What we're reading now

The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East
by Sandy Tolan
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Recommended by Susan Ives
Susan says: This book places the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in a profoundly human context by telling the story of Dalia, whose family of Bulgarian Jews moved into a Ramle home built by Bashir's family. Their persistence in maintaining a shakey friendship in the midst of 35 years of competing desires in beautiful.

Nonviolence:: 25 Lessons from the History of a Dangerous Idea
by Mark Kurlansky
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We bought the audio CDs for the Peace and Justice library. He studies the history of nonviolence from the dawn of Christianity to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and points to prominent victories, like Gandhi's quest for Indian independence and the Eastern European resistance to the Soviets. A good introduction to the subject.

PeaceCENTER favorites

When Religion Becomes Evil
by Charles Kimball
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Kimball identifies five indicators of religion gone bad and provides historical and contemporary examples: religions may make "absolute truth claims," require "blind obedience," "establish an 'ideal time'" (attempt to set up a utopian theocracy), teach that "the end justifies the means" or "declare holy war."

The Powers That Be: Theology for a New Millennium
by Walter Wink
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This is a condensed, easy-to-read version of the "powers" trilogy: Naming the Powers: The Language of Power in the New Testament; Unmasking the Powers: The Invisible Forces That Determine Human Existence and Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination. We also recommend Jesus and Nonviolence: A Third Way (2003) a précis of Wink's whole thinking about this issue, including the relation of Jesus and his message to politics and nonviolence, the history of nonviolent efforts, and how nonviolence can win the day when others don't hesitate to resort to violence or terror to achieve their aims.

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
by Malcolm Gladwell
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We liked this book so much we bought up every copy in San Antonio, so if you want it, get it here. This is a book about how things change, for better or worse. It's not in gradual steps; often, it's all at once, when the "tipping point" is reached. We will read this book again (Ann's already read it three times), discusses it promote it and most of all, use it to make change happen. Also available as an audio tape.

Soul of a Citizen: Living With Conviction in a Cynical Time
by Paul Rogat Loeb
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Activist Paul Loeb teaches us how to to lead lives worthy of our convictions. We also recommend Paul's latest book, The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear. Paul maintains a web site with sample chapters at www.soulofacitizen.org.

Faith Works: Lessons on Spirituality and Social Action
by Jim Wallis
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Wallis, best know as the editior of Sojourners magazine, explains that faith is not something you possess but rather something you practice and that meaningful activism is possible, palatable, soul-healing and even fun.

Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life
by Thich Nhat Hanh
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A peace activist, teacher, and community leader uses incidents from our everyday lives to show us how to transform our lives. This is also available for purchase from Amazon.com as a cassette tape.

Claiming All Things for God: Prayer, Discernment, and Ritual for Social
Change by George D. McClain
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A way to fulfil the yearning for a sense of integration between an active life and a spiritual life. This book describes the prayer-action cycle that the peaceCENTER follows and offer rituals groups can use to begin to be faith-filled together.

Jesus' Plan for a New World: The Sermon on the Mount
by Richard Rohr
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Critiques the institutionalization of Christ's gospel that renders it meek and mild and safe, and defends the original subversive character of Christ's life and teaching, which challenges the cultures of money, power, and religionism.

Peace classics

A Force More Powerful: A Century of Nonviolent Conflict
by Peter Ackerman, Jack DuVall
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Companion volume to the PBS series (available for check out from the peaceCENTER Resource Center), the book explores the use of nonviolent action to achieve social change in the twentieth century. The first part, "Movement to Power," covers pre-Revolutionary Russia, colonial India, and the Solidarity movement in Poland. Part 2, "Resistance to Terror," describes German opposition to the 1923 Ruhrkampf and Danish resistance to the Nazi invasion, as well as Latin American resistance efforts in El Salvador, Argentina, and Chile. Part 3, "Campaigns for Rights," addresses the civil rights movement in the U.S and the campaign against apartheid in South Africa, restoration of democracy in the Philippines, the Palestinian intifada, and a range of actions in China, Eastern Europe, and Mongolia. Finally, "Violence and Power" considers the theoretical questions that nonviolence raises and briefly discusses recent or current conflicts in such places as Sri Lanka, the Basques, Northern Ireland, Burma, Serbia, and Kosovo.

