Alan Pickersgill: from my bookshelves
Here are a few of the books on my shelves. I think you'll find them enjoyable and challenging. Give them a try.
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Sandra
Steingraber, Having Faith: An Ecologist’s Journey to Motherhood.
Perseus Publishing, 2001. “Steingraber offers the commonest of stories—how she got pregnant, gave birth, and fed her baby—in a most uncommon way. A cross between the quirkily thorough detail of Natalie Angier’s science-writing and the passionate environmental advocacy of Rachel Carson… Parents to be or anyone concerned with environmental pollution will want to read and discuss this—and act.” —Publishers Weekly, 9/24/01 "In her electrifying new book, Sandra Steingraber, brilliant writer, first-time mother, and respected biologist, explores the intimate ecology of motherhood. Full of beauty and mystery, this month-by-month story of her own pregnancy and childbirth weaves into its telling new discoveries about genetics, the intimate unfolding of embryonic organs, the architecture of the fetal brain, and the astonishing transformation of the mother’s body as it prepares to nourish and protect the new life. At the same time, Steingraber reveals the alarming extent to which environmental hazards—from industrial poisons found in amniotic fluid to the toxic contamination of breast milk—now threaten each crucial stage of infant development. In the eyes of an ecologist, the mother’s body is the first environment, the mediator between the chemicals—both nourishing and dangerous—in our food, water, and air and her unborn child. Never before has the metamorphosis of a few cells into a baby seemed so astonishingly vivid, and never before have the environmental dangers to conception, pregnancy, and to the continuation of healthy human generations been described with such clarity and urgency. In Having Faith, poetry and science combine in both a lyrical celebration and a passionate call to arms." - from the Sandra Steingraber web site |
Buy
it online |
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Putnam, Robert D., Bowling Alone. Simon & Schuster, 2000. Buy it In a groundbreaking book based on vast new data, Putnam shows how we have become increasingly disconnected from family, friends, neighbors, and our democratic structures-- and how we may reconnect. Putnam warns that our stock of social capital - the very fabric of our connections with each other, has plummeted, impoverishing our lives and communities. Putnam draws on evidence including nearly 500,000 interviews over the last quarter century to show that we sign fewer petitions, belong to fewer organizations that meet, know our neighbors less, meet with friends less frequently, and even socialize with our families less often. We're even bowling alone. More Americans are bowling than ever before, but they are not bowling in leagues. Putnam shows how changes in work, family structure, age, suburban life, television, computers, women's roles and other factors have contributed to this decline. (From http://www.bowlingalone.com/) Buy
it online from
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"In the last four years, my research has focused on the underlying value structure of economic theory, its consequences for global civil and environmental life, and the "life ground" and "civil commons" whose understanding is emerging as a resolution to the current world crisis." - John McMurtry, from www.uoguelph.ca/philosophy/McMurtry.html McMurtry, John, The Cancer Stage of Capitalism. Pluto Books, London, 1999. Buy it on-line for $32.95 McMurtry, John, Unequal Freedoms: The Global Market as an Ethical System. Garamond Press, Toronto, 1998. Buy it on-line for $24.95 |
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If you haven't read
Silent Spring yet, you should do so as quickly as possible.
Take a look at the Rachel Carson
web site, and explore the links you'll find there. You'll find
Sandra Steingraber and Theo
Colborn. Steingraber and Colborn have each written very important
books linking public health to the chemicals that poison our environment.
There are also three books by Dr.
Samuel Epstein that will help you understand why there has been
an alarming rise in the rates of cancer over the past few decades.
Carson, Rachel, Silent Spring. Houghton Mifflin, 1999. First published in 1962. Buy it on-line for $22.95 Steingraber, Sandra, Living Downstream: a scientist's personal investigation of cancer and the environment. Addison Wesley, 1997. Buy it online for $19.50 Colborn, Theo, Our Stolen Future. N A L, 1997. Buy it online for $19.99 Epstein, Samuel S., The Politics of Cancer Revisited. East Ridge Press, 1998. Buy it online for $33.95 Epstein, Samuel S., The Breast Cancer Prevention Program: The First Complete Survey of the Causes of Breast Cancer. Simon & Schuster, 1997. Buy it online for $22.00 Epstein, Samuel S., The Safe Shopper's Bible: A Consumer Guide to Nontoxic Household Products, Cosmetics, & Food. Simon & Schuster, 1995. Buy it online for $19.95 |
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I heartily recommend Catherine Macleod's memoir Waking Up in the Men's Room. It traces her cultural journey from Glasgow childhood to Canadian poet, writer and working class communicator. I became friends with Catherine while she worked in the communications department of the Canadian Auto Workers, and then later with the Ontario Federation of Labour. I think you'll like her book.
Macleod, Catherine, Waking Up in the Men's Room. Between the Lines Press, Toronto, 1998. Buy it online for $24.95
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Ronald Wright, A Scientific Romance. Knopf Canada, 1997. This is a fascinating story of a grim future. An archaeologist, David Lambert, learns the whereabouts of the time machine that H. G. Wells used as the basis of his famous novel. His girl friend has fallen victim to "mad cow" disease, and Lambert pilots the time machine 500 years into the future where, he is sure, a cure has been found. Instead, he finds a grim world where environmental degradation has changed Britain beyond recognition. Take it from me - this is a great story, full of hidden literary references. Try it, you'll like it. Buy it online for $17.95 |
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Oscar
L. Arnal, To Set the Captives Free: Liberation Theology in Canada.
Between
the Lines Press, Toronto, 1998. Buy
it online for $21.95 |