Books You Should Read About Local Economies

I highly recommend the following books for anyone interested in local economies and sustainability.

Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future

Author: Bill McKibbon
Publisher: Holt Rinehart and Winston
Published: March 1, 2008 paperback
isbn: 978080508722

This is the book we recommend first as a wonderful introduction to how important our local economies are.

Description
"Masterfully crafted, deeply thoughtful and mind-expanding.""--Los Angeles Times" In this powerful and provocative manifesto, Bill McKibben offers the biggest challenge in a generation to the prevailing view of our economy. "Deep Economy "makes the compelling case for moving beyond "growth" as the paramount economic ideal and pursuing prosperity in a more local direction, with regions producing more of their own food, generating more of their own energy, and even creating more of their own culture and entertainment. Our purchases need not be at odds with the things we truly value, McKibben argues, and the more we nurture the essential humanity of our economy, the more we will recapture our own.

Big-Box Swindle: The True Cost of Mega-Retailers and the Fight for America's Independent Businesses

Author: Stacy Mitchell
Publisher: Beacon Press
Published: October 2007 paperback
isbn: 9780807035016

On locally owned, independent business

Description
An expert's in-depth exploration of the enormous impact of mega-retailers--and what communities and independent businesses can do. Large retail chains have become the most powerful corporations in America and are rapidly transforming our economy, communities, and landscape. In this deft and revealing book, Stacy Mitchell illustrates how mega-retailers are fueling many of our most pressing problems, from the shrinking middle class to rising water pollution and diminished civic engagement. Mitchell's investigation takes us from the suburbs of Cleveland to a fruit farm in California, the stockroom of an Oregon Wal-Mart, and a Pennsylvania town's Main Street. She uncovers the shocking role government policy has played in the expansion of mega-retailers and builds a compelling case that communities composed of many small businesses are healthier and more prosperous than those dominated by large chains. More than a critique, The Big-Box Swindle draws on real life to show how some communities are successfully countering the spread of mega-retailers and rebuilding their local economies. Mitchell describes innovative approaches--from cutting-edge land-use policies to small-business initiatives--that together provide a detailed road map to a more prosperous and sustainable future.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life

Author: Barbara Kingsolver
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Published: May 2008 paperback
isbn: 9780060852566

On local foods


Description
Author Barbara Kingsolver and her family abandoned the industrial-food pipeline to live a rural life--vowing that, for one year, they'd only buy food raised in their own neighborhood, grow it themselves, or learn to live without it. Part memoir, part journalistic investigation, "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" is an enthralling narrative that will open your eyes in a hundred new ways to an old truth: You are what you eat.

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The Billionaire's Vinegar by Benjamin Wallace

The Billionaire's Vinegar

Author: Benjamin Wallace
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Published: May 13th, 2008
isbn: 9780307338778


This is a fascinating story about the world of wine collecting, particularly several bottles believed to have been owned by Thomas Jefferson. The reader doesn't need to have any background knowledge to enjoy this book, or really even much previous interest in wines. The author gives a very understandable history of the 18th century wine industry and Jefferson's attempts to bring vineyards into the US. The book is great at filling us in on the history of this discovery of 200 year old wine or fraud at the same pace as collectors at the time. It's an intriguing mystery that leaves the reader unenlightened about the truth of the Jefferson wine until all the arguing and testing has been completed. A great nonfiction book that will keep those who generally prefer fiction interested until the last page. - Lisa

June 2008 Book Sense Pick
Benjamin Wallace has uncorked an absolutely fascinating account of the world's most expensive bottle of wine. This is an intoxicating read with the complexity and nuances of a great vintage. As your book 'sommelier' I recommend that you drink deep of this heady narrative concerning world-class connoisseurs, deep-pocketed collectors, extremely costly crushed grapes and -- quite possibly -- a diabolically clever con man. Joe Drabyak, Chester County Book Co. Inc. (West Chester, PA)

Tomato Girl by Jayne Pupek

Coming in August

Tomato Girl

Author: Jayne Pupek
Publisher: Algonquin
Published: August 1st, 2008
isbn: 9781565124721

