Best of 2006 Bookshelf
Michele’s 2006 Bookshelf:
Mira Kamdar Planet India: How the Fastest Growing Democracy Is Transforming America and the World Interviewing a wide range of people, from Bollywood movie producers to indebted farmers committing suicide to tea merchants and U.S. software engineers working in India, Mira gives the flavor of India today, tells how it got there, and gives a sense of where it is going along with what its decisions will mean for the entire planet. Mira is not afraid to break taboos, and she addresses both the tremendous optimism and potential in India as well as the Herculean challenges that the country faces.
Zachary Karabell Peace Be upon You: The Story of Muslim, Christian, and Jewish Coexistence Booklist starred review: “Historians have so often focused on religious conflict–crusades, jihads, pogroms–that Karabell fears many readers have forgotten how often the devout have lived in peace with those of different faiths. To dispel this unfortunate forgetfulness, he develops a wide-ranging narrative highlighting epochs of interfaith toleration and cooperation.”
Aziz Huq and Frederick Schwartz Unchecked and Unbalanced: Presidential Power in a Time of Terror Check out Bob Herbert’s glowing op-ed column in the NY Times about this important book: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/022007H.shtml
Ben Barber Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole From Publishers Weekly: “Barber returns to the clashing models of civilization of his earlier Jihad vs. McWorld, focusing this time on the expanding global culture of market forces he claims will destory not only democracy but even capitalism, if left unchecked. He warns of a totalitarian ‘ethos of induced childishness’ that not only seeks to turn the young into aggressive consumers but to arrest the psychological development of adults as well, ‘freeing’ them to indulge in puerile and narcissistic purchases based on ‘stupid’ brand loyalties.”
David Wallis Killed Cartoons: Casualties from the War on Free Expression The collection, heralded by Gahan Wilson of the New Yorker as “amazing in its range,” features nearly 100 editorial cartoons and illustrations that were spiked by newspapers and magazines because of the potential for controversy. Works by celebrated contemporary artists such as Garry Trudeau, Steve Brodner, Edward Sorel, Ted Rall, Paul Conrad, Mike Luckovich and Anita Kunz are displayed alongside unearthed gems by legends like Al Hirschfeld, Herblock and Norman Rockwell. Here’s an article from the Pasadena Weekly: http://www.pasadenaweekly.com/article.php?id=4397&IssueNum=62
MY TALENTED AND PROLIFIC FRIENDS in 2006…
Since you’ve been so patient about me tooting my own horn on LOCKOUT, please indulge me while I brag on my friends and colleagues, who are incredibly talented and prolific and have published some fantastic books recently. (If I’ve left you out please email me to let me know. )
Anastasia Ashman and Jennifer Eaton Gokmen (editors) Tales from the Expat Harem: Foreign Women in Modern Turkey This charming collection of essays shows how much the struggle to fit in and questions of identity apply as much to Western women adapting to Turkey as they do to Third World migrants coming to the West.
Jake Bernstein and Lou Dubose Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency Here’s what Publishers weekly said in as starred review: “Dubose and Bernstein show in this thorough, rollicking career biography that it’s Cheney-not the more publicly criticized Donald Rumsfeld, Karl Rove, Condoleeza Rice or President Bush-who is chiefly responsible for the most unpopular aspects of the Bush regime: an imperial executive office and foreign policy; abandonment of democratic ideals (respect for government checks and balances, the Geneva Convention, the Bill of Rights and the Freedom of Information Act); and questionable corporate-government colusion (the secret energy task force, Halliburton’s government contracts in Iraq).”
Ian Bremmer The J Curve: A New Way to Understand Why Nations Rise and Fall. Publishers Weekly says: “With this timely book, political risk consultant Bremmer aims to ‘describe the political and economic forces that revitalize some states and push others toward collapse.’ His simple premise is that if one were to graph a nation’s stability as a function of its openness, the result would be a ‘J curve,’ suggesting that as nations become more open, they become less stable until they eventually surpass their initial levels of stability.”
David Callahan The Moral Center: How We Can Reclaim Our Country from Die-Hard Extremists, Rogue Corporations, Hollywood Hacks, and Pretend Patriots David reclaims “moral values” from the folks who have debased the term.
