NOVEMBER 17, 2007

Ecological Economics: Principles And Applications (Island Press, 2003) by: Joshua Farley and Herman E. Daly.
“An introductory-level textbook that reconceptualizes economics with new axioms that address the flaws of neoclassical economics. The textbook, used by nearly 20,000 undergraduates in 2007, proposes a new paradigm that reflects the value of clean air and water, species diversity, and social and generational equity.”

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R o o t s of R e s i s t a n ce:
A History of Land Tenure in New Mexico

“Roots of Resistance: History of Land Tenure in New Mexico, will be available in September 2007 from University of Oklahoma Press. It is a new and revised edition of the 1980 UCLA publication under the same title. The new edition has a new ending chapter and is updated throughout, with a new Preface by Simon J. Ortiz of Acoma Pueblo.”

This book will be available in September 2007. Read reviews here.

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Here is a book that may go a long way in explaining the public inertia and apathy which exists in greater quantity than oil. We constantly hear the phrases about the “way of the world” and “there are no alternatives” from the ruling, plutocratic elites, and these phrases are meant to reinforce the apathy and lack of inertia for change. We need to learn our history and this book uses a ‘dictionary of terms’ approach to introduce ideas.

“All too often, ordinary people across the world are being told that the problem of organization is already solved, or that it is being solved somewhere else, or that it need not concern them because they have no alternatives. We think this is wrong in two ways. Wrong, because the evidence we have gathered here is that (both geographically and historically) organizing is a highly varied, continually contested and negotiated matter; not a matter which is easily reduced to certain inexorable economic laws. Wrong also because, in an ethical and political sense, it is an attempt to persuade people that they cannot organize themselves, and that they need to wait for experts to tell them how they should live.” ( From the Introduction)http://www.opendemocracy.net/arts_cultures/book_week/dictionary_alternatives

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The Dictionary of Alternatives: Utopianism and Organization

Martin Parker, Valérie Fournier, Patrick Reedy

Zed Books | April 2007 | ISBN 1842773338

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The Democratic Socialists of America recommended books can be found here.

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July 5, 2007: “Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing: The New Liberal Menace in America”

By: Stephen Marshall

“Stephen Marshall is a writer and award-winning filmmaker. A founder of Guerrilla News Network, he is co-author of the book True Lies (Plume) with GNN colleague Anthony Lappé. He is the director of the feature film This Revolution, documentary features such as Battleground: 21 Days on the Empire’s Edge, and controversial, politicized music videos for the Beastie Boys, Eminem and 50 Cent. Over the span of his career, he has traveled and worked in more than 80 countries. He lives in New York City.”

“In an excerpt from the new book, Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing, Stephen Marshall takes on liberals like Friedman, who would have you believe that our capitalist system is inherently just and self-regulating when, in reality, it is anything but.” Read an excerpt here.

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The book The Road, by Cormac McCarthy, is one of the most profound stories I have ever encountered. Possibly this is so in that I haven’t seen my own son and daughter since September.

Even without that fact, this book - sparse in the use of prose and dialogue - strips away the veneer of civilized behaviour to expose what love really means and to what extent a parent will
go to preserve the life of their child because that child “carries the fire”.

Not only do our children carry the genetic codes to ensure the survival of the species - they must also carry the concept that there is a purpose in surviving, that we exist to prove to the universe that love IS real, no matter what, that if we are gone, either as parents or as a species, so is love. Perhaps without us, there can be no God.

Read it and weep for us all - we are worth the effort to live. Read it and contemplate the meaning of the monsters among us who wage war and sell death. We are all on The Road now…….

Some Reviews from http://www.randomhouse.com/knopf/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780307265432

“The Road [is] Cormac McCarthy’s new masterpiece . . . Lush, sensuous prose . . . Gorgeous descriptions . . . . . . He evokes Hemingway’s literary vision in order to invert it, first by eliminating the promise that nature can provide a refuge from human destruction and finally by giving us redemption in the form of the love between a parent and a child.”
–Jennifer Egan, Slate

“The love between the father and the son is one of the most profound relationships McCarthy has ever written.”
–Yvonne Zipp, Christian Science Monitor

“One of McCarthy’s best novels, probably his most moving and perhaps his most personal . . . Every moment of The Road is rich with dilemmas that are as shattering as they are unspoken . . . McCarthy is so accomplished that the reader senses the mysterious and intuitive changes between father and son that can’t be articulated, let alone dramatized . . . Both lyric and savage, both desperate and transcendent, although transcendence is singed around the edges . . . Tag McCarthy one of the four or five great American novelists of his generation.”
–Steve Erickson, Los Angeles Times Book Review