On December 7 and 8, when you buy books, gifts, or food and drinks at Village Well Books & Coffee, Culver City’s favorite bookstore/cafe, mention the Democratic Club when you pay and we will get some of the proceeds. Online purchases are also eligible, but only for books in stock – no special orders. Thanks to Village Well for their support!
Some of our members have contributed book suggestions, in case you need any help deciding.
Killed by A Traffic Engineer by Wes Marshall
Marshall meticulously and authoritatively demonstrates that America’s 40,000 annual road deaths are not accidental, and that this transportation system, which generates so much death, injury, and pollution, is built on a broad and deep foundation of mostly pseudoscientific bullshit.
—Alex Fisch
Awe; The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How it Can Transform Your Life by Dacher Keltner
This book is not political BUT it is my lifeline to navigating this political climate.
—Dorien Davies
Olga Dies Dreaming by Xotichl González
Fiction—but covers pure politics, hurricane Maria, PR culture and renewable energy.
—Kristen Torres Pawling
Tasting the Sky: A Palestinian Childhood by Ibtisam Barakat
Set in Ramallah during the aftermath of the 1967 Six-Day War, her memoir captures what it is like to be a child whose world is shattered by war. Ibtisam is a Palestinian-American author and poet whose work centers on healing social injustices, especially in the lives of young people. I haven’t read the book, but I attended an interview with the author, Ibtisam Barakat, and was very moved.
– Jeanne Black
The Fina Mendoza Mysteries by Kitty Felde
I recommend the middle school civic education series The Fina Mendoza Mysteries, by my own brilliant and beautiful wife, longtime public radio journalist Kitty Felde. Fina is the fictional ten-year-old daughter of a Congressman from Southern California. She has many misadventures running around inside the U.S. Capitol, looking for clues to solve mysteries—like HOW did a bird get inside to poop on the head of the president during the State of the Union address—AND teaches young readers about our history and our country and our constitution along the way. You can check it all out at http://www.chesapeakepress.org/ and you can pick up copies (or order them) at the Village Well.
—Tad Daley
Jenny and the Cat Club A Collection of Favorite Stories About Jenny Linsky written and illustrated by Esther Averill
This is a book about a cat and her friends growing up in Greenwich Village, New York in the 1960s. Though it is not a Democratic club, the cats do have a club that is very important to their lives and well-being! This is a delightful book with charming illustrations and won’t make the adult reader roll their eyes!
—Bronwyn Jamrok
Lesson 9: Read Books—My Three Recommendations
On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder
Historian Timothy Snyder, in full-on freakout mode after the 2016 election of Donald J. Trump, penned On Tyranny. This slim volume is a survival guide to living as a free human resisting tyranny. How timely.
Lesson 9 of 20 says “Be kind to our Language” and “Read Books.” This is most timely because on December 7 and 8 the Village Well bookstore will contribute a generous percentage of sales to customers who mention the Club at check out. See you there!
But what books shall we read? I suggest there is no better place to start than Snyder’s lesson book. “History does not repeat,” he wrote, “but it does instruct.” And in that, Snyder sees a kind of hope for 21st century America. “Americans today are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism, or communism in the twentieth century. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience.” Thus the lessons.
On this, my third reading of the book, I was particularly struck by how activism within our Club follows the lesson plan in important ways:
• Lesson 2: Defend institutions. —We defend our grassroots Club and by extension the Democratic Party and democracy itself.
• Lesson 3: Beware the one-party state. —Since I was in grade school, I have been hearing about the plan for a “permanent Republican majority.” In this dire moment, that looks more possible than ever. By keeping the Democratic Party’s local grassroots strong, we can hinder that effort.
• Lesson 13: Make new friends and march with them. —In this Club, I have met some of the most interesting, well informed, and fun people ever! Thanks for being my Club-mate!
• Lesson 15: Be active in organizations, political or not, that express your own view of life.
I plan to study Snyder’s 20 lessons and bind them to my heart with hoops of steel.
The January 6th Report The New Yorker Version
In the epilogue of the New Yorker version, Representative Jamie Raskin calls the Report “…a powerful new weapon for truth in the coming battles to strengthen American democracy and protect American freedom.” I recommend acquiring a paper and ink copy of the January 6th Report before it disappears down Orwell’s “memory hole.”
I don’t know anyone who has read the whole 700-something page book. That’s not the point. It’s a reference book. It includes the Committee’s Recommendations as to how to fix the broken parts of our democracy, an Executive Summary, a ton of footnotes and Raskin’s insightful epilogue.
Representative Raskin says of our Party that we are “…the only major party in America today still standing by free and fair elections and defending the Constitution” and so we will “…be the political home for pro-democracy Americans for the foreseeable future.” That’s an awesome responsibility for a Party still in the “OMG WTF” phase of grief from a staggering loss. But our Club, at least, is up to the challenge. If we can’t save democracy in America, surely we can save democracy in Culver City!
