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Book Recommendations:
A lot of people have been asking me for book recommendations. Here are some books I like, that have been important to me. They are in two categories. The first consists of books I've loved that have been core to my understanding, and the second is books I've just loved. Within each category they are arranged alphabetically by author. I will try to add books to the list as often as I have time.
If you're interested in reading these, I would first recommend you either get them from a library or buy them from independent bookstores near to you. If you don't live near an independent bookstore and you still want to buy them you can either order them through Booksense or Amazon.
Booksense is a website of the Independent Booksellers Association. The way the website works is that you give them your zipcode, city, and the book name, and they will then supply you with the name of the closest independent bookstore that carries the book. You can then either pick it up at that store or order it and have it mailed to you.
Amazon is, well, Amazon. You know how to use it.
If you order through either Booksense or Amazon I get a commission. That's groovy that I get a commission, but all other things being equal, it's still best if you check them out of the library or order them through your local neighborhood independent bookstore to support them.
CORE BOOKS:
Pentagon of Power: The Myth of the Machine
by Lewis Mumford
Lewis Mumford was one of the 20th century's most important philosophers, and the two-volume set Myth of the Machine (Volume 1 is Technics and Human Development; and Volume 2 is The Pentagon of Power) are probably his most important books: the summation of his life's work. In writing as elegant as it is clear, Mumford makes plain the death urge that has always underlain civilization, which Mumford calls "the machine," and later "the megamachine." This is a social structure organized not around any organic human needs, but around the "needs" of the machines that have come to characterize and control our lives. These are crucial, incisive, devastating books. I cannot praise them highly enough. |
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Myth of the Machine: Technics and Human Development
by Lewis Mumford
Lewis Mumford was one of the 20th century's most important philosophers, and the two-volume set Myth of the Machine (Volume 1 is Technics and Human Development; and Volume 2 is The Pentagon of Power) are probably his most important books: the summation of his life's work. In writing as elegant as it is clear, Mumford makes plain the death urge that has always underlain civilization, which Mumford calls "the machine," and later "the megamachine." This is a social structure organized not around any organic human needs, but around the "needs" of the machines that have come to characterize and control our lives. These are crucial, incisive, devastating books. I cannot praise them highly enough. |
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Pacifism
As Pathology: Reflections on the Role of Armed Struggle in
North America
by Ward Churchill, Ryan Churchill
This is an extraordinarily important little book that cuts
to the heart of why our movements to bring about social and
environmental justice always fail. The fundamental question
is: is violence ever an acceptable tool to help bring about
social change? This is probably the most important question
of our time, yet so often discussions around it fall into
cliche and magical thinking: that somehow if we are merely
good enough and nice enough people the state will stop using
its violence to exploit us all. In this book the authors go
through all of the arguments used by pacifists, and shoot
them down, using tremendous scholarship and logic. Gandhi
is often given as an example of a pacifist achieving his goal,
but Gandhi's success comes at the end of a hundred year struggle--often
violent--for independence by the Indians. How far could Martin
Luther King Jr have gone were it not for the African-Americans
taking to the streets? The authors don't, of course, argue
for blind, unthinking violence, they merely argue against
blind, unthinking nonviolence. A desperately important book.
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In Search of the Primitive: A Critique of Civilization
by Stanley Diamond, Eric R. Wolf (Designer)
I love this book,
and refer to it constantly, both in my life and in my books.
It has the best first sentence of any book I've ever read: "Civilization
originates in conquest abroad and repression at home." And the
book takes off from there. It is an extraordinary exploration
of the indigenous peoples with whom Diamond worked, and explores
the differences between, for example, indigenous and civilized
moralities. Here is what he wrote about morality in a civilized
world: 'Our moral syntax has no predicate. Hence we speak of
doing good, good for its own sake, or evil. We convert each
to a pure substantive, beyond experience, abstract. That is
what [anthropologist] Paul Radin meant when he observed that
the subject (or object) to which love, remorse, sorrow, may
be directed is regarded as secondary in our civilization. All
have the rank of virtues as such: they are manifestations of
God's if not of Man's way. But among primitives . . . the converse
holds. Morality is behavior, values are not detached, not substantives;
the good, the true, the beautiful or rather, the ideas of these
things, do not exist. Therefore, one does not fall in love,
one loves another; and that is an intricately learned experience,
as hate, in a certain sense, also is.' The whole book is that
good. Fabulous. Fabulous. |
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The
Natural Alien by Neil Evernden,
Lorne Leslie Neil Evernden
This is the book that started
me on my career as an environmental writer/philosopher. In my
late twenties I thought I was going insane because so much around
me made so little sense: we're destroying the planet yet people
continue with their lives as though nothing is wrong. And then
I read The Natural Alien, and I realized that it's the culture
that is crazy, not me. This book helped me to see how the insane
and destructive actions of our culture spring from how we perceive
the world, and revealed the hidden assumptions that guide the
destructiveness. I will be forever in debt to Neil Evernden
for writing this extraordinary book. |
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Columbus
and Other Cannibals: The Wetiko Disease of Exploitation, Imperialism,
and Terrorism
by Jack D. Forbes
This book is an extraordinary indictment
of the dominant culture. But it is something else as well. Forbes
seems to be saying that one of the reasons civilization is killing
the planet is because of a spiritual illness with a physical
vector. If I get the flu and then cough all over you, you might
then get the flu, with all of its symptoms. If I have the cannibal
sickness and I cough (or somehow otherwise transfer the disease
to you) you will have to consume the souls of others in order
to survive. You will become a vampire. Or to putthis another
way, you will become a conquistador, a pornographer, a slaver,
a businessman. I read this not only as a metaphor, but as a
possible description of how things really are. And he makes
a very convincing case. Wonderful and important book by a very
wise man. |
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Century
of the Wind (Memory of Fire Trilogy, Part 3)
by Eduardo H. Galeano, Cedric Belfrage (Translator)
Eduardo Galeano may be the world's best living writer and thinker,
and Century of the Wind may be his best book. I've not yet read
his newest. But this is an extraordinary history of the western
hemisphere in the 20th century, told vignette by vignette. Each
paragraph is a story of its own, but they form into a moving
collage that will change forever how you view the world around
you. |
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Woman
and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her
by Susan Griffin
This extraordinary and extraordinarily beautiful book is one
of the most important books I've ever read. Using the words
of scientific philosophers themselves (but putting them into
a beautifully-written, poetic context) Susan Griffin brilliantly
shows how the logic of science is fundamentally anti-life, and
anti-woman. She juxtaposes this to some of the most wonderful
embodied prose you could ever hope to read, and moves the reader
from this alienated state of modern civilized people and back
into our bodies. Words cannot do this book justice. |
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The
Politics of Experience
by Ronald David Laing
This is one of the best books I have ever read, and has influenced
my thought more than almost any other. He lays bare the presumptions
that are guiding our culture to destroy the planet, with beautiful
writing that is clear when it needs to be and obscure when that
best serves. A truly remarkable book. My own perception of the
ending was different than one other reviewer who thought it
was the weakest point of the book: for me it was the strongest.
