Hearts & Minds BookNotes

annotations, blurbs and ruminations

to enlarge the heart & stimulate the mind

and to happily generate mail order business for Hearts & Minds bookstore

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Location: Dallastown, PA

My lovely wife Beth and I own and operate--proprietors makes us sound more classy than we really are--a cluttered, diverse and independent bookstore in Central Pennsylvania. After well over 20 years, we are still not sure what to say when people ask if our shop is a "Christian bookstore." I do a monthly book review column over at our website; we hope that these new blogged bits will afford friends and customers the chance to see other books I happen to be reading, wishing to read, pretending that I read or at least believe that others should, if not read, know about. We have three children, attend a Presbyterian church in York, PA and have no hobbies.

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Consumed, Deep Economy and another free Bono offer

In my last blog I told of our special offer as we promoted On the Move, the speech that rock star Bono gave to the National Prayer Breakfast. As you can see by browsing the comment section, it created some discussion, and some links were offered for those who want a dissenting opinion of Bono's policy proposals to "make poverty history." Thanks for those that ordered the books from us. The offer for the free one, and another free book, too, to go with it, is still on.

Two new books came in the other day, and given this bit of discourse, I thought I'd note them. (We stock more books on international justice and globalization and third world poverty and wholistic Christian missions than most bookstores.) These both look very, very good and I think would be helpful for many of our readers.
First, let me mention the new hardback by Benjamin R. Barber, Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole (Norton; $26.95.)

In this powerful and disturbing critique, Benjamin Barber takes dead aim at a fudamental fallacy of our time: the equation of capitalism and democracy. Perceptively exploring the puerility of market culture, Consumed insists on the crucial distinction between consumers and citizens. No one who cares about the future of our public life can afford to ignore this book.
Jackson Lears
editor in chief Raritan
Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future is the new book by the excellent writer, hiker, reporter and enviromental activist, Bill McKibben (Times Books; $25.00.) We really have appreciated his many books (The Age of Missing Information was fabulous, and The End of Nature highly, highly regarded. And his one on Job is back out again, too.) Some have likened him to Wendell Berry. Michael Pollan, author of Omnivore's Dilemma (did you see our note about it as a Year's Best in our end of the year list at the website?) has written,
The cult of growth and globalization has seldom been so effectively challanged as by Bill McKibben in Deep Economy. But this bracing tonic of a book also throws the bright light of McKibben's matchless journalism on the vibrant local economies now springing up like mushrooms in the shadow of globalization. Deep Economy fills you with hope and a sense of fresh possibility.

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