Nerve 22 - Round-up of Recommended Reads

Round-up of Recommended Reads

By Mandy (shop with the real Amazons) Vere

During News from Nowhere's 39th Birthday celebrations, which we organised around the theme of Utopia, I began to realise what a revolutionary and powerful concept "utopia" is. The word has somehow become synonymous with "unrealistic" which is surely an attempt by those who would prefer us never to believe change is possible, to knock any lingering hope out of us. By expressing our visions for a better world we begin the process of bringing them to fruition.

This is what David Graeber, a radical anthropologist and author of "The Democracy Project: A History. A Crisis. A Movement" (Allen Lane £14.99) means when he says of the Occupy Movement, seemingly against all the evidence: Why did it work this time? What went right? He believes the movement had something qualitatively different from previous demonstrations, maybe because it was not just a protest movement but one which began that envisioning of a new world. Tim Gee gives us a cheaper and slimmer analysis in "You Can't Evict An Idea: What Can We Learn from Occupy?" (Housmans £3) which is a view from the frontline of the occupations in the UK and US.

David Graeber is also a contributor to a new anthology, "What We Are Fighting For: a Radical Collective Manifesto" (Pluto £14.99). Edited by Federico Campagna & Emanuele Campiglio, it provides a rallying point for all those who resist the dogmas of contemporary politics and seek a fresh set of alternatives. Urgent and articulate, collective and inspiring, the many voices also include Owen Jones & Nina Power.

When Mark Thomas walked into NfN recently and put us on the guest list for his Liverpool Manifesto Gig we thought maybe utopia was here at last. His "The People's Manifesto" (Ebury £4.99) may be a more tongue in cheek look at alternative possibilities but is no less powerful for that and certainly funnier. I loved the recent proposal that the government should move en masse to a deprived area and not be allowed to move until life there has attained the national average.

The current assault on the poor and dispossessed in the UK has somewhat eclipsed the urgency of climate change, but Mike Berners-Lee & Duncan Clark have given us another terrific contribution to best thinking on the issue in "The Burning Question: We Can't Burn Half the World's Oil, Coal and Gas, So How Do We Quit?" (Profile £9.99). They ask and attempt to answer what mix of politics, psychology, economics and technology might be required to persuade the world to leave fossil fuels in the ground. Sounds utopian? Exactly.

Women are often very good at envisioning how we can work in harmony with the earth, none more so than Vandana Shiva, whose latest book is "Making Peace With the Earth" (Pluto £14.99). In it she asserts that a shift to earth-centred politics and economics is our only chance of survival. Then we have "Paradise Beneath her Feet: How Women are Transforming the Middle East" by Isobel Coleman (Random House £11.99) which introduces readers to influential Islamic feminist thinkers and successful grassroots activists working to create opportunities for women. Lindsey German, in "How a Century of War Changed the Lives of Women" (Pluto £16) also challenges negative assumptions about Muslim women, shows how conflict has changed women's lives and how those changes have put women at the centre of peace campaigning.

Finally, a lovely affordable series of books published by Penguin @ £4.99 ties in tenuously to the 150th anniversary of the London underground, but nevertheless includes some brilliant authors: John O'Farrell on "A History of Capitalism According to the Jubilee Line", Danny Dorling on "The 32 Stops", Richard Mabey on "A Good Parcel of English Soil" and the wonderful Camila Batmanghelidjh of Kids Company on "Mind the Child".

Maybe if we minded the child a lot more, utopia wouldn't be too far away.

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