The "Disconnex" of the site title references our disconnection from nature, from facts, from each other, and from the pursuits that make life worth living: community, meaningful work, and reverence. These pursuits have proven time and again to be the basis for happiness and a sustainable society. Only by imagining an inclusive narrative for the future can we hope to forge a path forward.
The volumes listed provide compelling fodder for the building of that new narrative by questioning conventional thinking, blasting complacency, and challenging us to aspire to the better angels of our nature.
** All of the links are to amazon.com for reference; but why not try buying at your local brick and mortar book store, or visiting the local library?
RECENT RECOMMENDATIONS:
BIG PICTURE
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
Life Inc: How Corporatism Conquered the World, and How We Can Take It Back by Douglas Rushkoff
The Price of Civilization: Reawakening American Virtue and Prosperity by Jeffrey D. Sachs
Ill Fares the Land by Tony Judt
The Unconscious Civilization by John Ralston Saul
The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change by Al Gore
BEHAVIOR
The Coddling of the American Mind by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt
The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior by Leonard Mlodinow
Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging by Sebastian Junger
SOCIETY
The Identity Trap by Yascha Mounk
The Sum of Us by Heather McGhee
The Age of Grievance by Frank Bruni
MORALITY
The Common Good by Robert Reich
Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do? by Michael J. Sandel
What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets by Michael J. Sandel
SCIENCE
The War on Science: Who's Waging It, Why It Matters, What We Can Do About It by Shawn Lawrence Otto
The Assault on Reason: Our Information Ecosystem, from the Age of Print to the Age of Trump by Al Gore
CLIMATE
Under a White Sky by Elizabeth Kolbert
Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out by Bill McKibben
The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming by David Wallace-Wells
Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming by Paul Hawken
This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate by Naomi Klein
The Weather Makers: How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth by Tim Flannery
FOOD
Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal by Eric Schlosser
The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan
Biting the Hands that Feed Us: How Fewer, Smarter Laws Would Make Our Food System More Sustainable by Baylen J. Linnekin
Animal, Vegetable, Junk by Mark Bitman
POLITICS
Surviving Autocracy by Masha Gessen
Why We’re Polarized by Ezra Klein
Ratf**ked: The True Story Behind the Secret Plan to Steal America's Democracy by David Daley
Why the Right Went Wrong: Conservatism--From Goldwater to Trump and Beyond by E. J. Dionne J.R.
What's The Matter With Kansas by Thomas Frank
HISTORY
The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age by Tim Wu
Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right by Jane Mayer
A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America by Bruce Cannon Gibney
Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History by Kurt Andersen
Evil Geniuses by Kurt Andersen
MEDIA & TECH
Hate Inc. Why Today’s Media Makes Us Despise One Another by Matt Taibbi
The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to get Inside our Heads by Tim Wu
The Tyranny of Metrics by Jerry Z Muller
The Shallows: What the Internet is doing to our brains by Nicholas Carr
The Glass Cage: How Our Computers Are Changing Us by Nicholas Car
The Cyber Effect: A Pioneering Cyberpsychologist Explains How Human Behavior Changes Online by Mary Aiken
Move Fast and Break Things: How Facebook, Google, & Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy by Jonathan Taplin
STUFF
Cradle to Cradle by Michael Braggart and William McDonough
Plastic: A Toxic Love Story by Susan Freinkel
ESSAYS
The Once and Future Liberal: After Identity Politics by Mark Lilla
The World As It Is: Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress by Chris Hedges
CLASSICS
A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn
Silent Spring by Rachel Carson
Animal Liberation by Peter Singer
Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered by E. F. Schumacher
The Medium is the Message by Marshall Macluhan
Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman
Manufacturing Consent by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky
Jihad vs. McWorld by Benjamin Barber
