100th Monkey Books

Social Thought & Political Action



Buying a Book?





Deschooling Our Lives
edited by Matt Hern (1996) 150pages

Deschooling Our Lives includes some of the most inspiring and challenging thinkers about education, as well as a survey of the most promising alternatives to compulsory schooling: community learning networks, homeschooling, democratic/free schools, and more. Contributors and examples include: Ivan Illich, John Holt, Leo Tolstoy, Vinoba Bhave, John Taylor Gatto, Grace Llewellyn, David Guterson, Satish Kumar, Growing Without Schooling, the Albany Free School, Summerhill, and the Sudbury Valley School.(New Society Publishers) If there were one thing I could wish for the readers (and some of the writers) of Deschooling Our Lives, it would be this: If people are seriously to think about deschooling our lives, and not just escape from the corrosive effects of compulsory schooling, they could do no better than to develop the habit of setting a mental question mark beside all discourse on young people's "educational needs" or "leqarning needs," or about their need for a "preparation for life." I would like them to reflect on the historicity of these very ideas. Such reflection would take the new crop of deschoolers a step further from where the younger and somewhat naive Ivan was situated, back when talk of "deschooling" was born. - from the Foreword by Ivan Illich (New Society Publishers)



Global Mind Change: The Promise of the 21st Century
Willis Harman(1987,1995) 208pages

This small volume explores the hypothesis that a change is taking place at the most fundamental level of the belief structure of Western industrial society. The book is deliberately small, because its purpose is not to make a case with finality but to stimulate a critical dialogue...We may not be able to reach consensus on the correct interpretation of our times. But the stakes are high and the attempt is worth taking. However we view it, the present-day world situation is hazardous for civilization. The passengers on planet Earth have a tough passage ahead. Our ability to travel that passage together without a wreck depends on keeping levels of understanding high and anxiety low. Whatever conclusions one reaches participating in this dialogue will increase the needed understanding. - from the author's Introduction (Institute of Noetic Sciences / Berrett-Koehler, 1998)



The Hungry Spirit: Beyond Capitalism - A Quest for Purpose in the Modern World
Charles Handy (1997) 272pages

To be Properly Selfish is to accept a responsibility for making the most of oneself, by, ultimately, finding a purpose beyond and bigger than oneself...The argument of this book is that, in our hearts, we would like to find a purpose bigger than ourselves because that will raise us to heights we had not dreamt of. If the individualism which is at the heart of capitalism became redefined as this sort of Proper Selfishness society might become a better place instead of the beggar-my-neighbour world it seems to be. This new individualism looks beyond materialism to something greater. The freedom and the choices which capitalism and liberal democracy make possible do not have to be squandered on yet more things, but can be used instead to liberate more people to be as well as to have. No laws can make this happen, only by a release of the human spirit, which I suspect is hungry for it, waiting only for such a Proper Selfishness to be fashionable and admired. - from "A Personal Preface" by the author (Arrow Books)



Kinds of Power: A Guide to its Intelligent Uses
James Hillman (1995) 260pages

Power doses not appear nakedly as such but wears the disguises of authority, control, prestige, influence, fame, etc. To get to the full nature of power we need to look into and see through the many styles so as to know the unique and specific ways these ideas of power operate in our daily psychology. And though ideas about power provide the overt content of the following pages, the power of ideas is the latent content of the book as a whole. For as you and I muse and mull, we are both all the while engaged - not with a thing or a fact called "power," but with ideas. This introduction will try to press home why I think this distinction is so utterly crucial. - from the author's "Opening the Book" (Currency Doubleday)



Letters At 3AM: Reports on Endarkenment
Michael Ventura (1993) 247pages

These hard-hitting heart-rending pieces collected from the L.A. Weekly cover the continent's shadow from Brooklyn to Texas and Hollywood - and across to the shores of the Gulf War. More than comments on the 90's scene, they chronicle a civilization in agony. As media conglomerates and 'correct' academic experts dominate American discourse, Ventura's clear, no b.s. language, his ancient Sicilian passion, and his courage to speak out have become crucial to the health of the body politic. (Spring Publications)



Manual for the Peacemaker: An Iroquois Legend to Heal Self & Society
Jean Houston with Margaret Rubin (1995) 177pages

