Annual Recommended Summer Reading List 2020

Readers think. Thinkers read.

During this “sheltered summer” empower yourself with these highly recommended books by Ralph Nader, and listen to these authors interviewed on The Ralph Nader Radio Hour.

“A Short History of Presidential Election Crises (And How to Prevent the Next One)” by Alan Hirsch. City Lights, 2020. Trump’s madness and lying ways makes Alan Hirsch’s fascinating history one that can alert us seriously between now and November. Link to interview.
“Genius of Earth Day How a 1970 Teach In Unexpectedly Made the First Green Generation” by Adam Rome. North Point Press, 2014. Today’s citizens have much to learn from this April 22, 1970 mass mobilization that turned Congress around to enact our major environmental laws fast! Link to interview.
“Beaten Down, Worked Up: The Past, Present, and Future of American Labor” By Steven Greenhouse. Knopf, 2019. With raging documentation, cool Steven Greenhouse issues a wake-up call to what is really terrible treatment of tens of millions of American workers. Union leaders need this book as well. Link to interview.
“Beyond the Valley: How Innovators Around the World are Overcoming Inequality and Creating the Technologies of Tomorrow” by Ramesh Srinivasan. MIT Press, 2019. Remarkably, grass root innovators in poor countries are using internet technology for important uses under their control. Link to interview.
“All the President’s Women: Donald Trump and the Making of a Predator” by Barry Levine and Monique El-Faizy. Hachette Books, 2019. The title tells the story. MeToo not withstanding, lawsuits not withstanding, the savage sexual predator has gotten away with all of it. Shame on Congress. Link to interview.
“The Triumph of Doubt: Dark Money and the Science of Deception” by David Michaels. Oxford University Press, 2020 Former head of OSHA, Dr. Michaels names names as he exposes the corporate scientific distortion lobby that costs many lives. Link to interview.
“Plaintiff in Chief: A Portrait of Donald Trump in 3,500 Lawsuits” by James D. Zirin. All Points Books, 2019. Yes, Trump is above the law, a recidivist fugitive from justice –civil, criminal and constitutional. Shame on the law enforcers. Link to interview.
“Our Future: The Basic Income Plan for Peace, Justice, Liberty, Democracy, and Personal Dignity” by Steven Shafarman. RealClear Publishing. Release date: June, 2020 For years one of the lone voices, Shafarman’s proposals are fast gaining currency, especially in the COVID-19 era. Link to interview.
“The Case for a Maximum Wage” by Sam Pizzigati. Polity, 2018. I wish some pompous, corporate bloviator would try to debate Sam Pizzigati. Read the book and you’ll see why no one has. Link to interview.
“Stealing Democracy: How the Political Assassination of a Governor Threatens Our Nation” by Former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman. NewSouth Books, 2020 The stunning story of how, with a corrupt judge, corporatists like Karl Rove railroaded to prison a rising progressive star in the South. Vindication came late for Siegelman. Link to interview.
“All Hell Breaking Loose: The Pentagon’s Perspective on Climate Change” by Michael T. Klare Metropolitan Books, 2019. When omnicide looms, even the Pentagon swings into action regarding climate devastation, regardless of denier Donald. Link to interview.
Profiteering Corruption and Fraud in U.S. Health Care by practitioner and professor Dr. John Geyman. Nobody, I mean nobody, can calmly and precisely generate more reader rage about our pay or die, wasteful and maddening cruel corporate health care complex than this modest doctor for the people. Focused rage can produce action. Five stars. Link to interview.
“Money, Power, and the People: The American Struggle to Make Banking Democratic” by Christopher W. Shaw. University of Chicago Press, 2019. Trillions of public dollars controlled by high fee Wall Street brokers instead can be deposited in public banks as exist in Republican North Dakota. Shaw shows the history when Americans were far more attuned to banking reforms than now. Link to interview.
“HIGH CRIMES: The Impeachment of Donald Trump” by Former Congressman Alan Grayson. Waterside Productions, 2019. Too bad Grayson wasn’t in Congress to give the House Democrats more backbone for more impeachment counts beyond the Ukraine violation. (See Dec. 18 2019 Cong. Record.) Link to interview.
“The Machine Never Blinks: A Graphic History of Spying and Surveillance” by Everett Patterson and Ivan Greenberg. Fantagraphics, 2020. This graphic history takes the reader through two thousand years of spying and surveillance. Today’s technology, portrayed by the author, takes it to new levels of domination. Citizens, beware. (Interview coming soon.)

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