March, 2005

Responding to the Dark Side

With the Bush regime consolidating to flex its muscles in ways that defy intelligence, dwelling on the dark side continues to be a strong temptation nowadays. In response, we need to resist like never before the agendas of an empire that would do more evil in the world and, equally, we need to focus like never before on actively building a culture of peace and sustainability as Babylon self-destructs. Our new books this month offer rich resources for doing just that…

May, 2005

Energy Drives the Economy…

Q: What's a good book worth reading again?
A: The Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies by Richard Heinberg. Richard's work has been widely reviewed, but this comes from an unusual source: a recent column in Northern Ontario Business citing the "Collected Wisdom" of Dr. Luc Duchesne, President and CEO, Forest Bioproducts, Inc. Dr. Duchesne continues: "It's about the fact we're running out of oil, oil is driving war and that industrial societies are going to hell in a hand basket. The key point is energy drives the economy. I think we're headed for disaster."
       While what he says may well be true, it is human energy that will drive the solutions – and that's what New Society books are mostly about, as our new releases demonstrate.

June 2005 OIL-FREE TRAVEL NSP author Guy Dauncey (Stormy Weather and Earthfuture) has a provocative solution to the end-of-oil problem: do without it! Here’s his 12-Step Journey… KUDOS Carbon Neutral Positive! Our carbon neutral initiative received a warm response from far and wide. Here are some of the comments. HOT LINK The WEEE Man overlooks Tower Bridge in London and superbly demonstrates the ecological footprint. More… PARTNERS Conscience Clothing Why we should care about where and how our clothes are made — from Resurgence magazine. Go! Also of interest on this topic: Global Profit AND Global Justice Organic Weddings		Carbon Neutral — Another Publishing First! We have been working hard over the past several months to become the first publishing company in North America to become carbon neutral, a mission we accomplished by Earth Day 2005. We announced the initiative in mid-May and, much to our delight, received very encouraging responses from far and wide. You can read the original press release here. Books to Walk the Talk We've also been busy redesigning our website which now includes a Tree Counter to show the number of trees we've saved by printing on 100% post consumer recycled papers. We're walking the talk and our books help you to do the same! Check it out: -- "scroll down to the right" A Building Movement Straw bale building has taken North America by storm over the past decade. Bale buildings have arisen like new shoots after a spring rain, and the technique has captured the imagination of thousands from south to north. As time has passed, accepted wisdom and techniques have evolved quickly. So it was that New Society's book, Straw Bale Building, originally released in 2000, was in need of an update. But so much had changed that authors Chris Magwood and Peter Mack proposed what was essentially a new book. More Straw Bale Building is the outcome, just released. A thing of beauty, the book is packed with the latest information to help you build effectively with straw. Of special interest, however, is that -- as the authors point out -- the straw bale building phenomenon is an oddity in the construction business. It is a movement, an authentic grassroots-driven groundswell of passion for the efficiency and effectiveness of the technique and for the sheer pleasure of the final product. Read more about the movement : from the Introduction Check out the Contents Note that this is another in our Mother Earth News Wiser Living Series of books. A Revolution of Interconnections — This is how author Andrés Edwards interprets the phenomenon of sustainability in his new book, The Sustainability Revolution: Portrait of a Paradigm Shift, due off press this month. A remarkable gathering together of the many diverse threads that constitute sustainability, the book is a family tree of sorts, a pedigree, of a revolution. It also eloquently describes the new paradigm: "The Sustainability Revolution marks the emergence of a new social ethos emphasizing the web of relationships that link the challenges we currently face." As David Orr says in his foreword, "The sustainability revolution is steadily reshaping our lives and our place in the larger fabric of life for the better." What's more, he adds, the book helps to put world events into perspective, "and clarify the point that despair can be overcome by a revolution of hope, competence and intelligence underlain by wisdom." Check the Contents Read the Advance Praise Seeds of Sustainable Societies — Now available! For all those who have ached for a more cooperative approach to living and a more day-to-day community-based experience, we now have the recorded wisdom of those pioneers in the field who have founded or have lived for a substantial time in ecovillages. In his foreword to EcoVillage at Ithaca: Pioneering a Sustainable Culture, by Liz Walker, Duane Elgin calls them "seeds of sustainable societies" — an antidote to the isolated misery of modern life, a living example that another world is possible. Read the Foreword by Duane Elgin Check out the Contents Kids Who are Making a Difference Meet Jared Duval. Jared led a successful effort to save a 12-acre (4.8 hectare) wetland and forest in his home town of Lebanon, New Hampshire while still a high school student. Jared recognized that the area -- slated for a supermarket development -- was of substantial ecological value, and rallied fellow students, forming a group called Students for a Sustainable Future. A year and a half later, the supermarket proposal was denied. In his acceptance speech receiving the Brower Youth Award, he commented: "The world is run by those who show up." Jared is just one of several "eco-kids" growing up with a passion for making the world a better place. He is featured in Dan Chiras' new book, EcoKids: Raising Children Who Care for the Earth. Check out the Contents Read the Introduction Go Where and Do What?? Elizabeth Boardman spent Christmas Day, 2002 in Basrah, Iraq. She shared lunch with fifteen Muslim and Christian clerics and one other American woman -- a feast of humus and olives, chicken and rice, spread out upon carpets in a mosque. Elizabeth reports that they urged us to understand that they are not fundamentalists or terrorists. They told us how their constant prayer is for peace .... "Iraqis are loyal to their own leader," they said, "and will resist the destruction of their country." The mosque in which we sat together was bombed in 1991 and again in 1998. "We will rebuild it again and again and again if necessary," they vowed. Elizabeth volunteered with the Iraq Peace Team. And like many others who have put their bodies on the line for peace, the experience was a life-changer. So much so for Elizabeth, that when she came back she wrote Taking a Stand: A Guide to Peace Teams and Accompaniment Projects, just of press. Check out the Contents Read the Introduction
New Society Publishers - P.O. Box 189, Gabriola Island, BC, Canada, V0R 1X0 Tel: 250-247-9737 . Fax: 250-247-7471 . e-mail: news@newsociety.com . Web Site: newsociety.com Copyright © 2005 New Society Publishers

