Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World
Author: Bill Clinton
GIVING: How Each of Us Can Change the World is an inspiring look at how individual endeavors can save lives and solve problems, and it offers compelling examples of both citizen and corporate activism at work in the world today. The book will go on sale nationwide September 24 with a first printing of 750,000 copies. It will be published simultaneously as an ebook, as a Large Print Edition, and as a Random House Audio book, read by the author. Additionally, a portion of President Clinton's proceeds from the book will be donated to charities and nonprofits that are doing their part to change the world.
"I've done my best in this book to demonstrate what I've seen firsthand through my Foundation's work in Africa and around the world: that all kinds of giving can make a profoundly positive difference," said President Clinton. "The amount of good that so many individuals and NGOs (non-governmental organizations) have been able to do has proven to me that almost everyone--regardless of income, available time, age, and skills--can do something useful for others and, in the process, strengthen the fabric of our shared humanity."
GIVING highlights the work of a number of extraordinary people and organizations--some famous, as well as many private citizens whom readers will be hearing about for the first time--all of whom represent a global floodtide of nongovernmental nonprofit activity. Their remarkable stories suggest that the act of giving takes many forms, and emphasizes that offerings of time, skills, objects, and ideas can be just as important as contributions of money.
Clinton writes about the life-changing aspect of giving---of men and women who traded in their corporate careers, and the fulfillment they now experience through their new efforts and associations. He also examines, in a chapter on organizing markets for the public good, progressive companies that do good work: going green; opening markets for the under-served in disadvantaged communities; hiring people who were once on welfare; and promoting fair wages and decent working conditions for all. Clinton addresses the role of government, suggesting that when it works well, citizen service can reinforce and supplement its efforts; when it doesn't, citizens need to harness time, money, knowledge, and skills in an effort to change, improve, or protect government policy. He outlines what we as individuals can do, the steps we can all take, how much we should consider giving, and why our giving is so important.
"Bill Clinton's actions and deeds during his post-presidential years, both directly and through his foundation, have had an extraordinary impact on the lives of millions," said Mehta. "His new book suggests that all of us can have a profound influence on the lives of others through acts of giving. I believe this book has the power to change both our outlook and our communities, and will make a real contribution towards turning the world into a better place."
President Clinton's previous book, My Life, was published by Knopf in 2004. It remains one of the bestselling memoirs of all time.
Kirkus Reviews
The former president provides dozens of effective and communicable examples of giving. "I wrote this book to encourage you to give whatever you can, because everyone can give something. And there's so much to be done, down the street and around the world," he writes. For Clinton (My Life, 2004), giving is the right thing to do; acts of unfettered goodwill promote harmony and trust. Writing in an unhurried style, the author doesn't chide or prod the reader, but simply provides numerous examples of giving of all kinds, whether it be a multimillion-dollar gift or the simple donation of an old, unused saxophone to a school music program. Bill Gates, Bono and Tiger Woods may grab the headlines, but Clinton is especially concerned with the giver of modest gifts or what little spare time they have. To that effect, Clinton quotes Warren Buffett, who recently gave $30 billion to the Gates Foundation: "My gift is nothing . . . .The people I really admire are the small donors who give up a movie or a restaurant meal to help needier people." Clinton inspires by pointing the way and introducing a company of givers. If you know how to tie a fishing fly, teach someone else. If you're appalled by the trash on the sidewalk or your local beach, pick it up-or, better, organize a sustaining drive to keep the area clean. If you own a business, consider hiring someone on welfare or with a disability. Also, says Clinton, think about injecting your giving with a dash of humor-down in his home state, there's an annual raccoon supper to equip the local football team; Clinton advises using plenty of barbecue sauce on the meat. He goes on to suggest participation in something as profound as Seeds of Peace, whichbrings together young people of different religious and ethnic groups long at odds with one another. An important message conveyed with a light touch. First printing of 750,000
A People's History of American Empire
Author: Howard Zinn
Adapted from the bestselling grassroots history of the United States, the story of America in the world, told in comics form
Since its landmark publication in 1980, A People’s History of the United States has had six new editions, sold more than 1.7 million copies, become required classroom reading throughout the country, and been turned into an acclaimed play. More than a successful book, A People’s History triggered a revolution in the way history is told, displacing the official versions with their emphasis on great men in high places to chronicle events as they were lived, from the bottom up.
