Growing a Reader from Birth: Your Child's Path from Language to Literacy by Diane McGuinness

Hey it's a book review!! Yes I am still reading, although you can see how my tastes are changing. I decided to do a book review on this book because I just really wanted to talk about it. I also posted the review on my baby blog.
The book is Growing a Reader from Birth: Your Child's Path from Language to Literacy by Diane McGuinness. Obviously I am interested in having a child who is a reader. I think the main reason why I am such a big reader is because both my parents modeled reading as a (very) common behavior as I was growing up. After reading this book, especially the last chapter about current literacy programs in schools, I have been thinking about how I learned to read. I actually do remember bits and pieces of learning, but not where it came from. But when I think about it hard enough, I think that my mom must have taught me before I started school. I remember being way ahead of the other kids, even when I started in the gifted program in second grade. Go Mom!
So, back to the book review. McGuinness structures the book by your child's age, beginning with the first year of life. For each section she reviews the literature on language development. (Her basic premise is that in order to be a good reader, we must first have top-notch communication skills.) She distills the important information out of the most current studies, and offers it to the reader in a coherent fashion. She finishes each section by discussing ways that parents can improve their child's language development, based on the current science.
Many of the tips are self-explanatory (talk to your child!), but she gives important details and ways to test your own communication style. The ideas that resonated the most with me were the difference between a repetitive style and an elaborative style, and, related to that, letting your child guide the conversation, rather than forcing it where you want it to go. The communication styles refer to conversations with toddlers - a repetitive style is one that mostly contains one-word answers and does not bother to expand on the topic under discussion, while the elaborative style is one where the parent adds lots of extra information on the topic under discussion, especially if it is one the child finds interesting. An example of an elaborative conversation from the book is -
Parent: What did we see down in the harbor?
Child: Boat
P: Yes we did, we saw a lot of boats didn't we? Do remember, some were big and some were small.
C: Small boat. Bird.
P: Oh, you remember the birds! We saw birds sitting on the small boat didn't we? Looking for fish. Do you remember what kind of birds they were?
C: Fish birds?
P: No they're called seagulls. Can you say seagulls?
C: Seagulls.
P: Good! That's very good!
The boy in this example is thirty months old. This is contrasted with the actual conversation, where the dad kept changing the subject to try to get the "proper" response from his son. That conversation ended with the boy in tears. Obviously not much learning taking place in that case. The key is to not be afraid to talk more than your child. He needs to hear you, as long as you're giving him a chance to participate as well.
The book ends with a discussion of current literacy practices in schools, and how, for the most part, they do nothing to actually teach children how to read. From McGuinness's examples, it's hard to see why these are the methods that are still predominate. She gives tips on investigating your school's methods, and what programs you can use at home if your school is not using a phonics-based method.
As you can probably see, I really thought this was an excellent book, and I highly recommend it for parents with children ages five and under. I know I will be using all of the tips, as well as modeling reading to my child. I kind of can't help that part!

Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell

This is the first book that I have read by Malcolm Gladwell, but if his other two books (The Tipping Point and Blink) are anything like this one, the man is a genius when it comes to synthesizing information. Synthesizing is not the exact word that I want, but what I mean is he has an incredible ability to bring together information from all sorts of studies, creating a pattern that he shows to his readers to make his point. His point in Outliers is that our notion of success is flawed. We love to believe in the self-made man, the super successful genius who pulled himself up by his bootstraps, came from nothing or nowhere, and became an icon of success. However, Gladwell shows that this myth is simply not true; for every super successful person, he can show examples of people who are just as talented, and could have been just as successful, but for whom life did not provide the lucky breaks it did for the success stories. (This is not meant to lessen the genius of those successes in any way - it just gives a different perspective on their lives.)
Gladwell's examples range from the Beatles to Bill Gates, from Jewish lawyers in New York to Chinese children and mathematics. In every single chapter there was something that I absolutely had to share with my husband while I was reading - really, I would have just read the whole book to him if I had the chance. The most fascinating information I found was his description of cultural legacies, and how those continue to affect us on all levels.
I cannot recommend this book highly enough. I was unable to provide a category for it in my labels, but anyone who enjoys reading will enjoy this book. It is fascinating, especially if you are a non-fiction reader. But even fiction readers will find themselves hooked!

