Radicalism Books

The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical

Shane Claiborne

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 129 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Many Good Observations, But Many Problems 3 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

Shane Claiborne has written a highly personal account of his journey as a follower of Christ and the call he feels to live radically for Christ. Much of The Irresistible Revolution is inspirational. Shane writes primarily to American evangelicals, who he calls out of their depressingly normal lives. Along the way, he levels numerous criticisms at the church, many of which seem on target.

The American evangelical church is in many ways indistinguishable from secular culture -- by its materialism, marketing, bigger-is-better mentality, and celebrity adoration. Worship services and youth ministry have almost become forms of entertainment. The church cultivates believers, but not always followers. Shane challenges his readers to take Jesus at his word when he spoke about the poor being blessed; the last being first; loving our enemies; denying ourselves; and serving Christ himself by serving the poor, lonely, sick, and imprisoned. And Shane criticizes the mixture of faith, patriotism, and conservative politics that characterize parts of the evangelical landscape.

Shane doesn't beat up his readers. He writes with a light, often humorous touch. He teaches almost entirely through stories, mostly his own. One of his appealing qualities is his willingness to take the unconventional route, to take risks for God. He seems to have cultivated an enjoyment of risk-taking, almost like that of a prankster. There is a streak of mischievousness that runs through his stories.

I wanted to like this book. There isn't very much about my walk of faith that I would call radical. Serious and heart-felt, yes. Sacrificial, to a degree. But radical, very little. One line from the book has stayed with me: "We have insulated ourselves from miracles. We no longer live with such reckless faith that we need them. There is rarely room for the transcendent in our lives."

However, as I read deeper into the book I began to notice many problems. By the end of the book I was pretty tired of these problems, several of which I describe below. Nevertheless, The Irresistible Revolution contains many good observations and will probably inspire and stick with many readers.

Now for the problems:

- I noticed an occasional harshness, even scorn, toward Christians with whom Shane disagrees. I don't know why he thinks this attitude is okay.

- Shane criticizes the mixture of biblical faith and right wing politics that exists in much of the church today. But his own politics are clearly left wing and his own faith and vision for the church are just as tinged by those politics. Nowhere does he acknowledge the truly difficult judgments involved in rightly engaging the culture with the gospel. Nor does he acknowledge the long cultural and moral slide that the Christian right has tried to address or propose alternative ways to address it.

- Shane is anti-war and anti-death penalty. His theology on these issues is anchored in Jesus' teaching to love our enemies and appears to preclude any use of violent force under any circumstances. Does he even believe the fight against the Axis powers in World War II was wrong? One of his heroes is Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German pastor who opposed the Nazi regime. Shane approvingly quotes Bonhoeffer and calls him a fellow resister, but nowhere mentions the problem (for a pacifist) that Bonhoeffer tried to assassinate Hitler.

- Shane condemns the Iraq war, but the war he condemns is a straw man. Based on his description, one would think the war is merely an American conquest of Iraq. In fact, it is more complicated, consisting of a war to depose Saddam Hussein, a war against the Jihadists who subsequently poured into Iraq to destabilize the new democracy, and a civil war between Sunni and Shia Muslims.

- At times Shane seems anti-capitalist, but he does not make his position completely clear, nor does he say what economic system would be an improvement over capitalism.

- Shane seems to romanticize the poor and credit to them a nobility that I don't see. He even refers to them as his teachers. The poor, at least the poor in America, are not simply victims of economic injustice. In my (limited) experience working with the homeless in San Francisco, I have mostly encountered people with a complex of problems, many being of their own making, and poverty being just one. These people are created by God and deserve practical help and love, but they are not particularly romantic or noble.

- In his anti-war and anti-poverty advocacy, Shane often expresses mushy sentiments about how we're all one big family, regardless of country, race, class, or religion. At times he seems to confuse the Body of Christ with the family of mankind. He sometimes sounds like mainline Protestantism of 50 years ago, with its de-emphasis of orthodox doctrines and its emphasis of the social gospel.

