Resource Type: Book/ebook

Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center

Book: “Feminist Theory established bell hooks as one of international feminism’s most challenging and influential voices. This edition includes a new preface by the author, reflecting on the book’s impact and the development of her ideas since it was first published. In this beautifully written and carefully argued work, hooks maintains that mainstream feminism’s reliance on white, middle-class, and professional spokeswomen obscures the involvement, leadership, and centrality of women of colour and poor women in the movement for women’s liberation. Hooks argues that feminism’s goal of seeking credibility and acceptance on already existing ground – rather than demanding the lasting and more fundamental transformation of society – has shortchanged the movement.A sweeping examination of the core issues of sexual politics, Feminist Theory argues that contemporary feminists must acknowledge the full complexity and diversity of women’s experience to create a mass movement to end women’s oppression.”

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Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal

Book: “Fast food has hastened the malling of our landscape, widened the chasm between rich and poor, fueled an epidemic of obesity, and propelled American cultural imperialism abroad. That’s a lengthy list of charges, but here Eric Schlosser makes them stick with an artful mix of first-rate reportage, wry wit, and careful reasoning.
Schlosser’s myth-shattering survey stretches from California’s subdivisions where the business was born to the industrial corridor along the New Jersey Turnpike where many fast food’s flavors are concocted. Along the way, he unearths a trove of fascinating, unsettling truths — from the unholy alliance between fast food and Hollywood to the seismic changes the industry has wrought in food production, popular culture, and even real estate. He also uncovers the fast food chains’ disturbing efforts to reel in the youngest, most susceptible consumers even while they hone their institutionalized exploitation of teenagers and minorities.”

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Even Vegans Die: A Practical Guide to Caregiving, Acceptance, and Protecting Your Legacy of Compassion

Book: “Even Vegans Die empowers vegans and their loved ones to make the best decisions regarding their own health, their advocacy for animals, and their legacy. By addressing issues of disease shaming and body shaming, the authors present a manifesto for building a more compassionate, diverse, and effective vegan community. Even Vegans Die celebrates the benefits of a plant-based diet while acknowledging that even vegans can get sick. You will learn how to make the health care decisions that are right for you, how to ensure your efforts to help animals will not end after you die, and how to provide compassionate care for yourself and for others in the face of serious illness. The book offers practical, thoughtful, and sensitive advice on creating a will, mourning, and caregiving. Without shying away from the reality of death, Even Vegans Die offers a message that remains uplifting and hopeful for all animal advocates, and all those who care about them.”

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Ethics in the Real World: 82 Brief Essays on Things That Matter

Book: “Peter Singer is often described as the world’s most influential philosopher. He is also one of its most controversial. The author of important books such as Animal Liberation, Practical Ethics, Rethinking Life and Death, and The Life You Can Save, he helped launch the animal rights and effective altruism movements and contributed to the development of bioethics. Now, in Ethics in the Real World, Singer shows that he is also a master at dissecting important current events in a few hundred words. In this book of brief essays, he applies his controversial ways of thinking to issues like climate change, extreme poverty, animals, abortion, euthanasia, human genetic selection, sports doping, the sale of kidneys, the ethics of high-priced art, and ways of increasing happiness. “

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Ecology, Ethics, and Interdependence: The Dalai Lama in Conversation with Leading Thinkers on Climate Change

Book: “Powerful conversations between His Holiness the Dalai Lama and leading scientists on the most pressing issue of our time. Engage with leading scientists, academics, ethicists, and activists, as well as His Holiness the Dalai Lama and His Holiness the Karmapa, who gathered in Dharamsala, India, for the twenty-third Mind and Life conference to discuss arguably the most urgent questions facing humanity today: *What is happening to our planet? *What can we do about it? *How do we balance the concerns of people against the rights of animals and against the needs of an ecosystem? *What is the most skillful way to enact change? *And how do we fight on, even when our efforts seem to bear no fruit? Inspiring, edifying, and transformative, this should be required reading for any citizen of the world.”

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Ecological Medicine: Healing the Earth, Healing Ourselves

Book: “This expansive collection illuminates the fertile edges between environmental restoration and holistic healing. Many of the world’s leading health visionaries show us how human and environmental health are one notion, indivisible, in an emerging movement called Ecological Medicine. Contributors include Carolyn Raffensperger, Dr. Andrew Weil, Michael Lerner, Charlotte Brody, Dr. Larry Dossey, Dr. Tieraona Low Dog and Jeanne Achterberg. Their inspiring, leading-edge work is of critical relevance to everyone concerned about reconciling health and the environment.”

