and conservatives have enjoyed remarkable success at it for more than 30 years. But winning elections was not a bid for permanence by itself. It was only a means. The end was capturing the state, and using it to destroy liberalism as a practical alternative." Their enormous increase in the budget deficit and the national debt have been entirely intentional; it gives them an excuse to cut social programs. They intend to plunder the economy so massively that it will be irreversible. "The overall effect for the nation's politics would be to elevate for ever the rationale of the financial markets over such vague liberalisms as 'the common good' and 'the public interest'. The practical results of such a titanic redirection of the state are easy to predict, given the persistent political demands of Wall Street: low wage growth, even weaker labour organisations, a free hand for management in downsizing, in polluting, and so on." Here is an excerpt, and here is a video of an interview on Democracy Now! |
Michelle Goldberg (a frequent author on Salon and Alternet). Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism, hardback.
| "In this fascinating and scary journey through radical Christian communities who want to assume control of the American government and turn America into a Christian state, we fully come to understand that we are living in two parallel universes: the one of reality, and the one of fanatical Christian zealots whose belief system conveniently discards science, the age of Enlightenment, modernity and simple facts." -- excerpt from Buzzflash Reviews "... Significantly, her conclusions do not come off as hysterical or shrill. Even while pointing to stark parallels between fascism and the language of the religious right, Goldberg's vision of America's future is measured and realistic." -- from Publisher's Weekly Here is an excerpt from the book. You can also listen to interviews by Fresh Air and Democracy Now, or watch a video on ForaTV. |
Al Gore. The Assault on Reason: How the Politics of Fear, Secrecy, and Blind Faith Subvert Wise Decision Making, Degrade Our Democracy, and Put Our Country and Our World in Peril. Hardback and audiobook. Reviewed by our webweaver, Eric Schechter:
I haven't finished reading this book yet, but it's too significant for me not to say a few words about it.
An 1886 Supreme Court announcement gave corporations the rights, but not the responsibilities, of people. A corporation's only directive is to maximize profits for its stockholders, regardless of the consequences for workers, consumers, or environment. Aside from a few brief exceptions -- e.g., FDR's New Deal -- our economic world has been deteriorating ever since. Our news media have been consolidated into fewer and fewer hands, and their goal is to make money, not to inform us. That's why we see so much more news about movie stars and violent criminals, and so little reporting on white collar crime in high places.
In 1928 Edward Bernays (Sigmund Freud's nephew), working for the American Tobacco Company, found a way to break through the barrier that prevented women from smoking. He dressed up some actresses as suffragettes, photographed them smoking, and labeled the cigarettes "torches of freedom." Increasingly since that era, our corporations have used marketing to persuade us to buy unnecessary and even harmful products. Even some politicians have been studying the playbook of the Tobacco Institute.
The type of media is of some significance too. Newspapers and books encouraged thinking and reacting -- you could stop and reread a sentence; you could write a letter to the editor. Television discourages thinking -- television is all one-way communication -- with the exception of Al Gore's own television channel, "Current," which runs entirely on viewer-provided content. Elections are won by expensive television advertisements, and so candidates must either be wealthy or be close friends with the wealthy. The internet is a new hope for all of us -- it is cheap, encourages thinking and reacting, and encourages multiple-direction communication.
Ultimately, Gore talks about what makes society tick. He begins one of his chapters with a metaphor of rock, paper, scissors: "Fear displaces reason, reason challenges faith, faith overcomes fear."
But this book is largely an attack on the Bush administration -- a detailed enumeration and intelligent analysis of that administration's many crimes against reason and democracy. I stopped reading when I was about halfway through the book, because I was bothered that Gore didn't seem to be attacking anyone else. Certainly, Bush has raised corruption to new levels, but most of his tactics have been used on a smaller scale by earlier politicians. Gore has been careful not to burn his bridges to other members of the oligarchy, which suggests to me that perhaps at this time (spring 2007) he still is considering running for office. I hope so -- I think he would make a better president than most other rich people -- but you can see the hole in that endorsement.
I haven't finished reading this book yet, but it's too significant for me not to say a few words about it.
An 1886 Supreme Court announcement gave corporations the rights, but not the responsibilities, of people. A corporation's only directive is to maximize profits for its stockholders, regardless of the consequences for workers, consumers, or environment. Aside from a few brief exceptions -- e.g., FDR's New Deal -- our economic world has been deteriorating ever since. Our news media have been consolidated into fewer and fewer hands, and their goal is to make money, not to inform us. That's why we see so much more news about movie stars and violent criminals, and so little reporting on white collar crime in high places.
In 1928 Edward Bernays (Sigmund Freud's nephew), working for the American Tobacco Company, found a way to break through the barrier that prevented women from smoking. He dressed up some actresses as suffragettes, photographed them smoking, and labeled the cigarettes "torches of freedom." Increasingly since that era, our corporations have used marketing to persuade us to buy unnecessary and even harmful products. Even some politicians have been studying the playbook of the Tobacco Institute.
The type of media is of some significance too. Newspapers and books encouraged thinking and reacting -- you could stop and reread a sentence; you could write a letter to the editor. Television discourages thinking -- television is all one-way communication -- with the exception of Al Gore's own television channel, "Current," which runs entirely on viewer-provided content. Elections are won by expensive television advertisements, and so candidates must either be wealthy or be close friends with the wealthy. The internet is a new hope for all of us -- it is cheap, encourages thinking and reacting, and encourages multiple-direction communication.
Ultimately, Gore talks about what makes society tick. He begins one of his chapters with a metaphor of rock, paper, scissors: "Fear displaces reason, reason challenges faith, faith overcomes fear."
But this book is largely an attack on the Bush administration -- a detailed enumeration and intelligent analysis of that administration's many crimes against reason and democracy. I stopped reading when I was about halfway through the book, because I was bothered that Gore didn't seem to be attacking anyone else. Certainly, Bush has raised corruption to new levels, but most of his tactics have been used on a smaller scale by earlier politicians. Gore has been careful not to burn his bridges to other members of the oligarchy, which suggests to me that perhaps at this time (spring 2007) he still is considering running for office. I hope so -- I think he would make a better president than most other rich people -- but you can see the hole in that endorsement.
Jacob S. Hacker. The Great Risk Shift: The Assault on American Jobs, Families, Health Care, and Retirement-And How You Can Fight Back. Hardcover.
| From the publisher's comments: With retirement plans in growing jeopardy while health coverage erodes, more and more economic risk is shifting from government and business onto the fragile shoulders of the American family. In The Great Risk Shift, Jacob S. Hacker lays bare this unsettling new economic climate, showing how it has come about, what it is doing to our families, and how we can fight back. Behind this shift, he contends, is the Personal Responsibility Crusade, eagerly embraced by corporate leaders and Republican politicians who speak of a nirvana of economic empowerment, an ownership society in which Americans are free to choose. But as Hacker reveals, the result has been quite different: a harsh new world of economic insecurity, in which far too many Americans are free to lose. Hacker gave a presentation at a conference in mid-December, 2006. You can watch a video of his presentation on the Campaign for America's Future healthcare page. |
Thom Hartmann. Screwed: The Undeclared War Against the Middle Class -- And What We Can Do About It (Hardcover).