- Early in the book Shane refers to himself as a postmodern: "The things that transform us, especially us 'postmoderns,' are people and experiences. Political ideologies and religious doctrines just aren't very compelling, even if they're true." Perhaps I'm reading too much into these lines, but I found them disturbing. As a philosophical ideology, postmodernism holds that objective truth either does not exist or cannot be known; all one can know are stories, and no story is better than any other story. Reality, truth, and value are held to be arbitrary cultural and linguistic constructions. But Christianity has always claimed that objective truth exists and is knowable -- truth about God, mankind, and the world -- not exhaustive truth, but real truth. I don't know what we're left with if we abandon this philosophical foundation.

- Shane rightly asks what Jesus has to say about this life and this world, but at one point he asks a strange question: "Even if there were no heaven and there were no hell, would you still follow Jesus? Would you follow him for the life, joy, and fulfillment he gives you right now?" But Paul came very close to answering this question in 1 Corinthians 15: "If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men." And: "If the dead are not raised, 'Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.'" If the gospel offers anything, it offers hope -- hope that we are not accidents, that we are loved by a good God, that our lives are going somewhere, and that we don't face personal extinction at death. It is only this hope that gives sufficient impetus to follow Jesus.

Editorial Review:

Using unconventional examples from his own life, Shane Claiborne stirs up questions about the church and the world, and challenges readers to truly live out their Christian faith.

Letters to a Young Contrarian (Art of Mentoring)

Christopher Hitchens

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 39 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

"Do justice, and let the skies fall." Christopher Hitchens borrows from Roman antiquity this touchstone for a career of confrontation, argument, and troublemaking. Part of the Art of Mentoring series, Letters to a Young Contrarian is a trim volume of about two dozen letters to an imaginary student of controversy. The letters are wonderfully engaging--Hitchens is an exceptional prose stylist--and from the outset they strike a self-reflective note. What Hitchens lionizes and illuminates in this book is not any particular disagreement, but a way of being perpetually at odds with the mainstream. "Humanity is very much in debt to such people," he argues.

Hitchens's style is incendiary and sometimes flamboyant. He relishes the role of provocateur and fancies himself a gadfly to the drowsy American republic. One of his main strengths is his erudition, allowing him to range over vast landscapes of the humanities and politics in a single breath. But he is also sometimes glib and self-satisfied, and his penchant for referencing everything in sight can be distracting. Nonetheless, his arguments are forceful and morally important--and if the reader feels otherwise, there are few more fitting compliments to a professional dissident than dissent. --Eric de Place

T.A.Z.: The Temporary Autonomous Zone (Autonomedia New Autonomy Series)

Hakim Bey

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Most likely COINTELPRO 1 out of 5 stars.
2 of 13 people found this review helpful.

Hakim Bey/Peter Lamborn Wilson is most likely COINTELPRO-if not literally at least metaphorically. I highly recommend looking at John Zerzan's reaming of this con artist in Running on Emptiness. For gullible wannabe anarchists, beware-you will be indoctrinated into becoming apathetic, self centered/indulgent and rendered quite useless if you subscribe to any of Bey's ideas.

what do Jello Biafra and Hakim Bey have in common? 4 out of 5 stars.
2 of 11 people found this review helpful.