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Ecological Governance: Toward a New Social Contract with the Earth

Book: “As our economic and natural systems continue on their collision course, Bruce Jennings asks whether we have the political capacity to avoid large-scale environmental disaster. Can liberal democracy, he wonders, respond in time to ecological challenges that require dramatic changes in the way we approach the natural world? Must a more effective governance be less democratic and more autocratic? Or can a new form of grassroots ecological democracy save us from ourselves and the false promises of material consumption run amok? Ecological Governance is an ethicist’s reckoning with how our political culture, broadly construed, must change in response to climate change. Jennings argues that during the Anthropocene era a social contract of consumption has been forged. Under it people have given political and economic control to elites in exchange for the promise of economic growth. In a new political economy of the future, the terms of the consumptive contract cannot be met without severe ecological damage. We will need a new guiding vision and collective aim, a new social contract of ecological trusteeship and responsibility.”

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Ecoliterate: How Educators Are Cultivating Emotional, Social, and Ecological Intelligence

Book: “Hopeful, eloquent, and bold, Ecoliterate: How Educators Are Cultivating Emotional, Social, and Ecological Intelligence offers inspiring stories, practical guidance, and an exciting new model of education that builds — in vitally important ways — on the success of social and emotional learning by addressing today’s most important ecological issues. This book reveals how educators can advance academic achievement; protect the natural world on which we depend; and foster strength, hope, and resiliency. Ecoliterate is the result of an innovative collaboration between Daniel Goleman — bestselling author of Emotional Intelligence and Social Intelligence — and Lisa Bennett and Zenobia Barlow of the Center for Ecoliteracy. It tells stories of pioneering educators, students, and community leaders engaged in issues related to food, water, oil, and coal in communities from the mountains of Appalachia to a small village in the Arctic; the deserts of New Mexico to the coast of New Orleans; and the streets of Oakland, California to the bucolic hills of Spartanburg, South Carolina. Ecoliterate also presents five core practices of emotionally and socially engaged ecoliteracy and a professional development guide.”

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Eating Animals (book)

Book: “Part memoir and part investigative report, Eating Animals is the groundbreaking moral examination of vegetarianism, farming, and the food we eat every day that inspired the documentary of the same name. Bestselling author Jonathan Safran Foer spent much of his life oscillating between enthusiastic carnivore and occasional vegetarian. For years he was content to live with uncertainty about his own dietary choices-but once he started a family, the moral dimensions of food became increasingly important. Faced with the prospect of being unable to explain why we eat some animals and not others, Foer set out to explore the origins of many eating traditions and the fictions involved with creating them. Traveling to the darkest corners of our dining habits, Foer raises the unspoken question behind every fish we eat, every chicken we fry, and every burger we grill.”

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Eat Like You Care

Book: “Prof. Gary L. Francione and Prof. Anna Charlton, who are long-term vegans, explain why our use of animals for food runs counter to the widely shared moral intuition that harming animals unnecessarily is wrong. They address the 30+ most heard questions and objections regarding a vegan diet, and show that none of our excuses for eating animals works. Packed with clear, commonsense thinking on animal ethics, without jargon or abstract theory, this short and clearly written book will change the way you think about what you eat.”

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Eat Here: Reclaiming Homegrown Pleasures in a Global Supermarket

Book: “Eating locally is a growing movement that is good for your health―but even better for the planet. Everyone everywhere depends increasingly on long-distance food. Since 1961 the tonnage of food shipped between nations has grown fourfold. In the United States, food typically travels between 1,500 and 2,500 miles from farm to plate―as much as 25 percent farther than in 1980. For some, the long-distance food system offers unparalleled choice. But it often runs roughshod over local cuisines, varieties, and agriculture, while consuming staggering amounts of fuel, generating greenhouse gases, eroding the pleasures of face-to-face interactions, and compromising food security. Fortunately, the long-distance food habit is beginning to weaken under the influence of a young, but surging, local-foods movement. From peanut-butter makers in Zimbabwe to pork producers in Germany and rooftop gardeners in Vancouver, entrepreneurial farmers, start-up food businesses, restaurants, supermarkets, and concerned consumers are propelling a revolution that can help restore rural areas, enrich poor nations, and return fresh, delicious, and wholesome food to cities.”