Arc of Justice: A saga of race, civil rights, and murder in the Jazz Age by Kevin Boyle

I picked this book up for my woefully unfinished 999 Challenge. It won the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 2004, which is why it made it onto my list. (You can look at my whole list here. I think I've only read about 10% of them!) It also finishes off my New Author Challenge, which is exciting. Good thing that one doesn't take nearly as much work.
Arc of Justice is the story of Ossian Sweet and his family, and the murder trial they become involved in when the Sweet family attempts to move into a part of Detroit where they are not welcome. The Sweet family is black, and in 1920's Detroit, this means they cannot live where they choose, especially following the race-related violence of 1924 and 1925. When a mob gathers outside of their new home and begins throwing rocks and getting more and more violent, shots are fired, although by whom it is never fully clear. Dr. Sweet had filled his house with friends to help defend it from the violence he knew was coming. When one man in the mob dies after being shot from the house, the eleven people in the house, including Ossian's wife and two of his brothers, are taken into custody and eventually charged with murder.
This book is not just the story of the Sweet family and the trial, however. It is a story of race relations in the northern urban areas of America in the 1920's. Boyle does a tremendous job bringing all aspects of the story together to educate us on this issue. I am continually amazed by how little I know about the history of race relations in this country. This book is a must-read for anyone who wants to know more about our recent past.

Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village by Laura Amy Schlitz, illustrated by Robert Byrd

This was one of those books I read over the summer for my Tween Materials class. I picked it up because it was a Newbery Medal winner (2008) and also because it was non-fiction. For the final project for the class I had to read and review 50 books and other materials for tweens, half of which had to be fiction. The majority of my books were fiction, so I needed a few non-fiction titles to break it up.
As I obviously am not reviewing every book that I read this summer here, I chose to review this one for a specific reason. That reason is the honesty of the portrayal of medieval life, made accesible to kids. Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! is written in an interesting format - it is a series of plays (mostly monologues, but a few for two people) written for students at a Middle School. Each of these plays is a portrait of an individual in this medieval village, all of which are first-person accounts by narrators that can be assumed to be the same age as the students reading the book. I expected something fun and light-hearted, and what I got was a very good lesson in what medieval life might really have been like. Not really fun and light-hearted at all, but difficult in many ways, even for the young people of the time. In addition to the plays, Schlitz also includes background information to help young readers learn more about the time period. This is truly an excellent book to include in any lesson about medieval history, or to give to any young person who wants to learn more about this time period.

Annie's Ghosts: A Journey Into a Family Secret by Steve Luxenberg

The story of Annie Cohen is a tragedy, a story of mental illness and physical disability, of family abandonment and secrets. Steve Luxenberg first discovered Annie's story when his mother mentioned having a sister to a doctor in her old age. Steve and his siblings grew up being told that their mother was an only child, so the casual mention of a sister, even one that was put in an institution at the age of two, was rather shocking. It wasn't until after his mother's death that Luxenberg discovered Annie's true identity - she had grown up with his mother, had not been institutionalized until the age of 21, when his mother was 23. But in the family history according to Beth Luxenberg, she did not exist.
Annie's Ghosts is Luxenberg's attempts to piece together Annie's history. He includes not only family details, but also details about the history of services to people with mental illness and mental and physical disabilities. Not only is Luxenberg trying to discover the truth about an aunt that he never knew, he is also searching to find the answer to why his mother would have kept such an enormous fact about her family a secret. He is not even sure that his father knew about Annie, or which of his mom's friends knew. Steve has to reconcile this part of his mother with the woman he knew and loved, and he begins to reconsider some family memories he himself holds.
This is a fascinating story of a single family's history, and all of the little details that tie into that history. Luxenberg reconnects with cousins he never knew, and discovers more about the tiny Eastern European village that his grandparents came from than his family had ever told him. Reading this book forces the reader to compare their own family to the Luxenbergs. Are there secrets that we know nothing about hiding in our history?