Now Howard Zinn, historian Paul Buhle, and cartoonist Mike Konopacki have collaborated to retell, in vibrant comics form, a most immediate and relevant chapter of A People’s History: the centuries-long story of America’s actions in the world. Narrated by Zinn, this version opens with the events of 9/11 and then jumps back to explore the cycles of U.S. expansionism from Wounded Knee to Iraq, stopping along the way at World War I, Central America, Vietnam, and the Iranian revolution. The book also follows the story of Zinn, the son of poor Jewish immigrants, from his childhood in the Brooklyn slums to his role as one of America’s leading historians.
Shifting from world-shattering events to one family’s small revolutions, A People’s History of American Empire presents the classic ground-level history of America in a dazzling new form.
School Library Journal
Gr 10 Up -A study of empire-building by established politicians and big businesses from the 1890 Massacre at Wounded Knee through the current Iraq war. As nonfiction sequential art narrative, this stellar volume is compelling both as historical interpretation and you-are-there observation during many eras and in many climes. Konopacki melds realistic and energetic cartoons-Zinn lecturing in the present day, American and Vietnamese soldiers in the jungle, the Shah of Irana's White Revolution-with archival photos and document scraps to create a highly textured visual presentation. Each episode has its own period-specific narrator: Woody Guthrie sings about the Ludlow Massacre, a zoot suiter recounts the convergence of racial politics with popular music, and Zinn remembers his class-conscious boyhood through World War II soldiering and activism undertaken as a Civil Rights-era college professor. Politically charged, this book cana't stand alone as a history text, but it is an essential component for contemporary American government education, as well as an easy work to suggest to both narrative nonfiction and sophisticated comics readers.-Francisca Goldsmith, Halifax Public Libraries, Nova Scotia
Kirkus Reviews
The unknown history and devastating impact of American imperial activities abroad. In this impressively ambitious, if scattered, new offering from Metropolitan's wide-ranging American Empire Project, left-wing historians Zinn (The Unraveling of the Bush Presidency, 2007, etc.) and Buhle (History/Brown Univ.; Students for a Democratic Society: A Graphic History, 2008, etc.) collaborate with graphic artist Konopacki on a graphic adaptation of key sections from Zinn's bestselling A People's History of the United States (1980). The book is imagined as a lecture on the ugly side of history, delivered by the lean, aging Zinn to a darkened auditorium, with each episode illustrated by Konopacki's almost childishly simple illustrations, sometimes crudely buttressed with grainy photographs. Occasionally, perky sidebars titled "ZINNformation" pop up to point readers to a modern analogy or an interesting bit of trivia. It's an effective technique for delivering this laundry list of despicable behavior, though at times the illustrations seem less than capable of truly rendering their subjects. After a prologue that describes the government's vengeful, knee-jerk reactions to 9/11 as "part of a continuing pattern of American behavior," the main narrative begins abruptly with the Wounded Knee massacre of 1890 and moves on to one head-shaking moment of infamy to another. Being that Zinn is most valuable for his insistence on shedding light on dark corners of American history, the book comes most alive when it is describing little-remembered episodes like the shameful American occupation of the Philippines in the aftermath of the Spanish-American War, cleverly enlisting Mark Twain's embittered, virtuallyunknown writings on the subject. The authors' thesis-that America's imperial war machine manufactures conflicts abroad to further its economic interests while stoking consumer demand and tamping down dissent at home-is not developed as fully as it should be, and current wars are strangely missing. An overly episodic but nonetheless powerful teaching tool for the next generation of anti-imperialist activists.
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