1)
The Rich and the Rest of Us: A Poverty Manifesto by Tavis Smiley and Cornel West 203 pg.
2)
Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America by Juan Gonzalez 346 pg.
3)
Whole Self/Whole World: Quality of Life in the 21st Century by Eric Gerinke 119 pg.
4)
Democracy Matters: Winning the Fight Against Imperialism by Cornel West 219 pg.
5)
Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto by Chuck Klosterman 245 pg.
6)
The Future of Life by Edward O. Wilson 189 pg.
7)
The White Man's Burden: Historical Origins of Racism in America by Winthrop Jordan 229 pg.
8 )
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave by Frederick Douglass 99pg
9)
La Raza: The Mexican Americans by Stan Steiner 392 pg
10)
Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche by Ethan Watters 256 pg.
11)
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values by Robert M. Pirsig 406pg.
12)
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins 265pg.
13)
Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini 371pg.
14)
Evidence of Things Not Seen by James Baldwin 125 pg.
15)
The Underdogs (Los de abajo) by Mariano Azuela 150 pg.
16)
The Huey P. Newton Reader by Huey P. Newton with David Hilliard and Donald Weise 360 pg.
This was amazing. This was pretty much a bunch of selected writings from Huey Newton, containing some biographical information, his time in college, meeting Bobby Seal and forming the Black Panther Party, his trial and conviction of murdering a cop in Oakland, but mostly was a compilation of Newton, one oft he most prominent leaders of the Black Panthers in the last 60's/early 70's. It is a very important segment of personal and collective history to read about in my opinion. I found that throughout my secondary and college education, nothing was ever said about the more radical side of the fight for civil rights, including but not limited to Malcom X, Stokely Carmichael, James Baldwin, Angela Davis, the more radical MLK, and the Panthers. Newton has many writings covering everything from the necessary unity of the black struggle with the feminist and gay liberation movements in the 70s, environmentalism, the Vietnam War, and the overall idea of the Unites States as not a nation-state, but rather an empire. Clearly the Panthers were considered a grave threat to U.S. imperial interests, given their openly Marxist approach and their 'survival tactics' (as Newton referred) including armed patrols of police in areas where police brutality of blacks was rampant. Newton formulated a theory that he termed
inter-communalism which the Panthers used as their forming ideology.
On the whole the book was great and I learned a lot. A lot more can be critically seen in retrospect, such as Newton's affinity towards Mao in China and North Korea, seeing what became of that historically. But I do feel that the Panthers were doing something truly amazing back in their time, organizing the communities they lived in, and becoming a force to be reckoned with. Unfortunately, as the last chapter shows, the Panthers received the brunt of J. Edgar Hoover's FBI the CIA's Counter-Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO <
http://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro> under "Black Extremist") which targeted dissident groups opposed to U.S. policy. Hoover declared the Pather's free breakfast program the "biggest threat to National Security". So eventually, many false letters were sent and a lot of spying was done to create in-fighting within the BPP which, along with other factors, lead to their decline.