The Midwife by Jennifer Worth

The Midwife is the memoir of Jennifer Worth, and it follows a year or so of her life when she was in her twenties. Worth trained as a midwife with a convent of nuns who served London's poor East End in the 1950's. This book chronicles her time with the nuns.
The stories that Worth tells alternate between uplifting, heartbreaking, charming, and hilarious, and her descriptions of the characters that she meets and interacts with are fascinating. As I am currently planning a family, and thinking quite a lot about pregnancy, I found this book even more compelling. Worth gives some interesting history about midwifery and obstetrics, and I found it illuminating that, at least for East End women, the midwife was the only medical attendant they expected to have at the birth. Going to the hospital meant bad, bad news, and a doctor's presence meant only slightly less danger. Yet the nuns provided excellent prenatal care, and obviously excellent service, so no woman wanted anything else. In addition to the stories of the births she attended, Worth tells us stories about the various people she meets in her day-to-day work. From the disturbed, elderly Mrs. Jenkins, to the family of Len and Conchita Warren, this book is full of fascinating people.
I really enjoyed reading this book, and I don't think it was just because of the connection I currently feel to all pregnant women and stories of birth. Worth is a great story-teller, although at times the chapters did not flow very well from one to another. And the end of the book came on me rather abruptly. But I guess when you are telling stories about real life, that is what happens. I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in stories about real people, and is not afraid of the descriptions of birth that of course come along with a book like this.

The 16% Solution by Joel S Moskowitz, JD

The original 16% Solution came out in 1994. I just finished the 2009 edition, which has been updated in many ways. The 16% Solution is about investing in tax lien certificates, which is something that I had never heard of before. Basically it involves buying tax liens from county governments, and then rather than the county earning the interest, you now earn the interest. Only 23 states sell their tax liens in this way, but Moskowitz includes all of this information for you.
The major differences between this edition and the first one is the fact that many counties now do their auctions online, or at least have websites that have very detailed information about the procedure. Moskowitz includes web addresses for all of the relevant counties. He also includes advice that is based on the current economic situation, rather than what the economy looked like back in 1994. The world is a different place now.
At first I was wary of tax liens - I felt that it must be in some way bad for the person whose lien is being sold, the person who has been unable to pay their property taxes. I would hate to participate in a system that made it easier for people to lose their homes because I bought the lien on their unpaid property tax. But in many states, it's actually better for the property owner - at the auction, the person who wins the bid is the one who will take the lien at the lowest rate of interest. Granted, some states seem to make it very easy to foreclose on someone, but I was interested in the states that seemed to be the most fair to the property-holder. All-in-all, this book makes tax lien investing sound like a really good deal. I plan on checking it out when I have the extra money ready to invest. And I will have this book read for when I need it.
I am glad I actually own this book, because then I can hang on to it until I am ready to use the information in it. So of course this counts for the RYOB Challenge. As a non-fiction book, it also gets a Dewey Decimal Number, making it work for the Dewey Decimal Challenge. I mostly tend to read history, so I already have my 900's book. The number for this one is 332.6324, so I actually get a 300's book now. And we can't forget about the Pub 2009 Challenge!

The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan

The Worst Hard Time: The Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl was everything that I'd hoped for in a non-fiction title. Egan begins his tale by introducing us to many of the characters who will populate his history: real people who lived through the Dust Bowl in the No-Man's Land of the Oklahoma and Texas panhandles and the southeastern corner of Colorado, with some stories of northeast New Mexico and southern Kansas thrown in as well. The Dust Bowl is not a respecter of state lines.
The chronological story begins with the wheat boom that brought settlers to the plains. Egan tells us how they were lied to to get them to stay, and how they convinced themselves that agriculture could work on the land. It is tremendously sad, reading how the buffalo were destroyed and the Native Americans removed from their lands. Egan then goes on to describe the first changes, the beginning of the drought, when people did not yet know that disaster was coming. This is a profoundly moving book, as we get to know each of the families - you see how they suffer, how they stick through the worst times, or leave in order to save their lives. It's hard to imagine living through something so terrible, but I suppose that we always want to believe that it can't get any worse. This book is highly recommended for anyone who enjoys reading about history.
I picked this book up because it won the National Book Award for Non-Fiction in 2006. I am reading award winners for my 999 Challenge. You can see my whole list here. Timothy Egan is a new author for me, so here's another one for the New Author Challenge.