I saw Jello Biafra speak last night. I had no real desire to listen to him babble but he spoke at a club I work at and I thought a friend of mine might who wasn't too familiar with the former Dead Kennedy might enjoy it if for no other reason than a change of pace and a chance to get out of the house. I saw Jello speak some fifteen years ago at the Univ. of GA. He seemed more animated/theatrical then- or maybe I was just more into what was spewing from his oropharynx. Last night I found his word drool contained a humorous line here or there but was largely boring to just plain tiresome. Whine, whine, whine about the Bush admin and the Dems- for four freaking hours! Well, I guess he LOVES sitting around collecting hundreds of juicy little facts about everyone in the current administration and all the huge companies (Haliburton, et al)they are connected to. I was really hoping that he would show video of the ongoing NBA Draft that was on ESPN and, with each announced pick, he would take a moment offers his opinions (in between all the commentary against Bush). Jello: "Randy Foye chosen by Portland. I realy like this guy! He could be a star ala D. Wade. But wait- he's been traded to Minnesota for Brandon Roy, who may be the most complete player in the draft. So Roy goes to the Trailblazers and Foye will play alongside the "Big Ticket" Kevin Garnett in the Twin Cities. If you are a T'wolves fan you gotta be pleased so far..." What would the crowd have thought? Just a pipedream, I suppose.
So what does this have to do with Hakim Bey's collection of essays The Temporary Autonomous Zone (ontological anarchy and poetic terrorism). At the spoken word there was a table set up for a local "infoshop"- an anarcho/lefty bookstore. Everytime they table one of the clubs shows I go up and ask them if they have Bey's TAZ. They never seem to, which is curious to me. I wonder Biafra (or anyone in the crowd) has read it. If he has he either a) doesn't agree w/ Bey or b) he really, really LOVES (his true desire) to gather info on all the amoral activities and motives of politicians and add it to his catalogue. Effectively Jello is engaging in the reproduction of death/death imagery, something Hakim despises. I side with Bey.
I first read TAZ about thirteen years ago and loved it. It was humorous, frank, cutting, and I enjoyed the word play. Even the review quotes on the back were funny. I still like it. I'll leave you with what my coworker Al said after I lent it to him: "It's the only rant I've ever read that made me want to jack-off."

Editorial Review:

The underground cult bestseller! Essays redefining the psychogeographical nooks of autonomy. Recipes for poetic terror, anarcho-black magic, post-situ psychotropic surgery, denunciations of spiritual addictions to vapid infotainment cults—this is the bastard classic, the watermark impressed upon our minds. Where conscience informs praxis, and action infects consciousness, T.A.Z. continues to worm its way into above-ground culture. Second edition, with a new introductory essay by the author and additional appendical materials.

Right Turns: From Liberal Activist to Conservative Champion in 35 Unconventional Lessons

Michael Medved

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 48 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

You'll be impressed, even if you don't agree with all the views 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 3 people found this review helpful.

Heard Michael Medved read his autobiography, RIGHT TURNS:
FROM LIBERAL ACTIVIST TO CONERVATIVE CHAMPION
IN 35 UNCONVENTIONAL LESSONS and must say I was
impressed--though I don't agree with all his political beliefs.

Yet that's what makes the book so interesting; i.e., that
Medved gets you to think . . . he has always done that
for me, even since I started to watch him back when he reviewed
movies on PBS . . . his opinions were often funny, but they
were also much more honest than those of his colleague
Jeffrey Lyons (who could find something admirable in almost any
film). . . I also got a kick out of his "Golden Turkey Awards,"
presented to the very worst efforts in filmmaking.

When he described his early liberal leanings, I could
relate to much of what he said--particularly when he talked
about Allard Lowenstein, one of my political heroes . . . how
he transformed to become conservative kept my attention,
as did his becoming increasingly aligned with Orthodox
Judaism . . . and when he followed-up an unsuccessful
first marriage with a loving second one, I found myself
feeling glad for Medved.

Parts of RIGHT TURNS are funny; much of it is thought-provoking.

Editorial Review:

Nationally syndicated talk-radio host and noted film critic Michael Medved has taken an extraordinary journey from liberal activist to outspoken conservative. Along the way he has earned millions of admirers—and more than his share of enemies—with his disarming wit and slashing arguments on issues of pop culture and politics.

In the candid, illuminating Right Turns, Medved chronicles the lessons and adventures that changed him from a Vietnam protest leader to an optimistic promoter of American patriotism, from secularism to religion, from adventurous single guy to doting husband and father. He skewers leftist orthodoxy, revealing why the Right is right and why his former colleagues on the Left remain hopelessly wrong on every cultural, political, and social issue.

Patriots, Politics, and the Oklahoma City Bombing (Cambridge Studies in Contentious Politics)

Stuart A. Wright

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Page turner 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 2 people found this review helpful.

