If new knowledge doesn't change the way you act, have you really learned anything?
I enjoy a lot of books. My favorites, though, tend to make my life different. Make me live different. They aren't just fun and interesting; their ideas and information illuminate more of the world for me and compel me to act in new ways to match this new understanding. A few such titles, for your consideration:
Let My People Go Surfing: The Education Of A Reluctant Businessman, by Yvon Chouinard
In this chronicle of the development of the outdoor sports equipment company Patagonia (and to a lesser extent, the climbing-gear company Black Diamond), founder Yvon Chouinard lays out the incredible, beautiful and encouraging results of a group of climbers, surfers, skiers, and other people passionate about the outside who more or less accidentally created a company that is at once financially successful and has legitimate moral fiber.
Patagonia's primary reason for existence is not to turn a profit, but to make the world a better place. Profit is secondary. Chouinard has seriously contemplated liquidating the whole business and using the money to protect the environment, but has decided against that because of his belief that more good can be done if the company continues to exist. This idea should be basic--nothing should exist if it's not making the world better--but in a book about a for-profit corporation, it's pretty rare. Also key in Patagonia's operating values are excellent worker treatment (they were one of the first companies to offer childcare for employees, and their flexible policy on when people get their shifted hours done lets workers maintain their often weather-dependent outdoor pursuits), minimizing environmental impact of their products (many of their clothes are made of recycled materials, and you can send some of them back once they wear out to be recycled again), and making gear that's built to last through massive abuse (Chouinard tells the story of a conversation where he said to another Patagonia high-up that he wanted their company to make the best shirt in the world, and he was rebuffed: she said it was impossible, that the best shirts in the world are hand-stitched in Italy and cost hundreds of dollars apiece. He asked whether you could get those shirts dirty and toss them in the heavy cycle of a washer, and she said of course not, the shirt would be ruined. Chouinard concludes that these are not in fact the best shirts in the world.). These values--doing good to the world; doing good to other people; living freely; and making and using efficient, effective products--are presented as a unified ethic. Seeing them all laid out so plainly--and moreover, seeing them put into action with integrity, consistency and success--touched me and shifted how I approach many parts of my life and what new things I seek to bring into it.
Let My People Go Surfing is in our Biography section--enjoy!
Bomb The Suburbs and No More Prisons by William Upski Wimsatt
These two books are hard to characterize. Wimsatt, a college dropout (from my college!) turned hip hop journalist (yeah, hip hop is big enough to include journalism, too) turned philanthropist, has considered many, many topics and written on them here: the causes and effects of the abandonment of urban centers by middle-class white people, self-education where formal education leaves students cold, responsible use of inherited money, cross-country hitch hiking, popular misconceptions about the safety of poor neighborhoods, abuse of racial privileges within hip hop culture, and many others. In a style that is at once abrasively blunt and engagingly conversational, Wimsatt keeps you reading, thinking, and re-thinking throughout.
The two books, read in order (Bomb The Suburbs came out first), chart marked changes in Wimsatt's views on the topics he discusses--ideas that were only partway formed in the first book are fleshed out or critiqued and reconsidered in the second. I first encountered the idea that this whole post is based on--that really learning something will change the way you act--in Wimsatt's writing. I learned later that it's also found in educational theory; professional educators call it "deep learning." This approach, focused on big-picture results, permeates these books, and helps make what might seem like scattershot collections of unrelated essays feel instead like strong, extremely cohesive meditations on the state of contemporary society and what each individual--any individual--can do to improve things.
Wimsatt has a newer book out--Please Don't Bomb The Suburbs. I haven't read it yet, but it's in the Politics section here at Indigo Bridge. If you're interested, be quick, or I'll pick it up first.
No Impact Man, by Colin Beavan
This fine specimen recounts the author's yearlong attempt to reduce his family's negative environmental impact to zero. Not to "be green," not to drive a hybrid, not to buy the plastic box of food from another continent with a "certified organic" sticker on it instead of the one without, but to do nothing at all that hurts our earth. Public transportation is not good enough--the subway still runs on fossil-fuel power. Recycling is not good enough--the project demands that no waste be produced whatsoever. Forget CFLs--Beavan, his wife and their toddler daughter turn off the electricity.
The book's power is multifold: for one, it presents and strives to answer some very important questions, questions that humankind has stopped being able to run away from. If all our technological progress, at the expense of the planet's livability and the lives, health and happiness of billions of our poorest people, is legitimately making our lives better, then perhaps it's worth the cost, Beavan suggests. But, he continues, are our lives better with our Styrofoam and takeout boxes? With our disposable tissues? With twenty-four hour television, with plastic diapers, with so many material conveniences and labor-savers that we are now expected to live at a pace so fast we can't enjoy the life the conveniences are here to free us up to enjoy in the first place? And if not--if we spend so much of our time toiling to pay for another box of dross, and we're shooting the earth in the face in the process, and it's not even making us happier--what do we do about it?
