Jinxy Blazer's Rainy Day Reading List
Who likes summer reading lists? I don't. I don't need someone
who is hipper and more industrious than I am telling me what I
should read on a heartbreakingly beautiful day. Summer is for
hiking and being outdoors. I hope to present a few of the
books I have found thought provoking during the chillier
wetter times of the year when I tend to read more. I invite anyone who is reading this to respond with their opinions and suggestions for other books that will motivate people to think and act on the upcoming election cycle at jinxyblazer@yahoo.com.
Into the Buzzsaw: Leading Journalists Expose the Myth of a Free Press
Kristina Borjesson
Prometheus Books
This was the first book I read when I returned to the United States from a nice long stay abroad. It has always amazed me how much more information I hear and read in the news in developing countries, compared to my access in the States. This book explains why this is so. Two-dozen award-winning and respected print and TV journalists wrote essays about their personal experiences of being professionally and personally ripped up by the "buzzsaw." The buzzsaw is a conscious and concerted corporate and government effort to kill their controversial stories and their careers. I was not surprised by revelations of the horrific depth and breadth of censorship in the States today. My only hope is that more people will read this book and start to demand the truth from our Fourth Estate. We cannot make rational political decisions without knowing the truth about what our government does in our name.
Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower
William Blum
Speaking of truth, William Blum has done a great job collecting information that is out and publicly available of what the US government has been doing in the last fifty years to anger just about every country and everyone on the planet. I was not surprised that the US government is responsible for the assassinations of democratically elected leaders. I was shocked by how many lives we have stolen in the name of our corporate empire. This is a great book for details to share with your family and friends when they tell you that the terrorists are jealous of our "lifestyle."
Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: How We Got to Be So Hated
Gore Vidal
This is Gore Vidal's commentary on the events of September 11, 2001.
I don't know who deemed it not publishable in the United States
but thankfully the Italians are still on the side of light
and right and issued the book. It became an instant number one best seller there.
Was Timothy McVeigh just a mad man? Is Osama bin Laden Satan incarnate?
I am looking forward to your reactions and comments. Please write to jinxyblazer@yahoo.com with all you feel like sharing.
I need to lighten up a bit here. Here are a couple classics that you have probably already devoured.
Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal
Eric Schlosser
I love this book because it explores all aspects of food
and the strange relationship we have with it here in the United States. Schlosser explains where food comes from, who makes it and what it costs in terms of the lives and health of citizens. We are living in the great Industrial Food Complex. Eric Schlosser has great powers of turning a huge topic into a thoroughly enjoyable read. Even while I was cringing with recognition of an "evil axis of power" that the fast food industry has on the food supply, I was laughing out loud at his wry observations. I can't wait to get a glance at his newest work, Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market
Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America
Barbara Ehrenreich
This is my last suggestion. I figure you have all read this by now, but I just thought it might give heart to all of us who are underemployed, working two or more jobs, or just about getting by. Millions of Americans work for poverty-level wages, and Barbara Ehrenreich walked their walk and wrote about the conditions that many of us find ourselves. The question was, how can anyone survive, let alone prosper, on $6 to $7 an hour? Ehrenreich moved from Florida to Maine to Minnesota. She took work as a waitress, hotel maid, house cleaner, nursing home aide, and Wal-Mart salesperson. She soon discovered that even the "lowliest" occupations require extraordinary mental and physical efforts. This book is a great argument that welfare reform is just one more step toward serfdom.
If you are looking for other titles like these I urge you
to look at www.powellsbooks.com. This great Oregonian bookstore
has new and used copies of all the titles listed.
It also has a great browsing feature on the website
to find other books with similar topics. If you are
monetarily challenged place a hold on your title of choice at your local library.
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