In the rush to keep America safe, this book reminds us that the country inadvertently nurtures terrorism amongst 'all-American' types.

Both McVeigh and Nichols never would have fit the profile of a 'suspected terrorist'. This is because they were military veterans without prior arrest records who lived in middle America.

But Middle America feels alienated from its government. Come to think of it, they ultimately don't trust the government at all. Coming back after a military service, they were drawn into a gun show underground where restrictions on weapons are conveniently unenforced.

The going mantra at such events appears to be "If you want it, there is somebody who is just as willing to sell it to you". And coupled with the presence of equally chilling materials, this ultimately spelled out a recipe for disaster.

Serving as a consultant to Timothy McVeigh's defense team, Stuart Wright did not actually come across as somebody championing his client. Rather, I came away with an objective account of the tragedy.

I also compared his thoughtful examination against our ongoing public paranoia against 'outsiders' particularly those with certain-sounding names. The former seems like it offers the more reasonable strategy for effectively addressing and then winning the war against terrorism--international AND domestic.

Editorial Review:

This book explores an escalating spiral of tension between the Patriot movement and the state leading up to the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. The author served as a consultant to Timothy McVeigh's defense team and draws on information based on face-to-face interviews with McVeigh. Wright contends that McVeigh was firmly entrenched in the Patriot movement and was part of a network of 'warrior cells' that planned and carried out the bombing. By examining the Patriot movement's history and subsequent reconfiguration of conflicts with the state, McVeigh's role in the bombing can be more fully understood.

Flying Close to the Sun: My Life and Times as a Weatherman

Cathy Wilkerson

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 11 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

“On the morning of March 6, 1970, in the subbasement of 18 W. 11th Street in Greenwich Village, a piece of ordinary water pipe, filled with dynamite, nails, and an electric blasting cap, ignited by mistake…”

So begins this stunning memoir of a white middle-class girl from Connecticut who became a member of the Weather Underground, one of the most notorious groups of the 1960s. Cathy Wilkerson, who famously blew up and escaped from a Greenwich Village townhouse, here wrestles with the legacy of the movement, at times looking at contradictions of the movement that many others have avoided: the absence of women’s voices then and in the retelling; the incompetence and the egos; the hundreds of bombs detonated in protest which caused little loss of life but which were also ineffective in fomenting revolution. While proud of many of the accomplishments of the 1960s, years later Wilkerson examines why, in 1970, she in effect accepted the same disregard for human life practiced by the government. In searching for new paradigms for change, Wilkerson asserts with brave humanity and confessional honesty an assessment of her past—of those heady, iconic times—and finds hope and faith in a world that at times seems to offer neither.

Cathy Wilkerson was active in the civil rights movement, Students for a Democratic Society, and the Weather Underground. In 1970, she, along with Kathy Boudin, survived an explosion in the basement of her parents’ townhouse that killed three Weathermen, forcing the two underground. For the past twenty years she has worked as an educator teaching teachers in the New York City schools.

The Disinformation Book of Lists

Russ Kick

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Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Can you name five military leaders who were -transgendered?

Twelve cases of involuntary human experimentation by the U.S. government?

How about the four porn novels written by famous authors, 11 books left out of the Bible and over 50 side effects of NutraSweet that have been reported to the FDA?

In 1977, David Wallechinsky, Irving Wallace and Amy Wallace published The Book of Lists, causing an immediate sensation. Not only did it lead to three direct sequels (in 1980, 1983 and 1993), it also created a new genre. Soon, shelves were lined with The First Original Unexpurgated Authentic Canadian Book of Lists (1978), The Book of Sports Lists (1979) and Meredith's Book of Bible Lists (1980), among many others. Using this popular, enduring format, Russ Kick's Disinformation Book of Lists delves into the murkier aspects of politics, current events, business, history, science, art and literature, sex, drugs, death and more. Despite such unusual subject matter, this book presents hard, substantiated facts with full references.

