Thad Williamson reviews What Then Must We Do? Straight Talk About the Next American Revolution by Gar Alperovitz.
Books
A Historical Haiku on Human Conflict
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Kirk J. Schneider has written a synopsis of human history that he calls a “historical haiku.” He explains how polarized thinking, rather than observing each other and our world in all its complexities through a lens of mystery and awe, is the root cause of why human beings continue to kill each other. He offers us examples of how fear and the absence of curiosity and awe have made us unable to rise above hatred.
Books
What Do You Buy the Children of the Terrorist Who Tried to Kill Your Wife?
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When Mohammad Odeh, the terrorist who tried to kill David Harris-Gershon wife, said he was sorry, Harris-Gershon decided to travel to Israel/Palestine to see if Odeh was speaking the truth.
Books
Immigration Stories That Will Belong to America
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The thirteen stories in Lam’s most recent collection, Birds of Paradise Lost, are populated by refugees of the Vietnam War who came to the Bay Area, as well as their children and friends—but each story is a world unto itself. Lam’s characters are haunted by what they have lost, transfixed by embers that still cloud the air with smoke. What Lam explores is the question of whether they can conquer the ghosts, or at least learn to live with them peacefully.
2013
Spirituality in a Broken World
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Larry Rasmussen reviews Spirituality: What It Is and Why It Matters by Roger S. Gottlieb.
2013
Queering Palestinian Solidarity Work
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Wendy Elisheva Somerson reviews Israel/Palestine and the Queer International by Sarah Schulman.
Activism
An End to Easy Answers: Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore’s New Memoir
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Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore describes decades of queer activism in her new memoir, which is often scarring, startling, and never easy. But Sycamore confronts the problems in her life with real feeling, showing that emotion—if genuine—can often break us out of the corporate-sponsored numbness which so inundates our culture.
2013
A Psychoanalytic Guide to Kabbalah
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Psychoanalysis and Kabbalah have a lot in common, not the least their ability to profoundly alter our mind-states and influence our actions. In his modern Guide for the Perplexed, renowned psychologist Michael Eigen breaks down the connections between psychoanalysis and Kabbalah, and how they might be used together for our benefit.
Articles
Hark! The Psychiatrists Sing, Hoping Glory for that Revised DSM Thing!
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The DSM-5 is full of labels and misconceptions. Avoid it, if you can. If you can’t, at least know how it manipulates medical information to turn various mind-states into “disorders” and “diseases” which must be “cured.” The truth is, psychiatry can be a wonderful and holistic discipline, when not in the clutches of Pharma and the often useless drugs that industry peddles.
Articles
Dollarocracy and the Fight to Get Money Out of Politics
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That the corporate-driven “medium” overcomes almost any conceivable “message” is one of the clearest lessons of the election of 2012. A review of Dollarocracy: How the Money and Media Election Complex is Destroying America by John Nichols and Robert W. McChesney
Articles
With What Will I Fill the Space You Left Behind?
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Where Karen Bender’s A Town of Empty Rooms truly succeeds is not in the petty arguments that move the plot along, but in how we, as readers, can observe how invested these characters are in those arguments. What emerges, then, is a novel about the unsaid, the unspeakable, and the ways we talk past the dividing lines between us.
2013
Four Views on Jewish Spirituality
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by Bradley Shavit, Sheldon Lewis, Rami Shapiro and Reuven Firestone
2013
Does Zionism Have a Future?
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The Making and Unmaking of a Zionist: A Personal and Political Journey by Antony Lerman. Review by Svi Shapiro
2013
The Criminal Caste
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The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander, Review by Ben Bloch