Thom Hartmann. Cracking the Code: How to Win Hearts, Change Minds, and Restore America's Original Vision (hardcover).
| Here is a ForaTV video of Hartmann talking about this book (See viewing instructions at the top of this web page). After I (the webweaver) watched Hartmann's talk, I rushed out and bought the book -- or more precisely, I ordered it through this web page. Hartmann explains how democracy and the middle class require each other; you can't have one without the other. Part of Hartmann's explanation was a stunning revelation to me: some conservatives, though paying lip service to democracy, do not actually believe in it; they actually believe that the common people cannot rule themselves, and must instead be ruled by a wise elite. America's backbone and lifeblood - its middle class - is vanishing. (Or being cast out, set aside, and methodically destroyed, depending on your perspective.) ... Through concrete examples of laws passed, unions busted and programs dismantled, Hartmann reminds us how, since Reagan's 1980 ascension to the throne, conservative policiticans have done little except "conserve" their own wealth- and power-grubbing interests. -- from Laura Barcella's review and interview. |
Thom Hartmann. Cracking the Code: How to Win Hearts, Change Minds, and Restore America's Original Vision (hardcover).| Comments from the publisher: Millions of working Americans talk, act, and vote as if their economic interests match those of the megawealthy, global corporations, and the politicians who do their bidding. How did this happen? According to Air America radio host Thom Hartmann, the apologists of the Right have become masters of the subtle and largely subconscious aspects of political communication. It's not an escalation in Iraq, it's a surge; it's not the inheritance tax, it's the death tax; it's not drilling for oil, it's exploring for energy. Conservatives didn't intuit the path to persuasive messaging; they learned these techniques. There is no reason why progressives can't learn them too. In Cracking the Code, Hartmann shows you how. Drawing on his background as a psychotherapist and advertising executive as well as a national radio host, he breaks down the structure for effective communication, sharing exercises and examples for practical application. Excerpt from a recent interview: Since Reagan stopped enforcing the Fairness Doctrine and the Sherman Antitrust Act, and then Bill Clinton signed the Telecommunications Act, the media has become this monolithic monster. We have about 90 percent of everything that Americans see, hear and read, outside of the Internet, coming through the filter of fewer than a dozen corporations. ... So, we need to become the media, at least over the short term. ... My goal with this book is to help us become a little more competent at storytelling and messaging. My goal was to empower Democrats, progressives, liberals and Greens at the individual level, because that's where the action is. It makes the job much more difficult because, instead of merely getting 200 members of Congress to memorize a word list like Newt Gingrich did, you have to get thousands or tens of thousands of progressive activists in all kinds of different fields all over the country, not to mention the politicians associated with them, to understand some of these concepts. That's the downside of it. The upside of it is, as I said before, that small "d" democracy, living your values. I wrote the book with the goal of giving away everything I know with the hope that people will use it. |
Paul Hawken. Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came Into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming. Hardcover and several audio formats.
| Here are interviews with John Stauber and Amy Goodman, and a 6-minute video and also a 78-minute video of Hawken introducing ths book (Your webweaver enjoyed the video greatly; I found it a wonderfully refreshing breath of hope.) You may also be interested in the book's website, as well as the related global community directory Wiser Earth. Among the short reviews I've read, the one I liked best is the following one by Donna Seaman: The profusion of good causes and the nonprofit groups that advance them can seem laughably overwhelming, but without altruistic grass-roots efforts, the world would be a far less merciful place. Environmentalist Hawken believes that we are in the midst of a world-changing rise of activist groups, all "working toward ecological sustainability and social justice." Rather than an ideological or centralized movement, this coalescence is a spontaneous and organic response to the recognition that environmental problems are social-justice problems. Writing with zest, clarity, and a touch of wonder, Hawken compares this gathering of forces to the human immune system. Just as antibodies rally when the body is under threat, people are joining together to defend life on Earth. Hawken offers a fascinating history of our perception of nature and human rights and assesses the role indigenous cultures are playing in the quest for ecological responsibility and economic fairness. Hawken also presents an unprecedented map to this new "social landscape" that includes a classification system defining astonishingly diverse concerns, ranging from farming to child welfare, ocean preservation, and beyond. Fresh and informative, Hawken's inspired overview charts much that is right in the world. |
Jim Hightower was the keynote speaker at our COMPASS III conference
|
|
|
||||||
|
||||||||
(with Susan DeMarco) Swim Against the Current: Even a Dead Fish Can Go With the Flow (
Lynn Hunt. Inventing Human Rights: A History. Hardback or paperback.
| Review by Eric, your webmaster: I haven't actually read this book yet, but I've read about it, and I watched Hunt talk about it for most of an hour. Here's a link to the video. (You can skip the first 8 1/2 minutes of it, which just consist of people introducing one another.) This is a scholarly work, but written for a general audience. Hunt traces the history of empathy. Empathy as we know it today is a relatively recent cultural phenomenon. The truths about human rights that were described as "self-evident" in the Declaration of Independence would not have been described in that fashion just a century earlier. Personally, I believe that empathy is still growing in our culture; as a progressive I would like to encourage that growth. Some of George Lakoff's recent writing says that progressives give priority to empathy over authority, whereas conservatives reverse that ordering. I hesitated about posting this book on TAP's book page, because it demands a certain cultural relativism that none of us can be completely comfortable with. It would be more comforting to believe that empathy has always been what it is today, and that in some timeless and absolute sense the conservatives are simply "wrong" about everything. But we must be wary of the temptations of dogmatic certainty. George Soros explains in his book The Age of Fallibility that such temptations are the Achilles heel of an open society. In The Wisdom of Insecurity, one of his books on Zen Buddhism, Alan Watts wrote that we must learn to live with uncertainty. |
Jesse Jackson Jr. A More Perfect Union: Advancing New American Rights. Hardcover and paperback.
| Historic, thought-provoking, daring, controversial, visionary, and statesmanlike, A More Perfect Union provides a clear path to a progressive future... A must read for all serious political people. -- Professor Mary Frances Berry |
Van Jones. The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems. Hardcover, paperback, or Kindle.
| From Publishers Weekly: As the "ecological crisis nears the boiling point," human rights activist and environmental leader Jones (president of the national organization Green For All) lays out a visionary, meticulous and practical explanation of the two major challenges the U.S. currently faces-massive socioeconomic inequality and imminent ecological catastrophe-and how the current third wave of environmentalism, the "investment" wave, can solve both. If industry players want to take advantage of growing consumer demand for green solutions, they'll have to follow principles of inclusiveness as well as conservation and inventiveness to create "broad opportunity and shared prosperity" for citizens at all levels of society. Rife with statistics, facts and history lessons, Jones introduces a "Green New Deal," a re-imagining of FDR's original New Deal that makes the government "a partner" (as opposed to a "nanny" or "bully") of the people, and sets about defining the principles of a "smart, supportive, reliable" partnership. Jones examines success stories from around the world (included close looks at Chicago and Milwaukee), defines government priorities at national and local levels and offers concrete solutions; one major positive step for any "significant U.S. metropolis" is to "invest massively in constructing buses, light rail cars, and mass-transit projects," creating good jobs while cutting greenhouse gases. With both caution and hope, Jones concludes that "tens of thousands of heroes at every level of human society" will be needed to carry off this third, and perhaps ultimate, green initiative. |
Naomi Klein. The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Hardback or compact disc.