This book invites you to participate in a legend about a bringer of peace, a creator of community, a changer of his world. It is one of the richest stories to come out of North America... It tells of Deganawidah, the Man from the North, celebrated even today as the Peacemaker, and his successful campaign to create a peaceful and prosperous society, where previously there had been only long years of violence and intertribal warfare. His allies included Jigonhsasee, remembered as the Mother of Nations, and the great orator Hayenwatha, remembered as Hiawatha. Together they created a peaceful democracy among five tribes of native people in the northeastern woodlands, a true democracy that lasted hundreds of years and is still, to a remarkable extent, in force today. European settlers gave this nation the name Iroquois; they call themselves the Haudenosaunee, the People of the Longhouse. The figure of Deganawidah carries archetypal power as a new kind of Peacemaker; his peace embraces what he calls a New Mind, a radical change in consciousness that opens itself to a new order of health, justice, and sacred power. Thus the peace that he proposes is vigorous and demanding, rigorous and challenging. He does not arrive from on high with answers spelled out and a completed plan; though he knows himself to be a messenger of the Great Spirit, he invites others to help him clarify the message and carry it forward persuasively to kin and kind. As his mission proceeds, so does the peace, becoming feisty and rich! It is peace expressed through dynamic conversation, intensive sharing of ideas, ceremony, and cooperation; peace that appeals to all levels of human experience: physical, psychological, mythic, spiritual. - from the author's Introduction (Quest Books)



Pedagogy of Freedom: Ethics, Democracy, and Civic Courage
Paulo Freire (1921-1997) translated by Patrick Clarke (1997) 144pages

Pedagogy of Freedom was written largely for the graduate seminar on liberation pedagogy that Paulo Freire and I were scheduled to teach at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) during the fall semester, 1997. As we were preparing the seminar, Paulo was overtly concerned with the positivistic overemphasis on the so-called scientific methods of analysis and absolute objectivity that informs institutions of higher learning, ...This concern over the technicist approach to education via a reductionist specialization motivated Freire to write Pedagogy of Freedom, in which he highlights other fundamental knowledges that all teachers should have, or at least be exposed to, but that are seldom taught to them in their preparation as teachers. He contends that "teaching requires a recognition that education is ideological"; "Teaching always involves ethics"; "Teaching requires a capacity to be critical"; "Teaching requires the recognition of our conditioning"; "Teaching requires humility"; and "Teaching requires critical reflection," among others. In Pedagogy of Freedom Freire convincingly demonstrates that these other fundamental knowledges are absolutely necessary for the development of a critical reading of the world, which implies, according to him, "a dynamic comprehension between the least coherent understanding of the world and a more coherent understanding of the word." - from the Foreword by Donaldo Macedo, Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts and Education, University of Massachusetts, Boston (Rowman & Littlefield, 1998)



Uncommon Learning: Thoreau on Education
Henry David Thoreau ( ) edited by Martin Bickman (1999) 86pages

"It is only when we forget our learning that we begin to know." Thoreau wrote. The sign of a truly good book was this: "I must lay it down and commence living on its hint...What I began by reading I must finish by acting." Ideas about education permeate Thoreau's writing, although he never wrote a book on the subject. Uncommon Learning brings his ideas together in a single volume for the first time. (Mariner Books/Houghton Mifflin)



A World Waiting To Be Born: Civility Rediscovered
M. Scott Peck (1993) 366pages

In The Different Drum I attempted to take a word, community, that had lapsed into obsolete meaninglessness and both resurrect and redefine it. This book is a similar attempt. I wish to resurrect and redefine the meaning of civility. This is necessary for the healing of our society...We are organizational creatures. We are born not only into a society and culture but usually into a specific, complex organization: a family. Our marriages are organizations. We study in schools that are organizations; we earn a living in business that are organizations; at some time or another we will likely worship in an organization; and when we die there will be organizations to usher us out of this world... The following chapters of this section will delineate the interlocking cornerstones - the underlying prerequisites - for civil behavior. Through this delineation, we shall gradually arrive at the more accurate and complete redefinition of civility that we so desperately need. The second section will be devoted to an exploration of these cornerstones in the most common of organizations: marriage and the family, The third will examine civility in the context of business or the larger organizations for which we work. The differences between business and families will be noted, but so will many of the organizational dynamics they have in common. Finally, there will be a fourth concluding, section on community in the workplace. it is entitled "Epiphany" because the mode of organizational behavior that I call genuine community is the vehicle par excellence for both the teaching and the practice of civility. Here lies our most exciting and unrecognized of frontiers. - from Chapter One: Something Is Seriously Wrong (Bantam)


Browse Selected Books: 100th MONKEY Stable
Go Back to Table of Contents: 100th MONKEY OASIS