Micro Trends: The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow's Big Changes by Mark J. Penn

This is a quick read - the chapters are short and formatted in a predictable pattern - but it is a big paradigm changer. Mark Penn is a sociologist/statistician/analyst whose ability to spot very small trends helped formulate campaign strategies for victorious candidates as in Bill Clinton in 1996. That was when he identified a group of under-recognized young mothers and labeled them "soccer moms" to recruit them to vote Democratic. The label served well enough for Republican vice presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, to adopt the moniker for herself in the 2008 campaign. Politics aside, Penn's book explains how the inter-connectivity of the world wide web makes it possible and profitable to market to a niche group of individuals once 100,000 of them can be located. Then he explores a plethora of micro trends spanning all aspects of our culture: religion, education, life style, family, work, fashion, leisure, and technology to name a few biggies. When relevant he also comments on the same micro trends in their global contexts. So, I recommend reading this book to take the pulse of American culture and to discover a different way of thinking about what our fellow citizens are doing and deciding.

Penn, Mark J. with E. Kinney Zalesne. Micro Trends: The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow's Big Changes. 2007. Twelve. New York

Cherokee Dragon by Robert J. Conley

Dragging Canoe, a Cherokee chief, grew up in the eighteenth century as more and more whites entered their ancestral lands forcing more and more concessions in return for less and less remuneration. His father, also a tribal elder, believed in negotiating with the white man- at least until he met Pontiac and learned of the animosity between the various American and European factions. Dragging Canoe watched as one agreement after another was violated and as more and more of his people were killed. He advocated an inter-tribal alliance and inspired Tecumseh. Neither approach ended up being successful and the Cherokee nation moved west in the Trail of Tears. Robert Conley has written an important piece of historical fiction that presents the native point of view well, adding the emotional dilemmas that come when traditional wisdom fails its people and when one generation's solutions clash with those preferred by the next.

Conley, Robert J., Cherokee Dragon. 2000. St. Martin's Press. New York.

Queen by Alex Haley and David Stevens

"A child of the plantation," Queen looked as white as her father but was "nigra." This piece of narrative historical not really fiction covers the period between around 1820 to the late nineteenth century while the fabric of Southern plantation society and its dependency on slavery unraveled. In the epic style of a Michener book, the authors assume various perspectives over the course of the book to demonstrate that at our core we need to be loved for who we are and not for what we might represent or possess or accomplish. Poignant in its ability to express the deepest emotions, the authors force us American readers to own our own prejudices. As the characters develop many of the white people lose touch with their original values becoming more entrenched by the drive to maintain and expand the land and the privileges they received by enslaving one population at the same time that they were expelling another. Like Pres. Obama, Queen was forced to struggle with her double heritage and found both groups unwilling to fully accept her. The book is a fascinating window on the socio-cultural history of race relations in our nation. It is difficult to read from an emotional point of view and compelling from beginning to end.

Haley, Alex, and David Stevens. Queen. 1993. William Morrow & Co. New York.

Occult America: The Secret History of How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation by Mitch Horowitz

A terribly objective albeit friendly record of mysticism and its relationship to American political history, this book is disturbing and enlightening. Mitch Horowitz does not differentiate between mysticism that has its source in Christianity from mysticism that derives from other spiritual bases but he does show the synergy of ideas such as hyper-nationalism, prosperity, and positive thinking across the boundaries between church and society at large. He returns again and again to the theme of the commercialization and the popularization of spiritual ideas both within the Christian and what would traditionally be considered Occult traditions. He also reveals how secret mystic traditions that came from Europe and Asia became commonly known practices here. The key figures involved are named, the places where their influence was centered and to which it spread are clearly identified, and dates, other affiliations, and the presidents and other strongmen who fell under their sway are listed. Horowitz's narrative starts in Colonial New England and, while it peeks a bit into the 1960s, it really covers the period up until that decade began. It is extremely well written and does no more than provide an alternative window through which to view our history which, to many should be investigated and addressed courageously in the spirit of truth.