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Dreaming New Mexico Local Foodsheds and A Fair Trade State Map and Booklet

“The Dreaming New Mexico Map envisions New Mexico in the Age of Local Foodsheds and Fair Trade. The front of the map shows current farming and ranching in New Mexico. The back of the map displays 13 technical maps including farms and crops, biocultural legacies, eco-friendly agriculture and many more. The Dreaming New Mexico Booklet compliments the map and provides a more in depth explanation of the artist’s depictions and the dream. It discusses the bridges and barriers to our sustainable food future and additional information.”

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Dreaming New Mexico Renewable Energy Map and Booklet

“The Dreaming New Mexico Map envisions New Mexico in the Age of Renewables. The front of the map depicts the dream. It displays the best areas for wind and solar energy, some of the “green grid” and existing biofuel areas. The back of the map displays the technical maps and provides some of this doable dream’s strategic research. The Dreaming New Mexico Booklet compliments the map and provides a more in depth explanation of the artist’s depictions and the dream. It discusses the bridges and barriers to our energy future and additional information including graphs and energy-related maps.”

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Dreaming the Future: Reimagining Civilization in the Age of Nature

Book: “The world is entering a period of great change. The environment is collapsing. Social disruption abounds. All around, it seems, societies are experiencing breakdown—even collapse. Out of this chaos, however, comes the opportunity to avoid a complete breakdown and instead foster a breakthrough. It is time, argues award-winning social entrepreneur, author, journalist, and filmmaker Kenny Ausubel, to reimagine our future and our connection to each other, and to nature. In Dreaming the Future, Ausubel tracks the big ideas, metatrends, and game-changing developments of our time being led by some of the world’s greatest thinkers. As more communities take the initiative to shape their own future and become more resilient, Ausubel shows how it’s possible to emerge from a world where corporations are citizens, the gap between rich and poor is cavernous, and biodiversity and the climate are under assault—and create a world where people take their cues from nature and focus on justice, equity, diversity, democracy and peace.”

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Dr. Dean Ornish’s Program for Reversing Heart Disease: The Only System Scientifically Proven to Reverse Heart Disease Without Drugs or Surgery

Book: “Dr. Dean Ornish is the first clinician to offer documented proof that heart disease can be halted, or even reversed, simply by changing your lifestyle. Based on his internationally acclaimed scientific study, which has now been ongoing for years, Dr. Ornish’s program has yielded amazing results. Participants reduced or discontinued medications; they learned how to lower high blood pressure; their chest pain diminished or disappeared; they felt more energetic, happy, and calm; they lost weight while eating more; and blockages in coronary arteries were actually reduced. In his breakthrough book, Dr. Ornish presents this and other dramatic evidence and guides you, step-by-step, through the extraordinary Opening Your Heart program, which is winning landmark approval from America’s health insurers. The program takes you beyond the purely physical side of health care to include the psychological, emotional and spiritual aspects so vital to healing. This book represents the best modern medicine has to offer. It can inspire you to open your heart to a longer, better, happier life.”

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Doing Democracy: The MAP Model for Organising Social Movements

Book: “Citizen activism has achieved many positive results. But the road to success for social move-ments is often complex, usually lasting many years, with few guides for evaluating the precise stage of a movement’s evolution to determine the best way forward. Doing Democracy provides both a theory and working model for understanding and analyzing social movements, ensuring that they are successful in the long term. Beginning with an overview of social movement theory and the MAP (Movement Action Plan) model, Doing Democracy outlines the eight stages of social movements, the four roles of activists, and case studies from the civil rights, anti-nuclear energy, Central America, gay/lesbian, women’s health, and globalization movements.”