The Fearless Fish Out of Water by Robin Fisher Roffer

I have not been keeping up with the 2009 Mini-Challenges, so I thought I would use this book for one of them. There are twelve mini-challenges, and while it would make sense to do one a month, I obviously haven't done that. So I'll do a couple a month to catch up. This book is for challenge # 3 - read a non-fiction book.
The Fearless Fish Out of Water: How to Succeed When You're the Only One Like You is a book about using your uniqueness to do well in your career. The idea of the book is that many of us feel like fish out of water when it comes to corporate settings, or maybe just in particular situations. Roffer suggests that we use that outsider feeling to our advantage. There are seven chapters, each one with an overarching theme, like "Go Fishing For the Real You" or "Swim in Their Ocean Your Way". Obviously she keeps up the fish theme throughout the book.
This would be a really good book for anyone who fears losing their individuality in a corporate setting. Roffer advocates being true to yourself, while still maintaining good business relationships. She does not want her readers to stand out just for the sake of standing out however. She makes it clear that you should always be true to yourself, and not try to force or emphasize difference just to make a statement. And she counsels conformity up to a point, in cases where it shows respect.
As someone who would definitely be a fish out of water in a corporate world, this book made a lot of sense to me. However, I think I would rather eat my shoes than go back to a job in an office, so I won't be trying this advice out in that realm. It does apply to other types of jobs as well though - this advice could be useful in many fields. In the library field, at least where I work, uniqueness is a strength, and it is encouraged. Roffer's suggestions would still work well even in a field that embraces the fish out of water.

Walking Through Walls by Philip Smith

Walking Through Walls is the memoir of Philip Smith, an artist and former managing editor of GQ. It follows his upbringing in Miami with his decorator father, Lew Smith, who also just happened to be a very powerful psychic healer. Philip begins his story when he is a child and his parents are the social butterflies of the town. Lew's initiation into the world of natural healing comes first through diet changes, when he decides that his family needs to eat a macrobiotic diet. From there he continues his exploration into mind-body connections, and begins to learn how to contact and be contacted by spirits. It is these spirits that share with him the revolutionary healing techniques that he will use to perform miracles.
I enjoyed this book at the beginning, reading about his parents' lives in Miami, and his father's decorating business. It was interesting to see how Philip's mother reacted to his father's explorations - she continued her coffee and cigarette habit even while her husband and son were living almost exclusively on brown rice. And Lew's spiritual journey was fascinating, whether or not you believe in any of the things he participated in. But after Philip's parents split up, and his father began to use his "pendulum" the book lost me. Lew just got too far out there, and while he may have performed miraculous healings, the explanations of his methods were just beyond kooky. The lengths that Philip went to as a teenager to try to escape his father and the spirit guides was entertaining, and gave a glimpse of what it must have been like to live with a man who performed excorcisms and received communications from the spirits on a regular basis. I know this was not the author's intention, but the book left me feeling sorry for Lew Smith, the man whose life was hijacked by "spirit guides" who left him no time for himself or his family.

A Rose by Any Name by Douglas Brenner & Stephen Scanniello

This lovely little book is all about the history of roses and their names. As someone who knows almost nothing about roses, this book was a fascinating read. Each chapter is titled with the name of a rose, and the authors tell the story of that particular rose's name. The rest of each chapter is then spent explaining the names of other roses which got their names for similar reasons. Each chapter ends up with at least a dozen rose names explained. There are chapters on roses named after Presidents, royalty, celebrities, food, sports, and saints. I had no idea that there was a world of rose creators out there, vying for the right to name their hybrid creations. It gives me the urge to create a garden based on all peace-related rose names, or a garden full of Shakespeare-themed roses. The book has a very handy index in the back, so that you can look up any rose you are curious about. This book would be a terrific gift for any garden or rose-lover.
This is the first adult book that I've read that was published in 2009, so it counts for the Pub 2009 Challenge. The 2009 Pub Challenge is to read at least nine books that are published in 2009. I never manage to stay on top of new books, so this challenge might get me to read some new ones. This one is also for the RYOB 2009 Challenge, which is "read your own books". This is also something I need help with.