Among the lists presented:

Innocent People Freed from Prison
Members of the Skull & Bones Secret Society at Yale
Drugs Pulled Off the Market After They Killed Too Many People
Legal Substances that Will Get You High
Dead People Surrounding Bill Clinton
Scenes that Were Cut from Movies
Raunchy Songs that Were Never Released
Military Officers, Government Officials, Astronauts, and Airline Personnel Who Say UFOs Are Real
Words and Phrases No Longer Allowed in Textbooks

The Assassins

Bernard Lewis

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 23 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Lewis is a racist 1 out of 5 stars.
10 of 36 people found this review helpful.

I am an Ismailli and totally offended by Lewis's book. He is no doubt a total anti-Muslim racist. For greater information on the Nizari ismaillis read Farhad Daftary

Editorial Review:

The Assassins is a comprehensive, readable, and authoritative account of history's first terrorists. An offshoot of the Ismaili Shi'ite sect of Islam, the Assassins were the first group to make systematic use of murder as a political weapon. Established in Iran and Syria in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, they aimed to overthrow the existing Sunni order in Islam and replace it with their own. They terrorized their foes with a series of dramatic murders of Islamic leaders, as well as of some of the Crusaders, who brought their name and fame back to Europe.Professor Lewis traces the history of this radical group, studying its teachings and its influence on Muslim thought. Particularly insightful in light of the rise of the terrorist attacks in the U.S. and in Israel, this account of the Assassins--whose name is now synonymous with politically motivated murderers--places recent events in historical perspective and sheds new light on the fanatic mind.

Revolution for the Hell of It: The Book That Earned Abbie Hoffman a 5 Year Prison Term at the Chicago Conspiracy Trial

Abbie Hoffman

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Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

While the supremely popular Steal This Book is a guide to living outside the establishment, Revolution for the Hell of It is a chronicle of Abbie Hoffman's radical escapades that doubles as a guidebook for today's social and political activist. Hoffman pioneered the use of humor, theater, and shock value to drive home his points, and in Revolution for the Hell of It he gives firsthand accounts of his legendary adventures, from the activism that led to the founding of the Youth International Party—or "Yippies!—to the 1968 Democratic National Convention protests ("a Perfect Mess") that resulted in his conviction as part of the Chicago Seven. Also chronicled are the mass demonstrations he led in which over fifty thousand people attempted to levitate the Pentagon using psychic energy, and the time he threw fistfuls of dollar bills onto the floor of the New York Stock Exchange and watched the traders scramble. With antiwar sentiment once again in a furor and an incendiary political climate not seen since the book's original printing, Abbie Hoffman's voice is more essential than ever.

The Black Panther

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Editorial Review:

"We knew from the beginning how critical it was to have our own publication, to set forth our agenda for freedom...to urge change, to use the pen alongside the sword," writes David Hilliard in the preface to this stunning collection of pages from the original groundbreaking editions of the Black Panther Party's official news organ and original essays by Hilliard, Elaine Brown, Dr. Stan Oden, Craig Laurence Rice, Kumasi, and Joshua Bloom.

First called The Black Panther Community News Service and then The Black Panther Intercommunal News Service (BPINS), the weekly periodical was nationally and internationally distributed. It was "sold in small stores in black communities, through subscriptions, and, mostly, on the streets by dedicated Party members," writes Brown, a party leader and author of A Taste of Power, in this edition.

In its heyday, the Party sold several hundred thousand copies of the newspaper per week and was highly regarded for the quality of its content by media professionals and its legion of readers alike. It ultimately became the most influential independent black newspaper in the United States, known not only for its fearless reportage and analysis but its stunning photographs and illustrations, including provocative and humorous political cartoons.

Published in time to mark the 40th anniversary of the BPINS, this book is, at once, an invaluable document of a little-known aspect of American history and a celebration of one of the most stunning accomplishments of a cultural and political movement that changed the nation. The original DVD, included in the back of the book, makes this a multimedia package that readers across generations can appreciate, documenting events and leaders of the past who still resonate and influence culture and politics today.