Economic geography Books

Book SynopsisAs heard on NPR's Fresh Air "This empowering light into a brighter future is a narrative you won’t want to miss." – Ralph Nader "Collins not only talks the talk but walks the walk...this is a worthwhile book to read, digest, and share" – Publishers Weekly An essential piece of reading for anyone concerned by the increasing wealth inequality–made worse by the global pandemic and political partisanship The growing wealth inequality continues to dominate headlines. The divide between the haves and have nots in America is increasingly political and tensions are rising. On one side, the wealthy wield power and advantage, keeping the system operating in their favor―all while retreating into enclaves that separate them further and further from the poor and working class. On the other side, those who find it increasingly difficult to keep up or get ahead are desperate and frustrated ―waging a rhetorical war against the rich and letting anger and resentment keep us from seeing new potential solutions. But can we suspend both class wars long enough to consider a new way forward? Is it really good for anyone that most of society’s wealth is pooling at the very top of the wealth ladder? Does anyone, including the one percent, really want to live in a society plagued by economic apartheid? It is time to think differently, says longtime inequality expert and activist Chuck Collins. Born into the one percent, Collins gave away his inheritance at 26 and spent the next three decades mobilizing against inequality. He uses his perspective from both sides of the divide to deliver a new narrative. Collins calls for a ceasefire and invites the wealthy to come back home, investing themselves and their wealth in struggling communities. And he asks the non-wealthy to build alliances with the one percent and others at the top of the wealth ladder. Stories told along the way explore the roots of advantage, show how taxpayers subsidize the wealthy, and reveal how charity, used incorrectly, can actually reinforce extreme inequality. Readers meet pioneers who are crossing the divide to work together in new ways, including residents in the author’s own Boston-area neighborhood who have launched some of the most interesting community transition efforts in the nation. In the end, Collins’s national and local solutions not only challenge inequality but also respond to climate change and offer an unexpected, fresh take on one of our most intransigent problems. Trade ReviewChoice Reviews- "Drawing on both engaging personal stories and economic research, Collins (Institute for Policy Studies) portrays an 'economic apartheid' of growing inequality of wealth and opportunity in the US, and urges citizens, especially the wealthiest, to recommit to the broader community to address it. Collins describes 'an empathetic barrier to change' that leads rich Americans to deride the industriousness of the less affluent. Raised in a “one percent” family, Collins understands how the wealthy are cut off from the wider society as their experiences lead them to adopt false myths of self-reliance and meritocracy. These views overlook the roles community and equity play in securing prosperity and well-being for rich and poor Americans. The overvaluing of self-reliance obscures the advantages of family wealth as well as the role of government programs in providing gains for the white middle class (in particular, home ownership) over other groups. Collins calls for empathy and solidarity among the rich, the affluent, and the poor to address inequality and environmental degradation. The book lists ways for the wealthy to connect to the larger society and support policies to bring about an equitable and sustainable future. Summing Up: Recommended. All readership levels."Booklist- "As the great-grandson of Oscar Meyer, Collins grew up in a wealthy and advantaged family. He considers himself part of the privileged 1 percent, “born on third base,” with only a short hop to make it to home plate. But Collins believes it’s time for our society to come to a different home, one where inequality is addressed in a new way, where the economy can be made more inclusive, and where the 1 percent can engage with the other 99 to become partners in transforming the future. Collins (99 to 1: How Inequality Is Wrecking the World and What We Can Do about It, 2012) once again presents a convincing and deeply thought-provoking argument in favor of not just the need for societal change but the importance of individual action in making change happen. Written in a well-crafted, conversational style, Collins’ latest is a gentle yet clear reminder to readers that real change starts by looking outside ourselves and making even the smallest connection with others.”“I have never read a story remotely like the one Chuck Collins has to tell. Born to the one percent, in circumstances few of us can imagine, he grew an outsized conscience and gave up his inherited wealth for a life of fighting the vicious inequality that is destroying our country. Somewhere along the way, he came to understand that the rich can be part of the solution instead of the problem and started organizing them to join in the struggle for a fair economy. The result is an electrifying challenge to the affluent as well as the one percent. ‘Come out of your gated communities and gated hearts,’ he writes, because outside lies the warmth of human solidarity.”--Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed“Chuck Collins has already organized the rich against their own immediate economic interest. He and his colleagues at the Institute for Policy Studies were instrumental in blocking the Republican repeal of the federal estate tax for the wealthy. So when he writes in Born on Third Base about all the good that can come from the enlightened rich pressing for justice, not just charity, he speaks from experience as both an organizer and a former affluent heir. Partly autobiographical, this empowering light into a brighter future is a narrative you won’t want to miss. Chuck Collins walks the talk and can motivate, if anyone is able to, the super rich to fund systemic drives for change.”--Ralph Nader, consumer advocate, author, and lawyer“A call to action for America's wealthy and a warning shot across the bows of their yachts if they fail to act, Born on Third Base offers a clear and compelling case for why the privileged and powerful must act to reverse widening inequality of income, wealth, and political power in America.”--Robert B. Reich, former US Secretary of Labor; author of Saving CapitalismPublishers Weekly- "Collins (99 to 1), born to great privilege, takes a thoughtful, well-written, and carefully researched approach to solving the extreme imbalance in wealth distribution, directed toward one- and 99-percenters alike. Refreshingly, Collins not only talks the talk but walks the walk: at age 26 he gave up his $500,000 trust fund and dedicated his life to ending inequality. The book's first half outlines the problems of uneven wealth distribution, which have been made even more evident by the 2008 economic downturn. This part includes a section addressing racial issues in the U.S. and making the case for federal reparations for slavery. What Collins does even better than describing the challenge is, in the book's second half, outlining significant and specific solutions. He includes 10 elements of a program for the wealthiest 1% to follow, imploring readers to connect with both 'people around us' and 'people who are completely different.' He makes an appeal for 'humanity and empathy' at the book's very beginning, shows how he and others have worked to embody it, and reinforces the importance of this approach at the conclusion. Wherever readers fall on the economic scale, this is a worthwhile book to read, digest, and share."“The American dream assures us that, if you work hard and play by the rules, you’ll succeed. But the facts tell a different story: Everyone knows the system is rigged. In these trickle-down times, income inequality threatens to pit the 99 percent against the 1 percent in violent revolution—and, really, who can blame them? My fellow plutocrat Chuck Collins gets it. Born on Third Base explodes the myth of the self-made man, but it also celebrates true achievement in the classic American sense. This isn’t some self-hating rich guy; Collins has thought seriously about what it means to be a citizen, and to be a patriot. He makes the case that we all do better when we all do better, and he does it with compassion and humor. This book would give Ayn Rand nightmares.”--Nick Hanauer, entrepreneur; venture capitalist; coauthor of The True Patriot and The Gardens of Democracy“Chuck Collins may have been born on third base, but he hits a grand slam with this powerful call to even the richest Americans to join their fellow citizens in challenging the obscene wealth gap that characterizes America today. He hammers all the curve balls thrown to justify inequality, writes eloquently but humbly of his experiences, and lays out a winning lineup of ways to bring Americans across class lines together for economic justice.”--John de Graaf, coauthor of Affluenza and What’s the Economy for, Anyway?“Chuck Collins does the soul-searching, fundamental work of reminding us all that wealth inequality and injustice make everyone’s life worse, including those of us who are supposedly better off. No matter what your class background, Collins’s work is an insight into and inspiring call to action for why we all need to be two feet into the fight for a more just world –one that is based on shared prosperity and community, not individualized notions of success. People and the planet literally depend on it.”--Jessie Spector, executive director, Resource Generation “Sobering and inspiring, Chuck Collins has written a Declaration of Interdependence. A must read for anyone on third base who has forgotten that they’re part of a team.”--Peter Buffett, copresident, NoVo Foundation; composer; author of Life is What You Make It“There are few tasks as urgent as a radical reorientation of the 1 percent, a radical re-engagement of ‘us’ with ‘them’—and a radical redeployment of the wealth created over the past century in order to address the problems of the next. Chuck Collins is our personal guide.”--Woody Tasch, founder, Slow Money Institute; author of Inquiries into the Nature of Slow Money“This is the engaging story of a courageous rich white guy who gave it all away, journeyed to the dark heart of inequality and deprivation in America, and became a leading thinker and activist for something much better for all of us, including the rich. Collins doesn’t disappoint. He is the real deal.”--James Gustave Speth, author of America the Possible and Angels by the River“No one explains inequality better than Chuck Collins, and no one walks his talk with more integrity. All Americans—rich, poor, and in the shrinking middle—will benefit from his insights and be inspired by his example.”--Peter Barnes, cofounder, CREDO Mobile; author of With Liberty and Dividends For All

