Click on the title of the book to read more about it or to purchase it at Powell's Books.
The Working Poor: Invisible in America, by David Shipler
"....a deeply impressive book, a thorough and balanced study of the millions of Americans living at or around the poverty line. Shipler's varied portraits and interviews are insightful and moving, and his analysis of causes and suggestions for plausible change left me with genuine hope." Powell's Books
Generation Kill: Devil Dogs, Iceman, Captain America, and the New Face of American War, by Evan Wright
"Far from the news media's lionization of the captured Pfc. Jessica Lynch or its vilification of enlisted grunts in the Abu Ghraib torture debacle, Mr. Wright's portrait is nuanced and grounded in details often overlooked in daily journalistic accounts." The New York Times
Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib, by Seymour Hersh
"Hersh and those like him are...a safeguard against the natural temptation of any institution to minimize the gravity of exceptionally shameful crimes. That the ensuing global scandal with its relentless evocation of My Lai then, or Abu Ghraib now, is bound to obscure parallel realities...is just inevitable, because mass media live by telling stories, not necessarily in their wider context.... Seymour Hersh has many faults, but we still need him, obsessions and all, because we must know, more than anything, what we least enjoy seeing in print." Edward N. Luttwak, The Times Literary Supplement
God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It, by Jim Wallis
"Jim Wallis is the major prophetic evangelical Christian voice in the country. He refuses to allow the religious Right to have a monopoly on morality and spirituality; he also calls for the secular Left to speak to the crucial issues of personal meaning and individual values. His major message is faith, hope, and love - yet it is put forward with a sense of urgency and insight rarely seen in our cynical time. I hope and pray his voice resounds across this land - and that we pay heed to it." Cornel West
Three Strikes: Labor's Heartland Losses and What they Mean for Working Americans, by Stephen Franklin
"This eloquently written book chronicles the massive, protracted strikes waged against three large corporations in Decatur, Illinois, in the 1990s. Veteran journalist Stephen Franklin shows how labor disputes at Bridgestone/ Firestone, Caterpillar, and A. E. Staley left lasting scars on this town and its citizens--and marked a turning point in American labor history."Powell's Books
Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky
A must-read for all progressive activists. One of Paul Wellstone's favorite books.
Cold Anger: A Story of Faith and Power Politics by Mary Beth Rogers
"The story of Ernesto Cortes, an Hispanic organizer of the Saul Alinsky school, who has combined intellectualism, religious faith and hardball politics to develop a grassroots movement of local community organizations in San Antonio, Texas and elsewhere." Powell's Books
Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center, by bell hooks
"...hooks maintains that mainstream feminism's reliance on white, middle-class, and professional spokeswomen obscures the centrality of women of color and poor women in the movement for women's liberation."
Poor People's Movements: Why They Succeed, How they Fail, by Frances Fox Piven and Richard A Cloward
A provocative study of four protest movements, written by two of Paul and Sheila Wellstone's favorite scholars, activists and friends. Another must-read!
From Poor Law to Welfare State: A History of Social Welfare in America, by Walter I. Trattner
"Originally published in 1974, this highly regarded text -- the only comprehensive account of American social welfare history from the colonial period to the present -- has been updated to include the latest events and scholarship on the subject. Topics new to this sixth edition include President Clinton's health-care reform and its failure; his efforts to "end welfare as we know it"; recent developments in child welfare, especially the escalating youth crime and poverty rates; AIDS and the reappearance of tuberculosis; and the impact of Murray and Hernstein's The Bell Curve."
The Divine Right of Capital: Dethroning the Corporate Aristocracy, by Marjorie Kelly
"In this text, Marjorie Kelly proposes that corporations are built on six aristocratic principles which work in the interests of wealth-holders and against those of employees. She shows how to use democratic principles to build a new corporate order that serves the many rather than the few."
Nickle and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America, by Barbara Ehrenreich
"We have Barbara Ehrenreich to thank for bringing us the news of America's working poor so clearly and directly, and conveying with it a deep moral outrage and a finely textured sense of lives as lived. As Michael Harrington was, she is now our premier reporter of the underside of capitalism." The New York Times Book Review
What's the Matter with Kansas? by Thomas Frank
"Why do so many Americans vote against their economic and social interests? With his acclaimed wit and acuity, Thomas Frank answers the riddle by examining his home state, Kansas-a place once famous for its radicalism that now ranks among the nation's most eager participants in the culture wars. Charting what he calls the "thirty-year backlash"-the popular revolt against a supposedly liberal establishment-Frank reveals how conservatism, once a marker of class privilege, became the creed of millions of ordinary Americans."
The Long Haul: An Autobiography by Myles Horton
"An amiable stroll through the life of this maverick educator and founder of the Highlander School. History is palpable in this book, especially when Horton traces an organizing tactic from Abraham Lincoln to Jane Addams to himself to Martin Luther King." Utne Reader