Here is the book's website. Here is an online video (in 6 parts) of an hour-long lecture Klein gave about the book. Here is a 7-minute video Klein collaborated on. Klein has her own website, which includes links to various articles and videos. And here are some comments from Eric, based on the hour video:
Klein gives a new insight into what the neocons have been doing all these years. Milton Friedman, the economist who taught the neocons their love of privatizing everything, also said something that the neocons don't mention often: it's much easier to impose an unwanted economic system during moments of crisis. Klein gives plenty of examples; one is New Orleans, which is now being rapidly privatized in large bites. She says "These tactics work ... for the same reason it works to pick someone's pocket at a car accident." And in some cases the shocks or crises are artificially created by the people wanting to do the privatizing.
But Klein ends the video on an encouraging note. She says that despite their efforts, the neocons do not win the battle of ideas, and eventually the shock wears off. "It's easy to be discouraged by how much more funding the right wing think tanks have. But ... they need that money, because they have a really tough intellectual job. ... Their job is to convince people that [altruism is bad and selfishness is good]. Crazy talk. Very expensive to convince people of something so deeply counterintuitive. It is much cheaper to convince people that to do good is good; bad, bad."
Addendum: I've just watched a video of actor John Cusack interviewing Naomi Klein about the book. Click on the picture at right to watch the video -- but you may need headphones or an external speaker; the volume is a little weak. Here are paraphrases of a few bits from that interview (with comments from me added in italics): This goes way beyond the military-industrial complex that Eisenhower talked about. Here we see a massive transfer of public money to build a shadow state -- Blackwater, etc. -- to run territory both foreign (Iraq) and domestic (New Orleans). The endless "war on terror" metaphor guarantees that peace cannot break out, so the war business will be stable and reliable. The Iraq "green zone" is a Haliburton city-state, and it may be an indication of our future. (Or maybe just the future of the haves; the have-nots are the people outside the green zone -- and the rich in our society are getting not only richer, but fewer.) Lockheed-Martin's economy exceeeds that of over 100 countries. (I would imagine they have their own little analogue of a "State Department," a "CIA," and everything else that goes with an imperialist entity.) Watch for "shock therapy" to be applied in the aftermath of the subprime mortgage bubble burst; they may try to use that as an excuse to privatize social security or some other public resource.
More recently, Klein appeared for an hour on Booktv; see link. The video may be available there for just a while; I'll download it if I can figure out a way to do that. The interviewer, Franklin Foer, seemed rather unsympathetic and skeptical about her ideas, but she held up well in the interview nevertheless.
Another addendum: Joshua Sperber's review gives praise with some reservations. He says that Klein describes accurately the disaster that capitalism has been, but that Klein overemphasizes the historical roles played by individual people, and moreover attributes only to laissez faire capitalism some defects that Sperber says can be found in all variants of capitalism.
Here is the book's website. Here is an online video (in 6 parts) of an hour-long lecture Klein gave about the book. Here is a 7-minute video Klein collaborated on. Klein has her own website, which includes links to various articles and videos. And here are some comments from Eric, based on the hour video:
Klein gives a new insight into what the neocons have been doing all these years. Milton Friedman, the economist who taught the neocons their love of privatizing everything, also said something that the neocons don't mention often: it's much easier to impose an unwanted economic system during moments of crisis. Klein gives plenty of examples; one is New Orleans, which is now being rapidly privatized in large bites. She says "These tactics work ... for the same reason it works to pick someone's pocket at a car accident." And in some cases the shocks or crises are artificially created by the people wanting to do the privatizing.
But Klein ends the video on an encouraging note. She says that despite their efforts, the neocons do not win the battle of ideas, and eventually the shock wears off. "It's easy to be discouraged by how much more funding the right wing think tanks have. But ... they need that money, because they have a really tough intellectual job. ... Their job is to convince people that [altruism is bad and selfishness is good]. Crazy talk. Very expensive to convince people of something so deeply counterintuitive. It is much cheaper to convince people that to do good is good; bad, bad."
Addendum: I've just watched a video of actor John Cusack interviewing Naomi Klein about the book. Click on the picture at right to watch the video -- but you may need headphones or an external speaker; the volume is a little weak. Here are paraphrases of a few bits from that interview (with comments from me added in italics): This goes way beyond the military-industrial complex that Eisenhower talked about. Here we see a massive transfer of public money to build a shadow state -- Blackwater, etc. -- to run territory both foreign (Iraq) and domestic (New Orleans). The endless "war on terror" metaphor guarantees that peace cannot break out, so the war business will be stable and reliable. The Iraq "green zone" is a Haliburton city-state, and it may be an indication of our future. (Or maybe just the future of the haves; the have-nots are the people outside the green zone -- and the rich in our society are getting not only richer, but fewer.) Lockheed-Martin's economy exceeeds that of over 100 countries. (I would imagine they have their own little analogue of a "State Department," a "CIA," and everything else that goes with an imperialist entity.) Watch for "shock therapy" to be applied in the aftermath of the subprime mortgage bubble burst; they may try to use that as an excuse to privatize social security or some other public resource.More recently, Klein appeared for an hour on Booktv; see link. The video may be available there for just a while; I'll download it if I can figure out a way to do that. The interviewer, Franklin Foer, seemed rather unsympathetic and skeptical about her ideas, but she held up well in the interview nevertheless.
Another addendum: Joshua Sperber's review gives praise with some reservations. He says that Klein describes accurately the disaster that capitalism has been, but that Klein overemphasizes the historical roles played by individual people, and moreover attributes only to laissez faire capitalism some defects that Sperber says can be found in all variants of capitalism.