Peace Is the Way: Writings on Nonviolence from the Fellowship of Reconciliation
edited by Walter Wink
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he 53 articles, culled from 85 years of Fellowship magazine, are by Berrigan, Chavez, Day, Deming, Dolci, Ellsberg, Gandhi, Harding, Jegen, King, Macy, Merton, Muste, Nhat Han, Nouwen, Sharpe, Smiley... and the list goes on.

Beyond Violence: In the Spirit of the Non-Violent Christ
by Gerard A. Vanderhaar
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Importance of nonviolence at the turn of the millennium. Challenging, but easy to comprehend.

Violence Unveiled: Humanity at the Crossroads
Gil Bailie
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About the rise of violence and social disintegration in our culture, searching out its sources and proposing a way of salvation; an expansion of René Girard's theory of mimetic desire.

Passion for Peace: The Social Essays
by Thomas Merton
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A comprehensive volume containing Thomas Merton's principal writings on non-violence, war, and racism. Much of what he wrote between 1961 and 1968 is prophetic and speaks penetratingly to our time thirty years later. We also recommend Faith and Violence: Christian Teaching and Christian Practice and The Nonviolent Alternative.

In the Footsteps of Gandhi: Conversations With Spiritual Social Activists
by Catherine Ingram and Ramchandra Gandhi
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Interviews with the leading spiritual social activists of our century, including Desmond Tutu, the Dalai Lama, Thich Nhat Hanh, Ram Dass, Joan Baez, Gary Snyder, Joanna Macy, Cesar Chavez, David Steindl-Rast, A. T. Ariyaratne, Diane Nash, and Mubarak Awad.

Personal Recommendations

Don't Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate
by George Lakoff
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Recommended by peaceCENTER BoD member Cathy Arends
Cathy says: The New York Times bestseller, Don't Think of an Elephant is a "must read". The subtitle, "the essential guide for progressives" is accurate. Have you been bewildered as to why so many people don't see the facts behind the Bush & Co. "double speak"? Just to name a few examples: "Clean Air" bill that creates more pollution, "No Child Left Behind" while cutting the budget for education, "friendly fire" while killing innocent women and children. This book clearly articulates how "framing" overrides facts, how the national strict father model vs nurturant parent model shapes national and global political worldviews, priorities and policies.

The conservative, right wing groups have spent the last 30-40 years mastering how to "language", frame and articulate their views in a powerful, effective way. Meanwhile, we are losing the America, and its role in the world, as we have known and think of it. If America is to be reclaimed and improved upon, it is essential for the rest of the population to learn what is so clearly explained in this book. This information is as essential as learning our "ABC's" in order to read and speak and communicate our values, goals, visions in a way that has impact and can be successful not only in our country but in the world.

Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals
by Saul D. Alinsky
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Recommend by Susan Ives.
Susan says: A groundbreaking primer of how "have-nots" can organize to achieve political power. I first read this book when I was in college more than 30 years ago (and you can check out my battered copies of this and Reveille for Radicals from the peaceCENTER Resource Center!) Alinsky's insights are the foundation for San Antonio's COPS/METRO.

At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-68
by Taylor Branch
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The day after Selma's "Bloody Sunday," the first U.S. combat troops arrived in South Vietnam. King followed where its logic took him: to war protests. Required reading for those working to end the militarization of the San Antonio Martin Luther King March!

The Great Starvation Experiment : The Heroic Men Who Starved so That Millions Could Live
by Todd Tucker
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As WWII neared an end, 36 conscientious objectors volunteered to be systematically starved a project designed to develop an understanding of the physiology and psychology of starvation and to provide strategies to manage the mass starvation that might follow the war's end in Europe. Tucker provides provocative discussions on subjects ranging from the ethical problems inherent in the use of human volunteers to the history of cannibalism and the conscientious objector movement.

