NEW BOOKS
See also the pages of reviews of other new books --Main menu.

1. THE VOICE OF THE EARTH: AN EXPLORATION OF ECOPSYCHOLOGY by Theodore Roszak. (I had a class of his there! Called "Darwin, Tarzan & Superman"!) Simon and Schuster Consumer Group (Touchstone), 1230 Avenue of the Americas, N.Y., NY 10020, (800) 223-2336, (212) 698-7007 FAX. 367 pp., $13.00 paper. 0-671-86753-9
   . . REVIEW:
   . . According to Roszak (a sociologist at California State University at Hayward), in this paperback reissue of last year's hardback edition, our planet has become infected by the schizophrenia of our pathological society. On the one hand, we rely on the environment to provide us with food and shelter, while on the other, we irrationally use it as our collective trashcan, and become alienated from it in the process.
2. "Ethics For The New Millennium." Dalai Lama
3. "The Art of Happiness." (older) Dalai Lama:
   "Everywhere, by all means imaginable, people are striving to improve their lives. Yet strangely, my impression is that those living in materially developed countries, for all their industry, are in some ways less satisfied, are less happy, and to some extent suffer more than those in the least developed countries.
   . "Indeed, if we compare the rich with the poor, it often seems that those with nothing are, in fact, the least anxious, although they are plagued with physical pains and suffering."
   . The rich "are so caught up in the idea of acquiring still more that they make no room for anything else in their lives [so] they actually lose the dream of happiness."
4. "Green Space, Green Time" Connie Barlow.
5. "The Sacred Depths of Nature" Ursula Goodenough
6. "God, Gaia, and Biophilia" by Dorian Sagan and Lynn Margulis.

7. Lynn Margulis's works include: The Origin of Eukaryotic Cells (1970), Early Life (1981), and Symbiosis in Cell Evolution (2d ed., 1993). She is also the co-author, with Karlene V. Schwartz, of Five Kingdoms: An Illustrated Guide to the Phyla of Life on Earth (2d ed., 1988), and with Dorion Sagan of Microcosmos (1986), Origins Of Sex (1986), and Mystery Dance (1991).
8. "Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors" Carl Sagan & Ann Druyan. 1992
9. "The Rise & Fall of the Third Chimpanzee", Jared Diamond, 91
10. "The Blind Watchmaker" & "The Selfish Gene", Richard Dawkins (see excerpt-file)
11. "Everyday Zen: Love and Work" by Charlotte Joko Beck. Her other book: "Living Zen".

• Tops as a Gaia Book: Thomas Berry, "Dream of the Earth". Timeless. (Tho it does not mention Gaia!)
• "THE DIFFERENT DRUM: Community Making And Peace" Scott Peck--An insightful work on commmunity building. The 4 stages of Faith development is discussed in chapter 9: Patterns of Transformation. Are most Gaians #3 & 4?

• "The Book" Alan Watts. (Read alternate chapters with Maslow!)

• "Toward a Psychology of Being" ~Abraham Maslow.

• "Scientists on Gaia" Edited: Steven Schneider. Chapter 9 is by John Harte! I talked with him once, so I know he's NOT me! A $55 book. Kinda dated now.

• Bill Moyers World of Ideas; has Forrest Church. $25: huge pprbk.

• "If You Love This Planet." H. Caldicott

• Charlene Spretnak: "The Spiritual Dimensions of Green Politics." Goddess-oriented european culture ended w an invasion from the east around 4,500 BC, & the concept of a remote over-god took root.

• "Gaia Connections", Allen S. Miller. Pub: Rowman and Littlefield. Much about ethics.

• "Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors / A Search for Who We Are." Sagan/Druyan, Hardcover: $23.

• "Wisdom of the Elders" - Peter Knudtson and David Suzuki. 1992. Sacred stories and traditions from the indigenous cultures of the world; profound ecological wisdom. See chapter 6.

• "The Tao of Physics", '75, Fritjof Capra.

• "The Turning Point" - Science, Society, and the rising culture, ibid.

• The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems, ibid. Released: 15 September, 1997. ISBN: 0385476760

  Capra abandons the traditional emphasis on the cell as the basic building block of life. Instead, the cell is seen as a symbiotic partnership between a number of formerly independent entities, now playing the roles of nucleus, mitochondria, ribosomes, chloroplasts, and so forth. [Margulis' "Endosymbiosis"]

  The Gaia hypothesis [Lovelock; what I call ["metasymbiosis"] plays a large role. He believes that the Darwinian struggle for survival aided by chance mutations is refuted by the discovery that microorganisms can pass genetic material from one to another across species lines--a discovery that he feels calls into question the entire notion of separate species.

  He too often states sweeping and unprovable assumptions as fact --such as that Cro-Magnons possessed "fully developed language".

• "How the Leopard Changed its Spots: The Evolution of Complexity" by Brian Goodwin. Margulis' review: "Goodwin thus recognizes the problem clearly, but I find his solutions deficient."

• "Living Within Limits." Garret Hardin. Or any of his stuff.

• "Sacred Earth" by Arthur Versluis. The Spiritual landscape of Native America.

• Arthur Clarke: "How the World Was One. Beyond the Global Village."

• The Blind Watchmaker; Richard Dawkins, 1986.

• Viable Populations xxx? Conservation; Edited by Michael Soule'. Lotta stats on minimum viable populations. (MVPs) Man not included, as far as I saw.

• James Randi's "Flim-Flam"

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  Bible Stuff:
  1. "Destroying the World to Save It", Robert Lifton (Amer. Psyciatric Ass'n). On Cults.
  2. "Fundamentalisms Observed" --The Fundamentalism Project; 3 Volumes: Edited by Martin E. Marty & Scott Appleby.

     "Neo Fundamentalism --The Humanist Response": The Academy of Humanism.

  3. "The Truth Shall Set You Free --A Family's Passage from Fundamentalism to a New Understanding of Faith, Love and Sexual Identity": Sally Lowe Whitehead.
  4. "When Time Shall Be No More --Prophecy Belief In Modern American Culture": Paul Boyer (A UW Prof who does a great job of chronicling the rise of fundamentalism in the late 19th and throughout the 20th century.)
  5. "Rescuing The Bible From Fundamentalism": Bishop John Shelby Spong. (A great affirmation of the value of non-literal reading/understanding of the Bible and an expose on the exploitation of the Bible by the literalists to support a fundamentalist "theology" by this Episcopal Cleric)
  6. "The Glory and The Power": Martin E. Marty & John Appleby
  7. "Religious Right--Religious Wrong": Lloyd J Averill
  8. "Stealing Jesus": Bruce Bawer
  9. "The Mind of The Bible Believer": Edmund Cohen
  10. "The Passover Plot." Schoenfeld
  11. "Pagan Christs" J. M. Robertson. The Lives & similarities of all the saviors of the world... before Christ.

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  With slight exerpts/reviews:

• "The Third Chimpanzee", by Jared Diamond.
  Here's some similarity between humans and bonobos:
  Face to face copulation;
  Male or female initiates sex;
  Pair-bonds between male & female, m&m, f&f
  Female receptive to sex during most of menstrual cycle, and when not in it.

  >Who is the closer genetic relative of the human?
  Similarity of DNA:
  Common Chimp /Bonobo: 99.3%
  Human /Either: 98.4%

  When did (A) all 3,
  (B) humans/common,
  (C) humans/bonobo,
  (D) common/bonobo chimps have a common ancestor?

  A, B, & C: 6-8 million years ago
  D: 4 mya