Recommended Reading

Politics, Culture, History

An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It, Al Gore. Rodale Press, 2006.
Global warming shares quite a few qualities with the human shadow—extremely inconvenient, highly uncomfortable to acknowledge, hard to start working on, usually denied. Al Gore is a true hero; a man who keeps on going to bat for what he believes in no matter how heartbreaking his last strike out. An academy award-winning documentary of An Inconvenient Truth is also available on DVD.

A People’s History of the United States, 1492-Present, Howard Zinn. HarperCollins, 2003.
When you first see the size of this book you think you won’t be able to finish it. Then when you start reading it, you won’t be able to put it down. It should be required reading for every citizen of the USA. What we aren’t told, compared to what we are told, is simply astonishing. And Zinn is fearless—he never pulls his punches.

The Assault on Reason, Al Gore. Penguin Press, 2007.
Not running for office sure frees a guy up to speak his mind. This book kicks some serious ass. “When the public merely watches and listens and does not have a speaking part, the entire exercise is fraudulent. It might be called American Democracy: The Movie. It looks and sounds almost real, but its true purpose is the presentation of a semblance of participatory democracy in order to produce a counterfeit version of the consent of the governed.”

The Chalice and the Blade, Our History, Our Future, Riane Eisler. HarperSanFrancisco, 1987.
A review of the mounting archaeological evidence which suggests that human beings did not always live in patriarchal, warlike societies, and do not necessarily have to in the future. Now that’s good news.

Collapse, How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, Jared Diamond. Penguin Group, 2005.
Diamond (author of Guns, Germs and Steel) has done us a big favor here. He makes it clear that whether we ultimately fail or succeed as a society is entirely up to us, examines the choices made by present and past societies which led to their success or failure, and offers suggestions for the
future.

Confessions of An Economic Hit Man, John Perkins. Berrett-Koehler, 2004.
A chilling book. Why do rock stars keep trying to get Third-World loans cancelled? Turns out most of the loans are bogus—merely fronts for big business interests. The smooth talking representatives go over and say “You guys need a dam (or a bridge or whatever). Let us build one for you!” Then the countries go deeply into debt to a giant corporation for something they really didn’t need which completely destroys their way of life and leaves them too broke to provide basic services for their own people. In most cases the money never leaves the USA.

Fast Food Nation, The Dark Side of the American Meal, Eric Schlosser. HarperCollins, 2002.
I think that title says it all.

Fiasco: The American Military Misadventure in Iraq, Thomas E. Ricks. Penguin Press, 2007.
I hate to recommend such a sad book, but we should all read it anyway. If our current fiasco in Iraq does indeed lead to the decline of the American empire, at least we’ll all know what happened. Written by a Senior Pentagon Correspondent for the Washington Post.

The Future of Success, Working and Living in the New Economy, Robert B. Reich. Vintage Books/Random House, 2000.
A former Secretary of Labor and a very bright man with a very big heart, Reich is always worth a look. In this book he makes telling points about what’s awry in our time, without letting any of us
off the hook about how things got that way. I was particularly struck by what he calls “sorting:” the way we all unconsciously sort ourselves into communities and neighborhoods and school districts to the exclusion of those who have less resources than we do, and the impact it will have on our culture if not mitigated by other factors..

Overthrow, America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq, Stephen Kinzer. Times Books, Henry Holt & Co., 2006.
Absolute proof that the USA’s heroic rhetoric does not always match her clandestine actions. Meticulously documented evidence of the 14 governments toppled by the USA since 1893. Ouch.

The Sibling Society, Robert Bly. Addison-Wesley, 1996. Bly points out that the USA has become a nation of squabbling siblings because no one is willing to grow up. We refuse to take up the mantle of “elder” no matter how old we get, and we neglect the acquisition of wisdom to buy increasingly elaborate toys and manipulate our bodies to look young. A good book for aging baby boomers in denial about what awaits us around the next bend.

The United States of Europe, The New Superpower and the End of American Supremacy, T.R. Reid. Penguin Press, 2004.
Reid spent months living in Europe, and comes out with a much different perspective than we get from this side of the globe. Cooperation between countries, although far from easy or painless, has led to phenomenal progress in Europe—a lesson for the USA in not always getting your own way.

back to top...