Getting a Grip: Clarity, Creativity and Courage in a World Gone Mad
Author: Frances Moore Lapp
Getting a Grip: Clarity, Creativity & Courage in a World Gone Mad is a little book with a big message. Frances Moore Lappe--author of fifteen books, including three-million-copy bestseller Diet for a Small Planet--distills her world-spanning experience and wisdom in a conversational yet hard-hitting style to creat a rare "aha" book. In nine short chapters, Lappe leaves readers feeling liberated and courageous. She flouts conventional right-versus-left divisions and affirms readers' basic sanity--their intuitive knowledge that it is possible to stop grasping at straws and grasp the real roots of today's crises, from hunger and poverty to climate change and terrorism. Because we are creatures of the mind, says Lappe, it is the power of "frame"--our core assumptions about how the world works--that determines outcomes. She pinpoints the dominant failing frame now driving out planet toward disaster. By interweaving fresh insights, startling facts, and stirring vignettes of ordinary people pursuing creative solutions to our most pressing global problems, Lappe uncovers a new, empowering "frame" through which real solutions are emerging worldwide.
She write: "My book's intent is to enable us to see what is happening all around us but is still invisible to most of us. It is about people in all walks pf life who are penetrating the spiral of despair and reversing it with new ideas, ingenious innovation--and courage."
Publishers Weekly
This determinedly optimistic manifesto-cum-workbook by the author of Diet for a Small Planetbegins with the question, "Why are we as societies creating a world that we as individuals abhor?" Lappé posits that U.S. culture is grounded in a worldview of scarcity, creating a society of "competitive materialists" who practice a "Thin Democracy" of electoral politics in a "one rule" market economy that returns wealth to wealth and leads to an ever-increasing concentration of power." Yet she believes there is "no reason we can't" create a values-guided, empowering democracy based on the premise of "plenty," where individuals and communities take charge of public life and engage in active listening, conflict mediation, dialogue and judgment. Full of charts comparing "Thin Democracy" constructs with "Living Democracy" alternatives, and ending with a study guide for community "Group Talk," the book includes numerous examples of people practicing "Living Democracy," from Nobel Prize-winner Muhammad Yunus, instigator of the international microcredit movement, to School Mediation Associates, which teaches conflict resolution and peer mediations skills. Unfortunately, Lappé's coverage of many of these inspiring stories is unintelligibly thin, too often referring readers to her Web site for backup. (Oct. 31)
Copyright 2007 Reed Business InformationRachel Bridgewater - Library Journal
Prominent author (Diet for a Small Planet), activist, and advocate, Lappé now offers a slim manifesto that promises to show readers how to reframe their understanding of democracy as a way out of what she refers to as a "spiral of powerlessness." Lappé argues that our current definition of democracy, "elections plus a market," creates benefits for corporate interests and the rich but not for the average citizen. She argues for a dynamic, values-driven model of democracy that she calls "Living Democracy." As a manifesto, the work is mostly effective. Lappé rallies her readers, striking a welcome tone of hope and optimism, and many of her reframing techniques are compelling and inspiring. Unfortunately, she peppers the book with facts and statistics that are too decontextualized to work as evidence. She does better when she draws on inspiring anecdotes from people and communities practicing the kind of democratic principles she describes. Lappé is a prominent thinker; most public and academic libraries should consider this title.
Interesting book: Derecho comercial y el Ambiente Legal, Edición Estándar
The Girl with the Crooked Nose: A Tale of Murder, Obsession, and Forensic Artistry
Author: Ted Botha
In The Girl with the Crooked Nose, Ted Botha tells the absorbing story of Frank Bender, a gifted, self-taught artist who can bring back the dead and the vanished through a unique, macabre sculpting talent. Bender has been the key to solving at least nine murders and tracking down numerous criminals. Then he is called upon to tackle the most challenging and bizarre case of his career.
Someone is killing the young women of Juarez. Since 1993, the decomposing bodies of as many as four hundred victims, known as feminicidios, have been found in the desert surrounding this gritty Mexican border town. In 2003, prodded by local political pressure and international attention, the Mexican authorities turn to the United States to help solve these horrific crimes. The man they turn to is Bender.