The other big strength of the book is that it explains in concrete terms just how Beavan and his family sought the "No Impact" ideal. Their approach is specific to their circumstances--a fairly well-off family of three living in an apartment in New York City--but many of the things they do are applicable to other people too, either in concept or step-for-step. Perhaps grocery shopping on a custom-built cargo trike won't work for someone living in the country, but washing clothes by stomping them clean in the bathtub can work just fine.
In addition to telling his family's personal story, Beavan returns time and again to the project's national and global context, which helps keep the book's relevance constantly in focus. No Impact Man gave me a new framework with which to conceptualize my commitment to environmental (and societal) sustainability, specific tools and processes to make my life more sustainable and potentially satisfying, and an image of what one part of our planet's future may look like. Green consumerists beware: his answer does not include living as you always have buying everything you're used to, except made out of recycled plastic and organic palm oil. It does, however, include some possible directions to a future where the planet supports us, we support each other, and we have a better time as we do it.
We shelve it in Environment.
Books that don't go a step beyond pure entertainment are wonderful and important. But books that give you new understanding of your world and make you approach and engage that world differently can be perhaps more wonderful still.
Read on,
~Grey
1) Autobiography of Mark Twain: The Complete and Authoritative
Edition, Volume 1 - $34.95 The sensation sweeping the headlines,
finally released a century after the death of the great American legend
as per his wishes - discover the man in his own words with this first
volume of his much anticipated memoirs. Despite the sell-out success of this title in media outlets across the nation, we're proud to have
copies of this instant classic on hand in our store.
2) Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff - $29.99 Peer through the
veil of mystery surrounding Cleopatra, the Egyptian queen that has
mystified and enchanted mankind for thousands of years - as never
before. Pulitzer-Prize winning author and renowned biographer Stacy
Schiff delves into the facts behind this historic figure to reveal her
as so much more than a famous pretty face, but as a woman who shrewdly
negotiated her empire. The truth is even more extraordinary than the
myth.
3) A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin - $7.99 "Winter is
coming," as the nobles of the Stark family say - and with it, we meet
then follow a changing cast of magnificent characters. Each voice is
woven into the same epic tale of battle, intrigue, honor, betrayal,
corrupt power and the lives of nations. A Game of Thrones is the first
of four books in a truly moving realistic fantasy saga, and this ongoing
series stirs every emotion. We have the whole set in stock. Read it
now; HBO is scheduled to begin the first season of their show based on
these books in the spring!
4) An Object of Beauty by Steve Martin - $26.99 The latest and
perhaps greatest accomplishment by the bestselling actor-become-writer
(yes, that Steve Martin), he draws on his own experiences as an
art collector to reveal the NYC fine art scene in all its awe and
shame. Lacey Yeager is a young up and coming art dealer, engaging in a
whole host of unsavory activities to claw her way up the ladder of her
high society business, and the reader learns much about the inner
workings of art dealing as well as modern human nature along the way.
Though often witty as it mirrors the emotional trauma which such savage
avant garde hunting and gathering wrecks, Object of Beauty is foremost a
compelling lesson on art and aesthetics complete with pictures that
will make the reader re-evaluate their own appraisals of the world
around them in things large and small.
5) The Lord of Misrule by Jaimy Gordon - $25.00 The surprise
winner against long odds to collect the National Book Award for fiction
in 2010, this story begins with a small-time racetrack in go-nowhere
Virginia during in the 1970s and a get rich quick scheme that becomes so
much more. The reader meets, feels, lives and breathes with the track
occupants both two and four legged, the small world of these intriguing,
colorful misfits shared in the sense of their lost soul wanderings come
together. Painted in dark watercolor shades of language, this tale of
the track and tragedy cashes in a winning ticket with critics and casual
readers alike. Similar to Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen, one of
our top sellers in fiction here at the store. 
6) All My Friends Are Dead by Avery Monsen - $9.95 This book made
several of our employees literally laugh out loud while we read it the
first time, and still never fails to put a smile on my face. Whenever
someone asks for a birthday gift idea with a sense of humor, this is
always my pick - and often, theirs too! The simple, wide-eyed, vaguely
disconcerted look of the charmingly squiggly drawings and the spartan
text pack a delightfully wry, cynical punch at the funny bone with
perfect page-turn pacing.