Elizabeth Kolbert. Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change. Available in hardcover, paperback, audio CD, or audio download.
| Publishers Weekly praises Kolbert's book for its "calmly persuasive reporting," to be contrasted with the many "alarmist" books now available about global warming. She "lets facts rather than polemics tell the story." But actually, some of us here at TAP feel that now is a good time to get alarmed. See the remarks further down this page, beside Al Gore's movie. |
David Korten, The Great Turning:From Empire to Earth Community. hardcover.
| Eric's notes: I haven't had time to read the book yet, but I've been watching videos of Korten talking about it. Korten says we are heading into a "perfect storm" of simultaneous disasters: peak oil, global warming, and the failure of the American dollar. The next few years will be either a time of unraveling or a time of turning, depending on how we handle it. Korten describes the stories and framing that have guided us badly for 5000 years, and the new stories and framing to which we must switch if our species is to survive. A more detailed outline can be found on the book's website. Korten has been travelling and presenting a slide show, which probably is getting a little longer, more complete, and more developed, with each successive presentation. I've been finding videos of some of these presentations on the web. So far, the longest and most recent presentation that I've found is the one Korten gave at the Storyfield Conference in August 2007, but unfortunately the sound and video quality in that recording were both a bit muddy. Much better quality can be found in Korten's earlier, shorter presentations of the slideshow, at Sonoma in May 2006 (54 minutes) or Seattle in August 2006 (30 minutes) |
 George Lakoff, professor of linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley. Here are some of his articles and audios and videos. |
|
|
||
|
|
|||
|
||||
How Democrats and Progressives Can Win, 
Betsy Leondar-Wright, Communications Director at United for a Fair Economy. Class Matters: Cross-Class Alliance Building for Middle-Class Activists. Available in paperback.
| From the publisher's description: Movements for social change could be more powerful if they had more class diversity - a factor that has limited their past size and clout. But attempting to cross class barriers has frequently left middle class activists frustrated, with few resources to turn to for help. Based on interviews with 40 diverse activists and thinkers, Class Matters fills this gap by demystifying this taboo topic. A guide to building bridges across class lines and collaborating more effectively in mixed-class social change efforts, it is designed in lively, highly readable short "bites," full of stories, ideas, quotations, tips and resources. |
Michael Lerner, leader of Tikkun Magazine and the Network of Spiritual Progressives. The Left Hand of God: Taking Back Our Country from the Religious Right. Available in hardback or ebook (Adobe, Microsoft Reader, or Mobipocket).
| I simply cannot understand how somebody can be a spiritual being and not be actively involved in transforming the world. -- Lerner, in an interview with What is Enlightenment magazine The truest spiritual impulse is progressive, centering on caring, connection, and community. It is, in the words Lerner has made famous, about tikkun olam, about healing the world. To heal it, you must be in it. Spiritual commitment requires political action, or it amounts to nothing. This is the fundamental truth of The Left Hand of God. -- George Lakoff, mentioned elsewhere on this page. Lerner says to the left: Give up the fabled and failed neutrality and start arguing for your own values. This means two things: Oppose the Religious Right's sectarian disregard for separation of church and state. And proclaim a 'new bottom-line' of love and generosity that defies selfishness and materialism. -- excerpt from review in Ethics Daily by Ray Waddle, author of A Turbulent Peace Here are some videos from the Network of Spritual Progressives. |
Mark Lynas. Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet. Paperback.
| The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has estimated that by the end of the 21st century, the global average temperatures will have risen between 1.4 and 6.4 degrees centigrade above the average for 1990, and that the worst will happen if we don't take steps very soon to curtail the warming. Some experts have begun to predict that the rise could happen a lot faster, because of feedback loops that are starting to accelerate global warming. (For instance, the so-called "permafrost" has already begun defrosting.) Lynas's book describes what will happen to the planet with each additional degree of temperature. By two degrees, a third of all species will be extinct. By three degrees, the Amazon rainforest will die. By four degrees, runaway thaw of permafrost makes global warming unstoppable. By six degrees, with a hydrogen sulphide atmosphere, we'll all be dead; only fungi might survive. You can read a few more details in this interesting review in Times Online. |
Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. Piety & Politics: The Right-Wing Assault on Religious Freedom. Available in hardback.
Leslie Lytle. Execution’s Doorstep: True Stories of the Innocent and Near Damned. Hardcover.
| "Wonder how it could be that 126 wrongly convicted people on death row have been exonerated? What's wrong with our court system? Here's a promise: if you accompany Ms. Lytle into these five stories you'll not only 'get it,' you may be moved to join our efforts to change it." - Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking and Death of Innocents "Damn, I wish I had written this book! Leslie Lytle has done a masterful job of drawing out her subjects in interviews, as Studs Terkel might have, and telling their stories in fast-paced narratives, as John Grisham might have." - Rob Warden, Executive Director, Center on Wrongful Convictions, Northwestern University School of Law" |
Laura Magnani and Harmon L. Wray. (Harmon was a local activist and a longtime TAP supporter and friend who worked on criminal justice reform for decades.) Beyond Prisons: A New Interfaith Paradigm for Our Failed Prison System (paperback).
| This book is the fruit of years of organizing, advocacy and reflection concerning our deeply broken criminal justice system. Magnani and Wray offer a truly radical analysis that penetrates to the roots of the crisis, challenges long-held assumptions, and imagines thoughtful alternatives. It is the finest critique of the prison-industrial complex available. -- Ched Myers, writer, theological educator and social justice organizer |
Jonathan Miller, with an afterword by Al Gore. The Compassionate Community: Ten Values To Unite America. Hardback. Miller's website outlines ten progressive values and how they impact on issues. The website also includes a form that you can use to contact your representatives in government, to urge them to follow these values.
| "a glimpse of who we wish to become" -- Bob Edgar, National Council of Churches USA "a compelling roadmap of how to ensure we leave our children a strong, safe, and just America" -- U. S. Senator Evan Bayh "obedient to the challenge of Tikkun Olam --to repair the world" -- Lawrence S. Cunningham, Professor of Theology, University of Notre Dame |
Don Mitchell. The Right to the City: Social Justice and the Fight for Public Space. Paperback. Most or all of this book is also available online.
| "In this wide-ranging tour de force, Don Mitchell offers us a rich and geographically grounded exploration of struggles over urban public space. This is scholarship in the best sense of the word: politically engaged, theoretically informed, and powerfully argued. Urban public space emerges not only as a site of brutal and often violent control, but also as a space of liberation and hope. Mitchell shows us that public spaces--the streets and parks of the everyday--matter, and are worth fighting for."--Nicholas K. Blomley, Department of Geography, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada |
Bob Moser. Blue Dixie: Awakening the South's Democratic Majority. Available in hardcover, softcover, and kindle.
| From Publishers Weekly: This arresting analysis from Moser, political correspondent for the Nation, debunks the belief in an enduring Republican South, which he terms the single most destructive myth of contemporary politics. The author wades into the swirl of stereotypes to challenge the conventional wisdom of many Democratic strategists, that the South is a Republican stronghold. Moser examines polls and voting trends that belie the idea of a conservative, fundamentalist, inherently racist voting bloc, looking instead at the history of the South as a breeding ground for progressivism and populist economic policies before proposing that the Democrats should stop trying to be the party of 'Republicans Lite' in order to win over Dixie. Moser details Jim Webb's and Barack Obama's successes in the South, praises Howard Dean's fifty-state strategy for re-energizing the Democratic Party in the region and gives insightful suggestions for how the party can continue the trend. Well-written, well-researched and perfectly timed with this year's election cycle, this fascinating read is highly recommended to anyone interested in unraveling political fact from fiction and detecting the myriad complicated relationships that knit a nation together.. |
Bill Moyer, JoAnn McAllister, Mary Lou Finley, and Steve Soifer. Doing Democracy: The MAP Model for Organizing Social Movements. Paperback.
