Non-Fiction
Related: About this forumI need a stealth selection for my book club -
we have some members who have drunk deeply of the Fox kool-aid and are convinced people on welfare are middle class - after all, they have cell phones and cable TV, don't they?
I was thinking of Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich, but that may be too obvious.
Any suggestions?
MountainLaurel
(10,271 posts)About a guy about to retire and the evils of the American healthcare system and their effects on middle-class Americans.
dixiegrrrrl
(60,011 posts)or any of Bageant's books.
LuckyLib
(6,898 posts)and provokes great conversations. I don't think there's a woman who can't relate to something Ehrenreich talks about. Go for it. It will make folks in the group think twice about throw-away comments, and may even develop some empathy in folks as to how hard people work for what little they get.
fe6252fes
(50 posts)SheilaT
(23,156 posts)If your group has drunk deeply of the kool-aid, anything non fiction written to show how depsicable the current right-wing is, might even be rejected outright by the group.
Plus, having read that book, I don't think it's one that would convince anyone who is deep into the Fox News mentality. They'd look at everyone she writes about and conclude that each and every person is responsible for his or her own situation, and not see the larger picture.
"The Jungle" could be a good choice, and you can push it as a classic that everyone ought to read. "It Can't Happen Here" is another possibility. The problem with many of those books is that it could be too easy for a modern right-wing reader to simply conclude that they represent an era long gone, and one that has no meaning today. Which is, of course, the heart of the problem: Those who do not remember history . . .
Two recent non-fiction books might possibly work. "A Train in Winter" by Caroline Moorhead tells the story of a group of French Resistance fighters, women, who were captured by the Nazis and sent off to the death camps early in the war. It's about what they did to resist the Nazis in the first place, how they were captured, what they endured, and how some of them survived. It brings back the full horror of the Nazi era, which is being lost, sincfe those who lived through it are mostly gone now.
A book I'm reading right now (almost finished) is "In the Garden of Beasts" by Erik Larson, subtitled Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin. William Dodd was a college history professor when he got tapped by Franklin Roosevelt in 1933 to be ambassador to Berlin. Several other men had turned down the post prior to his selection. Dodd, his wife, son, and daughter arrived in Berlin in July of 1933, when many thought that Hitler could not possibly stay in power more than a year. They witnessed first-hand the awful change in German society and the German people as laws were passed restricting Jews' rights to hold a job, go to school, and so on. The book really only covers the Dodds' first year there (he served until 1937) but it clearly shows what happens when extremists take over a country, totally control the media, and set forth unchallenged lie after unchallenged lie.
Again, it is entirely possible that the point of either of those two books will be too subtle for your group. It will take a lot more than one book, or one movie, or even one personal encounter of some kind (like losing health care and needing serious medicine/surgery, etc) to change people like this. If they don't stop watching Fox, there's no real hope for them.
Mcubed1945
(9 posts)You might want to look at Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow. I just finished it. Not only did leave aghast at the racial slant of the war on drugs, I was truly astounded by just how much our supreme court has eroded the fourth amendment to the constitution since the beginning of the Reagan administration. I think the book speaks ill of politicians from both parties. The book leaves the reader with no clear solutions, but certainly sets the stage for some honest debate about to correct the problem.
freesqueeze
(1,384 posts)Seems like the story of a person getting sucked in with civil war recreators, but slips quietly into a scathing report on redneck america.
hedgehog
(36,286 posts)Flight Behavior - Barbara Kingsolver
n what may be the first novel to realistically imagine the near-term impact of global weirding, Barbara Kingsolver sets her latest story in rural Appalachia . In fictional Feathertown, Tennessee, Dellarobia Turnbow--on the run from her stifling life--charges up the mountain above her husbands family farm and stumbles onto a valley of fire filled with millions of monarch butterflies. This vision is deemed miraculous by the towns parishioners, then the international media. But when Ovid, a scientist who studies monarch behavior, sets up a lab on the Turnbow farm, he learns that the butterflies presence signals systemic disorder--and Dellarobia's in-laws logging plans wont help. Readers who bristle at politics made personal may be turned off by the strength of Kingsolvers convictions, but she never reduces her characters to mouthpieces, giving equal weight to climate science and human need, to forces both biological and biblical. Her concept of family encompasses all living beings, however ephemeral, and Flight Behavior gracefully, urgently contributes to the dialogue of survival on this swiftly tilting planet. --Mari Malcolm
http://www.amazon.com/Flight-Behavior-Novel-Barbara-Kingsolver/dp/0062124269
MountainLaurel
(10,271 posts)I've avoided Kingsolver's previous works, but this one sounds worthwhile.