 AVAILABLE NOW FROM SOUTH END PRESS

SISTERS OF THE YAM

Black Women and Self-Recovery

bell hooks

• According to a 2004 American Journal of Public Health report, poor health care access cost nearly one million black people their lives in the last decade.

• Researchers estimated that more than 886,000 deaths could have been prevented from 1991 to 2000 if African Americans had received the same medical care as whites.

As a result of increasing community mobilization and pressure on government, improving access to quality health care for people of color is emerging as a leading issue for health care providers and policymakers. But there are other health crises hidden within statistics on racial disparity and illness, including the impact of racism on the physical and emotional health of black people.

"Readers trying to unlearn racism and sexism will respect hooks for politicizing the self-recovery movement."

-Library Journal

In Sisters of the Yam: Black Women and Self-Recovery (South End Press Classics Edition), renowned cultural critic bell hooks explores how the emotional health of black women--the “least happy Americans” according to a recent study by the National Center for Health Statistics--is wounded by daily assaults of racism and sexism.

Lauded by critics as “astute and downright brilliant,” hooks shows the “link between self-recovery and political resistance” as only she can, tackling the structural roots of black women’s pain and black women can empower themselves and effectively struggle against racism, sexism and consumer capitalism. And in this updated edition’s introduction, a lengthy 2004 interview with hooks, hooks reflects on the challenges faced by black feminism in the last decade as well as how Sisters of the Yam paved the way for her recent and popular writing on love, relationships, and community.

“This is a wonderful book, filled with hooks’s love and encouragement.”

 -Alice Walker

$15.00 paper (0-89608-716-6)
$40.00 cloth  (0-89608-717-4)
For more information on Sisters of the Yam, Classic Edition
     please contact Jill Petty at 617-547-4002
     or jillpetty@southendpress.org

Individual Orders, call 800-533-8478
To request a review copy, visit www.southendpress.org/order/review.shtml
To request a desk or exam copy, visit www.southendpress.org/order/examform.html
For more information on this title, visit www.southendpress.org/books/sisters.shtml

AVAILABLE NOW FROM SOUTH END PRESS  

If you are in MASSACHUSETTS, NEW YORK, CONNECTICUT, or NORTH CAROLINA, the author is coming to speak at a place near you.

Cambridge, MA

April 11, 7:30 pm
Harvard Law School, Austin Hall (at the intersection of Cambridge St. & Mass. Ave., across from the Cambridge Common), North Room
for more info: zmiller@law.harvard.edu, johns@fas.harvard.edu or www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/jfp/main.htm

April 12, noon
Book signing at the Harvard Coop

New York, NY

Individual Orders, call 800-533-8478
To request a review copy, visit www.southendpress.org/order/review.shtml
To request a desk or exam copy, visit www.southendpress.org/order/examform.html
For more information on this title, visit www.southendpress.org/books/border.shtml

South End Press Author Under Attack

CAMBRIDGE, MA: After finding himself at the center of a media firestorm-and receiving 
a barrage of death threats-South End Press author Ward Churchill has stepped down from 
his position as Chair of the Ethnic Studies Department at the University of Colorado. 
Not satisfied with this, Colorado Governor Bill Owens is demanding that Churchill 
resign his position as a tenured professor as well.

The controversy is based on an essay Churchill wrote soon after 9-11, which he later 
expanded into an AK Press book, On the Justice of Roosting Chickens: Reflections on 
the Consequences of U.S. Imperial Arrogance and Criminality. Conservative protestors 
used the essay to force Hamilton College in New York to cancel a speaking engagement 
Churchill had scheduled there. The mainstream media (including Bill O’Reilly and Fox 
News) has picked up the story, distorting and misrepresenting the facts, as usual.

South End Press wishes to voice our support for Ward Churchill in this struggle-in 
terms of both his well-researched analysis of factors that contributed to the 9-11 
attacks and his right to express that analysis in public without having his life and 
livelihood threatened. We also recommend that you read On the Justice of Roosting 
Chickens yourself, rather than rely on the media’s version of it. Individuals can 
order it here: http://www.akpress.org/2003/items/onthejusticeofroostingchickens

On the Justice of Roosting Chickens and other books by Ward Churchill are available 
to bookstores and the trade from Consortium Book Sales and Distribution. To order 
please visit http://www.cbsd.com/ or call 1-800-283-3572.

Ward Churchill titles published by South End Press include: Islands in Captivity: 
The International Tribunal on the Rights of Indigenous Hawaiians (coedited with 
Sharon H. Venne; forthcoming); From a Native Son: Selected Essays on Indigenism, 
1985-1995; Agents of Repression: The FBI’s Secret War Against the American Indian 
Movement and the Black Panther Party (with Jim Vander Wall); and The COINTELPRO 
Papers: Documents From the FBI’s Secret Wars Against Dissent in the United States 
(with Jim Vander Wall).