| Clearly written, useful, wise, informative, and well-grounded in experience, Doing Democracy is essential reading for every activist who wants to achieve real change, and for every citizen who wants to know how democracy really works. -- David C, Korten, author of When Corporations Rule the World |
George Orwell. Nineteen Eighty-Four. Available in many editions, including free download.
| (Review by Eric) This novel is not new -- it was published in 1949 -- but it grows more important with each passing year, as we see so many of its ideas coming true around us. (See also Naomi Wolf's book, reviewed elsewhere on this page.) Orwell's book is "science fiction" in the sense that it depicts what seemed a conceivable future at the time it was written. It depicts one man's half-hearted attempt to rebel against a totalitarian government, and it explains that government in some detail. The novel uses a nonfiction book-within-a-book technique, which is perhaps a weakness in fiction -- Orwell chooses to tell rather than show -- but he also has a little bit of plot development among the handful of characters in his frame story, serving to illustrate power, fear, secrecy, surveillance, etc. The rulers of that society have seized power simply because they love power -- they wish to control the lives of others -- and I have found in this book explanations of at least three phenomena that I cannot see adequately explained anywhere else: (1) The rulers prefer endless war, and are not particularly concerned about winning; their real goal is to intimidate their own proletariat and to waste enough economic resources so that the proletariat cannot become strong. (2) The rulers torture, despite knowing that it is useless as a source of information -- or, indeed, because it is useless as a source of information; their purpose is to intimidate the torturee as well as everyone else who knows of the torture. (3) The rulers wish to abolish joy, spontaneity, and personal intimacy, and wish to make sex a dirty, furtive, shameful thing, because sexual love is an alliance outside state control, and because sexual repression makes people more manipulable. Sex can make people feel good about themselves without dependence on money or the state; to deprive people of that good feeling is one more way to punish people and thus to exert power over them. Among the many editions of Nineteen Eighty-Four, and among the few I've looked at, one that holds a little extra interest for me is the edition linked here, which has a foreward by novelist Thomas Pynchon. Pynchon has many interesting insights about Orwell's life and views, one of which I will recount here. The novel is followed by an appendix, a discussion of Newspeak, the simplified language that the totalitarian rulers attempted to impose on their society so as to reduce possibilities of free thought. Orwell was very insistent that this appendix be retained in the book, despite some publishers' wishes to excise it. Pynchon points out that the discussion of Newspeak is in past tense, and it is written in English, not in Newspeak. In other words, the novel's protagonist Winston Smith and its villain O'Brien both believed that the Party would rule forever, but Orwell himself believed that such a Party must eventually fail, that the human spirit would eventually triumph. Thus, the story has a pessimistic ending, but the book ends in optimism. |
John Perkins. Confessions of an Economic Hit Man (paperback) and The Secret History of the American Empire (hardcover).
Beware when the corporate news media uses the phrase "protecting national interests." That's an intentionally vague phrase, and they'd rather you don't examine it too closely. Generally it doesn't mean the interests of the American people. Rather, it means the interests of the big corporations whose chief executives are close friends of the people in power.
In the 1970's, Perkins was an economist at the consulting firm Charles T. Main, which he describes as a front for the NSA. His job was to cook the books, to convince foreign nations to accept huge loans to hire American companies to build dams, airports, and other infrastructure that those nations really could not afford. When the government defaulted on the loan, the USA or IMF or World Bank would step in to run the country. If a government was uncooperative about accepting such loans, assassins were sent in to change the situation. Perkins left such enterprises after a decade and went to other kinds of careers; currently he is involved with progressive organizations such as the Rainforest Action Network (RAN). But after the events of 9/11 he felt he had to write about his sordid past.
Reviews of these books are mixed. On the one hand, they give a broad narrative that explains much of the foreign policy that we've seen over the years -- e.g., the USA having a hand in overthrowing uncooperative democracies and propping up friendly dictatorships all around the world. On the other hand, Perkins's books are lacking in evidence, statistics, proof; the negative reviews simply call them fantasy.
I (Eric) haven't read either book yet, but I have watched Perkins speak for 82 minutes about his books. He's an interesting speaker. You can see the video for free at http://fora.tv/fora/showthread.php?t=1216. One of the most interesting tales he tells is about his recent work with Rainforest Action Network. RAN has struggled against big corporations, exposing their environmental destructiveness and forcing them to change. Perkins says that the executives of those corporations sometimes thank him afterwards. They have children too, they say; they know they are destroying the world, and they don't want to; they are simply cogs stuck in a bad system. If they tried to change the system on their own, they would simply be fired. Organizations like RAN and people like Perkins are providing cover for them, making it possible for them to change. But ultimately we need to change the laws that govern all corporations; it is not enough to try to reform corporations one by one.
Beware when the corporate news media uses the phrase "protecting national interests." That's an intentionally vague phrase, and they'd rather you don't examine it too closely. Generally it doesn't mean the interests of the American people. Rather, it means the interests of the big corporations whose chief executives are close friends of the people in power.
In the 1970's, Perkins was an economist at the consulting firm Charles T. Main, which he describes as a front for the NSA. His job was to cook the books, to convince foreign nations to accept huge loans to hire American companies to build dams, airports, and other infrastructure that those nations really could not afford. When the government defaulted on the loan, the USA or IMF or World Bank would step in to run the country. If a government was uncooperative about accepting such loans, assassins were sent in to change the situation. Perkins left such enterprises after a decade and went to other kinds of careers; currently he is involved with progressive organizations such as the Rainforest Action Network (RAN). But after the events of 9/11 he felt he had to write about his sordid past.
Reviews of these books are mixed. On the one hand, they give a broad narrative that explains much of the foreign policy that we've seen over the years -- e.g., the USA having a hand in overthrowing uncooperative democracies and propping up friendly dictatorships all around the world. On the other hand, Perkins's books are lacking in evidence, statistics, proof; the negative reviews simply call them fantasy.
I (Eric) haven't read either book yet, but I have watched Perkins speak for 82 minutes about his books. He's an interesting speaker. You can see the video for free at http://fora.tv/fora/showthread.php?t=1216. One of the most interesting tales he tells is about his recent work with Rainforest Action Network. RAN has struggled against big corporations, exposing their environmental destructiveness and forcing them to change. Perkins says that the executives of those corporations sometimes thank him afterwards. They have children too, they say; they know they are destroying the world, and they don't want to; they are simply cogs stuck in a bad system. If they tried to change the system on their own, they would simply be fired. Organizations like RAN and people like Perkins are providing cover for them, making it possible for them to change. But ultimately we need to change the laws that govern all corporations; it is not enough to try to reform corporations one by one.
