Reading Material

Here is a list of what I've been reading lately:

Richard Preston - The Wild Trees. Wonderful popular science book about recent discoveries of redwood trees in California. Turns out the tallest discovered was in the Fall of last year. It's name is Hyperion and it's 379.1 feet tall. Looking up at the 35 foot pine tree in my backyard, I can't even begin to fathom what this tall tree must look like.

Kate Coleman - The Secret Wars of Judi Bari: A Car Bomb, the Fight for the Redwoods, and the End of Earth First! An interesting book, but a bit too critical of her subject. It was obvious that Kate Coleman didn't particularly care for Judi Bari, which makes me wonder why she invested so much time and energy researching and writing about her.

Patrick Hossay- Unsustainable: A Primer for Global Environmental and Social Justice. Even though it is a primer, it's a fairly informative read, linking the political-economic forces of globalization to the natural world. After reading this you truly understand this mess we're in.

David Pellow & Robert Brulle - Power, Justice and the Environment: A Critical Appraisal of the Environmental Justice Movement. This is a collection of essays from sociologists critiquing the current state of environmental justice theory and praxis. Some of the essays are good, even though I don't fully agree with all of the critiques leveled. Interestingly enough, I bought this book at the World Bank bookstore in Washington D.C.

Andrew Dobson - Environmental Citizenship. A bit too philosophical for my purposes. Dobson is an environmental philosopher and I have used his books in the past. The most interesting aspect of this one is that the phrase "environmental citizenship" was coined by environment Canada - a preservationist department in the Canadian government. It stresses individual, civic responsibility to the natural world. I'm not sure how effective it has been, but interesting nonetheless.

Rinku Sen - Stir it Up: Lessons in Community Organizing and Advocacy. This book is an organizing 101 book with lots of case studies that serve as examples for various facets of political activism. It's a good handbook for any would be community activist.

Robert Gottlieb - Forcing the Spring: The Transformation of the American Environmental Movement. I first read this classic text is the late 90's. I revisited it recently to go over his "chick chapter" for an essay I'm working on.

Jennette Wall - The Glass Castle. In between all of this heavy environmental reading I also devoured this excellent memoir. It's beautifully written, and captures the experiences of a young girl growing up in an eccentric family. Wall is a gossip columinst for MSNBC.

In addition to these books, I have been reading weekly and monthly editions of Harper's, The Nation, The Progressive, Entertainment Weekly, and The New Republic.

Oh, and I read two academic articles recently: Heidi Hartmann's "The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism: Towards a More Progressive Union." Read this in graduate school and revisited it recently for the essay I'm working on. STILL one of my all time favorite academic articles. I also read Cathryn Bailey's "We Are What We Eat: Feminist Vegetarianism and the Reproduction of Racial Identity." This was in a recent edition of Hypatia. Terribly classist perspective on vegetarianism.

So, this is my completed list.

Next Up:

Robert Kennedy's Crimes Against Nature
Mike Davis's Buda's Wagon: A Brief History of the Car Bomb
Clifford Connor: A People's History of Science
Elizabeth Engelhardt - Tangled Roots of Feminism: Environmentalism and Appalachian Literature
Barbara Ellen Smith - Neither Separate Nor Equal: Race, Class and Gender in the South
Carolyn Sachs - Women Working in the Environment
Carolyn Sachs- Gendered Fields: Rural Women, Agriculture and Environment
Julian Agyeman. Sustainable Communities and the Challenge of Environmental Justice.
Jeffrey Myers - Converging Stories: Race, Ecology and Environmental Justice in American Literature.