Recommended Reading

Politics
Douglas J. Amy. Real Choices / New Voices: Identifies Winner-Take-All elections as the fundamental cause underlying many of the problems that face American society today, and shows how a systems of proportional representation used in other democracies around the world give people a greater voice in their democracy, so they have the tools they need to solve their problems.

Jared Diamond. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed: Chronicles the downfall of civilizations who destroyed the very ecosystems that sustained and supported them, and rings a warning bell for our planetary future.

Al Gore. An Inconvenient Truth: The facts about global warming, presented in a manner that is impossible to deny. (For a really vivid picture, see the movie.)


David Cay Johnston. Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich -- And Cheat Everybody Else.: The government don't have the money for social security, universal health care, or needed research. Here's why. Details the tax havens, loopholes, and frauds that corporations and the super rich are using to excape taxes and foist the bill for our infrastruture onto working Americans.
Thom Hartman. Unequal Protection: the Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights.: How we got where we are.
Steven Hill. Fixing Elections: Stunning expose of the political system. Difficult reading, but highly informative.

Henry Milner. Civic Literacy: How Informed Citizens Make Democracy Work: Identifies proportional representation as a key ingredient to motivate voter interest, along with good sources of voter information. For example, Scandanavian countries subsidize politically-oriented newspapers to provide that information.

G. Bingham Powell, Jr. Elections as an Instrument of Democracy: How voting systems determine the kind of democracy we get -- a system of proportional representation where everyone is represented to the degree that they share common beliefs, or a system that forces you to choose between two parties when neither one truly represents your beliefs.

Ellen Schwarz and Suzzane Stoddard. Taking Back Our Lives in the Age of Corporate Dominance.: Wonderfully upbeat book that demonstrates how the corporate quest for profit has worked to reduce quality of life, but which contains dozens of tips for things you can do to take your life back.

Micah Sifry and Nancy Watzman. Is That a Politician in Your Pocket?: Washington on $2 Million a Day: The skinny on money in politics, and the havoc it is wreaking on our lives.

David Sirota. Hostile Takeover : How Big Money and Corruption Conquered Our Government--and How We Take It Back: Yet another exposé of the intrusion of corporate influence intot he political system.

Economics

Henry George. Progress and Poverty: The first clear exposition of the principles underlying a taxation system that produces a fair and equitable society. The language is old, but the ideas are timeless.

Michael Hudson, G.J. MIller, Kris Feder. A Philosophy for a Fair Society: A succinct exposition of the ideas expressed by Henry George, expressed in more contemporary language.


Health
Sally Fallon & Mary Enig, Nourishing Traditions.: A tremendous collection of traditional recipes from around the world, with clear and concise explanations of their health benefits.