Women in Early Medieval Europe 400 - 1100 by Lisa M Bitel

This was my third book read for the Medieval Challenge, and the second of the non-fiction books I have read about this time period. Actually, the other non-fiction book I read discussed the true medieval time period, 1040-ish to the 1500's, and this book obviously covered an earlier time period, 400 to 1100. But as they focused on different topics, there would not have been much overlap anyway.
I have to say that I loved this book. I have not read a history book that I enjoyed so much in a long time. Women in Early Medieval Europe could easily be used as a textbook for a class on either early medieval history or women's studies. It is an extensively researched and well notated book that focuses solely on women, and their impact on the history of this time period, as well as the time period's impact on them. Bitel does an excellent job of finding the stories about women from the little that is said about them. She points out that the histories written during this time period are by men, and women are only discussed if they are somehow connected to the male main characters, as mothers or wives. The only women that merit real attention are those that either break the rules set for them by society, or who are especially pious and noble, and therefore used by the historians as examples of what women should or should not be.
In addition to the histories written during these time periods, Bitel examines records of laws and accounts, often finding evidence of women when it is not explicitly stated. And of course we know that women existed, because people continued to procreate and extend their reach over the land. Bitel discusses the reasons for why women were included or left out of records to great extent. This is a fascinating book both on the level of women's history and early european history.
Women in Early Medieval Europe is part of the Cambridge Medieval Textbook series. For anyone interested in good non-fiction about this time period, I would recommend checking out any books in this series.
I am also using this book for my first read in the Dewey Decimal Challenge. I am a little bit confused by the way this challenge is structured, but it looks like I can read the books out of order (thank goodness). So this book is for the 900's category - Geography and History (this book's specific Dewey number is 940.1).

Medieval Britain: The Age of Chivalry by Lloyd and Jennifer Laing

This book is my second read for the Medieval Challenge, and the first of the non-fiction books that I have chosen to read for it.
Medieval Britain: The Age of Chivalry is laid out like a text book, and covers the time period from the Norman Conquest in the 1000's to the 1500's. Each chapter focuses on a different area of Medieval life, focusing on Britain, but also giving details about Europe at points. The chapter headings are Society; Castles; The Countryside; The Church; Towns; Trade and Communications; Science and Technology, Superstition and Medicine; Leisure and Fashion; and Intellectual and Artistic Endeavor. This gives you an idea of what information this text has to offer.
Although the information given in this book is interesting, I found it to be too broad of an overview for what I was hoping. This book is definitely a good starting point for someone looking to read more about medieval times. I will have to explore further for a book that delves more deeply into this time period, however.

Crimes Against Nature by Robert F Kennedy Jr

The subtitle to this book is "How George W Bush and His Corporate Pals are Plundering the Country and Hijacking Our Democracy." There's not really much more that needs to be said about what this book is about. Kennedy has a tremendous amount of data to back up this statement, and his writing lets you know that he feels pretty strongly about it. I would say he's pissed, as we should all be. I already knew vaguely of some instances where Bush's appointments for various government positions allowed corporate interests to basically take over, but Kennedy brings to light many many more perversions of power. This is an incredibly well-researched book, Kennedy obviously went to great lengths to make sure that he had the facts to back up what he knows was happening in our government.
It would be really interesting to see what has changed in the four years since this book was written. Parts of it have an almost mournful tone: Kennedy is telling us about what the Bush administration has done so far, and he is concerned about what is going to be affected in the future. It will also be interesting to see what will change with the new administration - most of Obama's environmental and scientific appointments seem to be people who can make the necessary changes. But there is still a big connection with the corporations, and in today's politics, that seems hard to change. This is an interesting factual read, although much has probably changed since the book first was published.
I read this book to finish up the From the Stack Challenge, and it also qualifies for the RYOB Challenge, since they're pretty much the same thing. I am also using this book for the Read Your Name Challenge. For reading my name, I am doing my full first name - Jessica. So this is my "C".

Reading Like A Writer by Francine Prose

I was honestly surprised by just how much I got out of reading this book. It's not that I expected it to be unhelpful, but the wealth of information, and the way Prose conveys it, adds up to a terrific book. In Reading Like A Writer, Prose walks us through classic works of fiction, dissecting passages and pointing out how it is that the masters became masters. In each of the chapters she tackles a different part of writing (sentences, chapters, descriptions, dialogue, etc) and shows through example how great authors used these same story features. With all of the excerpts and detailed information, you might expect the reading to be tedious and dull, or maybe at least pedantic, but it is nothing of the sort. This book was truly a joy to read, one that I would love to actually own a copy of, as it has made me a better reader.
The book's subtitle is "A guide for people who love books and for those who want to write them". I definitely fall into the first group, though not really in the second. While reading the book, it does seem like Prose is speaking to future writers more than she is to lovers of books, but the wisdom that she passes along is no less useful. I have already noticed how my reading has improved, just over the week or two that I was reading this book. I feel that I've been able to get more out of books like Life of Pi and Year of Wonders. Reading this book also helped me to better articulate what was truly missing from The Exchange. The main rule it seems that Prose sets for new writers is that there are no rules, and look to the masters as your teachers. For readers, however, I think that this book is even more invaluable. And on a final note, I thought I should mention that I have not read most of the works that Prose quotes as she makes her explanations, but the quotes that she chooses, and the way she explains them, makes it so that anyone can understand and grasp her meaning. I highly recommend this book.