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Doing Democracy with Circles: Engaging Communities in Public Planning

“Here is the definitive guide on circles with planners in mind. Primal and potent in equal measure, the circle is the basis for all good conversation. It is well nigh indispensable today for those practicing planning as collective communicative action whereby common, meaning-filled places get made. [This book] presses many of the hot buttons for planners looking to be more relevant and effective in today’s world, while also stretching minds into the realm of hearts and souls. Circles may be regarded as a conduit for tapping the precious galvanizing spirit in their communities and (if professional planners dare admit it) in themselves. This is a timely call for planners to consciously circle their praxis … to realize fuller, fairer processes and to facilitate a democratics that can transcend mere politics and contribute to a more just society. –Ian Wight, Associate Professor, City Planning, Faculty of Architecture, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg” (Review)

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DMZ: A Guide to Taking Your School Back from the Military

“DMZ: A Guide to Taking Your School Back from the Military is a comprehensive counter military recruitment organizing manual for youth activists and their allies. This 48 page magazine-style handbook includes everything you need to know about organizing to keep military recruiters out of your school, including detailed legal information, concrete campaign suggestions, and up-to-date statistics.”

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Direct Action Handbook

Practical considerations for Direct Action. ““Direct Action” is a form of creative resistance, and has to be understood as part of an intervention against power and exploitation as well as a step towards visionary, emancipatory forms of society. “

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Discernment: Transforming Power in Daily Life

Workshop Manual “Discernment: Transforming Power in Daily Life is the ability to grasp the inward character and relationship of things, especially when obscure, leading to keen insight and judgment. This workshop offers practices for transforming power and living in accord with conscience in every moment while building conscientious relationships in community, at work and play.”

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Diet for a New America: How Your Food Choices Affect Your Health, Happiness and the Future of Life on Earth

Book: “From John Robbins, a new edition of the classic that awakened the conscience of a nation. Since the 1987 publication of Diet for a New America, beef consumption in the United States has fallen a remarkable 19%. While many forces are contributing to this dramatic shift in our habits, Diet for a New America is considered to be one of the most important. Diet for a New America is a startling examination of the food we currently buy and eat in the United States, and the astounding moral, economic, and emotional price we pay for it.”

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Decolonizing Solidarity: Dilemmas and Directions for Supporters of Indigenous Struggles

“In this highly original and much-needed book, Clare Land interrogates the often fraught endeavours of activists from colonial backgrounds seeking to be politically supportive of Indigenous struggles. Blending key theoretical and practical questions, Land argues that the predominant impulses which drive middle-class settler activists to support Indigenous people cannot lead to successful alliances and meaningful social change unless they are significantly transformed through a process of both public political action and critical self-reflection. “

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Deconstructing Democracy

“Deconstructing Democracy was written as a response to global events and to a series of “democratic elections” across the world that ushered into power, governing parties increasingly antagonistic to the so called democratic foundations of freedom, equality and justice. Scanning the record of democratic countries worldwide, it was hard to identify any one country that could truly shine the democratic values they claim to uphold. All seemed, to some extent or another, to have sold out to incentives of profit and power and the exploitation of people and planet. And yet, mainstream conversations continued to idealize democracy as the royal road to healthy governance. The dissonance between the ideal and the real catalyzed this exploration into the fundamental flaws of the democratic system…The second part of the exploration is the work of Co-creating EcoGovernance. It is not sufficient to resist that which is not working. For healing and transformation, it is essential that we articulate a new form of governance that responds wisely to the challenges and opportunities of our time, and integrates evolving knowledge and wisdom in life-enhancing ways.”

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Curtailing Corruption: People Power for Accountability and Justice

Book: “How do citizens counter corruption and exact accountability from power holders? What strategic value does people power bring to the anticorruption struggle? Can bottom-up, citizen-based strategies complement and reinforce top-down anticorruption efforts? Addressing these questions—and demonstrating the critical role of grassroots efforts in the anticorruption/accountability equation—Shaazka Beyerle explores how millions of people around the world have refused to be victims of corruption and become instead the protagonists of successful nonviolent civic movements to gain accountability and promote positive political, social, and economic change.”

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Cultural Resistance Reader

Book: “This expansive and carefully crafted reader brings together many of the classic texts that help to define culture as a tool of resistance. With illuminating introductions throughout, it presents a range of theoretical and historical writings that have influenced contemporary debate, providing tools for the reader’s own interventions. In these pages can be found the work of Karl Marx, Matthew Arnold, Antonio Gramsci, C.L.R. James, Bertolt Brecht, Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, Virginia Woolf, Mikhail Bakhtin, Stuart Hall, Christopher Hill, Janice Radway, Eric Hobsbawm, Abbie Hoffman, Mahatma Gandhi, Dick Hebdige, Hakim Bey, Raymond Williams, Robin Kelley, Tom Frank and more than a dozen others, including a number of new activists/authors published here for the first time.”

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