My Wishlist
Not ranked in order of importance nor preference
Books
The Fine Print: How Big Companies Use "Plain English" to Rob You Blind
by: David Cay Johnston
Sleep to be Sexy, Smart, and Slim
by: Ellen Michaud
The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters
by: Rose George
A Pearl in the Storm: How I Found My Heart in the Middle of the Ocean
by Tori Murden Mcclure
Blood Money: Wasted Billions, Lost Lives, and Corporate Greed in Iraq
by T. Christian Miller
1. Toxic Talk (Thomas Dunne Books) by Bill Press, the liberal talk show host, unloads in his words, on “how the radical right has poisoned America’s airwaves.” The five major syndicates are dominated by the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Mark Levin, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage and Bill O’Reilly. Using their own statements, Press applies indignation, satire and humor to demonstrate the bigotry, the falsehoods and the propaganda that sustain the concentrated power of corporate oligarchs who fan far right-wing flames with advertising revenues.
2. Stop Getting Ripped Off (Ballantine Books) by Bob Sullivan. MSNBC’s penetrating consumer reporter gets very specific about how you are being fleeced and how you can often get a fair deal. If you have credit cards, mortgages, life insurance, cell phones, cable tv, are shopping for a new car or worried about preserving your retirement, this is the personal budget protector and aggravation-reliever for you.
3. Unequal Protection (second edition, expanded, Berrett-Koehler Publishers) by Thom Hartman. The growing debate against corporations having the same constitutional rights as human beings flows in part from this brainy author and talk show host’s documentation of the portentous drive since the notorious 1886 Supreme Court decision to establish corporate supremacy over the sovereignty of the people. He writes with dramatic historical accuracy, using primary sources, to wake Americans up to this incremental judicially-decreed coup d’etat.
4. Saved by the Sea: A Love Story with Fish by David Helvarg (Thomas Dunne Books-St. Martin’s) is an enthralling bedtime or beachtime read. Helvarg combines knowing how to write with knowing the ocean, reefs and surfs. His touching, tragic story of the love of his life and of aquatic nature is beyond unique.
5. In the Shadow of Power by Kike Arnal (Charta Books). This is a book, with my introduction, of haunting photographs of the “other Washington” which is off the beaten track of the twenty million tourists who visit our nation’s capital every year. Regaled by critics such as Pulitzer Prize-winner Henry Allen, Kike walked the poor and affluent neighborhoods to capture the tale of the “two cities” for months looking for the telling, unposed picture that speaks volumes. A native Venezuelan, he cannot qualify for the Pulitzer Prize in photography, which is reserved for U.S. citizens—the primary obstacle to deserving such an honor.
6. The Story of Stuff: How Our Obsession with Stuff is Trashing the Planet, Our Communities, and Our Health—and a Vision for Change by Annie Leonard (Free Press). Can anyone make the pile of production and consumption waste interesting? Try Annie Leonard, who has scoured the world for the stories that tell the cumulative story of where our throwaway economy and unawareness are leading us. Her twenty minute video (http://www.storyofstuff.com) that inspired this book has received over ten million visits. Annie knows how to connect with the reader.
7. “This Time We Went Too Far” by Norman G. Finkelstein (O/R Books) is the author’s report on what he calls “the Gaza massacre” of late to early 2008-2009 by the all-powerful, U.S.-supplied Israeli military. The title comes from an Israeli official, signifying the slaughter of utterly defenseless civilians, including nearly 300 children and the destruction of schools, clinics, homes, public works, mosques, even fields growing crops, UN property and an American school, was off the charts. Finkelstein places this bloodbath in the context of U.S. foreign policy, human rights law and shifts in American and European public opinion.
8. North Star: A Memoir by Peter Camejo (Haymarket Books) is a story of radical American and Pan American politics of the latter 20th century as practiced and experienced by this great and wise American. The late Peter Camejo, in the fulsome tradition of Eugene Debs, was a full-spectrum fighter for justice in the political, civic, electoral and international arenas. In this highly personal book, you might find a more perceptive understanding of our times.
9. Senseless Panic by William M. Isaac (Wiley) compares the preventable Wall Street collapse of 2008-2009 with how he, as head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), and other federal banking regulators handled the smaller but still devastating financial crisis in the early 1980s. Isaac claims the current global financial crisis-managers have not learned the lessons from the earlier meltdown of the S&L industry and other banks, during which interest rates hit 21 percent and there was 11 percent unemployment. When a leading member of the former banking establishment takes on the banking establishment, now in charge in Washington and Wall Street, it makes for jarring, no holds barred reading that is a rare experience in these times of high-level self-censorship and hubris.
10. The Energy Reader by Laura Nader, editor (Wiley-Blackwell). From the Seventies to the present, my sister, Laura Nader, professor of Anthropology at U.C. Berkeley, has been observing and teaching about our country’s ossified energy policies and practices and why available technical, social and economic solutions have been kept on the shelf.
