I have decided for the month of April I wanted to make another top ten list. This time I want to rank the most important non-fiction books ever written. Again, these are not the best written or most interesting, but important from a historical standpoint. These are important for good or for bad. Some have inspired greatness, others have caused pain and evil, but all have made changes. I get few comments about my book lists, but hopefully I can inspire someone to read or think about at least one. So I do not take up too much room and my wife says my postings are too long, I will issue them in installments.
10. Silent Spring, Rachel Carson, 1962. If you were alive in the 1960s you are probably aware of this book. It has been credited with starting the Environmental movement in the US. The book documents how the use of pesticides, especially DDT, was killing the bird and water life in our river systems, hence silent springs. She awoke a generation in the 60s to the harms we have committed to our planet and for the first time made people aware. Because of his book, DDT has been banned in the US, though used in many third world nations. The environment became a major political issue and an important one for Richard Nixon when he ran for the presidency. It was one topic that blue collar workers, Wall Street tycoons, Hollywood, hippies, and the youth movement could all agree on, and in 1972 there was little else they could all agree on. It was Nixon that began the environmental protection agency. Today the environment has become a major political issue, has even spawned its own political party.
9. The Jungle, Upton Sinclair, 1906. This is the best known and best representation of the journalist’s movement known as the muckrakers (Ida Tarbell, Jacob Riis). During the Progressive era, the muckrakers took it upon themselves to expose all the evils in society, and there were plenty. During the Progressive era, government went through a complete overhaul as government went from doing nothing to changing its creed to “there ought to be a law about that.” Presidents like Teddy Roosevelt created larger government to fix social ills. But in order to identify what needed fixing, muckrakers like Sinclair first needed to expose the problem. The Jungle attacked the meat packing plants in Chicago. It exposed the unsanitary conditions, and harsh reality of living conditions of poor workers. It talked about things like human body parts chopped off while working as well as rats and rat droppings all being added to the meat. This book is enough to even make me a vegetarian for a couple days. When Roosevelt read this book, it was very influential in his pushing the Pure Food and Drug Act, which created health inspectors. I still wonder about hot dogs.
8. Century of Dishonor, Helen Hunt Jackson, 1881. This book chronicled the inhumane treatment of the American Indians over the previous century, and is responsible for policy changes towards them. As Americans read this book, they came to the realization that the treatment of Indians was wrong and became determined to make a difference. The first hundred years was full of violence, lies, and removal of Indians from their homes to reservations. This book was so powerful, that Americans now wanted to help the Indians plight. Those who wanted to help meant well, however, their way of helping is now seen as just as cruel. The best thing white America could offer savage Indians was to make them just like them. So instead of reservations, they brought Indian children to the east to teach them to be white. They cut their hair and gave them Christian names and punished them if they spoke their native language or acted Indian. They passed laws like the Dawes Act which took away the power of the tribes by dividing up the reservations into private plots and giving families their own lands, 160 acres (extra land was sold off to whites). The only problem was they were given worthless land and could not provide for families. They set up a system that was bound to fail, and when it did they blamed the Indians. Whites meant well, but what they did is try to destroy a proud people, and in many ways were successful.
7. Civil Disobedience, Henry David Thoreau, 1849. Yes I include this in my novels, but this is where it truly belongs. Thoreau gave a name to breaking the law when that law went against a higher law. He coined the phrase “That government is best which governs least.” During the 1840s, Thoreau had many issues with the government, mainly slavery and the Mexican War. He believed he could not support a government that supported these two instutitions, and decided that he would not pay taxes. He believed he answered to a higher law, one that did not agree with the United States. His decision to not pay taxes landed him in prison and led him to say, “the true place for a just man is also a prison.” The reason for making this list is its influence on later generations. In the 1960s it became a must read for the student radicals and hippies, buts its real importantce was the influence it had on men like Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King. Gandhi wrote,
“Thoreau was a great writer, philosopher, poet, and withal a most practical man, that is, he taught nothing he was not prepared to practice in himself. He was one of the greatest and most moral men America has produced. At the time of the abolition of slavery movement, he wrote his famous essay “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience”. He went to gaol (jail) for the sake of his principles and suffering humanity. His essay has, therefore, been sanctified by suffering. Moreover, it is written for all time. Its incisive logic is unanswerable.”
Dr. King wrote, “I became convinced that noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. No other person has been more eloquent and passionate in getting this idea across than Henry David Thoreau.” King credited Thoreau as his insiration for things like the Montgomery Bus boycot.
