We love to share books we have read with you our readers. These are books that cause one think about taking action. If you have a book to recommend, please email us.
BOOK REVIEW
Arlie Russell Hochschild, a professor of sociology at the University of California at Berkeley, sets out, according to the narrative of her book Strangers in Their Own Land, to discover how to scale the empathy wall between people like herself, West Coast liberals, and the Tea Party conservatives. She picks Tea Party advocates in the state of Louisiana, because she expects them to provide fertile ground for her research on how people make decisions when experiencing emotional dissonance. On the one hand, they see petrochemical corporations destroying their beloved environment and risking their health. On the other hand, they hate government regulation, (which could force those corporations into better practices and force them to clean up the damage they have caused). Read more
BOOK REVIEW
Allan Johnson, sociologist, author and speaker, has shared with us a deeply personal journey, as he comes to terms with who he is. He is in possession of his father's ashes, a father who, it seems, gave him no guidance about where to scatter them. "Makes no difference to me at all." He travels from his home in Connecticut to the Midwest, but the travels in his mind range even more broadly, seeking an identity, a history he can call his own. His travels take him to the formation of a nation of immigrants including his ancestors, who displace the Indigenous Peoples. He muses painfully on the replacement of an intimate belonging to the land by an unrooted ethic that treats it as mere property. Without a sense of belonging to the land Johnson is lost in his quest to find a place for his father's ashes. "It was my fate to be born a white man in the United States." Not From Here is part diary, part genealogy, part political philosophy, and partly an essay on our national conscience. Read more
BOOK REVIEW
Michael Roscoe writes clearly and accessibly in "Why Things Are Going to Get Worse.." about the impending demise of the current capitalist economic system. He proposes a simple model of wealth based on natural resources and the labor and ideas that convert them to usable goods. He contrasts it with the false wealth derived from speculation in financial markets. He uses this model to give a detailed critique of current economic practices and propose a solution. He backs his critique up with 130 accessible charts well matched to the points he is making. His arguments are persuasive and have clarity that provokes the reader into considering counter arguments – something that fosters informed debate! Read more
BOOK REVIEW
We act out of self-interest. That is certainly true – sometimes. Ayn Rand took this idea and elevated it to the central motivation for economic, social and political acts. In her graphic novel I and You author Beverly Garside pokes holes in Rand’s ideas. The presentation of Ayn Rand’s philosophy in this book would certainly be considered simplistic and heavy-handed by Randians. On the other hand, Ayn Rand herself initially presented her ideas in novels, which critics found to be simplistic moral philosophy. Indeed, the story in Garside’s graphic novel is a plausible continuation of the fictional history told in Atlas Shrugged – but with a negative valuation of Rand’s ideas. Read more
BOOK REVIEW
What if you couldn’t find or keep employment or succeed in your education because you worked too slowly and people belittled you because you spoke 'funny?' What if you had difficulty working in business, because you were unable to meet the measures of productivity required? What would you do? Allan White has faced these challenges his whole life. He initially tried to escape by preparing himself to live off the grid with almost no money, until he witnessed firsthand the ravages of such a lifestyle. His life story is an odyssey of dealing with his neurodiversity. His telling is intimate, brave and brutally honest. He shows himself no mercy – sharing with us his dreams and disappointments, his blaming his parents and the society in which he finds himself, his anger resulting in one occasion of violent rage and others of murderous fantasies, his persistent search for an alternative lifestyle and his dream of a society where individuals with disabilities can thrive by simply contributing to the useful diversity of humankind. It is a fascinating look at the world from the point of view of a neurodiverse person.
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BOOK REVIEW
Lean In for Graduates is so much more than a book for women just graduating from college. It encourages women of all ages to lean in to their own skills, their own worth, and their own growth. Lean In was written by Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, as a counterweight to the one-sided focus on what society and culture does to women. She recognizes the considerable barriers that women face at every turn, but (often with personal stories) shows the concrete steps women can take and the mind sets they can use to succeed at work and in life. Read more
BOOK REVIEW
Diane Ravitch addresses what she calls “the hoax of privatization” on the American educational system. She details the players in the privatization process, how they have mounted an extensive media campaign to gain a foothold into the educational system and how they have misused the facts to convince the American people that there is a crisis in the educational system. Contrary to their media campaign rhetoric, test scores in reading and mathematics have been increasing steadily and significantly over the past 40 years when measured by a uniform test. Ravitch analyzes the arguments for privatizing education, finds them lacking and goes on to explain how privatization accompanied by testing is destructive of democratic society. The reader will want to pay close attention to what is unfolding in Pierce County and Washington State as a result of Initiative 1240.
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BOOK REVIEW
I have recently become a fan of graphic novels, e.g., Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, and graphic non-fiction, e.g., Health Care Reform: What It Is, Why It's Necessary, How It Works by Jonathan Gruber. Economix: How Our Economy Works (and Doesn’t Work) in Words and Pictures is another great example of graphic non-fiction that keeps me wondering why the graphic genres are so effective. In Economix Michael Goodwin (author) and Dan E. Burr (illustrator) provide most of us a much deeper understanding of economic theory and practice. They debunk the slogans that make up what most of us know about these things. And they offer practical lessons about what is going on in our country today. Read more
Obamacare is suddenly big news now that the U.S. Supreme Court is considering challenges to the 2010 law underlying it. There is considerable sentiment against it. All the Republican presidential candidates have vowed to repeal it, and recent polls show that around 53% of Americans agree with them. We all seem to have an opinion about it. Some of us oppose it because we think it does too little, and some of us, because we think it does too much. Only around 40% of us think we should keep it. But, no matter what we think, most of us have to admit: we don't understand it and we don't even know much about what it includes. Given this state of affairs, Jonathan Gruber's comic book Health Care Reform: What It Is; Why It's Necessary; How It Works is a happy find. It presents the details in easy-to-understand language and offers a convincing argument about why we keep this law. Read more
Karen Armstrong reviews the history of approaches to understanding God. She focuses primarily on Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, with frequent comparisons to other religions, including Buddhism and Hinduism. Three aspects of the history stand out.
- How each religion has each gone through many different relationships to God.
- How science has gone through similar relationships to understanding the world.
- How science has affected attitudes toward God.
The book is more than history of ideas. Armstrong argues that religion is not primarily about belief. We are unable to describe God in words. We need to relate to God directly through commitment and action, individually and in community. An important corollary is that we need to remain open to examination of our own approach and respect others’ approaches to God. She applies these ideas not only to the religious, but also to those critical of religions. This book is especially important for understanding where the current religious-political climate fits in the course of history and how to react to what seem to be extreme positions.
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