Barbara Fischkin’s Confidential Sources is the sequel to Exclusive: Reporters in Love and War. Both are the “Mulvaney-true” (as opposed to “true-true”) versions of Barbara’s life. Journalism hasn’t been so funny since Scoop. Confidential Sources is the story of the fictional alter egos of her family, including Jim Mulvaney and their sons Jack and Danny (who happens to be autistic), as Barbara and Jim travel the world from China to Mexico as intrepid reporters. Exclusive is the story of the fateful Mulvaney-Fishkin meeting in a Long Island newsroom. (Those of you who teach journalism should order your students to run, not walk, to get these novels.)
Carolina Gonzalez and Seth Kugel. Nueva York: the Complete Guide to Latino Life in the Five Boroughs. Learn how to speak Spanish, dance the tango, or negotiate with a livery cab driver. From two friends who
Ron Hayduk Democracy for All: Restoring Immigrant Voting Rights in the United States Ron, who co-directs The Immigrant Voting Project (www.immigrantvoting.org) with me, explains the all-but-forgotten history of noncitizen voting and details ongoing efforts to restore rights for noncitizens to vote in municipal and school board elections.
Betsy Leondar-Wright The Color of Wealth: The Story Behind the U.S. Racial Wealth Divide For every dollar owned by the average white family in the United States, the average family of color has less than a dime. Why do people of color have so little wealth?
David Marcus What It Takes to Pull Me Through: Why Teenagers Get in Trouble and How Four of Them Got Out (now available in paperback) Booklist says “Marcus, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, was granted full access to students, parents, and staff at a therapeutic boarding school in western Massachusetts. The result is an astonishing profile of troubled teens: foulmouthed and truant Bianca; D. J., on the brink of failing and fascinated with fire; disengaged and depressed Tyrone, from the housing projects in Queens; and Mary Alice, drug addicted and sexually promiscuous. Through his focus on particular teens and their families, Marcus highlights the complexities of modern adolescence–studies show that one in four youths suffers from some kind of behavioral or emotional problem, including higher rates of suicide, depression, and delinquency.”
Nomi Prins’ Jacked: How “Conservatives” Are Picking Your Pocket (Whether You Voted for Them or Not) Each chapter matches a wallet item to a set of political topics. The driver’s license leads to a discussion of gasoline prices, energy policy, and Iraq; the Social Security card leads out to the administration’s efforts to “reform” Social Security by weakening it; the credit card points to bankruptcy legislation and credit card company profits; the health insurance card is a reminder of soaring medical and insurance costs, and the cutting of Medicaid and Medicare, and so on.
Heather Rogers Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage (Paperback) Booklist Starred Review: “America leads the world in garbage, and that is nothing to be proud of. A clear-thinking and peppery writer, Rogers presents a galvanizing expose of how we became the planet’s trash monsters. Americans were ingeniously thrifty until industrialization ushered in consumer culture and the age of disposable goods and built-in obsolescence. But once the public was exhorted to buy stuff whether they needed it or not–and Rogers provides many eye-opening examples of corporate strategies and propaganda–new forms of garbage began to pile up and break down into toxic substances.”
Lucia Suarez The Tears of Hispaniola: Haitian And Dominican Diaspora Memory. For Lucia Suarez, literature does not just exist between the pages of a book, but is part of society and history. Her scholarship and analysis show a rare and important ability to show the links between literature and real life. Her literary analysis weaves in references to history, human rights, sociology, and journalistic accounts of the important issues that pummel the lives of the characters created by Dominican and Haitian diaspora writers: migration, child slavery, poverty, loss, domestic violence, historical tragedy, and contemporary political violence. If only all scholars wrote in such a readable and accessible style
Maia Szalavitz Help at Any Cost: How the Troubled-Teen Industry Cons Parents and Kids The frightening but true story of tough-love schools and the families who fall for them. This book will make you appreciate sane parents.
Debby Waldman A Sack Full of Feathers. Yankel loves to tell stories and repeat the gossip that he hears in his father’s store in the shtetl –but unfortunately, only hears the bits and pieces that make trouble, not how things turn out. So the rabbi decides to teach the boy a lesson by making him see that stories spread and that they can be hurtful.
Tom Zoellner’s The Heartless Stone: A Journey Throught the World of Diamonds, Deceit and Desire Part travelogue, part political and social analysis of the forces that surrounds diamond production and consumption. Beautifully written and compelling.
Aristide Zolberg A Nation by Design: Immigration Policy in the Fashioning of America Even before the xenophobic reaction against European and Asian immigrants in the late nineteenth century, social and economic interest groups worked to manipulate immigration policy to serve their needs. A Nation by Design explores American immigration policy from the colonial period to the present, discussing how it has been used as a tool of nation building.