Through breathtakingly realistic sculptures, Bender reconstructs the faces of unknown murder victims or fugitives whose appearances are certain to have changed over years on the run. The busts are based in part on the painstaking application of forensic science to fleshless human skulls and in part on deep intuition, an uncanny ability to discern not only a missing face but also the personality behind it.
Arriving in Mexico, Bender works in secrecy, in a culture of corruption and casual violence where the line between criminals and law enforcement is blurry, braving anonymous threats and sinister coincidences to give eight skulls back their faces and, hopefully, their histories. Drawn to one skull in particular–"The Girl With the Crooked Nose"–Bender gradually comes to suspect that perhaps he is not meant to succeed, and that the true solution to themystery of the feminicidios is far more terrible than anyone has dared to imagine.
Ted Botha brilliantly weaves Bender’s story–the cases he has solved, the intricacies of his art, the colorful characters he encounters, and the personal cost of his strange obsession–with the chilling story of the Juarez investigation. With a conclusion as shocking as its story is gripping, The Girl with the Crooked Nose will haunt readers long after the last page is turned.
“…[a] crackling account of a quirky, maverick forensics artist, Frank Bender, and his largely successful efforts in facial reconstruction of murder victims…. extraordinary is Botha's writing, with his unerring depiction of Bender's painstaking work and the eventual unraveling of the brutal crimes it solves…. the tales in this book accurately capture the dark motives and complexities of senseless murder, and even the most savvy true-crime reader will not be able to resist the author's insightful storytelling."—Publishers Weekly
Publishers Weekly
There is a bewildering, frustrating quality in Botha's crackling account of a quirky, maverick forensics artist, Frank Bender, and his largely successful efforts in facial reconstruction of murder victims. The steady, no-nonsense approach of the author (Mongo: Adventures in Trash ) is marred by the herky-jerky sequences of the narrative as he switches from Bender's hit-and-miss past triumphs to a monumental murder case south of the border in the sordid Mexican area near Ciudad Juárez, where about 400 women have been raped, tortured and killed. National and international recognition of Bender's uncanny skill grows, but the psychological toll wears on his home life and his interaction with authorities. What is extraordinary is Botha's writing, with his unerring depiction of Bender's painstaking work and the eventual unraveling of the brutal crimes it solves. Although Bender is not successful with every case, including the epic Mexican serial killings, the tales in this book accurately capture the dark motives and complexities of senseless murder, and even the most savvy true-crime reader will not be able to resist the author's insightful storytelling. 16 pages of photos. (May 13)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Kirkus Reviews
The real-life saga of Frank Bender, who unexpectedly rode a commercial photography career to a parallel gig reconstructing the faces of unidentified murder victims and suspects. Now in his mid-60s, Bender calls Philadelphia home, yet his work with clay and other materials on behalf of law-enforcement agencies has taken him to dozens of locales. Botha (Mongo: Adventures in Trash, 2004, etc.) cuts back and forth between Philadelphia, where Bender labors in his studio, and the Mexican state of Chihuahua, across the border from El Paso, Texas, where Bender is helping police identify dozens of the young women murdered year after year dating back to 1993. The chronology jumps around, with 1977 serving as one of the key years. New at ceramics and collaborating with Philadelphia medical examiners, the self-taught, intuitive Bender almost immediately helped solve the cold case of an unidentified murdered woman who turned out to be Anna Duval. Bender's painted clay cast, photographed and distributed to law-enforcement agencies, caught the attention of a New Jersey policeman who realized it looked like the picture of a former Philadelphia-area resident who had moved to Arizona, then went missing. Early success gave Bender confidence to continue his new occupation, and law-enforcement agencies reason to seek him out. Although the book fits into the true-crime genre, it is as much a biography of Bender. Botha examines his marriage and extramarital affairs, his fathering skills, his friendships and his financial ups-and-downs in addition to documenting cases solved, cases unsolved and the arcane techniques of facial reconstruction. Readers given to queasiness may find the gory details excessive, butfans of crime-solving procedurals will love it. Agent: Luke Janklow/Janklow & Nesbit
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