Jeff Sharlet. The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power. Hardcover.
| Excerpts from the publisher's description: A journalist's penetrating look at the untold story of christian fundamentalism's most elite organization, a self-described invisible network dedicated to a religion of power for the powerful. ... The Family is about the other half of American fundamentalist power—not its angry masses, but its sophisticated elites. Sharlet follows the story back to Abraham Vereide, an immigrant preacher who in 1935 organized a small group of businessmen sympathetic to European fascism, fusing the far right with his own polite but authoritarian faith. From that core, Vereide built an international network of fundamentalists who spoke the language of establishment power, a "family" that thrives to this day. In public, they host Prayer Breakfasts; in private, they preach a gospel of "biblical capitalism," military might, and American empire. Citing Hitler, Lenin, and Mao as leadership models, the Family's current leader, Doug Coe, declares, "We work with power where we can, build new power where we can't." ... Part history, part investigative journalism, The Family is a compelling account of how fundamentalism came to be interwoven with American power. |
David Sirota. Hostile Takeover: How Big Money & Corruption Conquered Our Government – and How We Take It Back,. Hardcover and eBook. (Sirota was one of our keynote speakers at Compass IV. He is also the author of the article People Party vs. Money Party: Who's Who Among the Democrats.)
The Uprising: An Unauthorized Tour of the Populist Revolt Scaring Wall Street and Washington (Hardcover).
| Every politically engaged citizen should read this book. -- Al Gore Here are the horrifying facts about how our government works today - and for whom it works - delivered in a tone of outrage that is not only merited but appropriate. Read it and scream. -- Thomas Frank, author of What's the Matter with Kansas? David Sirota is a genuine American hero: he speaks the truth - forcefully, courageously, straightforwardly - with no apologies, and with thorough documentation. This book is an invaluable guide to how the hostile takeover of our government affects you, and what you can do about it. -- George Lakoff |
The Uprising: An Unauthorized Tour of the Populist Revolt Scaring Wall Street and Washington (Hardcover).| "After so many decades of fake populism--of revolts by the wealthy, red-state fantasies, and stock-picking grandmas--could we finally be looking at the real thing? In this compelling book, rooted in history but as contemporary as this morning's newspaper, David Sirota gives us reason to hope." —Thomas Frank, author of What's the Matter with Kansas? and The Wrecking Crew "With a historian’s and a journalist’s storytelling gifts, David Sirota describes the populist tide that so many elites fear and ignore at all our peril: multinational corporations that rip off local communities as if they were resource colonies, a national security state that manipulates our young to bleed for that same empire, and a political elite more concerned with preserving its power than empowering citizens to become self-governing. Since leaving the Beltway behind, David Sirota has become a must-read chronicler in the populist tradition." —Tom Hayden, author of The Tom Hayden Reader and Ending the War in Iraq. Review by Eric, TAP's webmaster: Sirota is a good speaker (here are videos of a few of his recent talks: The Colbert Report, PBS NOW, Newsweek, Oakland DFA), but he is a great writer. His articles are good (you can find them via his website) but his book is better: it adds more personality, humor, color. But all of his writing is richly textured. He goes way beyond the monochrome, one-dimensional explanations of pro versus con, or labor versus corporatocracy. He shows all the seething, writhing complex mixture of anger in our society. For instance, he shows the battle over the framing of taxation; and he shows, in its many forms, the love-hate relationship between grassroots progressives and the establishment Democratic Party regulars. Sirota says -- and I think he's probably right, and I think that he sees the picture better than anyone else right now -- that our society is at a turning point, where big changes may soon happen in a progressive direction or in a direction very much opposite to that, depending on whether we figure out how to steer this thing. ... But Sirota is also fun. His first chapter is titled "A portrait of the writer on a bathroom floor." He's had one too many drinks while attending the first annual YearlyKos Convention. Here is the beginning of his description of that convention: "This 2006 summer gathering is for those who read, write for, comment on, and are otherwise connected to the weblog Daily Kos. It is a boisterous band — mostly young, middle-class lefties, with some unreformed '60s hippies, '70s environmentalists, '80s anti-Reagan liberals and '90s-era Clinton political operatives mixed in. Imagine a Democratic National Convention and a Star Trek convention having a drunken one-night stand and producing a love child: that is YearlyKos." |
Tavis Smiley, editor. The Covenant with Black America (paperback).
| This book was praised highly in a recent talk by Cornel West. Here in Nashville, this book has formed the basis of the Nashville Black Covenant Coalition. Here is Amazon.com's description of the book: "Six years' worth of symposiums come together in this rich collection of essays that plot a course for African Americans, explaining how individuals and households can make changes that will immediately improve their circumstances in areas ranging from health and education to crime reduction and financial well-being. Addressing these pressing concerns are contributors Dr. David Satcher, former U.S. surgeon general; Wade Henderson, executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights; Angela Glover Blackwell, founder of the research think tank PolicyLink; and Cornel West, professor of Religion at Princeton University. Each chapter outlines one key issue and provides a list of resources, suggestions for action, and a checklist for what concerned citizens can do to keep their communities progressing socially, politically, and economically. Though the African American community faces devastating social disparities—in which more than 8 million people live in poverty—this celebration of possibility, hope, and strength will help leaders and citizens keep Black America moving forward." |
Douglas B. Sosnik, Ron Fournier, and Matthew J. Dowd. Applebee's America: How Successful Political, Business, and Religious Leaders Connect with the New American Community. Hardcover.
| Mark Naccarato, chairman of Democracy for Tennesseee, says: If I had to recommend only one book this year ... it’s Applebee’s America. The title is inspired by the hugely successful Applebee’s restaurant chain, which sparked a revolution in the casual dining industry, not by its food or even by its advertising campaign, but by its authenticity and its personal connection with customers. And that’s the main premise of Applebee’s America: In order to win elections or sell a product in today’s fast-paced, cynical, oversaturated world, one has to satisfy that all-American yearning for community, connection, and authenticity. Or what the authors call "Gut Values Connections". -- You can read the rest of his review here. |
Alex Steffen. Worldchanging: A User's Guide for the 21st Century. Hardcover.
| Bill McKibben has called this book "the Whole Earth Catalog retooled for the iPod generation." (That generation might not recognize the reference, but the W.E.C. meant a lot to us pre-iPod folks.) The book is a compilation from Worldchanging.com, a website that has won high praise from Leif Utne, formerly connected with Utne Reader. He said that although some independent news media and blogs do tell us more of what is going on, too often they focus only on "what's going wrong with the world," whereas Worldchanging includes "positive stories about effective solutions." Their premise is: "Another world is not just possible; it's here." The website and the book deal with "everything from consumer consciousness to a new vision for industry; non-toxic homes to refugee shelters; microfinance to effective philanthropy; socially responsible investing to starting a green business; citizen media to human rights; ecological economics to climate change." |
John Stewart, former chair of Tennesseans For Fair Taxation and a longtime activist for economic justice in Tennessee. Witness to the Promised Land, paperback.