Math Doesn't Suck by Danica McKellar

This is a fantastic book. It put me off a little bit at first with its teen-magazine-like cover, and its subtitle - "how to survive middle school math without losing your mind or breaking a nail". But McKellar does a terrific job of explaining a lot of difficult math issues in a way that is fun and makes sense. I read this book because I tutor kids who are mainly doing middle school level math. This book gave me a lot of ways to help explain things when kids are stuck.
One thing to know going into it, in case it's not obvious enough from the cover - this is a book geared entirely towards middle school girls. Middle school boys are not at a level of maturity where they can read a book that talks about cute boys, crushes, shopping, and make-up, and take it with a grain of salt. They simply wouldn't be able to get through it. The idea is to make girls feel like it's okay to be smart and good at math. So many girls feel "nerdy" if they're good at science or math, and nerdy is absolutely what most girls do not want to be in middle school. This book is for girls who are tempted to pretend they are someone else, just to be approved of. Math Doesn't Suck is full of examples of successful grown women who use math every day in their jobs, and are glamorous at the same time. The message here is "being smart is cool" and never dumb yourself down for other people. I admire McKellar for using her star power in this way - and I wish her and all the middle schoolers who read this book luck. Middle school is difficult, but if girls can use this book to help them gain the confidence they need, they'll be on the right path.

The Places In Between by Rory Stewart

Rory Stewart spent almost two years walking across Asia, but was unable to spend any time in Afghanistan until the fall of the Taliban. So in January of 2002, he made his way to Herat, there to begin his walk to Kabul, and thus finish his journey. This book is an account of the five weeks that he spends on foot across the snow-covered mountain passes of Afghanistan.
Stewart writes with a great sense of history, and he has a greater depth of understanding of the various cultures that have interacted to make this part of Afghanistan what it is than most people. This history and culture make their way into his tale, as he describes the background of both the people and the land as he travels through. Throughout the book Stewart also includes quotes from another traveler, the Mughal Emperor Babur, who traveled the same route in the 1500's. It is a fascinating juxtaposition.
I enjoyed this book, especially once Stewart found himself the owner of an unwanted dog, a mastiff with no ears, no tail, and very few teeth, who he names Babur. Experiencing the way that Stewart is treated at each village is engrossing - the hospitality he expects is often not forth-coming, but other times the people are overwhelming in their generosity. Perhaps it is because of the constant war, or because he is Scottish, but many villagers are unwilling to interact with him at all. He travels through snow and minus twenty degree weather, living mainly on bread, unless the villagers have a little more to offer him. The journey definitley does not sound enjoyable in any way. With the addition of Babur, Stewart becomes a more sympathetic character to the reader, yet becomes even more unwelcome in the towns he passes through. We know that he does not get killed in these circumstances, since he did write a book about it, but sometimes you're left wondering how he got away.
With the violence, poverty, and unfriendliness he found in Afghanistan, I wonder what Stewart thought of the rest of his travels. He brings them up sporadically throughout the book - stories of traveling through Iran, India, Nepal. I would love to read about those travels, and I find it strange that Stewart chose to write only about his trip across Afghanistan, at least for this book. The book does give the reader a varied and deeper picture of the tribal regions of Afghanistan, more than any other book I have read about the area. For that reason alone it is worth reading.