Friends and Neighbors

Back from the Dead: One Woman's Search for the Men Who Walked off America's Death Row
by Joan M. Cheever
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Joan was a stalwart in the 2005 Journey of Hope visit to San Antonio. Back From The Dead is the story of 589 former death row inmates who, through a lottery of fate, were given a second chance at life in 1972 when the death penalty was abolished; it returned to the United States four years later. During the years she represented Walter Williams on Texas’ Death Row, Cheever always wondered what would happen if his death sentence was reversed and he was eventually released from prison. Would he have killed again? Two years after Williams’ execution, Cheever was determined to find the answer and reveals these tales of second chances: of tragedy and failure, racism and injustice, and redemption and rehabilitation.

Boundaries Not Barriers: Some Uniquely Jewish Perspectives on Life
by Samuel M. Stahl
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Rabbi Stahl was on the original Board of Directors of the peaceCENTER. This is a book of Jewish information and inspiration, including: Forgiving Is Not Condoning, The Anatomy of Gossip, Is a White Lie Ever Justified?, How Jewish Is Privacy?, Grace: Jewish and Christian Understandings, Jews and the Anti-Christ, Kabbalah Lite, and Felix Mendelssohn: Musical Genius and Jewish Casualty. We also recommend Sam's first book, Making the Timeless Timely (you can read his chapter about the death penalty on the peaceCENTER's site.).

Legacy of Love: My Education in the Path of Nonviolence
by Arun Gandhi
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This compelling memoir begins in the heart of apartheid South Africa where the author lived under conditions of zealous racism until he was 12 years old. Following are the two pivotal years he spent with his grandfather in India, learning the lessons that would undo his anger and cultivate a profound activism. His account also describes living with his parents in religious and socially activist communities in South Africa and India. Arun served a three-year term on the peaceCENTER's Board. Our Peace and Justice Resource Center is dedicated to hom and his wife, Sunanda.

All of One Peace: Essays on Nonviolence
by Colman McCarthy
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A collection of essays by a former syndicated Washington Post columnist with a nonviolent stance. In 1982 McCarthy founded the Center for Teaching Peace, an organization that supports courses on nonviolence. His Class of Nonviolence is available for download on the peaceCENTER's Web site. We also recommend I'd Rather Teach Peace, his how-to manual, describing how he gets kids to explore issues relating to peace. Colman served a three-year term on the peaceCENTER's Board.

Children's Books

Is There Really a Human Race?
by Jamie Lee Curtis, Laura Cornell
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A boy asks his mother the title question then continues, "If the race is unfair, will I succeed?" His mother tells her son that it's often better to help others and make the world a better place than to win first place in a foot race. Cornell's ink-and-color wash cartoons are a perfect match to Curtis's lilting text.

Long March: The Choctaw's Gift to Irish Famine Relief
by Marie-Louise Fitzpatrick
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Based on a true story. In 1847 the Choctaws, having themselves known starvation during their Long March, raise money to help the staring people in Ireland. A wonderful story of empathy and forgiveness. We also recommend The Sneetches and Other Stories

The Butter Battle Book
by Dr. Seuss
recommended by: Susan Ives    
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Engaged in a long-running battle, the Yooks and the Zooks develop more and more sophisticated weapons as they attempt to outdo each other. A true and humorous explanation of the arms race for children and adults alike.

Story of Ferdinand
by Munro Leaf
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Much-loved tale of a bull who prefers peace to fighting.

Peace Tales: World Folktales to Talk About
by Margaret Read MacDonald
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Three dozen short stories and numerous proverbs, intended as discussion starters on war and peace, conflict and cooperation. No illustrations. All ages.

It's Our World, Too!: Stories of Young People Who Are Making a Difference
by Phillip Hoose
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The stories of 14 teenagers who made a difference. The stories of Harriet, Neto and Robyn were featured in "The Table," a video made by the peaceCENTER on behalf of the Evangelical Lutheran Church.