Favorite books of 2002 - includes poems

Progressive, The, Jan, 2003 by Kate Clinton, Ruth Conniff, Anne-Marie Cusac, Elizabeth DiNovella, Andrea Lewis, Fred McKissack, Jr., John Nichols, Matthew Rothschild

Malone's regard for these performers and for those working class realities make him the Howard Zinn of country music historians.

A more focused examination of a single artist's life and music, Michele Kort's Soul Picnic: The Music and Passion of Laura Nyro (St. Martin's) is in its own way as instructive and valuable as Malone's text. Soul Picnic, the first biography of the enormously influential writer of songs that slipped feminist, civil rights, and anti-war messages into the pop mainstream, is an exceptionally important examination not just of Nyro but of the struggle of the independent woman artist in an increasingly commercial music industry. Kort argues, specifically, that Nyro is owed a place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame. And Kort's exceptionally well-done book makes the broader case that songs such as "Save the Country"--a brilliant 1968 call for peace and social justice that Nyro described as "my philosophy in a nutshell"--remain essential in a world that has yet to heed the songwriter's advice to "study war no more."

John Nichols is co-author with Robert W. McChesney of "Our Media, Not Theirs: The Democratic Struggle Against Corporate Media" (Seven Stories Press).

Matthew Rothschild

After the crash of the stock market, James K. Glassman, co-author of Dow 36,000, was asked about his rosy prediction. His response: I said it would get to 36,000, I just didn't say when.

What brings that to mind is The Emerging Democratic Majority, by John B. Judis and Ruy Teixeira (Scribner). This emergence does not appear imminent, given the debacle of November 5. But Judis and Teixeira say the steam has gone out of the far right, and that the McGovernites actually have won the debate on social libertarianism--feminism, abortion, gay rights--among members of an increasingly powerful professional class. They contend that when the economy turns downward, the Democrats can make gains among the white working class with populist appeals. And they insist that the rising proportion of minorities, professionals, and single women bodes well.

Warning: The authors' terminology can be cloying. Bad enough that they talk about "postindustrial metropolises," but then to dub them as "ideopolises" is to strain the reader's (or at least this reader's!) patience. And the book bugs me for political reasons, as well. It all too readily criticizes Democrats for promoting universal health care, and it praises Clinton and Gore for adopting Republican-style "fiscal constraint," which the authors say appealed to the professional class. Plus, it dismisses, almost out of hand, any validity to Ralph Nader's challenge.

Still, for those who woke up on November 6 with an awful headache, take this book as an aspirin--or at least a placebo.

In this year of corporate malfeasance, one book stands out: High and Mighty: SUVs--the World's Most Dangerous Vehicles and How They Got That Way, by Keith Bradsher (PublicAffairs). The author, former Detroit bureau chief for The New York Times, explains how the automakers circumvented clean air and safety standards by classifying SUVs as light trucks instead of passenger cars. The prevalence of these dangerous vehicles is causing "close to 3,000 needless deaths a year in the United States," he writes.