| Here's what the author said about the book: Last year I finished a book based on what I was doing with Hubert Humphrey & others in the mid-1960s.. The book is titled “Witness to the Promised Land” and it is based on a series of articles I wrote in the mid to late 1960s for Christianity & Crisis, the weekly journal founded by Reinhold Niebuhr. Much of the book deals with passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964. As I’ve thought about it, I have come to see that by “the Promised Land” I mean a belief that everyone in America deserved a chance, a shot to make it, and that in these years we were making real progress in giving this shot to persons who had always been denied—the CR Act of 64, the Voting Rights Act of 65, Medicare, the anti-poverty program, housing legislation, the Youth Conservation Corps, the Appalachia Regional Commission, etc. There still was work to do but the federal government clearly was on the side of giving everyone a chance to make it. Everyone had a seat at the table. No guaranteed outcomes but at least a shot. People believed that. That feeling—that motivating philosophy—no longer exists, thanks to Reagan and Bush, in particular. Only some folks—and not very many—get a shot. The rest are on their own and the federal government takes absolutely no responsibility or even interest in their situation. That is a dramatic shift from the years of the Promised Land. Bringing everyone back to the table is what we should be talking about. I think that is what Obama is, in fact, talking about and that is what is generating the remarkable reception he has received. What you do in specific situations can vary greatly but it is possible to relate most of what we talk about to the notion of once again making America a nation where everyone has a chance, a real shot. |
Andras Szanto, editor. What Orwell Didn't Know: Propaganda and the New Face of American Politics. Paperback. Introduction by Orville Schell. Contributors include: George Soros, Francine Prose, Drew Westen, George Lakoff, Victor Navasky, Nick Lemann, Orville Schell, Samantha Power, Mark Danner, Farnaz Fassihi, Francis Fitzgerald, Michael Massing, Aryeh Neier, David Rieff, Geoff Cowan, Patricia Williams.
| This book is not a followup to Orwell's famous 1949 novel "1984" (discussed elsewhere on this page), but rather to Orwell's 1946 essay "Politics and the English Language," which includes this idea: If your language gets corrupted, then your politics will become corrupt too as a result, with detrimental consequences for democracy. Orwell was able to see past some, but not all, of the assumptions inherent in the culture of his time. Here are links to a 16-minute discussion by Lakoff, and a 72-minute discussion by six of the other contributors, and several more video and audio recordings available on the web. And here is part of Barnes & Noble's description of this new book: This anthology of essays was conceived when the deans of five American schools of journalism decided that it was time to address the state of public discourse in our country, especially the language used by politicians and journalists, which seems, in the words of the volume's editor, András Szántó, "to be divorcing itself from reality at an alarming rate." The journalism deans "were especially concerned about the waning power -- or inclination -- of the press to bring political rhetoric in line with fact," believing that the line between debate and propaganda had become dangerously obscured. |
Matt Taibbi, contributing editor to Rolling Stone magazine. The Great Derangement: A Terrifying True Story of War, Politics, and Religion at the Twilight of the American Empire. Hardcover.
| This is a preliminary review by Eric; I might add more later. I haven't read any of this book, but I watched Taibbi being interviewed about it for 80 minutes by David Corn of Mother Jones magazine. It was an interesting interview, which you can watch online at this link (give the video a moment to load). There's also a cute 2 1/2 minute video on the book's web page. Taibbi's book is on a number of topics, as his title would suggest. One insight in the interview was particularly striking to me: I have wondered how progressive and conservative Christians could possibly love the same Jesus. Taibbi's answer is that they don't. Progressives love the loving Jesus of the Gospels; conservatives prefer the vengeful Jesus of Revelations. Taibbi learned this during his undercover work, posing as a conservative and infiltrating the religious right. |
Rev. Billy Talen. What Would Jesus Buy? Fabulous Prayers in the Face of the Shopocalypse. Paperback.
| This book, published in spring 2007, is part of the basis for a film coming to some theaters in December 2007, though apparently not yet to Tennessee; we may just have to wait for the DVD. Reverend Billy is the leader of the Church of Stop Shopping, a humorous activist group that uses street theater to mock consumerism. People who are interested in this set of ideas may also want to look at the Buy Nothing Christmas campaign. Here is a short video clip of Reverend Billy's preaching. |
Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor. Meltdown: How Greed and Corruption Shattered our Financial System and How We Can Recover. Hardback.
| The following description is taken from the publisher's page: America's economy is in meltdown. Banks have failed, foreclosures are sweeping the housing market and the Dow Jones has suffered its worst losses since the Great Depression.At every step of the way, The Nation, America's leading progressive weekly magazine, has tackled the most urgent questions facing the nation's leaders and its citizens with clarity and insight. Stretching back 20 years and edited by Katrina vanden Heuvel and the editors of The Nation, Meltdown draws together the best of the magazine's coverage of the financial crisis and explores what steps President Obama and his new administration must take to ensure a more secure future for everyone. Contributors include William Greider, Robert Sherrill, Thomas Frank, Christopher Hayes, Barbara Ehrenreich, Kai Wright, and others. A forum on the topics of this book was held on March 6. At this link you can find videos of excerpts of that forum, and an audio recording of the entire 1½ hours. |
Paul Waldman. Being Right Is Not Enough: What Progressives Must Learn from Conservative Success. Hardcover. (Waldman was one of our keynote speakers at Compass IV.)
| A senior fellow at Media Matters for America and the former associate director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, Waldman briefly indulges in matter-of-fact self-blame while lauding the Right for its hard work and cheering on future Democratic activism in this well-sourced, partisan blueprint for undoing Republican control of the nation. Let's `inaugurate the age of the progressive warrior,' Waldman trumpets, proposing that Democrats take a cue from their opponents in order to do so. He maps out a rhetorical strategy, a `thematically unified master narrative' in answer to the `four pillars of conservatism': low taxes, small government, strong defense and traditional social values. `We're all in it together' is Waldman's progressive answer, a maxim that encompasses five principles: `government that works for everyone, opportunity for everyone, security for everyone, individual freedom for everyone, progress for everyone.' Under each principle one can fit any topical issue (e.g., corporate accountability), Waldman explains. The book's website includes the first page from each chapter. Here is a ForaTV video of Waldman talking about his book; see the viewing instructions at the top of this page. And here is a link to many articles by Waldman; one of our favorites is the one on "the progressive identity complex." |
Jim Wallis. God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It. Hardcover, audiobook, trade paperback, or large print edition.
| Since when did believing in God and having moral values make you pro-war, pro-rich and pro-Republican? Wallis argues that America's separation of church and state does not require banishing moral and religious values from the public square. In fact, the very survival of America's social fabric depends on such values and vision to shape our politics. -- from the publisher's description Here are a BookTV video and a ForaTV video of Wallis. See viewing instructions at the top of this page. |
Drew Westen. The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation.
