Will Brady's suggested reading list

you got it. some things aren't available as e-books | This list shall grow over the coming months and years | What you get, however, are only books I've seen myself | Suggest a couple to add | No guarantee your entry will be added but try me | Provide all the info you see here plus a one or two sentence synopsis of what the book's about | And, no, I'm not making it any easier to tell you how or where to get them | That's part of the beauty of learning ~ try your library or amazon.com |

architecture / community planning

Sustainable Architecture Principles, Paradigms and Case Studies | by James Steele | © 1997, pub: McGraw Hill || Dedicated to Ian McHarg, this book notes architect Steele makes a case for using the best of modern technology while building "green". While refusing to sacrifice indiginous design the author presses to be innovative and resourcesful as well | A tall order to follow for urban culturephiles |

cosmology

deep time | How Humanity Communicates Across Time | by Gregory Benford | © 1999 - Abbenford Associates | publisher: Avon Books/Bard | This book was an outgrowth of a philosophiacl/ethical question raised in the Yucca Mountain nuclear storage project | The question posed is ~ how to identify a hazmat site for 10,000 years | The challenge: the author notes that such a thing has never successfully been done before |

Pillow Mountain Notes on Inhabiting a Living Planet | by Michael Bridge | © 1991, pub: Times Change Press | "...Civilization has become a threat to the continuity of nature on the Earth beause its premise is rooted in fear..." A guidebook on overcoming those fears by basing our future on Universal Truths |

environment / weather

The Coming Global Superstorm | by Art Bell and Whitley Strieber | © 2000, pub: Simon & Schuster | Radio pundit teams up with a popular best-selling author to present the reader with a quite readable speculation on what we can expect from the impact of global warming | The authors optimistically assert this can be avoided but only if the "...wait and see approach perpetrated by oil and chemical companies..." is abandoned | Expect their critics to dismiss them as cranks pushing UFOs and over the edge stuff |

Snowflake Bentley The Story of an Ingenious Vermonter | by Gloria May Stoddard | © 1985, pub: The New England Press || A cooling read about the man who took photos of literally thousands of snowflakes; ideal for hot summer reading |

the human condition

A Larger Memory A History of Our Diversity, with Voices | by Ronald Takaki | © 1998, pub: Little, Brown & Company | Noted historian takes the words of many others and lets us, first hand, read American's history from the perspective of pinapple crop pickers, freed slaves, european peasant immigrants, korean americans and americanindians as well | a fresh change from reading histories according to rich/famous people |

Long Road to Freedom The Advocate History of the Gay & Lesbian Movement | edited by Mark Thomspon | © 1994, pub: St. Martin's Press | An extensive 25 year history of fighting for basic human rights as seen through the pages of, the Advocate, gay newsmagazine |

NOT GUILTY by Reason of Insanity | One Man's Recovery | by Randy Starr | © 2000 | publisher: Recovery Press / University of Chicago Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation | First person account of a courageous man who talks of his journey through a life fraught with violence, abuse, drugs, the criminal justice system, the "insanity defense" and making it through to the plus side of Recovery |

politics & government

The Irony of Democracy | An Uncommon Introduction to American Politics | by Thomas Dye and L Harmon Zeigler | © 1996 | pub: Harcourt, Brace & Co | Starting from the premise that elites, not the masses, run the nation, the book (used as a college level text) proceeds to argue that such can be a good thing | It may have been updated since 1996 |