Suggest NON-FICTION books for our next official discussion

What would you like to read and discuss next? Please provide a link to where we can learn more about your suggestions on Amazon.com.

I came across this book review in The Week (which as I've said before is my favorite magazine).

The Kingdom of Infinite Space: A Fantastical Journey Around Your Head
by Raymond Tallis
(Yale, $28)

There's an awful lot going on in your head, says physician and poet Raymond Tallis. A liter of saliva accumulates in your mouth every day without your notice. Mucus forms in the nasal passages and waxy cerumen in the ears. You yawn and blink involuntarily. You blush when you least want to signal embarrassment. Of course, the head is also the place we do our thinking, the "capital" of our "first-person world." But it's hard to imagine exactly how our electrical impulses come to be experienced as thought. "Earwax is in my head," Tallis muses. "But are my thoughts in my head?"

Tallis' playful new book is on one level "a wonderful treasury of stupefying facts," said Michael Simkins in the London Mail on Sunday. He aims first and foremost to make his readers "astonished tourists of the piece of the world that is closest to them," and he succeeds in illuminating what's extraordinary about such everyday acts as speaking, sneezing, spitting, breathing, sweating, laughing, and smiling. But his larger objective is to examine where the self resides, said Andrew Robinson in New Scientist. Tallis is "exasperated by brain worship"

Great suggestion DWill. At first I wondered if there would be enough to discuss, but just reading the last paragraph of your post got me thinking of questions and ideas.

I would like to suggest:

Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism by Kevin Phillips

http://books.google.com/books?id=aJJnHw ... ient=opera

[ "Phillips explains that these are the fruits of what he calls the "financialization" of the United States: the decline of manufacturing and the rise of finance as the central driver of the nation's GDP. It is not a change Phillips believes happened by chance. Former Nixon White House strategist and political and economic critic Kevin Phillips, whose latest book BAD MONEY: RECKLESS FINANCE, FAILED POLITICS, AND THE GLOBAL CRISIS OF AMERICAN CAPITALISM explores the role that the crumbling financial sector played in the now-fragile American economy."

"In 1969, he published THE EMERGING REPUBLICAN MAJORITY, which forecasted a major shift to the right in electoral politics - a prediction that has been remarkably accurate."

"If you read only one book on the route to this financial meltdown, I recommend this one: BAD MONEY: RECKLESS FINANCE, FAILED POLITICS, AND THE GLOBAL CRISIS OF AMERICAN CAPITALISM. The author, Kevin Phillips, has a history of being way ahead of the curve. As a young man working for Richard Nixon, he wrote THE EMERGING REPUBLICAN MAJORITY, a book that uncannily predicted how the GOP would regain power in Washington. Kevin Phillips saw our current crisis coming a long time ago. And in one book of historical insight after another, laid out the clues he was tracking. As recently as last spring in the AMERICAN PROSPECT magazine, Phillips wrote that what he thought was about to happen would be "unusual and potentially tragic."

In the preface of his book, he has written that these things usually come to fruition in August and September. And sure enough, here we are coping in September with the effects of bad money."

- Bill Moyers ]

Some work by the author:

http://harpers.org/archive/2008/05/0082023

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/09192008/profile.html

Highly seasoned author on a topic that is very relevant to the current economic events that everyone obviously should have (and many obviously did) see coming for sometime now. Should be a great introduction to a failing system, Kevin Philips who is described as having the potential to see through the crisis and offer hope on the horizon many may have trouble picturing just now.

Phillips seems to be an interesting guy. I've heard his name for years but have never read one of his books. Saw him on Bill Moyers the other night. He is one who might be as free as possible of partisan blinders. He can't be classified at this point as either liberal or conservative. Good recommendation.

Kevin Phillips was on the Diane Rehm show today. Here I'll post a link to it.

11:00The Future of American Capitalism

Some say the efforts to address the economic crisis in the U.S. could lead to long-term and fundamental changes in the American model of capitalism. A look at possible changes ahead in our economic system.
Guests

Kevin Phillips, political and economic commentator and former Republican White House Strategist, his 13 books include "American Theocracy" and "American Dynasty."

Kevin Philips on The Diane Rehm Show

I was able to catch Kevin Phillips on Bill Moyers and listen to him on Diane Rheams this morning: a very important voice in exposing the corruption, fraud and delusion that has gripped our elected officials and their directing economic masters. I think reading his book right after Bacevich's "Limits of Power" could very well lead to Booktalk members rallying for revolution!

I would rather we take a different approach in sequence after Bacevich's essential criticality of a flawed system...and read a book that challenges us to imagine what sort of economic system to we want...one that doesn't simply say what's wrong (and Bacevich's text is more than just that) but that carefully, methodically and thoughtfully tries to answer: if not this system, then what?

I think Michael Albert's Parecon: Life Beyond Capitalism is precisely that sort of book. Here is the link to the entire book on-line, and you can see for yourself if it delivers the goods http://www.zmag.org/zparecon/pareconlac.htm

I am not an economist, but I think every citizen has an obligation to understand the fundamentals...and, more importantly, to be able to support an economy that reflects their values and principles. I think Albert's Parecon will provide ample opportunity for us to imagine the kind of economy we desire and are willing to support.

Excellent advocation, I have been effectively swayed.



Except how can you get a hard copy?

I haven't been a member for very long so I'm sorry if this has already been done or discussed.

I thought maybe In Cold Blood by Truman Capote. I haven't read it yet but am planning to at some stage and have heard good things about it.

http://www.amazon.com/Cold-Blood-Truman ... 0679745580
Amazon.com Review
"Until one morning in mid-November of 1959, few Americans--in fact, few Kansans--had ever heard of Holcomb. Like the waters of the river, like the motorists on the highway, and like the yellow trains streaking down the Santa Fe tracks, drama, in the shape of exceptional happenings, had never stopped there." If all Truman Capote did was invent a new genre--journalism written with the language and structure of literature--this "nonfiction novel" about the brutal slaying of the Clutter family by two would-be robbers would be remembered as a trail-blazing experiment that has influenced countless writers. But Capote achieved more than that. He wrote a true masterpiece of creative nonfiction. The images of this tale continue to resonate in our minds: 16-year-old Nancy Clutter teaching a friend how to bake a cherry pie, Dick Hickock's black '49 Chevrolet sedan, Perry Smith's Gibson guitar and his dreams of gold in a tropical paradise--the blood on the walls and the final "thud-snap" of the rope-broken necks.

I'm looking through the new releases and can't find anything too exciting.