Book List


Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
by John Perkins

"Economic hit men," John Perkins writes, "are highly paid professionals who cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars. Their tools include fraudulent financial reports, rigged elections, payoffs, extortion, sex, and murder."

John Perkins should know—he was an economic hit man for an international consulting firm that worked to convince developing countries to accept enormous loans and to funnel that money to U.S.corporations. Once these countries were saddled with huge debts, the American government and international aid agencies were able to request their “pound of flesh” in favors, including access to natural resources, military cooperation, and political support.

The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers, and the Media that Loves Them
by Amy Goodman

In Exception to the Rulers, award-winning journalist Amy Goodman, with the aid of her brother David, exposes the lies, corruption, adn crimes and of the power elite - an elite that is bolstered by large media conglomerates. Her goal is "to go where the silence is, to give voice to the silenced majority. As Goodman travels around the country, she is fond of quoting Margaret Mead: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." This book informs and empowers people to act on that principle.

Nickel and Dimed
by Barbara Ehrenreich

Millions of Americans work for poverty-level wages, and one day Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join them. She was inspired in part by the rhetoric surrounding welfare reform, which promised that any job equals a better life. But how can anyone survive, let alone prosper, on $6 to $7 an hour? To find out, Ehrenreich moved from Florida to Maine to Minnesota, taking the cheapest lodgings available and accepting work as a waitress, hotel maid, house cleaner, nursing-home aide, and Wal-Mart salesperson. She soon discovered that even the "lowliest" occupations require exhausting mental and physical efforts. And one job is not enough; you need at least two if you intend to live indoors.

Water Wars: Privatization, Pollution and Profit
by Vandana Shiva

In Water Wars, Shiva reveals how many of the most important conflicts of our time, most often camouflaged as ethnic wars or religious wars, such as the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, are in fact conflicts over scarce but vital natural resources like clean, drinkable water.

When Corporations Rule the World ($12.21 paperback)
by David Korten

Translated into 15 languages, When Corporations Rule the World is a well-documented, apocalyptic tome describing the global spread of corporate power as a malignant cancer exercising a market tyranny that is gradually destroying lives, democratic institutions and the ecosystem for the benefit of greedy companies and investors. Using numerous well-researched examples, Korten argues that not only do today's corporations exploit labor and the environment, but governments (particularly the U.S. government), the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, aid and abet this exploitation through policies that favor capitalists over workers and small business. (Publishers Weekly and Library Journal reviews)

Fair Trade For All: How Trade Can Promote Development ($19.80)
by Joseph Stiglitz & Andrew Charleton

Nobel Prize-winning economist and ex-World Bank official Joseph Stiglitz is the leading mainstream critic of the free-trade, free-market "Washington Consensus" for developing countries. In this follow-up to his best-selling Globalization and its Discontents, he and Charlton, a development expert, present their vision of a liberalized global trade regime that is carefully geared to the interests of poorer countries. (Publishers Weekly review)