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisGathering together Ruth Wilson Gilmore's work from over three decades, Abolition Geography presents her singular contribution to the politics of abolition as theorist, researcher, and organizer, offering scholars and activists ways of seeing and doing to help navigate our turbulent present.Abolition Geography moves us away from explanations of mass incarceration and racist violence focused on uninterrupted histories of prejudice or the dull compulsion of neoliberal economics. Instead, Gilmore offers a geographical grasp of how contemporary racial capitalism operates through an "anti-state state" that answers crises with the organized abandonment of people and environments deemed surplus to requirement. Gilmore escapes one-dimensional conceptions of what liberation demands, who demands liberation, or what indeed is to be abolished. Drawing on the lessons of grassroots organizing and internationalist imaginaries, Abolition Geography undoes the identification of abolition with mere decarceration, and reminds us that freedom is not a mere principle but a place.Edited with an introduction by Brenna Bhandar and Alberto Toscano.Trade ReviewScholars like Ruthie Gilmore, filmmakers like Ava Duvernay, and formerly incarcerated people like Glenn Martin have all done work to expose the many injustices of the industry of our prison system. -- Jay-Z * Time *Ruth Gilmore lays bare the diabolical logic of neoliberal incarceration. She shows us that the prison is a symptom of the decline of our civilization, how the California Nightmare has produced its disposable population. Gilmore's depressingly hopeful analysis is a wake-up call for our somnolence. -- Vijay Prashad, author of Keeping Up with the Dow Joneses: Debt, Prison, WorkfareRuth Gilmore, indefatigable activist-scholar, is one of our most dangerous and important minds. A radical geographer with roots in the Black liberation movement of the 1960s and 1970s, she pioneered the study of mass incarceration's catastrophic impacts on inner-city families and neighborhoods, and together with Angela Davis has played a catalytic role in the creation of today's movement for prison abolition. This powerful collection of essays is an indispensable conceptual armory for that struggle. -- Mike DavisRuthie's clarity and courage is a talisman for these monstrous times, and a guide out of them. -- Vijay Prashad, director, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.Abolition Geography isn't shallow romanticism. It is a rigorous criticism of capitalist social relations, which foment premature death and needless suffering of the poor and destroy the planet. Abolition geography is a human necessity for there to be freedom and a livable earth. Ruth Wilson Gilmore, one of the foremost revolutionary thinkers on abolition, draws on real historical traditions of getting free, showing us what is possible and necessary. -- Nick Estes, author of Our History is the FutureThis well-crafted assemblage of thirty years worth of Ruthie Gilmore's countless, brilliant interventions is a tremendous gift to our movements. While tending to grounded practices and particularities, Ruthie's meticulous mapping of interconnected histories offers us prescient analyses across scale, geography, and time. At a time of incredible uncertainty and global upheaval, Abolition Geography illuminates a political vocabulary and vision that reorganizes even conventional left ideologies; a tour de force and absolute must read for our collective trajectories of freedom making as world making. -- Harsha Walia, author of Border and Rule and Undoing Border ImperialismThe leaderly wisdom of Ruth Wilson Gilmore infuses this hefty volume, making it an indispensible compendium of practical abolitionism. In her hands, reducing police powers and dismantling the prison industrial complex become immediate matters of political struggle. If you want to come to terms with the movement that shaped the "American Summer" of 2020, this is the best available starting point. -- Paul Gilroy, author of The Black AtlanticRuth Wilson Gilmore is one of the most impactful radical thinkers of our time. This compilation of thirty years' worth of essays, interviews, and co-written reflections, is evidence of the depth and breadth of her extraordinary political praxis. Powerful, provocative, inspiring and inciting, this edited collection offers a formidable indictment of racial capitalism and the carceral state, a deep, complex and multi-faceted portrait of abolitionist work, and a call to action. Readers