A Life Worth Living: A Doctor's Reflections on Illness in a High-Tech Era
by Robert Martensen
1. Achieving the Impossible by Lois Marie Gibbs; Published by the Center for Health, Environment and Justice (www.chej.org) is an inspiring collection of short stories about how ordinary people have risen to meet the challenges of toxic pollution confronting their families and communities. The author herself rose from the Love Canal controversy in Niagara Falls, New York to lead a grand national grass roots organization.
2. Europe’s Promise: Why the European Way is the Best Hope In An Insecure Age by Steven Hill (University of California Press, 2010.) His thesis is that Western Europe treats its people better in many ways than the United States does its people, and not just in social insurance and services. Read, wonder and galvanize!
3. Grand Illusion: The Myth of Voter Choice in A Two-Party Tyranny by Theresa Amato (New Press, 2009.) My former campaign manager weighs in with an indictment of the two-party barriers to a competitive electoral system, candidate ballot access and voter choice. Partly personal memoir of her battles in 2000 and 2004, part history about the decades long ago when third parties could get on the ballot easier and make a difference and part a series of reforms that only an outraged public can make happen.
4. Priceless Money: Banking Time for Changing Times by Edgar S. Cahn is a revolutionary elevation of traditional assets in how time can become a currency—a means of exchange that is beyond price—that does not allow market price to define value. It is a limited edition booklet you’ll never forget, free. Send two first class stamps to TimeBanksUSA, 5500 39th St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20015.
5. Empire of Illusion by Chris Hedges (Nation Books, 2009) The Pulitzer Prize winning war correspondent turned prolific author and lecturer, Mr. Hedges goes to the core of a culture that cannot distinguish between reality and illusion. He “exposes the mechanisms used to divert us from confronting the economic, political and moral collapse around us.” In gripping, memorable concrete prose that resonates the moment we let ourselves think.
6. The Buyout of America: How Private Equity Will Cause the Next Great Credit Crisis by Josh Kosman (Portfolio Hardcover, 2009.) Think it is all about the brand names of a corrupt, reckless Wall Street? Try the entirely unregulated private equity firms that acquire and strip mine them under the guise of saving them, then leave behind debt time bombs and mass layoffs as the value of these leveraged buyouts is sucked out by the corporate bunccaneers. Kosman predicts a coming private equity-caused big bubble crisis.
7. Ordinary People Doing the Extraordinary: The Story of Ed and Joyce Koupal and the Initiative Process by Dwayne Hunn and Doris Ober. This husband-wife team “just ordinary people,” in their words, started out powerless and in over a decade, largely in the seventies, built Initiative power to qualify reforms on the California ballot for the popular vote. A story for the ages that strips away excuses steeped in a sense of powerlessness. This small but invigorating paperback can be obtained from The People’s Lobby (peopleslobby.hypermart.net) for $15, including shipping. California St., Unit 201, San Francisco, CA 94109.
8. Getting Away With Torture: Secret Government, War Crimes, and the Rule of Law by Christopher H. Pyle (Potomac Books, 2009) A former captain in army intelligence and Congressional staffer, now teaching constitutional law at Mount Holyoke College, Mr. Pyle shatters our belief in the rule of law before the unconstitutional government of Bush and Cheney in waging war crimes and torture, while seeking Congressional amnesty to those responsible for implementing their rogue, secret regime. Veteran constitutional law specialist, Louis Fisher asserts these practices have “left American weaker politically, economically, morally, and legally.”
9. It Takes A Pillage by Nomi Prins (Wiley, 2009.) A former managing director of Goldman Sachs, who quit Wall Street, and now is dedicated to educating and mobilizing the American people so that they press for reforms to prevent myopic greed from bringing down our economy again and to hold the speculators and crooks accountable. She “gets inside how the banks looted the Treasury, stole the bailout, and continued with business as usual,” in the words of one reviewer.
10. Censored 2010: The Top 25 Censored Stories of 2008-09 edited by Peter Phillips and Mickey Huff with Project Censored (Seven Stories Press, 2009.) This book contains investigative pieces on important topics too often neglected by the mainstream news organizations. Read this book, it will make you angry and then it will energize you to take on a significant societal problem in the New Year.
Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You with the Bill)
by David Cay Johnston
Rich Like Them
by Ryan D'Agostino
Eyewitness Newsman
by Albert T. Primo
In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto
by Michael Pollan
Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious
by Timothy D. Wilson
The Earth Knows My Name: Food, Culture, and the Gardens of Ethnic Americans
by Patricia Klindienst
Hot, Flat, And Crowded
by Thomas Friedman
Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond
by Brad Lancaster
...any books by:
by David Sedaris
The Ultimate Question
by Fred Reichheld
Emotional Intelligence
by: Daniel Goleman
Cradle to Cradle
by: William McDonough & Michael Braungart
Biomimicry
by: Jamie Benyus
Tour Smart
by: Martin Atkins
Havana Nocturne: How the Mob Owned Cuba...and Then Lost It to the Revolution
by: T. J. English
Engines of Creation
by: Eric Drexler
From Eco-Cities to Living Machines
by: Nancy Jack Todd & John Todd
Natural Capitalism
by: Paul Hawken
A Call for Heresy
by: Anovar Majid
Meat Market
by: Erik Marcus
Jihad vs McWorld
by: Banjamin Barber
Consumed
by: Benjamin Barber
Don't Start the Revolution Without Me
by: Jesse Ventura
Founding Faith
by: Steven Waldman
(Assorted Works)
by: Doris Lessing
Revolt of the Haves
by: Robert Kuttner
(Assorted Works)
by: Thomas Cahill
Modern Liberty and the Limits of Government
by: Charles Fried
(Assorted Works)
by: James H. Cone
Unchecked and Unbalanced Presidential Power in a Time of Terror
by: A G Schwarz, Jr.
The Missing Class: Portraits of the Near Poor in America
by: Katherine Newman
Corpocracy
by: Robert Monks
Unspun: Finding Facts in a World of Disinformation
by: Brooks Jackson, Kathleen Hall Jamieson
Amish Grace
by: Jossey-Bass
Democracy in Corporate America
by: John Bogle
On the Road to Armageddon: How Evangelicals Became Israel's Best Friend
by: Timothy P. Weber
Everything for Sale
by: Robert Kuttner
The Assassin's Gate: America in Iraq
by: George Packer
The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism
by: John Bogle
The Squandering of America
by: Robert Kuttner
Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army
by: Jeremy Scahill
The Little Book of Common Sense Investing
by: John Bogle
Silent Spring
by: Rachel Carson
My Father's Houses
by: Steve Roberts
Humboldt's Gift
by: Saul Bellow
The Peter Principle
by: Dr. Laurence Peter
Natural Cures They Don't Want You To Know
by: Kevin Trudeau
I Never Promised You A Rose Garden
by: Joanne Greenberg
The Lord Of The Rings
by: Tolkien
The Hobbits
by: Tolkien
The Hipster Handbook
by: Robert Lanham
Refusing Heaven
by: Jack Gilbert
The Human Stain
by: Philip Roth
Stealing Jesus: How Fundamentalism Betrays Christianity
by: Bruce Bawer
While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within
by: Bruce Bawer
Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace
by: Maxine Hong-Kingston
The Woman Warrior
by: Maxine Hong-Kingston
A Country That Works: Getting America Back on Track
by: Andy Stern
Living for Change
by: Grace Lee Boggs
A Place at the Table: The Gay Individual in American Society
by: Bruce Bawer
Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the 1991 Gulf War
by: John R. MacArthur
The Selling of "Free Trade": Nafta, Washington, and the Subversion of American Democracy
by: John R. MacArthur
From the Plantation to the Penitentary
by: Winton Marsales
Armed Madhouse
by: Greg Palast
Grave Matters
by: Mark Harris
Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid
by: Jimmy Carter
Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis
by: Jimmy Carter
A People's History of the United States
by: Howard Zinn
One Party Country
by: Tom Hamburger, Peter Wallsten
The Jungle
by: Upton Sinclair
Catch 22
by: Joseph Heller
Off The Grid
by: Lori Ryker
Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone
by: Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Cheryl Wheeler
by: Sylvia Hotel
The God Delusion
by: Richard Dawkins
Long Time Gone : A Black Panther's True-Life Story of His Hijacking and Twenty-Five Years In Cuba
by: William Lee Brent
Subscription to Reason Magazine
Nick Galespie
A Brief History of Disbelief
by: Jonathan Miller
Iraq & The Lessons of Vietnam
by: Marilyn Young
Washington on $10 Million Dollars a Day
by: Ken Silverstein
Private Warriors
by: Ken Silverstein
Scattered Pictures
by: Imam Zaid Shakir
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.
WHOSE TRADE ORGANIZATION?
by: Lori Wallach
Invasion of the Party Snatchers: How the Holy Rollers and the Neocons Destroyed the GOP
by: Vic Gold
THE GENIUS OF IMPEACHMENT
by: John Nichols
Poetry...(assorted books)
by: Martín Espada
The Far Enemy: Why Jihad Went Global
by: Fawaz a. Gerges
Journey of the Jihadist: Inside Muslim Militancy
by: Fawaz a. Gerges
Nickel and Dimed
by: Barbara Ehrenreich
Bait and Switch
by: Barbara Ehrenreich
Dancing in the Streets
by: Barbara Ehrenreich
Cultural Amnesia
by: Clive James
Reclaiming Conservatism
by: Anthony Romero
In Defense of Our America
by: Anthony Romero
The Terror Presidency
by: Jack Goldsmith
Poetry
by: Robert Bly
...more to be added later.
Clothing
Smart Wools - Web Site
Music
Pick A Bigger Weapon
by: The Coup
Automotive
100% Electric Car