This is a truly great book. Eleven-year-old Ellie Sanders reminded me of Scout Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird. Ellie is young girl in the midst of a situation completely out of control, and which she only vaguely understands. Unfortunately, Ellie doesn't have Atticus for a father. Ellie's life is more like Tom Robinson's; unjust, undeserved, and much too cruel. Despite her awful family life, Ellie remains a loving daughter and I think it's this innocence and ability to locate goodness in the people around her that most reminded me of Scout. Absolutely read this one! - Lisa

The Front by Patricia Cornwell

The Front

Author: Patricia Cornwell
Publisher: G P Putnam's Sons
Published: May 20th, 2008
isbn: 9780399154188



I picked this up thinking it was a Kay Scarpetta novel. I hadn't realized that Cornwell had begun a new series. Cornwell fans won't be disappointed by these new characters. This is the second book in the series, so you might want to start with At Risk (isbn 9780425214763). - Lisa


"At Risk featured Massachusetts state investigator Win Garano, a shrewd man of mixed-race background and a not in considerable chip on his shoulder; District Attorney Monique Lamont, a hard-charging woman with powerful ambitions and a troubling willingness to cut corners; and Garanoas grandmother, who has certain unpredictable talents that you ignore at your peril.
And in The Front, peril is what comes to them all. D.A. Lamont has a special job for Garano. As part of a new public relations campaign about the dangers of declining neighborhoods, she is sending him to Watertown to come up with a drama, and she thinks she knows just the case that will serve. Garano is very skeptical. He senses a much deeper agenda here, but he has no idea just how deep it goes. In the days that follow, he'll find that Lamont's task, and the places it leads him, will resemble a house of mirrors, everywhere he turns, he's not quite sure if what he's seeing is true.

This is the master writing at the absolute top of her game."

Bright Shiny Morning by James Frey

Bright Shiny Morning

Author: James Frey
Publisher: Harper
Published: May 13th 2008
isbn: 9780061573132



The author of A Million Little Pieces has written an excellent book, best described as having Los Angeles as its main character. Yes, there was the big Oprah stink about A Million Little Pieces, but true or false, fiction or nonfiction, it was a great book. James Frey writes beautifully and deserves to be read. I truly enjoyed this novel. - Lisa

The New York Times Book Review

One of the most celebrated and controversial authors in America delivers his first novel--a sweeping chronicle of contemporary Los Angeles that is bold, exhilarating, and utterly original.

Dozens of characters pass across the reader's sight lines--some never to be seen again--but James Frey lingers on a handful of LA's lost souls and captures the dramatic narrative of their lives: a bright, ambitious young Mexican-American woman who allows her future to be undone by a moment of searing humiliation; a supremely narcissistic action-movie star whose passion for the unattainable object of his affection nearly destroys him; a couple, both nineteen years old, who flee their suffocating hometown and struggle to survive on the fringes of the great city; and an aging Venice Beach alcoholic whose life is turned upside down when a meth-addled teenage girl shows up half-dead outside the restroom he calls home.

Throughout this strikingly powerful novel there is the relentless drumbeat of the millions of other stories that, taken as a whole, describe a city, a culture, and an age. A dazzling tour de force, "Bright Shiny Morning" illuminates the joys, horrors, and unexpected fortunes of life and death in Los Angeles.

Want to buy this or any other book? Email or call us with your request. We can have it available for store pickup or shipped to you. We love to have author, title, and isbn, but will gladly help you track down a book with any info you can give us.

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Bonk by Mary Roach

Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex

Author: Mary Roach
Publisher: W W Norton
Published: 4/1/08
isbn: 9780393064643

Bonk Website

The bestselling author of "Stiff" turns her outrageous curiosity and infectious wit on the most alluring scientific subject of all: sex. In "Bonk," Roach shows how and why sexual arousal and orgasm can be so hard to achieve and what science is doing to make the bedroom a more satisfying place. 16 illustrations.

May 2008 Book Sense Picks	Lori Kauffman, Brookline Booksmith (Brookline, MA)
An absolutely fantastic book that will have you laughing and blushing at the same time! As she did with Spook and Stiff, Mary Roach again uses her wonderful storytelling talents to combine her knowledge of science (this time examining current and historical studies of sex) with the curious and absurd.

