A BEACH BAG OF AUGUST VACATION BOOKS

Want some titles for August vacation reading? Here are six offerings.

In Bowling Alone, The Collapse and Revival of American Community Robert D. Putnam explains the reality of our lives as we know them. He talks about social change and about the decline in community, neighborhood, social, and civic connection in recent years in the U.S. He contends that more people are bowling, but not in leagues. People are bowling alone. This isolated individualism has resulted in people feeling disconnected and in having less social capital. Social capital is the invisible glue that make sour society work. It involves networking and building community. It builds on mutual cooperation and trust. It relies on people participating and getting involved through various groups (such as church, the PTA, a senior citizen club, a political party, Boy and Girl Scouts, the Christian Business Breakfast Alliance). Putnam analyzes trends, then plumbs why we are bowling alone, and then offers suggestions about what can be done to build bridges towards social engagement. This is a must read. Bowling Alone will help you understand the reality of work, church, neighborhood, and society.

Thomas Berry, an 85 year old Passionist priest-cultural historian, has devoted his life to understanding how spirituality begins with the cosmos as a subject. He teaches a spirituality of intimacy with the planet, with earth-as-"wonderworld." The Good Work, Our Way to the Future is his crowning achievement, a coherent, readable, and valuable book. Berry critiques the "wasteworld" that has developed over the last 150 years. "The Great Work before us (is) the task of moving modern industrial civilization from its present devastating influence on the Earth to a more benign mode of presence." Berry critiques the failures of the political, religious, educational, and economic establishments and offers four alternative visions of the future. [I first met Tom as a teenager and his thought has deeply influenced me and changed my life.]

Leslie Paul Thiele has written Environmentalism for a New Millennium, The Challenge of Coevolution. This book investigates the stages the environmental movement has gone through in our country and the challenges it faces. Thiele shows how the human and nature is interdependent and mutually enhancing.

Two books explain social and cultural thought in terms of religion and work. First, Eugene McCarraher has written Christian Critics, Religion and the Impasse in Modern American Social Thought. He presents the thought of Catholics and Protestants who shaped 20th Century religion and social change. Second, Michael Zweig looks at the class struggles among the middle class and the working class in The Working Class Majority, America's Best Kept Secret Zweig understands class in terms of power.

Sandra M. Schneiders' With Oil in Their Lamps: Faith, Feminism, and the Future investigates the history of feminism and its transformative impact in the culture, in sports, in education, and in the church. She suggests ways that Christian feminism envisions a new world. This is an important essay.