1. A Handful of Straw Blowing in the Wind by Thelma Doak (About Times Publishing, 2007). She reached her 104th birthday, remembering her life in the dust bowls of the nineteen thirties, of seeing the Wright brothers and their flying machine at the Oklahoma State Fair in 1912 and much more served with wisdom, humor and the family passions of decency. (Published by About Time Publishing, 2007).
2. FoodFight-The Citizen’s Guide to a Food and Farm Bill by Daniel Imhoff with a Foreword by Michael Pollan (University of California Press, 2007)-This is a beautifully laid out, gripping tutorial of a book about the effects of industrial agriculture, The Farm Bill, about to be rewritten in Congress, and corporate domination of food policy that affects your health, environment, tax dollars, consumer dollars and rural America-plus, much, much more graphically portrayed.
3. Nation of Secrets by Ted Gup (Doubleday, 2007). A former Washington Post reporter shows how our democracy and “the American Way of Life,” is damaged by Government secrecy. His book is alarming but still an understatement, as our nearly 40 year old Freedom of Information Clearinghouse and its many court cases can attest (Please see: http://www.citizen.org/litigation/free_info/). And then there is corporate secrecy-which I hope will be Ted Gup’s next book.
4. Blackwater-The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army, by Jeremy Scahill (Nation Books, 2007). Speaking of corporate secrecy, this kind comes with a government cloak and presages the next stage of the corporate state-that worried both Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower.
5. The Declaration of Independence-A Global History by David Armitage (Harvard University Press, 2007). This Harvard history professor writes about our Declaration of Independence “through the eyes of the rest of the world” in those early and subsequent years. Yale constitutional law professor, Charles Black accorded the Declaration momentous juridical importance prior to and after our Constitution of 1787. This manifesto deserves reading by students and adults alike. The Declaration is greatly under-noticed. Recently, I sent a parchment copy to 25 Eagles Scouts and urged them to place in on their bedroom wall, if possible. Not one of these Scouts bothered to respond with a thank you or a comment or two. Would they have been so indifferent had they received a Simpsons poster?
6. State of the World-2007 (Worldwatch Institute, 2007) draws on the Institute’s global network to confront urban problems with amazing fresh reports of sustainable responses. Did you know that in Rizhao, China, a city of 3 million people, 99 percent of households in the central districts use solar water heaters and more than 60,000 greenhouses are heated by solar panels. This book does describe the terrible poverty and perils of cities around the world but retains for the reader a framework of what is being done and what could be done.
7. Sue the Doctor and Win! By Lewis Laska, J.D., Ph.D. (Farmacon Press, 2007) sounds alarmist until you learn from official and academic studies that nearly 100,000 people die each year from medical malpractice in hospitals, plus hundreds of thousands of casualties, and a huge toll of fatalities and sickness from hospital-induced infections. The vast majority of victims or next of kin file no claims whatsoever. Five percent of physicians account for nearly 40 percent of the harm but only a few are disciplined by the state medical regulatory agencies. This book includes a large amount of information people need to know to achieve deterrence, prevention, as well as compensatory justice for these most helpless and trusting patients.
8. Building Powerful Community Organizations by Michael Jacoby Brown (Long Haul Press, 2007). Is there a more important book given our weakening democratic society bullied by concentrated corporate power and their control of government? This is the book for you whenever you want to go after a persistent injustice or you want to solve a problem and make your community whistle with happiness. Whether on the beach or at a mountain retreat this summer, you will find this book full of organizing truths and detailed advances in practical democratic action.
9. Nanotechnology-Risk, Ethics and Law edited by Geoffrey Hunt and Michael Mehta (Earthscan, 2007). The latest volume, in a series of Science in Society produced by the James Martin Institute at Oxford University, provides an excellent overview for interested citizens-and we better get up to speed on this portentous, unregulated, largely invisible technology-as nanotechnology moves swiftly into consumer and other commercial products and begins what editor Hunt calls “the journey of finding its space within the social imaginary.”
10. Everybody’s Guide to Small Claims Court by Atty. Ralph Warner (Nolo Press, 2006). Everybody has complaints about being ripped off by some seller, but few know how practical and accessible small claims courts are to win justice from the rascals. This is as clear a roadmap about how you can prepare your case, win in court and collect your money. You don’t need a lawyer. These courts are greatly underused by consumers.
Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer, and author. His most recent book is The Seventeen Traditions, not a bad summer read either.
Forgot America, Inc., wherein US human citizens incorporate and move our taxable assets offshore with the rest, thereby stopping the burning Bush/wars.
Someone much funnier than I should put together the antithetical reading list, the one Bush would read if he only read.
And then someone capable of completely sinister imaginings could do Rove’s or Cheney’s list. My skin crawls just thinking about it!
The profound changes that are destroying this country and the planet are simply beyond the comprehension of reformist and consumerist advocates such as Ralph Nader.
Any reform of the status quo that does not recognize the necessity of ending the system of economics that maintains the status quo is not just inadequate but a cover-up and a fraud.
The federal government, including the military, is now privatized to maximize profit for the military-industrial complex. War will never end as long as greed and profit drives foreign policy.
Search and read the World Socialist Web Site at
wsws.org for a daily read during the summer and start thinking outside the “status quo” box.
“… I was born in a welfare state / Ruled by bureaucracy / Controlled by civil servants / And people dressed in grey / Got no privacy got no liberty / ‘Cause the 20th-century people / Took it all away from me.”
The Kinks
This isn’t exactly Get Off My Cloud. It was about an overall direction of civ, right?
I don’t view politics as the sole means available for spiritual evolution. If I opt to support some politics I no longer expect it to put signs of utopia even on the horizon.