The View from the Seventh Layer by Kevin Brockmeier

The View from the Seventh Layer

author: Kevin Brockmeier
Publisher: Pantheon Books, Random House
Published: March 4th 2008
isbn: 9780375425301

Kevin Brockmeier is such a wonderful writer. I have a notebook in which I transcribe beautiful sentences I've read. I have happily made several entries from this new book. I usually read a book quickly and quickly move on to another, especially since opening the bookstore. However, I have forced myself to slow down and read one story per night so that I can truly appreciate the beauty of these stories. We are so lucky that Kevin is writing; don't pass up the opportunity to read his books. - Lisa


Kevin Brockmeier--award -winning author of "The Brief History of the Dead"--has been widely praised for the richness of his imagination, the lyrical grace and playfulness of his language, and the empathic emotional complexity of his storytelling. And this dazzling collection once again affirms his place as one of the most creative and compassionate writers of his generation. In the haunting title story, a young, asocial woman remembers the oddly honest things she wrote in her high school classmates' yearbooks and contemplates her scarred life, imagining an escape with an apparition she calls the Entity. In "Father John Melby and the Ghost of Amy Elizabeth," a formerly dull and turgid pastor is touched by a spirit that turns his sermons into crowd-pleasers--that is, until he discovers his inspiration is a little less than divine. "The Human Soul as a Rube Goldberg Device" is a gorgeous homage to the classic, young readers' choose-your-own-adventure novels. But this one is for grown-ups who can navigate through imagery and dead ends, and toward a resolution that only Kevin Brockmeier could have invented. From the fantastical to the concrete, the range of this collection is breathtaking. It moves fluidly, finding beauty in the quiet, often overlooked corners of the world. By turns daring and moving, "The View from the Seventh Layer" is crafted with the remarkable voice and vision that have become hallmarks of Brockmeier's acclaimed fiction.

April 2008 Book Sense Pick
Matt Kandarian, Books on the Square, Providence RI
Heartfelt confessions scrawled in yearbooks, 'Choose-Your-Own-Adventure, ' Captain Kirk's love life, and spontaneous periods of absolute silence--these are just a few subjects touched upon in the new short story collection from the author of The Brief History of the Dead. Once again, Brockmeier beautifully demonstrates his unique gift for making the commonplace extraordinary and the extraordinary wonderfully ordinary.

Coal Black Horse by Robert Olmstead

Coal Black Horse

Author: Robert Olmstead
Publisher: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
Published: May 1st 2008 (paperback)
isbn: 9781565126015

Coal Black Horse Website

Finally in Paperback! This was absolutely my favorite book from 2007. - Lisa

When Robey Childs's mother has a premonition about her husband, a soldier fighting in the Civil War, she does the unthinkable. She instructs her only child to retrieve his father from the battlefield and bring him home. Just fourteen and ill-prepared for the journey, Robey sets off wearing the coat his mother sewed to ensure his safety: blue on one side, gray on the other. However, it is the gift of an uncommon horse that changes Robey's destiny-- a horse that becomes his only companion, guide, and protector.

As they plunge into a world of death and destruction, Robey is cloaked in the invincibility of youth. But the horrors of war, the truth of his own nature, and the inextricable connection between the two turn the boy into the best a man can be-- and the worst, irrevocably scarred by all that he has seen and done.

This " powerful, redemptive narrative" in the tradition of "The Red Badge of Courage" is a brutally honest portrait of what war does to men and how it allows-- even compels-- them to love what they should hate.


April 2007 Book Sense Pick
Tom Campbell, The Regulator Bookshop, Durham, NC
In the course of searching for his father, a 14-year-old boy wanders through Civil War battles and their aftermath. One of the best books on men and war I've ever read. A remarkable, haunting achievement.