Horowitz, Mitch. Occult America: The Secret History of How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation. 2009. Bantam Books, New York.

How to Read Literature Like a Professor, by Thomas C. Foster

You have to like books to like this book but if you do, and if you've read fairly widely in the canon of English literature, this is a fabulous romp. Obviously the result of many lectures, this series of essays demystifies- should I venture to say deconstructs- the layers of symbols, cultural references, archetypes and other devices we authors utilize knowingly and unconsciously to hook and engage our reader audiences. He didn't include C. S. Lewis' opinion that descriptions of food in children's books are as erotic for those readers as graphic sex scenes might be for grown-ups but Foster's insights pack as much power.

Thomas C. Foster, How to Read Literature Like a Professor. c. 2003. HarperCollins

Dreams From My Father by Barack Obama

This is a coming of age account by a man who grew up between cultures and racial groups wondering how to understand himself. He just happens to be our president now but I don't believe that achieving that office was in his five year plan when the book went to print even though I think he did intend to advance politically through various elected offices. I'm a few years older than the president and I grew up in a WASP family in New York City very aware of the Civil Rights Movement, racial discord, riots, assassinations and flower power juxtaposing with black power but not having to deal with it directly. Like Obama, I lived and even briefly (for my senior year of high school) went to school abroad - not in a madrasa but in a British boarding school that served the children of politicians from all over the Commonwealth. My room-mate, from Nigeria, plied me with questions that I was unable to answer about the African American experience. Later, a college student in St. Louis, I lived in a blighted African American neighborhood within walking distance from the university because the rents were low. Years later still I taught in the St. Louis inner city public school system where I discovered the lack of parity that is so often defined as the achievement gap between black and white students in America. That was when I became the most engaged with the heart of the issues that Obama describes in his book - fear, anger, inequality, and in general a lack of hope that often masquerades as bravado. The book is written as well as the man speaks - it exposes his own journey with its discomforts probably made worse by the fact that so much of the truth was unexplained and interpreted within the framework of a child's, adolescent's, newly emerged adult's shifting perspectives. It echoes the struggle for a sense of personal-cultural identity that I have heard many missionary kids whose first encounter with their home culture starts when they are sent to college but who grew up fluent and friends in a very different cultural context. I find the book an authentic, honest attempt to narrate his experiences against America's racial backdrop. Interestingly, the person who insisted I read it isn't even an American.

Obama, Barack. Dreams From My Father. c. 1995. Three Rivers Press. NY

Horse Boy by Rupert Isaacson

Yesterday I listened to all nine CDs as author, Rupert Isaacson, read his own account of the search for healing for his autistic son, Rohan. The quest took them on horseback through Outer Mongolia to expose Rohan to powerful shamans. Last of all they visited Ghost, the shaman of the Reindeer People in Siberia. Rupert is transparently, painfully honest about his own fears, embarrassments, cynicism, exhaustion, disappointment, and passionate love for his son. Hearing him read is a treat because of his British accent and the way he is able to capture the intonations and timbre of his son's voice. A travel writer by trade, he has a fabulous ability to paint with his words so that we hear, taste, smell, touch and see the textures and vastness of the beauty of the steppes and the squalor of the broken down Soviet-built cities. He knows horses and indigenous culture too from growing up partly among the bushmen of South Africa and learning to ride and hunt foxes in England.

I've read a lot of books about autism but this one may be the first one written from the father's perspective. The narrative oozes with Rupert's love for Rohan. The perspective, incorporating American experts including Temple Grandin, along with the ancient wisdom of past cultures challenges our usual one to enlarge, consider spiritual causes and effects, and explore the hidden giftedness within autists.

From a spiritual perspective I was alternately fascinated and grieved. I understand how to function in the spirit and I know the High God and King of the Universe by name, personally. Unfortunately, few people on spiritual quests expect to find Him more powerful, and able to trump the gods of this world. This book is an indictment against the Judeo-Christian religious community through the ages for failing to take our God's name and reputation seriously.

Isaacson, Rupert, Horse Boy