New Books - May 2010
You've watched the video, you've told all of your friends and family members to watch the video, now you can read the book - The Story of Stuff by Annie Leonard with Ariane Conrad. Leonard elaborates on her previous work to examine in greater depth the nature of our current patterns of production and consumption that are based on a belief in perpetual economic growth, and the critical challenges this system presents to the future of the global environment. Drawing on extensive research and on her personal experiences visiting the places around the world where "Stuff" is made and the dumps where it ends up, she illustrates the enormous and often hidden costs involved in the stages of today's material economy: extraction, production, distribution, consumption, and disposal. She also details more signs of hope and examples of solutions, showing the practical ways people are working to make a safe, fair, and sustainable material economies at the local, national, and international levels.
Also...
Elizabeth Grossman. Chasing Molecules: Poisonous Products, Human Health, and the Promise of Green Chemistry. (2009)
Journalist Elizabeth Grossman (author of High Tech Trash) reports on the weak regulation of synthetic chemical materials and explains how they spread through our bodies and our environment thousands of miles from their sources with still unknown long-term effects. Her work illustrates the alternative potential for new developments in green chemistry to revolutionize the materials we make in order to bring about a healthier world.
Adam Kahane. Power and Love: A Theory and Practice of Social Change. (2010)
Based on his two decades of experience working around the world with teams of civil society, business, and government leaders to address challenges including food security, economic development, peacemaking, and climate change, Adam Kahane relates an approach to facilitating social change based on a balance between seemingly contradictory methods based on power - the desire to achieve one's purpose - and love - the drive to reconnect and unite with others. As Martin Luther King put it, “Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic.”
Michael Pollan. Food Rules: An Eater's Manual. (2009)
Michael Pollan returns with this concise guide for making eating less complicated. Critical of much of today's nutritional science, he starts with the bottom line "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants" and elaborates a set of rules designed to help you move away from the typical Western diet to one based on eating real food in moderation.
Philip J. Dreyfus. Our Better Nature: Environment and the Making of San Francisco. (2008)
Cities and the people who live in them exist in complex relationships with the natural environment on which they depend. San Francisco State University professor Philip J. Dreyfus recounts the history of San Francisco, how the residents of the city remade the landscape around them, and how that history has reflected changes in humankind's understanding of our place in nature.
Jeff Chester. Digital Destiny: New Media and the Future of Democracy. (2007)
From the founder and executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, this book details how large media corporations with the help of lobbyists and pro-business policy makers have used their influence to shape regulation and increase their dominance over the Internet and other digital communication channels. Rather than an open and democratic landscape offering a variety of independent news, knowledge, and culture, the online world is in danger of coming under the control of a few media giants interested only in its commercial potential.
