The Animal Question: Why Non-human Animals Deserve Human Rights

by Paola Cavalieri, Catherine Woollard (Translator)

Our Ecological Footprint: Reducing Human Impact on the Earth ("The New Catalyst" Bioregional Series)

by William Rees, Mathis Wackernagel, Phil Testemale (Illustrator)

Not on the Label:
What Really Goes into the Food on Your Plate

by Felicity Lawrence

• That half the chicken on sale in UK supermarkets is contaminated with campylobacter, which causes food poisoning?
• That much of the chicken we eat has been illicitly injected with pork and beef proteins?
• That ready-to-eat bagged salad has been washed in a solution of chlorine twenty times stronger than that of a swimming pool; that the processing destroys the vitamin content; that in one government study 13.5% of bagged salads were found to contain E coli bacteria?
• That perhaps 30% of the workforce in the food industry is in the UK illegally, controlled by a violent mafia-style network of gangmasters and paid far less than the minimum wage?
• That the average Briton has between 300 and 500 chemicals in their body not present 50 years ago, many of which are capable of hormone disruption in the womb?
• That the incidence of obesity in the UK trebled between 1980 and 1998 to 21% of women and 17% of men. Almost one third of children are obese or overweight?
• That 30-40% of cancers could be prevented through better diet?
• A devastating expose of the state of the food production industry in Britain, Not On The Label will change the way we eat and the way we think about what we eat.
• Looking at some of our most popular foods, the author sytematically exposes their production and marketing, showing how the food industry causes ill health, environmental damage, urban blight - and starves smallholders in Africa and Asia, and exploits illegal labourers in Britain.

by Osho

Love can only happen through freedom and in conjunction with a deep respect for ourselves and the other. Is it possible to be alone and not lonely? Where are the boundaries that define "lust" versus "love"... and can lust ever grow into love? In Love, Freedom, Aloneness you will find unique, radical, and intelligent perspectives on these and other essential questions. In our post-ideological world, where old moralities are out of date, we have a golden opportunity to redefine and revitalize the very foundations of our lives. We have the chance to start afresh with ourselves, our relationships to others, and to find fulfillment and success for the individual and for society as a whole.

Freedom: The Courage to Be Yourself

by Osho International Foundation

The Insights for a New Way of Living series aims to shine light on beliefs and attitudes that prevent individuals from being their true selves. The text is an artful mix of compassion and humor, and readers are encouraged to confront what they would most like to avoid, which in turn provides the key to true insight and power.

Freedom helps readers to identify the obstacles to their freedom, both circumstantial and self-imposed, to choose their battles wisely, and to find the courage to be true to themselves.

Escape from Freedom

by Erich Fromm

Reviewer: Richard Schwartz from Haskell, New Jersey United States

An amazing book that pieces modern society starting from the medieval to the renaissance and reformation, that is, from a well defined structured and fixed group identity, fixed meaning to life, determined purpose to life and the here after, to that of the existential, capitalistic and monopolist society that has produced radical individualism with the type of freedom producing severe loneliness, separation and the need to alleviate such emptiness, which has been fulfilled by illusionary means.

Fromm goes both into the psyche of man, the nature of societal structure, the development of western civilization and need for security and certainty to that of either authoritarian rule, internal conscious rule or the invisible rule of democratic conformity to public opinion, or automation.

Basic Masochistic/Sadistic desires of man from the extreme, to what is considered "normal" has been seen in the forfeit of the individual self into totalitarian control, capitalistic profit and religious and social concepts that attempt to fill the void of separateness without keeping the self.

Fromm ends his book in what the positive traits of what Faust would be: that of spontaneous living, not compulsive living, but in positive affirmation and movement, in the process of life, not the results, the experience of the activity of the present moment. I couldn't agree more.

Lila: An Inquiry Into Morals

by Robert M. Pirsig

From Kirkus Reviews

Pirsig's absorbing second novel, appearing nearly two decades after Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, continues where his former work left off--in an exploration of the Metaphysics of Quality set against a journey by sailboat to the Atlantic Ocean. Phaedrus, peripatetic author of a successful book about motorcycles, is once again on the road in this philosophical odyssey--or rather on the Hudson River, as he makes his way toward the Atlantic and, eventually, Florida. His initial goal was to isolate himself sufficiently to complete his second novel, which currently consists of hundreds of notes that he regularly reorganizes and stores in rusty card-catalogue drawers. But isolation is the last thing a sailboat captain experiences on the water, Phaedrus discovers, and it's just as well, because his encounters with Lila (an aging former prostitute), Richard (her childhood friend), and assorted others along his journey inspire even more exciting concepts for his philosophical book. Chief among these is the concept of ``quality'' or value, which Phaedrus posits as the basic organizing principle of the universe. Shifting away from the Western world's reliance on subject-object and cause-and- effect relationships, Phaedrus suggests that everything is instead an expression of more or less quality, and that evolution moves not toward survival of the fittest but toward higher forms of value. While Phaedrus teases a ``scientifically-based'' morality out of this concept (lower forms of quality, such as individual humans, should be sacrificed if necessary in favor of higher forms, including society and, even higher, ideas), Lila begins exhibiting psychotic behavior and Richard becomes increasingly irritated with Phaedrus' abstract, self-absorbed pose. Readers may occasionally feel the same irritation--scenes that advance the plot seem carelessly scribbled in the author's hurry to get back to his theory--but as ever Pirsig's provocative ideas far outweigh such drawbacks.

The Resilience Factor: Seven Essential Skills for Overcoming Life's Inevitable Obstacles

by Karen Reivich (Author), Andrew Shatte (Author)

The science in The Resilience Factor takes an extraordinary leap from the research introduced in the bestselling Learned Optimism a decade ago. Just as hundreds of thousands of people were transformed by "flexible optimism," readers of this book will flourish, thanks to their enhanced ability to overcome obstacles of any kind. Karen Reivich and Andrew Shatté are seasoned resilience coaches and, through practical methods and vivid anecdotes, they prove that resilience is not just an ability that we're born with and need to survive, but a skill that anyone can learn and improve in order to thrive.

Readers will first complete the Resilience Questionnaire to determine their own innate levels of resilience. Then, the system at the heart of The Resilience Factor will teach them to:

• Cast off harsh self-criticisms and negative self-images
• Navigate through the fallout of any kind of crisis
• Cope with grief and anxiety
• Overcome obstacles in relationships, parenting, or on the job
• Achieve greater physical health
• Bolster optimism, take chances, and embrace life