Tikkun Recommends

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave
Frederick Douglass
Sterling Publishing, 2012

1963: The Year of Hope and Hostility
Byron Williams
Byronspeaks, 2013

Hate Thy Neighbor
Jeannine Bell
NYU Press, 2013

The acquittal of the man who killed unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin, the release of the fi lm Fruitvale Station dramatizing the murder of Oscar Grant (another young black man) by police, and a federal judge's August 2013 ruling that the NYPD's stop-and-frisk policy has resulted in millions of incidents of blacks being unjustly harassed by police have all contributed to a broader awareness of America's ongoing racist treatment of African Americans.

Perhaps it's time to think more deeply about how we expose each new generation to the history of slavery, segregation, and their consequences. We could start by requiring every middle school child to watch the televised version of Alex Haley's Roots. We would also do well to share the essays of Frederick Douglass and national columnist Byron Williams's refl ections on the year 1963, when southern police set their dogs on peaceful anti-segregationist blacks. Williams's book recalls Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous "I Have a Dream" speech, the Kennedy assassination, and much more.

Another new book to share with the younger generation is Jeannine Bell's Hate Thy Neighbor, a sobering reminder of how the legacy of the past lives on. Bell's book documents the persistence of racial segregation in American housing—segregation enforced by violence against Blacks who try to move into predominantly white neighborhoods. Anti-integrationist violence often persuades African Americans and other people of color to stay out of those neighborhoods, thus guaranteeing the persistence of a racially segregated America. Bell's book offers an important reality check for those who believe that racism is no longer a problem.

The Approaching Great Transformation
Joel Magnuson
Seven Stories Press, 2013

Full Planet, Empty Plates
Lester R. Brown
W. W. Norton & Company, 2012

America the Possible
James Gustave Speth
Yale University Press, 2012

By this point it's old news that the world is entering an age of environmental catastrophe that will totally alter the way most of us live. The problem is that most Americans don't believe they can do anything to avert the tragedy and consequently drown their half-conscious worries in accelerated consumption, thereby fueling the catastrophe. Joel Magnuson, Lester R. Brown, and James Gustave Speth join the community of rigorous theorists who have concrete ideas on what to do in the coming decades.

Magnuson's subtitle, "Toward a Livable Post Carbon Economy," makes clear that carbon-emitting fuel is at the heart of the problem. Magnuson shows how the culture of consumption, which has such deep roots in American society, is doing its best to distract us so that we continue to consume fast-disappearing resources, to the detriment of our own futures. Magnuson envisions a new economy based on reverence for natural beauty, renewable energy, resource stewardship, craft traditions, localization of production, fi nancial cooperatives, land conservation, local health care systems, and much more.

Speth looks more toward a national transformation, recognizing that environmental progress is unlikely until there is real progress on issues of social justice and political reform. As long as there is pervasive economic insecurity, he argues, the economic will continue to trump the environmental. Speth recognizes the need for marches, protests, demonstrations, direct action, and nonviolent disobedience.

Lester Brown's jeremiad, subtitled "The New Geopolitics of Food Scarcity," shows how the increasing number of people worldwide—coupled with water shortages, heat waves, and a land rush in...