| Recommended by Dylan Swift, who is on TAP's staff. Here is an excerpt from the publisher's description: Westen turns conventional political analyses on their head, suggesting that the question for Democratic politics isn't so much about moving to the right or the left but about moving the electorate. He shows how it can be done through examples of what candidates have said—or could have said—in debates, speeches, and ads. Westen's discoveries could utterly transform electoral arithmetic, showing how a different view of the mind and brain leads to a different way of talking with voters about issues that have tied the tongues of Democrats for much of forty years—such as abortion, guns, taxes, and race. You can't change the structure of the brain. But you can change the way you appeal to it. And here's how… |
Naomi Wolf. The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot. Paperback.
| Naomi Wolf lists 10 steps that every dictator has used to shut down a free society. She points out that all 10 steps are already in play in our own society, which is now showing uncanny parallels to Germany during the beginning of Hitler's rise to power. You can see her talking about it in this half-hour video, and several other videos linked from that page. At the end of her video, Wolf recommends that you sign the civil liberties pledge at www.americanfreedomcampaign.org. ... You may also find it illuminating to look at Laurence Britt's list of 14 points of fascism. Fascism doesn't always wear a swastika. As Sinclair Lewis said, "when facism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross." Look around. |
Howard Zinn, professor emeritus of history at Boston University
|
|||||
|
|
||||
|
Many other books by Zinn are also available; for a list click here. By the way, Zinn has a new book coming out in April, and a 4-part television series this fall. |
||||
BLOGS
Although it's not a book and it's not for purchase, we would be remiss if we omitted our favorite blog from this list of recommended reading materials. Nell and Eric read the top stories on Alternet nearly every day. Alternet's own writers are excellent, and in addition Alternet copies some of the best articles from other blogs. Alternet often contains articles by some of our favorite authors -- e.g., some of the authors featured elsewhere on this bookshop page.
Eric, a high-tech junky, likes to read Alternet on his pocket computer -- he can read it anywhere he goes, not just at a desk. If you have a Palm PDA, install Avantgo. If you have a Windows Pocket PC, the recommended RSS reader program is Mobipocket.
Eric, a high-tech junky, likes to read Alternet on his pocket computer -- he can read it anywhere he goes, not just at a desk. If you have a Palm PDA, install Avantgo. If you have a Windows Pocket PC, the recommended RSS reader program is Mobipocket.
CINEMA (in order of title; on DVD unless noted otherwise)
An Inconvenient Truth, by Al Gore and Davis Guggenheim (DVD)
An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It, by Al Gore (Paperback)
An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It, by Al Gore (Paperback)
The other point that alarms me -- also mentioned in Gore's film -- is the present government's lies. When NASA -- a body of scientific experts -- produces a report about the terrible immediate dangers of global warming, the White House staff (with no scientific expertise) rewrites it completely to suggest that we're not in great or immediate danger. And the mainstream news media is just as bad. The scientific community is in total agreement about the scope and immediacy of the problem, but the press presents this as if it is still a "debate" with two sides, and then goes on to talk about something else. Meanwhile, Big Oil has launched an advertising campaign that says carbon dioxide is good for you. What is wrong with these people?? This goes beyond mere greed; they are either incredibly shortsighted or completely insane! After the world economy is utterly destroyed and civilization is wiped out, these corporate fat cats will not have anywhere to spend their ill-gotten gains. |
||||||||
Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers. Directed by Robert Greenwald. DVD.
| This film may have contributed to the Democratic Party's victory in 2006. The film may seem a bit slow moving for people who are already politically awake, but for the great sleeping masses of our society this film is a real eye-opener. In Iraq, the civilians and all of the soldiers -- ours, the Iraqis, the insurgents, etc. -- are losers; the only winners in Iraq are private military contractors like Haliburton and Blackwater. This film focuses on how such companies are making money, hand over fist, through corruption, waste, and neglect of their own responsibilities. (For instance, "cost-plus", which means the company gets its expenses plus a percentage. With no oversight, this is an incentive to blow up trucks instead of repairing them, even for problems as minor as a flat tire.) The film includes touching interviews with soldiers (or their families), who went to Iraq with the best of intentions and with great trust in the US government, and then found themselves thoroughly shafted. -- summary by TAP's webclerk For more information see Alternet's review, L.A. Times' Kenneth Turan's review, and the film's own website. |
Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War On News. DVD.
| Greenwald's documentary provides the viewer with a primer on propaganda techniques, documenting how the underlying goal of creating fear and uncertainty in the minds of viewers is achieved by use of language and repetition. ... Walter Cronkite heads a stellar group of more than a dozen media critics in the film ... -- from the much longer review on Alternet For more information and the trailer, see the film's website. |
The Corporation. Two-disk edition. The film is based in part on the book The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power, by Joel Bakan, available in paperback.
| Many of the ills of our society stem from a court decision of the mid-1800's that endowed corporations with the rights -- but alas, not the responsibilities or the conscience -- of people. A corporation's only responsibility is to make as much money as possible for its stockholders, regardless of the consequences to other people and other living things. An individual human, if behaving as corporations behave, would be diagnosed as a psychopathic serial killer. For more information about this subject and about the film, see the film's website. |
The End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of the American Dream (2004), directed by Gregory Greene. (DVD)
| The title, if you think about it, says it all. Our whole economy -- our suburbs, our factories, our highway system, our whole way of life -- is based around the assumption of cheap energy, and has been increasingly so for decades. But that's about to end, and our insufficiently planned economy will be devastated. The USA reached peak oil in the 1970's -- i.e., at that time we had the highest rate at which oil was being extracted from the ground in the USA. At that time, we'd gotten all the "easy" oil out of the ground; extraction since then has gotten harder and harder. And so since then we've been importing more and more oil, and overthrowing any countries -- democratic or dictatorial -- that impeded our gluttony. But the world is reaching its oil peak around now, and there aren't any nearby planets full of dead dinosaurs for us to import it from. So oil is going to get scarcer and more expensive, regardless of our foreign policy. Check out the film's website. It also mentions a sequel, "Escape From Suburbia," coming soon. |
The Yes Men: The True Story of the End of the World Trade Organization. Directed by Dan Ollman, Sarah Price, and Chris Smith. You can watch this one for free on Google Video, or purchase a DVD copy if you want to own it (I think it's the same movie), You can also buy the paperback book.
| Don't let anyone tell you that a progressive politics documentary film can't be funny. This one is hilarious. The history behind it starts out seriously enough: The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was developed in 1947 during the United Nations Conference on Trade and Employment. It later led to the World Trade Organization, a globalization system that has made the rich richer and, so far, seems to have worsened the lot of the poor. But in 1999, Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno -- a couple of middle-class (at best) activists -- set up a parody of the WTO's website at GATT.ORG. It got mistaken for the real thing, and they found themselves invited to some international trade conferences. Just for fun, they went to the conferences, passing themselves off as real WTO representatives. They presented business ideas that somewhat exaggerated the crassness of big corporate entrepreneurs -- auctioning votes to the highest bidder, marketing human rights abuses, administering shocks to sweatshop employees, and so on. And their audience didn't catch on, or even object. Here are links to the movie's website, the book's website, and the organization's website. |