Consumerism Bibliography

In another day I will join a business class - Building Sustainable Organizations - at Point Loma Nazarene University for a day to discuss the 100 Thing Challenge. I am attempting to prepare a short bibliography to hand out.

How does anyone put together a "short" bibliography?! It is so painful to be removing books from this list. Arrrr!

One of the things I'd like to communicate, both with the bibliography and with the discussion, is how understanding cannot be compartmentalized. There are excellent writings about the troubles of consumerism, books like Bill McKibben's Deep Economy or Wendell Berry's essay, "The Whole Horse" in The Art of the Commonplace.

But I seriously doubt either of those authors would have affected me the way they have if I had not first read Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory and C. S. Lewis' Till We Have Faces. The books "about consumerism" are especially powerful because of the books "about life."

Just curious: What book(s) have been most meaningful in your life?

Comments

[Somebody]

I'll limit myself to two.

Needful Things by Stephen King.
(If you've read it, you'll understand why. If not, I won't spoil it for you, but I'd suggest you give it a try and put it on your bibliography too.)

Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck.
(I'm going to let you be the judge on whether these are books "about consumerism" or "about life". ;-)

[Sean]

One author in particular has be a huge influence on me. Dennis Danver's has written multiple SciFi novels, all of which have rampant consumerism as a core theme. The ones of note are The Fourth World (in which people no longer leave their homes, but live inside and online) and Circuit of Heaven (Which takes that idea a step further in a re-imagining of a classic Shakespeare play in a virtual world that was separated from our own.)

[twitter.com/JeninJapan]

Culture Jamm by Kalle Lasn. My philosophy professor showed an Adbusters video in class my senior year of college and then loaned me this book when I asked him about it after class. It was my first realization of all the sneaky ways advertisers try to convince me my life sucks enough to buy their products.

[Carlos Teixeira, from Brazil]

How to make friends and influence people, Dale Carnegie

[Julie Klock]

Voluntary Simplicity by Duane Elgin sent me down the simplicity path 15 years ago. . .

[Brandon Smith]

Walden. If it's been longer than a few years since you've read it, I suggest reading it again. :)

I haven't read this next one, but one of the bigger scholarships out there this year is an essay contest about the morality of profit. (URL here: http://www.sevenfund.org/morality-of-profit/index.php)

The essays should be informed by the following book: In The River They Swim: essays from around the world on enterprise solutions to poverty.

When I was in Cedarville's honors program, we talked a lot about economic systems: is capitalism moral? We determined as it is, no, but an altered version of it may be. It might actually accomplish the ideal of harnessing the bad (greed) to do the work of the good. Or do you not think that's possible?

[Brandon Smith]

Aah, and one more.

Your bio describes yourself as "a restless wanderer on [your] way home." I understand that's a bit of a covert reference to your (and my) faith, and that's great and all, but after reading one particular book, I've stopped using that way of saying it, spread about by pastors everywhere.

I very, very highly recommend the book "Heaven is a Place on Earth." It's required reading for Cedarville's bible minor, and while it hits some subjects on a very basic level, there's a lot of challenging stuff in there.

[Somebody]

Just to be clearer than clear - in the interests of preparing a "short" bibliography, my submission above was a response more to the post title, not specifically to name "*the* singular (dual?) most meaningful books in my life". I do have (read) other books for other areas of life. ;-)

How did it go with the bibliography / discussion? Any further thoughts about *not* compartmentalizing understanding?