concerned with freedom-making and liberation will read this brilliant body of work carefully and act decisively. -- Barbara Ransby, activist, historian and author of several books, including Making All Black Lives Matter and Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement.Abolition Geography is a collection of three decades of Ruth Wilson's Gilmore's brilliance in the form of essays and interviews on the politics of abolition as a theorist, researcher and organizer. The result is a precious gift that will be read, studied and cherished for years to come by those of us who believe her when she says to be green we must be red, and to be red our world building must be planetary. -- Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, author of Noopiming: The Cure for White LadiesAn essential collection of writings from one of the most important thinkers on abolition, geography and racism of our time. -- Karla J. Strand * Ms.Magazine *Abolition Geography is the first collection of writing by this major thinker, activist, and writer in the fields of racism, geography, and incarceration. The book includes essays, articles, and interviews from the last two decades, covering topics such as the origin of mass incarceration and racial violence and the concept of the 'anti-state state'. * Autostraddle *Anyone with an interest in the critical theory of mass incarceration and social justice can't miss this first-ever compendium of writing by one of the most brilliant and radical minds in the field. [An] impactful guidebook for a whole new generation looking to join the movement. * The Chicago Review of Books *For over three decades, Gilmore's work has been crucial to the study of policing and prison abolition...Her newest anthology, Abolition Geography: Essays Towards Liberation, includes essays on policing, capitalism and organizing [that] are more critical than ever two years after the largest street mobilization in decades. Expertly assembled by scholars Brenna Bhandar and Alberto Toscano, the anthology reproduces Gilmore's essays chronologically from 1991 to 2018. The only way to escape the cycles of police violence, protest and retrenchment will be to collectively build popular, abolitionist frameworks for relating to each other. Gilmore's work helps us move toward that goal. -- Andreas Petrossiants * AJ+ *A geographer by training, Gilmore has a sweeping understanding of prisons and policing, one that approaches the issue at scale. If you haven't read her yet, it's a good year to start. -- Lexi McMenamin * Teen Vogue *A scathing exploration of global systems of oppression through a lens of geography, in which [Gilmore] asserts that freedom and liberation are a physical, tangible place - they're material conditions, not platitudes and niceties from ultra-rich politicians. -- Kylie Cheung * Jezebel *Introduced by a stimulating essay by Brenna Bhandar and Alberto Toscano, [Abolition Geography] ranges from theoretical chapters originally published in academic journals to public speeches and interviews conducted with other scholars. This anthology format allows the reader to see how Gilmore introduces, experiments with and then develops ideas in real time, taking us from the 1992 Los Angeles riots to the 2021 neo-fascist attack on the US Capitol building. -- Christopher McMichael * New Frame *Gilmore is clear as a bell: potent and factual on injustice, filled with sharp intelligence and even wit, but also somehow continuously surprising and emotional. With every page, Gilmore forces us to think of race, class, prisons, and the world in entirely new ways. -- Kamil Ahsan * NPR *Gilmore's work is enlightening and informative, a must-read for scholars and activists seeking a complex and interdisciplinary deep dive to effectively drive systemic change...Anyone committed to prison reform and social justice has much to learn from Gilmore's insights about the cognitive work and tactical organizing required to imagine and build an abolitionist future. -- Maileen Hamto * Seattle Book Review *Gilmore's prose is descriptive and direct; it describes a society whose economy has failed too many of its members and whose only solution is to create a police state. -- Ron Jacobs * Counterpunch *More than explaining or urging any single scalar change in social life, the purpose of Abolition Geography is to develop the ability of its readers to study the transformations of racial capitalism, figure out what to do about them, and follow through with enough patience to withstand the enormity of the task and enough urgency to get it done...Abolition Geography is written to be used. -- Kay Gabriel * Dissent *As Gilmore always reminds us, theory is a guide for action. This volume is a call to get on with the practice of getting free together. -- Orlando R. Serrano, Jr. * Smithsonian Magazine, Best Books of 2022 *Notable book, 2022 * Seminary Co-op *[Abolition Geography] is only the latest generous and supportive gift from Gilmore to liberation-minded abolitionist movements. This gift seems to be written as a call, an invitation to act and do...Abolition Geography contains fire, grit, and hope as well. -- Brit Schulte * The Avery Review *

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less