In my town, Jeremy, they’d shut the door and give you a weird look. I wouldn’t, but you’d make zilch headway. I might get’em to admit Kuncinch is right about one issue if I harangue’em enough…while we need everything he advocates. But if you come on with this ideology [as respectable as it is down south for sure] your gains will consist of the null set…down here at any rate.
Like Michael Moore sez, the English system has problems and the French and the Canadian…why can’t we take what we think is right from each and make our own? Fact is we know very well that if we don’t do this the deliver-factor associated with our own bureacracy will be the default. And in that case (the present case)…no matter what the reforms or redistributions are in law…they will never arrive.
So a newly synthesized approach would hopefully preclude somewhat the institutional jam-ups.
Ralph’s list shows him to be an inquiring mind and a person curious about a wide range of issues and situations. How many other presidential (or possible presidential) candidates can say the same?
Good list, will have to look into nanotechnology since they plan on building one of these plants 15 miles to the north. Local paper hasn’t said much.
exdem June 30th, 2007 4:13 pm
“Someone much funnier than I should put together the antithetical reading list, the one Bush would read if he only read.”
1. “The Complete Anthology of My Pet Goat” by Dick Cheney
2. “Mein Kampf”. Hitler, A. (1925).
3. “The Birth of Fascist Ideology, From Cultural Rebellion to Political Revolution”, Zeev Sternhell, with Mario Sznajder and Maia Asheri, trans. by David Maisel, Princeton University Press, NJ, 1994.
For starters assuming Bu$h has the intelligence or the inclination to read….
Oh I forgot,
4. “The Trotskyite’s Guide to Screwing up America”, by Paul Wolferwitz, Bedlam Press, 2001.
Hey Simon, thanks!
Dick Cheney’s summer reading list (he reads some of them every summer):
The Prince by Niccollo Machiavelli
The Art of War by Sun Tsu
If Democrats Had Any Brains, They’d Be Republicans by Ann Coulter
100 People Who Are Screwing Up America by Bernard Goldberg
The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) by Robert Spencer
How to Rule the World: A Handbook for the Aspiring Dictator by Andre de Guillaume
How to Be a Villain: Evil Laughs, Secret Lairs, Master Plans, and More!! by Neil Zawacki
Showdown with Nuclear Iran: Radical Islam’s Messianic Mission to Destroy Israel and Cripple the United States by Michael Evans and Jerome Corsi
Seven Rules of the Golf Swing by Nick Bradley
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
Dubya only has time to read one book this summer. This year he’s chosen Help Mom! There are Liberals Under My Bed! by Katharine DeBrecht
Note: These are all real books.
I once had a felafel sandwich with Ralph at an activist workshop in DC. I also got to meet Lois Gibbs, Howard Zinn, and other heroes.
Also for the reading list…
Eco-Eating: Eating as if the Earth Matters
htttp://www.brook.com/veg
Peace!
In 2000, I voted for Ralph Nader and campaigned for him, and I’m sorry he lost the election. Like so many other progressive people, I gave John Kerry my vote in 2004, and watching the “get along” Democrats whitewash the Ohio debacle, I said, that’s enough for me. I switched to the Green Party. Come next year, I’ll either be writing in for President of the United States on the paper ballot I request either Ralph Nader, Dennis Kucinich, or Bill Moyers. Constructive change will not come unless people are willing to take a stand and vote for the best person for the job.
vegnik…great website!… I haven’t met Ralph yet, but he’s been one of my heros for decades. I went to a Howard Zinn lecture about five years ago and, what a man!
Chicanery… don’t give Diabolical Dick any new ideas. Unlike Dufus, he may actually read those nasty books.
Jeremy Wells…also a great website, and I agree on your comments. I think democratic socialism which includes small businesses will manifest in the 21st century. Monopolistic Corporatism is hurting too many people around the globe. I want to read Ralph’s #8 book first, then #4. J. Scahill is tops. I’ve listened to him on the Pacifica radio stations for years as well as on blessed Amy Goodman’s DEMOCRACY NOW! show.
Must read rule by secrecy, James Bamford
Just ordered the book “3 Cups of Tea” looking forward to a good airplane read.
How about adding William Shirer’s fine book, THE COLLAPSE OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC,an Inquiry into the Fall of France in 1940 (to the Nazi’s}? So many parallels…the obscenely unequal distribution of wealth, negation of taxes for the wealthy, corruption as never before, corporate control of governance and of the media, and the inclination of those who profited most from the republic to turn it into a fascist dictatorship. This WWII commentator and journalist wrote RISE AND FALL OF THE THIRD REICH after being fired from CBS… for being “too liberal.” Both works are cautionary tales about wars of aggression and expose Hitler’s appeasers as the loathsome right-wingers whose political origins have been tossed down the memory hole by (guess what) today’s right-wingers. Filled with such fine writing, a casual glance and any paragraph will have you hooked.
How about adding William Shirer’s fine book, THE COLLAPSE OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC,an Inquiry into the Fall of France in 1940 (to the Nazi’s}? So many parallels…the obscenely unequal distribution of wealth, negation of taxes for the wealthy, corruption as never before, corporate control of governance and of the media, and the inclination of those who profited most from the republic to turn it into a fascist dictatorship. This WWII commentator and journalist wrote RISE AND FALL OF THE THIRD REICH after being fired from CBS… for being “too liberal.” Both works are cautionary tales about wars of aggression and expose Hitler’s appeasers as the loathsome right-wingers whose political origins have been tossed down the memory hole by (guess who) today’s right wingers. A casual glance at a single paragraph will have you hooked, so fine is the writing, and so fascinating the plot that unfolds in these histories, much of which was witnessed f