The Blue Way by Daniel de Faro Adamson & Joe Andrew

While looking for some books on socially responsible investing, I came across this one - the subtitle is How to Profit by Investing in a Better World. But this book is about more than socially responsible investing. The Blue Way refers to supporting companies that support Democrats. The assertion of the authors is that the Republican party is against everything that socially responsible companies are for, or at least their actions have shown this for the past decade or more. And although it seems taboo to discuss the political contributions of companies and CEO's, that is exactly what this book wants to talk about. Many of the companies that are listed in socially responsible mutual funds donate big money to the Republican party, or to individual campaigns. The authors have identified 76 companies on the S&P 500 that they describe as "blue" - contributing a majority of their political donations to Democrats. The authors then set out to show that these 76 companies are more successful than those that support Republicans.
Adamson and Andrew do get their point across. They have run the numbers, and the numbers show that these companies have done much better than the average S&P 500 company over the past decade. Of course, this book came out in 2007, and much has changed about financial markets since then, but it is still an interesting fact. The reason why the authors feel that they have to emphasize their facts so heavily is that conventional wisdom goes against these results. Republicans are traditionally the party of big business. The other main point the authors make is that the reason "blue" companies are more successful than "red" is that their business model is more progressive, in more ways than one. They spend a tremendous amount of the book discussing the importance of progressive leadership, both in business and in politics.
This book was not really what I expected, and it spent more time on topics other than investing than I would have expected, seeing as how the word "investing" was in the title. But the authors did make some very interesting points, and gave me a lot to think about. They discussed changes that certain very large companies have made to make themselves more socially responsible, companies like Nike and Gap, who I didn't realize had made so many steps in that direction. I'm still not sure that I agree that it makes sense to dig into data about political contributions; I also did not particularly care for the incredibly consumerist take on reality. There was barely a mention of the fact that perhaps instead of purchasing stuff from a "blue" company, we could instead not buy stuff at all. But I guess that wasn't the point of the book.

The Universe Story by Brian Swimme & Thomas Berry

The full title of this book is The Universe Story: From the Primordial Flaring Forth to the Ecozoic Era - A Celebration of the Unfolding of the Cosmos. It's quite a mouthful. But that is exactly what this book is about. I wasn't really sure what to expect when I began it - I had picked it up to read for a book club meeting that I never attended. But I thought it sounded interesting, so I kept it in my stack anyway. It certainly qualifies as an interesting read. I guess that I am still just trying to form my opinion of it more fully.
The book begins with a description of the formation of the universe, then following through in each chapter with the developments that led up to our (human) appearance on Earth. Each step forward, from the first prokaryotic cell to the first plant to make it on to land is given a name. These names exemplify how the authors feel about each of these profound steps, and individualizes it for the reader. But at the same time it felt a little silly. Once we get to human civilization, each chapter covers all of our technological changes, especially those that brought us into the current technological phase. It is the belief of the authors that we have lost the sense of the universe that our ancestors had, that we see it now purely in terms of science, and what technology can do with it, rather than as the glorious creation that it is. (I use the word creation, but the authors do not seem to believe in a "creator", at least not in the terms that we often think of it - more that the universe created itself.) The authors contend that if we don't get back some of our wonder and awe of the universe, we are in danger of thinking of ourselves separate from the fate that we have created for the Earth, and thus eventually dying along with it.
This book was written in 1994, and so has a different analysis of the environmental movement than we might see if it was written today. I think that if it was written today, the authors may have had more hope for the future of a Ecozoic Era, rather than a Technozoic Era. I really did enjoy their description of the universe as a celebration of life, and the authors did an excellent job of explaining how if each individual piece of the universe's creation had gone somehow differently, we would not be here. It was fascinating. I guess I've never really lost the awe and sense of wonder that I have about the universe and the Earth itself, but this book may be a good reminder for those who have. Overall, I agree with the authors, but I felt that this book was just a bit too heavy-handed in its attempts to inspire.

Screwed: The Undeclared War Against the Middle Class by Thom Hartmann

Despite its rather inflammatory title, this book is truly an excellent look at what has happened in economics and politics in the last 30 years. It is impossible to read this book and not understand what Hartmann is getting at; he emphasizes it in every single chapter, sometimes multiple times. His main thesis is that democracy cannot exist without a strong middle class, and that the ultra-conservatives who have taken over the Republican party have steadily weakened the American middle class. This weakens democracy, because it creates a feudal system, where a few rich families (or corporations) control the workers who are barely scraping by.
Hartmann documents this process very well, discussing how services have been taken away from the people and our democracy has been changed ever since Reagan became president. He makes a strong case for how detrimental trickle-down economics is, not only to the middle class, but to all of America. He then offers solutions, in very broad terms.
Hartmann ends the book on a very inspiring note. He outlines the steps that we need to take if we want to succeed, and even gives good reasons for why this can be done through the traditional two parties, rather than by creating a third party. I plan on hanging on to the book for a bit, just to refresh my memory on these steps. It has truly inspired me to get involved in local politics, something I've never really done before. I know that our democracy has seriously weakened over the last eight years, and Hartmann makes a good case for the fact that this began with Reagan, and continued through to the present time, even through Clinton's administration. It's up to us to bring it back to where it belongs, and make sure that all Americans have the same opportunities to succeed.