I am not making excuses for breaking the law, we need to respect the laws of our nations, anarchy would reign if everyone was aloud to break laws if they felt certain laws did not allpy to them. Yet in the case of someone like Dr. King, laws that allowed for segregation were wrong and against God and we are furtunate enough to have men like Gandhi and King who were willing to stand up and wise enough to know when.
10. Silent Spring, Rachel Carson, 1962. If you were alive in the 1960s you are probably aware of this book. It has been credited with starting the Environmental movement in the US. The book documents how the use of pesticides, especially DDT, was killing the bird and water life in our river systems, hence silent springs. She awoke a generation in the 60s to the harms we have committed to our planet and for the first time made people aware. Because of his book, DDT has been banned in the US, though used in many third world nations. The environment became a major political issue and an important one for Richard Nixon when he ran for the presidency. It was one topic that blue collar workers, Wall Street tycoons, Hollywood, hippies, and the youth movement could all agree on, and in 1972 there was little else they could all agree on. It was Nixon that began the environmental protection agency. Today the environment has become a major political issue, has even spawned its own political party.
9. The Jungle, Upton Sinclair, 1906. This is the best known and best representation of the journalist’s movement known as the muckrakers (Ida Tarbell, Jacob Riis). During the Progressive era, the muckrakers took it upon themselves to expose all the evils in society, and there were plenty. During the Progressive era, government went through a complete overhaul as government went from doing nothing to changing its creed to “there ought to be a law about that.” Presidents like Teddy Roosevelt created larger government to fix social ills. But in order to identify what needed fixing, muckrakers like Sinclair first needed to expose the problem. The Jungle attacked the meat packing plants in Chicago. It exposed the unsanitary conditions, and harsh reality of living conditions of poor workers. It talked about things like human body parts chopped off while working as well as rats and rat droppings all being added to the meat. This book is enough to even make me a vegetarian for a couple days. When Roosevelt read this book, it was very influential in his pushing the Pure Food and Drug Act, which created health inspectors. I still wonder about hot dogs.
8. Century of Dishonor, Helen Hunt Jackson, 1881. This book chronicled the inhumane treatment of the American Indians over the previous century, and is responsible for policy changes towards them. As Americans read this book, they came to the realization that the treatment of Indians was wrong and became determined to make a difference. The first hundred years was full of violence, lies, and removal of Indians from their homes to reservations. This book was so powerful, that Americans now wanted to help the Indians plight. Those who wanted to help meant well, however, their way of helping is now seen as just as cruel. The best thing white America could offer savage Indians was to make them just like them. So instead of reservations, they brought Indian children to the east to teach them to be white. They cut their hair and gave them Christian names and punished them if they spoke their native language or acted Indian. They passed laws like the Dawes Act which took away the power of the tribes by dividing up the reservations into private plots and giving families their own lands, 160 acres (extra land was sold off to whites). The only problem was they were given worthless land and could not provide for families. They set up a system that was bound to fail, and when it did they blamed the Indians. Whites meant well, but what they did is try to destroy a proud people, and in many ways were successful.
7. Civil Disobedience, Henry David Thoreau, 1849. Yes I include this in my novels, but this is where it truly belongs. Thoreau gave a name to breaking the law when that law went against a higher law. He coined the phrase “That government is best which governs least.” During the 1840s, Thoreau had many issues with the government, mainly slavery and the Mexican War. He believed he could not support a government that supported these two instutitions, and decided that he would not pay taxes. He believed he answered to a higher law, one that did not agree with the United States. His decision to not pay taxes landed him in prison and led him to say, “the true place for a just man is also a prison.” The reason for making this list is its influence on later generations. In the 1960s it became a must read for the student radicals and hippies, buts its real importantce was the influence it had on men like Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King. Gandhi wrote,
“Thoreau was a great writer, philosopher, poet, and withal a most practical man, that is, he taught nothing he was not prepared to practice in himself. He was one of the greatest and most moral men America has produced. At the time of the abolition of slavery movement, he wrote his famous essay “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience”. He went to gaol (jail) for the sake of his principles and suffering humanity. His essay has, therefore, been sanctified by suffering. Moreover, it is written for all time. Its incisive logic is unanswerable.”
Dr. King wrote, “I became convinced that noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. No other person has been more eloquent and passionate in getting this idea across than Henry David Thoreau.” King credited Thoreau as his insiration for things like the Montgomery Bus boycot.
I am not making excuses for breaking the law, we need to respect the laws of our nations, anarchy would reign if everyone was aloud to break laws if they felt certain laws did not allpy to them. Yet in the case of someone like Dr. King, laws that allowed for segregation were wrong and against God and we are furtunate enough to have men like Gandhi and King who were willing to stand up and wise enough to know when.
1 comment:
Wow, James. You're so sophisticated now... :)
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