Recommended Reading
Progressive America has a vibrant past and a promising future you can discover for yourself in these lively, informative, eye-opening books by leading progressives.
Big-Box Swindle: The True Cost of Mega-Retailers and the Fight for America's Independent Businesses. By Stacy Mitchell. Boston: Beacon Press, 2006.
Big-Box Swindle reveals the vast web of benefits arising from local independent businesses and the equally vast web of costs arising from remote corporate retail--the national big box stores, mall stores, and fast food chains. Mitchell's robust research and principled analysis confirms that corporate retail power weakens local communities, defunds local governments, reduces consumer choice, and erodes our democracy and our prosperity.
Democracy's Edge: Choosing to Save Our Country by Bringing Democracy to Life. By Frances Moore Lappé. San Francisco: John Wiley & Sons, 2006.
Written by the author of Diet for a Small Planet, Hope's Edge, and other groundbreaking works on the practice of living democracy, Democracy's Edge offers a wealth of real-life accounts of people exercising their civic rights to make a real difference in the lives of people in their own communities and beyond. The accounts simultaneously provide anecdotal evidence of a grassroots resurgence of democracy in America today and practical examples for all of us to follow.
Don't Think of An Elephant!: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate. By George Lakoff. White Rover Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2004.
This short, easy-to-read book is a major contribution to a new shift in progressive culture from negative reaction to positive action and represents a revolution in strategic thinking.
Of Grunge and Government: Let's Fix This Broken Democracy. By Krist Novoselic. New York: RDV Books, 2004.
Saving democracy requires promotion of our progressive values. It also requires meaningful participation of our election system, and it is this second issue which Krist Novoselic, former Nirvana bass-player and current Washington State political activist, addresses. Going beyond the gadget-based solutions of electronic voting machines, Novoselic recommends sensible, tried-and-true reforms such as Instant Runoff Voting and proportional voting—already used by many city governments but not yet widely used at the state or federal level.
The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century. By Paul Krugman. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2003.
This readable book by Princeton economist Paul Krugman provides important insights into the depth of the rightwing revolution which George W. Bush and company are carrying out all across the American political and economic landscape.
The Constitution of the United States: With the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation. Introduction by R.B. Bernstein. New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 2002.
This affordable, pocket-sized compilation of founding documents of American democracy is well-worth thumbing through during a coffee break or on the train to work. The principles which created our nation are the principles which will reclaim it in the coming decades. These documents are also available in many other editions from other publishers.
Rights of Man, Common Sense, and Other Political Writings. Works by Thomas Paine. Edited with an introduction by Mark Philp. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.
Reading Thomas Paine's critique of King George III of England, you will easily begin to think you are reading a modern author's critique of the George now sitting in the White House. Paine's complaint that Goerge was exercising the arbitrary power of a single, unaccountable individual instead of the equalizing power of the law is again relevant today. These classic works are also available in many other editions from other publishers.
The Politics of Rich and Poor: Wealth and the American Electorate in the Reagan Aftermath. By Kevin Phillips, 1990. New York: Harper Perennial, 1991.
A former Republican strategist and longtime veteran of American politics, Kevin Phillips provides the historical background for today's politics. Drawing on examples from the eighteenth century through the twentieth, he demonstrates the predictability of Republican actions and the predictability of the Democratic response, which is always too-little too-late. Better understanding the Republican mind and understanding how Democrats historically have sabotaged themselves, we gradually become aware of the need, and the real possibility, of a dramatic change in Democratic thinking—away from the Republican agenda and toward our own.
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