I read it lying on the grass in the middle of a public park
so crowded people were stepping over the top of me, yet I was
so moved I could not stop crying. Amazing book. |
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The
Anatomy of Human Destructiveness,
by Erich Fromm
I encountered this book in 1988 or so, and it changed my life.
It is I think Frommís best and most important book. This is
the book that first let me know that the violence of the dominant
culture is not biological in its origin. The book is centered
around the question, obviously, of why humans commit atrocities.
Fromm begins this book by exploring many of the theories, such
as the notion that we are biologically overdetermined to be
so violent. But he conclusively shows that cannot be the case.
He then gives examples of nonviolent cultures, and explores
why these cultures are the way they are. He then concludes with
a powerful and detailed exploration of Hitler, showing how Hitler
manifests the essence of this awful civilization that is killing
the planet. A powerful book that helped form the foundations
of my thinking. |
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OTHER GOOD BOOKS:
A Sorrow in Our Heart: The Life of Tecumseh
by Allan W. Eckert
I have a new hero. I recently came across this excellent biography of the great Indian leader Tecumseh, and I'm stunned. First, by Tecumseh. This brilliant warrior and visionary understood that civilization is insatiable, and that one must never make peace with the culture that uses any means necessary to kill the indigenous, and to kill the land. This is a powerful account of necessary resistance to the depredations of the dominant culture.
I'm stunned also by the writing. Allan W. Eckert is an extraordinary writer, and tells Tecumseh's story beautifully and movingly. The book is very hard to put down. |
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The
Human Race
by Robert Antelme, et al
This is the best and most moving account I've ever read of life
in a concentration camp, better by far than Primo Levi, better
even than Viktor Frankl, and better even than One Day in the
Life of Ivan Denisovich, all of which are saying a lot. The
book pulled me into the daily life in a way I've not encountered
so strongly before. Antelme has a gift for providing details
that immerse the reader in the experience, and he has a novelist's
skill with characterization. This is a powerful, meaningful
work. |
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The
Salamander Room (Dragonfly Paperbacks)
by Anne Mazer, et al
I don't normally read children's books, but this one is wonderful!
The story and writing are very moving, the illustrations are
beautiful. And the message!!!!! The message is wonderful, about
dropping the walls that separate us from the natural world,
inviting nature into our lives. I cannot recommend this book
too highly. |
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Stolen
Lives - Killed by Law Enforcement (2nd edition)
by October 22 Coalition
This book is a straightforward retelling of the stories of hundreds
or thousands of people who have been killed by police in the
United States. Many of those killed were nonresisting and unarmed.
Many of them were children. The stories pile one after another,
until the reader is moved to tears, and hopefully to action.
I spent many days looking over these stories, learning about
these lives lost--stolen--and it affected how I feel about the
looming American police state. |
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Trust
Us, We're Experts: How Industry Manipulates Science and Gambles
With Your Future
by Sheldon Rampton, John Stauber
This is an extraordinarily important book. Stauber and Rampton
lay bare, in clear, easily-readable prose, the ways that corporations
destroy democracy by hiring scientists and other experts to
promote "research" that has as its function confusing the public.
The book is meticulously footnoted. Following back some of these
sources reveals that the scholarship is as great as the analysis.
Their writing style is engaging, and at times even humorous.
I highly recommend this book. If we are ever to reclaim our
democracy from corporations, it will be in great measure because
of books like this one. |
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Links:
http://endgame.org/
The Public Information Network's extraordinary End Game site.
George Draffan is one of the most amazing thinkers and researchers
around.
http://www.inthewake.org
InTheWake.org is the working website of writer and activist
Aric McBay's absolutely extraordinary work in progress, In
the Wake: A Collective Manual-in-progress for Outliving Civilization.
In the Wake covers skills and discussion for dealing with (and
encouraging) the coming industrial collapse. It also includes
discussion and strategy for turning collapse into an opportunity
to build healthy, fair, and ecological communities. Aric is
brilliant, and I can't recommend this website too highly.
http://www.beatingheartspress.com
Beating Hearts Press is a great anarchist distributor in Australia.
http://www.freefreenow.org
The website of Jeff "Free" Luers, Environmental Activist
& Political Prisoner.
http://www.minimumsecurity.net
Stephanie McMillan is a great cartoonist with great politics.
http://www.LiberateFreedom.com
http://www.rootforce.org
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