John Berg's Book
Reviews
Books by my friends
The following books are a) by friends of mine, and b) worth reading
in their own right. The list is not comprehensive. Note
to my friends: if I left your book out, it was an oversight.
Please send me email (jberg@world.std.com)
about your book.
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Deborah Levenson-Estrada, Trade
Unionists Against Terror : Guatemala City, 1954-1985 (1994) is a wonderful
story of Coca-Cola workers in Guatemala and their struggle to organize
a union and improve their lives. Before I read the book, I thought
from the title that it would be mostly an exposé of state terror
against the working class, but it is much more than that. Through
oral histories, Debbie develops a profound understanding of the way in
which Guatemalan workers develop their personal ideologies, and the role
of such ideologies in their commitment to the struggle.
-
George Katsiaficas, The
Subversion of Politics : European Autonomous Social Movements and the Decolonization
of Everyday Life (Revolutionary Studies) (1997). George tells
the stories of the German and Italian (and others, to a lesser extent)
autonomous social movements of the 1970s and 1980s, and uses those stories
to develop a theory of decentralized, autonomous revolutionary social change.
It is linked to George's earlier book:
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George Katsiaficas, The
Imagination of the New Left : A Global Analysis of 1968 (1987), which
is just what the name implies. George proposes the "erotic" theory
of spontaneous spreading of revolutionary consciousness and action.
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Carol S. Robb was campus minister at Suffolk University when I started
working there. I never would have believed that I would get involved
in a religious organization--but I ended up spending years on the board
of the Boston-Cambridge Ministry in Higher Education, as their in-house
atheist. Carol first introduced be to the concept of Marxist-feminism.
She now teaches at a theological school in Marin County. Her book,
Equal
Value : An Ethical Approach to Economics and Sex (1997), is a wonderful
synthesis of feminism, class analysis, and ethical critique of today's
major public policy issues.
-
Barbara Brandt, Whole
Life Economics: Revaluing Daily Life (1995) is listed as "out of print"
by Amazon, but I believe that you can still order it from the publisher,
New Society--so if the link from the title does not work, try to reach
them. It is an excellent book, making a strong case that our personal
and social lives are harmfully distorted by the capitalist rule that the
value of everything must be measured in money. But Barbara does not
stop with criticism: she goes on to tell her readers
about the many efforts being made to replace money values with human values.
This book is worth searching for.
-
Fred Marchant, Tipping
Point, is a collection of poems by my friend and colleague. Fred
was in the military during the Vietnam War when discovered that he was
a conscientious objector to war. The title poem tells of this experience,
and how he felt about it. The whole book is great--highly recommended.
-
Fred's new book, Full
Moon Boat, came out in the fall of 2000.
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A few years ago the college-age son of my colleague, Alexandra Todd, learned
that he had a brain tumor. Alexandra took a leave of absence and
devoted herself to helping Drew recover (which he has, completely).
Drew was cured by surgery--but, with Alexandra's help, he found the strength
to cope with the surgery through mediation, macrobiotics, and other Eastern
medical traditions. Alexandra's book Double
Vision : An East-West Collaboration for Coping With Cancer tells the
fascinating story of her own research, Drew's treatment and recovery, and
the total lack of interest in these techniques on the part of Western-style
medical practitioners. If you or someone you know has cancer, this
book is also a very useful guide to alternative treatment possibilities.
It even has recipes!
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Anne Cammisa, my colleague at Suffolk, has just published Welfare
Policy in American Politics (1998), a study of the reality and the
rhetoric of welfare reform. It's a wonderful, clear explanation of
what happened in 1995 and immediately after; she is now working on a second
edition.
-
Teodros Kiros, a former colleague at Suffolk and present collaborator at
New
Political Science, has just edited Explorations
in African Political Thought: Identity, Community, Ethics. The
book, with a preface by K. Anthony Appiah, collects essays by Africa's
leading philosophers.
-
Teodros's earlier book, Self-Construction
and the Formation of Human Values: Truth, Language, and Desire , which
won the Michael Harrington Prize of the Caucus for a New Political Science
in 1999, has now been issued in paperback format.
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Revised February 3, 2003