The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
Hear me out. In the aftermath of November 5, 2024, I would find myself waking up in the night from nightmares of what life under a MAGA government would be like. One night, I decided that what I really needed was someone to read me a bedtime story. So I went to the Audible app and purchased (for only one credit!) “The Chronicles of Narnia Complete Audio Collection.” It contains all the books read by some of the greats of British stage and screen! I fell asleep listening to it and was transported to a magic realm where brave and loyal children could save the world. I woke up with the strange feeling that there was a smile on my heart.
– Cynthia Hart
For Adults
All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis Edited by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson & Katharine K. Wilkinson
A powerful mix of essays and poetry from women who inspire us to join the climate movement. The leadership of diverse scientists, journalist, farmers, teachers, lawyers, activists, artists, and innovators—spanning generations, geography, and race—provide all kinds of ideas and insights to help us reshape society. Readers are invited to engage in solution-oriented public conversation on the climate crisis, and to take action with compassion and collaboration. A hopeful book!
Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto by Tricia Hersey, founder of The Nap Ministry
The author of this encouraging book invites us to connect with the liberating power of rest, daydreaming, and naps as a foundation for healing and justice.
The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World by Robin Wall Kimmerer
The indigenous scientist and writer of this lovely book is a wonderful teacher who beautifully shares her vision for living based on lessons from the natural world. Because our current economy is based on scarcity, competition, and resource hoarding, she explains that we have surrendered our values to a system that actively harms what we love. The author asks us to instead embrace gratitude, reciprocity, and community in order to meet our needs, because all flourishing is built on mutuality.
Rough Sleepers: Dr. Jim O’Connell’s Urgent Mission to Bring Healing to Homeless People by Tracy Kidder
This nonfiction book reads like a story, and provides readers with the privilege of witnessing the ways that the practice of medicine can put patients first, offering empathy, humor, and friendship along with medicine, socks, and soup. The author spent five years following a medical team who created a community of care for unhoused people in Boston, including neighbors who sleep outdoors. In this model, healing is about so much more than medications and procedures, and means respecting and valuing people as full human beings whatever their challenges or circumstances.
For Children (of All Ages)
More, More, More Said the Baby by Vera B. Williams
The protagonists of this book are Little Guy, Little Pumpkin and Little Bird. They are loved by the adults in their lives and readers will celebrate them, too!
Press Here by Hervé Tullet
This delightful read-aloud book engages readers in the joy of interacting with its simple illustrations, but no electronic magic is needed. It is so much fun to follow the directions and be surprised by what follows.
Not a Box/No es una caja (Spanish edition) Author & Illustrator: Antoinette Portis
This is such an imaginative and amusing book! It uses a little rabbit, visual humor, and simple dialogue to demonstrate that a box doesn’t have to be just a box.
Close Your Eyes/Cierra los ojos (Spanish Edition) Author: Kate Banks & Illustrator: Georg Hallensleben
One of the most beautifully illustrated children’s bedtime stories ever. A little tiger is worried at bed time. But with his mother’s encouragement, he goes on a lovely dream journey. The little tiger is comforted knowing that his mother will be there when he wakes up. A book that makes me cry because it is so touching.
– Disa Lindgren
LA Modern Art History Books
William Hackman’s Out of Sight: The Los Angeles Art Scene of the Sixties (Other Press, 2015) is the best book in print on LA’s emergence as an art capital. The short chapters focus on individual artists, dealers, curators, and institutions, while also telling a mostly chronological narrative.
Hackman (no relation, as far as I know) covers much of the same territory that Hunter Drohojowska-Philip did in Rebels in Paradise: The Los Angeles Art Scene and the 1960s which, despite being published relatively recently (2011) by a major press (Henry Holt), is out of print. Both books are smart and accessible.
For more personality-driven accounts of the same scene, look for The Dream Colony: A Life in Art, by Walter Hopps with Deborah Treisman and Anne Doran, and Tosh Berman’s Tosh: Growing Up in Wallace Berman’s World.
All these books include black and white images alongside the text, all except Tosh add a section of color plates, and it’s easy enough to find a picture of just about anything online, but for a visually rich version of this story pick up Pacific Standard Time: Los Angeles Art 1945-1980.
Pacific Standard Time (now just “PST”) is a project by the Getty, coordinating and supporting thematically related shows at multiple institutions. The first PST, in 2011, was on LA modern art and this was its core publication. The second, in 2017, focused on Latin American and Latino art in LA, and the current one is on art and science.
The first PST included Now Dig This: Art and Black Los Angeles 1960-1980, at the Hammer Museum. That catalog is out of print, but Kellie Jones, who curated that show, subsequently published South of Pico: African American Artists in Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s. Daniel Widener’s Black Arts West: Culture and Struggle in Postwar Los Angeles connects some of the artists Jones discusses to their peers in music (Horace Tapscott), poetry (the Watts Writers Workshop), film (Charles Burnett), and other media.
Self-Serving Addendum: Speaking of underground music, my book Free Jazz is back in stock at the Village Well!
– Jeff Schwartz