“Realistic Living” is a revolutionary category, for most people, most of the time, are in dread flight from Reality.  Obsolete and mistaken notions rule our living, but we nevertheless cling to what has become familiar.  So realism can be dreadful.  But Realistic Living is also a joyous category, for being our authentic being in our real situation is a happy journey into our true humanity.  I nurture my realism from ancient religious sources, but I also nurture my being from those sources that best describe our contemporary world in vivid, unvarnished ways.

With regard to this last source of realism, I recommend these three books: (1) Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate, (2)  Henry A. Giroux, America’s Education Deficit and the War on Youth, (3) Charlene Spretnak, Relational Reality: New Discoveries of Interrelatedness That Are Transforming the Modern World.

The Klein book rips to shreds the old economic paradigms that still bounce around in our heads, and she tells us how deeply we must change our economic, political and cultural lives in order to respond to the climate challenges that threaten to narrow and perhaps extinguish human life on Earth.

The Giroux book focuses on education and the next generation, but it is also a book about the political revolution and how it must be conducted in order to do anything about the climate, inequity, needless violence, foolish wars, religious foolishness, and anti-intellectual stupidity.

The Spretank book deals with the underlying cultural revolution, the fundamental ideas and awarenesses that must replace the reigning mind of modernity in order for us to recover our humanity enough to enact the prophetic visions being penned by authors like Kline and Giroux.

I find each of these books wonderful to read, but the insights are so intense that my mind is repeatedly blown.  This intensity makes reading these book a project.  No Saturday morning scan will do the job.  You may have to read a bit, meditate a bit, perhaps write a bit, about almost every chapter.  Fortunately, these three scholars are so dependable in their thoroughgoing mastery of their topics that you can trust them deeply and not mind living with them for many weeks.

Obviously, there are many other good books to read, beginning with other good books by these same three authors.  For example, Spetnak’s States of Grace is easier to master and goes right to the heart of our need for profound interreligious dialogue and cooperation to undermine the dead-ends of modernity.  I have chosen Relational Reality because its insights are so basic to the comprehensive cultural revolution.  And some may wish to rank Klien’s Shock Doctrine as more important than This Changes Everything, but I have chosen her focus on climate change because I believe it goes to the heart of our social revolution in a way that too many of us are ignoring.  Similarly, Giroux has written a library of books that may each be as good as the above ripping work on education.  I have not read them, so I don’t know.  What I do know is that education, especially of the neglected coming generation is of huge importance to me and to my vision of how we might get from our horrific ruts to an effective dealing with our basic challenges.

If you want to read my own efforts on pulling together a vision of the comprehensive social revolution, I (with a lot of help from my coauthors Ben Ball, Marsha Buck, Ken Kreutziger, and Alan Richard) have pulled together  The Road from Empire to Eco-Democracy.  I would be delighted for you to consider our book as well, and I have a stack of them in my closet that a mere 20 dollars will start a copy your way.  Gene Marshall; 3578 N. State Highway 78; Bonham, TX, 75418

Or if you like e-books, you can get a copy from iUniverse for $3.99.

I consider the first three books a means of deepening and furthering the same revolution I was struggling with in The Road.  Those of you who have already read The Road and appreciated it will not be disappointed with the enrichments of that perspective to be derived from the above three books. The Road was intended to be an accessible condensation of the sort of scholarly excellence that the above three books exemplify.  The Road remains a useful study book I want all of you to read and teach to others, but if you want to be a leader in the social revolution of our times, you will also want to live with Klein, Giroux, and Spretnak until you digest their lucid, immense, and scholarly trustworthiness about the grueling depths of our planetary transition.