Letter from Point Clear

Letter from Point Clear (Hardcover (Cloth))
by McFarland, Dennis
Format: Hardcover (Cloth)
Price: $25.00
Published: Henry Holt & Company, 2007

A brother and sister return to their Southern hometown to rescue their younger sister from her marriage to an evangelical preacher— only to find their expectations turned completely upside down. The Owen children long ago left their gracious family home in Point Clear, Alabama, in favor of points north. But when their father takes ill, the youngest, Bonnie, who has spent a decade in Manhattan as an unsuccessful actress, returns to care for him. Soon after his death— unbeknownst to her siblings— she falls in love with and marries a handsome evangelical preacher, and together the couple takes up residence in the stately Owen mansion.

When they receive Bonnie’ s letter announcing her marriage, Ellen and Morris head for Alabama, believing they must extricate their troublesome sister from her latest mistake. To their surprise, they find that Bonnie's charismatic young husband, Pastor, has already saved her from her self-destructive ways, and Bonnie is now nearly three months pregnant. But Bonnie has only recently informed Pastor that Morris is gay, and Pastor quickly undertakes a campaign to "save" him as well . . .

With grace, warmth, and humor, Dennis McFarland reveals the common ground shared by these flawed yet captivating characters— setting them all, and the reader with them, on an unlikely course toward redemption.

Tunnels

Tunnels(Hardcover (Cloth))
by Gordon, Roderick, Williams, Brian J.
Format: Hardcover (Cloth)
Price: $17.99
Published: Chicken House, 2008

Will Burrows has little in common with his strange, dysfunctional family. In fact, the only bond he shares with his eccentric father is a passion for archaeological excavation. So when his dad mysteriously vanishes, Will unearths the unbelievable: a subterranean society that time forgot.

Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines

Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines
by Sheff, Nic
Format: Hardcover (Cloth)
Price: $16.99
Published: Ginee Seo Books, 2008

Nic Sheff was drunk for the first time at age eleven. In the years that followed, he would regularly smoke pot, do cocaine and Ecstasy, and develop addictions to crystal meth and heroin. Even so, he felt like he would always be able to quit and put his life together whenever he needed to. It took a violent relapse one summer in California to convince him otherwise. In a voice that is raw and honest, Nic spares no detail in telling us the compelling, heartbreaking, and true story of his relapse and the road to recovery. As we watch Nic plunge the mental and physical depths of drug addiction, he paints a picture for us of a person at odds with his past, with his family, with his substances, and with himself. It's a harrowing portrait -- but not one without hope.

Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction

Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction
by Sheff, David
Format: Hardcover (Cloth)
Price: $24.00
Published: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2008

Sheff's story is a first: a teenager's addiction from the parent's point of view--a real-time chronicle of the shocking descent into substance abuse and the gradual emergence into hope. Before meth, Sheff's son Nic was a varsity athlete, honor student, and award-winning journalist. After meth, he was a trembling wraith who stole money from his eight-year-old brother and lived on the streets. With haunting candor, Sheff traces the first subtle warning signs, the denial (by both child and parents), the three A.M. phone calls (is it Nic? the police? the hospital?), the attempts at rehab, and, at last, the way past addiction. He shows us that, whatever an addict's fate, the rest of the family must care for each other too, lest they become addicted to addiction. Meth is the fastest-growing drug in the United States, as well as the most addictive and the most dangerous--wreaking permanent brain damage faster than any other readily available drug. It has invaded every region and demographic in America. This book is the first that treats meth and its impact in depth. But it is not just about meth. Nic's addiction has wrought the same damage that any addiction will wreak. His story, and his father's, are those of any family that contains an addict--and one in three American families does.

Free Food for Millionaires

Free Food for Millionaires
by Lee, Min Jin
Format: Trade Paperback
Price: $13.99
Published: Grand Central Publishing, 2008

"Competence can be a curse." So begins Min Jin Lee's epic novel about class, society, and identity. Casey Han's four years at Princeton have given her many things: "a refined diction, an enviable golf handicap, a popular white boyfriend, an agnostic's closeted passion for reading the Bible, and a magna cum laude degree in economics. But no job and a number of bad habits."

