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Books and Movies: Works in the Spirit of Sustainability

Books and movies with themes that go to the issues of sustainability: economic vitality, social equity, and environmental quality.

How influential are books and movies? Famously, Lincoln is known to have addressed Harriet Beecher Stowe as "the little lady who started the big war."

People vary in their opinions because they have acquired different information. Whether first-hand in the "school of hard knocks," which everybody attends sooner or later, or through the language of conversation with family and friends, TV, radio, songs, books and movies, we pick up most of our ideas from the culture around us. Some of us pick up more than others.

Why put out a book list? The obvious, more cynical view is probably bragging rights. Book inventories as an intellectual accounting system. Certainly, the books we read and movies we watch, and recommend, say something about ourselves.

Art Garfunkel, who wrote and sang some great music and lyrics, posts on the web an extensive list of every book he's read since 1968. It's an impressive list. There's a shorter list of about 100 of Art's favorites. I think what Art (and Oprah Winfrey with her commercially influential list) really means is that there's a lot of stuff written and much of it's actually quite good. The creative juices still flow and people still search for understanding. What with all of the media available to us, books are still the place to develop serious ideas.

Words and ideas are powerful and point of view matters. A good education compels us to consider other viewpoints and when our schooling is over, we've still got some great books and movies to challenge and stretch our frames of reference. Here is a list, paltry as it may seem, of books and movies that I respect and some that have inspired and changed my thinking. Works that have something to do with the "Three E's" - environment, economics, and equity - recommended in no particular order.

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BOOKS

Rising from the Rails: Pullman Porters and the Making of the Black Middle Class, by Larry Tye.

Ham on Rye, by Charles Bukowski. Bukowski can be a bit crude, but I think he's brutally honest. If his writings were about scatology, maybe he'd have died rich like Howard Stern. Bukowski shows us a side of the middle class that is petty, intolerant, money-centered, and angry because it works hard (or at least thinks so), plays by the rules, and never achieves real affluence. Also a class of underdogs that fights for everything it gets.

Fatu-Hiva: Back to Nature, by Thor Heyerdahl.

Kon-Tiki, by Thor Heyerdahl. Thor's books are wonderful. He has an eye for great detail and a global vision.

A Small Room with Trouble on My Mind and other Stories, by Mike Henson. Henson might be the Nick Drake of the literary world, i.e., a serious talent who took 30-years to be "discovered." The good news is, though, Henson is still around.

Ransack, by Mike Henson. Demolition day labor in Cincinnati.

The Human Comedy, by William Saroyan

The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien. If you don't want to buy or read the whole book, which is too short, but you have half an hour to spend at a library or bookstore, read the chapter "Speaking of Courage" and the author's "Notes" that follow.

Common Sense, by Thomas Paine.

Green Mansions, by W.H. Hudson.

Purple Land, by W.H. Hudson. This is a fine personal adventure in South America. In one of Jim Harrison's books, Just Before Dark, Jim passed along a statement attributed to his father. When he asked his dad the difference between people and animals, Jim's dad replied, "animals live outside and people live inside." Hudson did both and wrote beautifully to tell us about it.

Facing Up: How to Rescue the Economy from Crushing Debt & Restore the American Dream, by Peter G. Peterson. Peterson quotes Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German Lutheran pastor who was imprisoned and finally hung by the Nazis in 1945: "The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world it leaves to its children."

Letters and Papers from Prison, by Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Running on Empty, by Peter G. Peterson.

Will America Grow Up Before it Grows Old?, by Peter G. Peterson.

Canary Row, by John Steinbeck. Drinking beer, catching frogs, driving around, and stewing all night back in the day.

The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck

Martin Eden, by Jack London.

Metamorphosis, by Franz Kafka.

The Assistant, by Bernard Malamud.

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, by Dee Brown.

A People's History of the United States, by Howard Zinn. Don't throw all your other history books away, but every American or those interested in US History should read this book. Zinn intentionally wrote from the perspective of society's "underdogs." Zinn, through depiction of historic events, reveals a mindset among the nation's leaders, driven by powerful money interests, that flows as a continuous current throughout our history - and persists to this day.

Four Souls, by Louise Erdrich.

The Journals of Lewis and Clark, Bernard DeVoto, editor.

A Prayer for Owen Meany, by John Irving.

Diary of a Young Girl, by Ann Frank.

The Man Who Gave Up His Name, by Jim Harrison. One of three novellas found in Legends of the Fall. A successful middle aged man abandons his career for something earthy and more delicious. "There's a man in a tree in a blue suit."

Letters from the Earth, by Mark Twain, edited by Bernard DeVoto.

The Great Gatsby, by Scott Fitzgerald

Look Homeward, Angel, by Thomas Wolf.

Coming into the Country, by John McPhee.

Seeing Things Whole: The Essential John Wesley Powell, edited by William deBuys.

Small is Beautiful, by E.F. Schumacher.

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MOVIES

It's a Wonderful Life, Stars Donna Reed and James Stewart. They don't get any better than this one.

Matewan

Everyone should see this film based on the Matewan Massacre and filmed in West Virginia coal country. Some of the victims' children and grandchildren were hired as extras. If anyone has any doubt about why we need unions, they need to see this one. If your history teachers never had time to get around to labor history in America, you have to see this. Stars Chris Cooper, James Earl Jones, and David Strathairn. Directed by John Sayles.

The Molly Maguires (aka Molly McGuires)

Stars Sean Connery and Richard Harris. The Molly Maguires were a group of coal minors in Pennsylvania who challenged the authority of the mining companies - and paid dearly. Again, based on historic events, this reveals an aspect of American History some would like to pretend never happened.

The Times of Harvey Milk

A documentary about San Francisco's gay mayor, his life, assassination, and aftermath. Those with contempt for gays or those who are just apathetic about the whole issue of what it means to be gay and try to achieve full-participation status in America, or elsewhere, would do well to see this. I recommend it for everybody.