Nerve 15 - Round-up of Recommended Reads

Round-up of Recommended Reads

Elinor Ostrom has just won the Nobel Prize for Economics - the first woman ever - for her pioneering work showing that management of resources and land is better served by co-operative stewardship than by state control or free market forces - hurrah!

To celebrate this sanity here's a few books reflecting this thinking: "Urgent Message from Mother: Gather the Women, Save the World" by Jean Shinoda Bolen (Conari Press £14.50) is an eloquent call to action for women to save our planet and our lives, showing how the cult of masculinity is endangering us all. Frances Moore Lappe you may remember from "Diet for a Small Planet". Howard Zinn reckons she is one of the small number of people in every generation who are forerunners, who swerve past the barriers of greed and power to hold a torch high for the rest of us. Check her out in "Getting a Grip: Clarity, Creativity & Courage in a World Gone Mad" (Small Planet Media £11.95). We've mentioned Wangari Maathai before, the Kenyan leader who helps to restore indigenous forests while assisting rural women by paying them to plant trees in their villages. Now there's a children's book about her called "Wangari's Trees for Peace" by Jeanette Winter (Harcourt £11.99). Buy it for the young ones in your life and weep with joy.

"Everywhere a Guest, Nowhere at Home: a New Vision of Israel & Palestine" by Kim Chernin (North Atlantic Books £16.50) invokes a phrase commonly used to describe the fate of Jewish people and examines the psychological forces that have kept her & other Jews from understanding the suffering of Palestinians, now in a similar predicament. It's a courageous and open-hearted portrayal of her journey and vision of a new beginning. "Burn This Book" edited by Toni Morrison (Harper Collins £10.99) is an anthology of PEN writers, such as Orhan Pamuk and Salman Rushdie, speaking out on the power of the word. PEN is dedicated to protecting the right of all humanity to create & communicate freely. As Toni says, "Writers can disturb the social oppression that functions like a coma on the population, a coma despots call peace." And long may they disturb. One of our home-grown disturbers of the "peace" is Tony Benn. "Letters to My Grandchildren: Thoughts on the Future" (Hutchinson £18.99) is written to his ten grandchildren and their generation, urging them to question everything, reject the pessimism & cynicism prevalent today and above all have confidence in themselves. "Trickster Makes This World: How Disruptive Imagination Created Culture" by Lewis Hyde (Canongate £8.99) celebrates the playful, mischievous, subversive spirit which creates the best art and inspires the best artists. Ranging from Hermes to Picasso to Frederick Douglass, it encourages us to think and see afresh. In "First As Tragedy, Then As Farce" Slavoj Zizek (Verso £7.99) asks why can't we bring forces to bear to address poverty & environmental disaster when we can bail out the banking system so spectacularly? The tragedy being 9/11 and the farce being economic meltdown, he calls on the Left to reinvent itself in the light of our desperate historical situation.

So we have been urged, disturbed, encouraged and called on. Surely it's time for a bit of light relief. If you were in Bold St in May you may have encountered the Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Gospel Choir performing an exorcism in Tescos and paying a visit to NfN to give us their blessings. It was a riot - they narrowly escaped the mounted police sent after them and gave us performance theatre at its best. Have a read of Reverend Billy's book "What Would Jesus Buy? Fabulous Prayers in the Face of the Shopocalypse" (Public Affairs £7.99). "I ate at McDonald's today and I feel terrible, what can I do?" Rev Billy: "Pick up some trash." And if you need some help surviving the combined madness of religion and commercialism in these winter months, we have just the thing: "The Atheist's Guide to Christmas" edited by Ariane Sherine, creator of "There's Probably No God…" bus ads (Friday Books £12.99). Combining comedy, science, philosophy, arts and storytelling, it's the book for every atheist.

Happy Blasphemy!

All available at News From Nowhere Bookshop 96 Bold St Liverpool L1 4HY 0151 708 7270 www.newsfromnowhere.org.uk (online ordering from the REAL Amazons – boycott union-busting Amazon!)

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