Casey's parents, who live in Queens, are Korean immigrants working in a dry cleaner, desperately trying to hold onto their culture and identity. Their daughter, on the other hand, has entered into the upper echelon of rarified American society via scholarships. But after graduation, Casey's trust-fund friends see only opportunity and choices while Casey sees the reality of having expensive habits without the means to sustain them. As Casey navigates Manhattan, we see her life and the lives of those around her: her sheltered mother, scarred father, her friend Ella who's always been the good Korean girl, Ella's ambitious Korean husband and his Caucasian mistress, Casey's white fiance, and then her Korean boyfriend, all culminating in a portrait of New York City and its world of haves and have-nots.

FREE FOOD FOR MILLIONAIRES offers up a fresh exploration of the complex layers we inhabit both in society and within ourselves. Inspired by 19th century novels such as Vanity Fair and Middlemarch, Min Jin Lee examines maintaining identity within changing communities. This is a remarkably assured debut from a writer to watch.

The Monsters of Templeton

The Monsters of Templeton
by Groff, Lauren
Format: Hardcover (Cloth)
Price: $24.95
Published: Hyperion, 2008

In the wake of a disastrous affair with her older, married archeology professor at Stanford, brilliant Wilhelmina Cooper arrives back at the doorstep of her hippie mother-turned born-again-Christian's house in Templeton, NY, a storybook town her ancestors founded that sits on the shores of Lake Glimmerglass. Upon her arrival, a prehistoric monster surfaces in the lake bringing a feeding frenzy to the quiet town, and Willie learns she has a mystery father her mother kept secret Willie's entire life. The beautiful, broody Willie is told that the key to her biological father's identity lies somewhere in her family's history, so she buries herself in the research of her twisted family tree and finds more than she bargained for as a chorus of voices from the town's past - some sinister, all fascinating - rise up around her to tell their side of the story. In the end, dark secrets come to light, past and present day are blurred, and old mysteries are finally put to rest. A fresh, virtuoso performance that will surely place Groff among the best young writers of today.

Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future

Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future 
by McKibben, Bill
Format: Trade Paperback
Price: $14.00
Published: Holt Rinehart and Winston, 2008

"Masterfully crafted, deeply thoughtful and mind-expanding.""--Los Angeles Times" In this powerful and provocative manifesto, Bill McKibben offers the biggest challenge in a generation to the prevailing view of our economy. "Deep Economy "makes the compelling case for moving beyond "growth" as the paramount economic ideal and pursuing prosperity in a more local direction, with regions producing more of their own food, generating more of their own energy, and even creating more of their own culture and entertainment. Our purchases need not be at odds with the things we truly value, McKibben argues, and the more we nurture the essential humanity of our economy, the more we will recapture our own.

Generation Dead by Daniel Waters

Generation Dead
by Waters, Daniel
Format: Hardcover
Price: $16.99
Published: Hyperion, 2008

Daniel Waters Website

Goth girl Phoebe has never run with the popular crowd at school. However, no one can believe it when she falls for Tommy Williams, the leader of the dead kids--the literally dead, living impaired kids who are doing their best to fit into a society that doesn't want them.

This is actually a very good book. The cover led me to expect a very teen oriented novel, but there is a lot to this story. It would make an excellent book club selection for a teen group and I plan to recommend it to readers beyond the teen years. I enjoyed it more than the Stephanie Meyers Twilight series.

Gossip of the Starlings by Nina de Gramont

Gossip of the Starlings - Lisa
by de Gramont, Nina
Format: Hardcover
Price: $22.95
Published: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2008

When Catherine Morrow is admitted to the Esther Percy School for Girls, it's on the condition that she reform her ways. But that's before the charismatic and beautiful Skye Butterfield, daughter of the famous Senator Butterfield, chooses Catherine for her best friend. Skye is a young woman hell-bent on a trajectory of self-destruction, and she doesn't care who is taken down with her. No matter the transgression-a stolen credit card, a cocaine binge, an affair with a teacher, an accident that precipitates the end of Catherine's promising riding career-Catherine can neither resist Skye's spell nor stop her downward spiral.

De Gramont's chilling novel is a portrait of an adolescent girl so thoroughly seduced by a peer that she willingly follows her to ruin. Caught in a world that is both appealing and astonishing, these young women are sexual beings with the minds of teenagers: willful, selfish, daring, and cruel-all the while believing they're utterly indestructible.