In his important and influential book Last Child in the Woods, child advocacy expert Richard Louv argues that today’s kids are increasingly disconnected from nature, a rift he explicitly connects to such alarming trends as the rise in obesity, attention disorders, and depression.

Among the findings:

- Children today spend much less time playing outdoors than they did a generation ago
- Children at eight years old can identify 25 percent more Pokemon characters than wildlife species
- Children between the ages of six months and six years spend an average of 1.5 hours a day with electronic media, and youths between the ages of 8 and 18 an average of 6.5 hours a day

Last Child brings together research and indicating that direct exposure to nature is essential for healthy childhood development and for the physical and emotional health of children — and adults. His solution, essentially: get kids — and yourself — out into nature!  Louv suggests plenty activities and games to get kids engaged once they’re out of the house, And for adults he offers an extensive list of books designed to inspire, inform, and generally open our eyes to the wonders of nature — and prod us to go enjoy it with the kids in our lives. Here’s a small sampling.

1. Carson, Rachel. The Sense of Wonder
2. Cornell, Joseph. Sharing Nature with Children.
3. Lovejoy, Sharon. Roots, Shoots, Buckets and Boots: Gardening Together with Children.
4. Pretor-Pinney, Gavin. The Cloudspotter’s Guide: The Science, History, and Culture of Clouds.
5. Pyle, Robert Michael. The Thunder Tree: Lessons from an Urban Wildland.
6. Reed, Edward S. The Necessity of Experience.
7. Rezendes, Paul. Tracking and the Art of Seeing: How to Read Animal Tracks and Sign.
8. Snyder, Gary. The Practice of the Wild.
9. Wilson, Edward O. The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth.
10. Yankielun, Norbert. How to Build an Igloo: And Other Snow Shelters.

We want to hear from you: What books would you recommend to reawaken a sense of wonder in nature?

A year to the day since the dramatic implosion of Lehman Brothers brought the global financial system to the brink of total collapse, we’d like to point you to some of the books that best illuminate the most devastating financial crisis since the Great Depression — its origins, its trajectory, and the key lessons it offers.

Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World

By Liaquat Ahamed

With penetrating insights for today: a vital, immensely readable history of the world economic collapse of the late 1920s.

Agenda for a New Economy: From Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth

By David C Korten

An economic blueprint for the twenty-first century that puts Main Street—not Wall Street—at the center of our economy.

The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008

By Paul Krugman

How the 2008 financial crisis paralleled the events that caused the Great Depression—and what it will take to avoid another catastrophe in the future.

The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Credit Crisis of 2008 and What It Means

By George Soros

A way out of the financial mess—by one of the world’s leading investors.

The Trillion Dollar Meltdown: Easy Money, High Rollers and the Great Credit Crash

By Charles R. Morris

A clear, concise layperson’s guide to the financial crash — how it happened, how best to recover, and what comes next.

In a wonderful essay titled “The Reading Cure,” Arthur Blaustein quotes the novelist John Gardner on the power of literature:

In a democratic society, where every individual opinion counts, [literature’s] incomparable ability to instruct, to make alternatives intellectually and emotionally clear, to spotlight falsehood, insincerity, and foolishness—[literature’s] incomparable ability, that is, to make us understand—ought to be a force bringing people together, breaking down the barriers of prejudice and ignorance, and holding up ideals worth pursuing. Literature in America does fulfill these obligations.

In the same essay, Blaustein, who is the Chairman of Progressive Book Club’s editorial board and the author himself of many books, including Make A Difference: America’s Guide to Volunteering and Community Service picks up:

We depend on our fiction for metaphoric news of who we are, or who we think we ought to be. The writers of today’s political and social realism are doing no less than reminding us of our true, traditional American values – the hope, the promises, and the dreams. When we read these novels, we learn about who we are as individuals and as a nation. They inform us, as no other medium does, about the state of our national politics and character—of the difference between what we say we are and how we actually behave. They offer us crucial insights into the moral, social, and emotional conflicts that are taking place in communities across America. We need such exploration today more than ever.

We asked Arthur to recommend, for PBC members and readers, a dozen novels that he considers especially rich explorations of American life — as he says, “the hope, the promises, the dreams.” Here’s what he came back with.

1. Shadow Play, by Charles Baxter (Norton)
   The  city manager of a small, depressed town in Michigan sees the human costs when the chemical plant he lured to town turns out to be an environmental disaster.
2. A Yellow Raft in Blue Water, by Michael Dorris (Warner)
   Compassionate and psychologically complex, this novel spans three generations of Native American women in the Pacific Northwest – on and off the reservation – who share a fierce independence and a love of family.
3. Heart Mountain, by Gretel Ehrlich (Penguin)
   Explores the experience of Japanese Americans exiled to a World War II relocation camp in Wyoming and their relationship with local ranchers.
4. The Dogs of March, by Ernest Hebert (New England Press)
   Brilliant, sensitive, and funny. Captures what it is like for blue collar workersto be unemployed. Set in New England, it’s the American dream gone belly-up.
5. Ironweed, William Kennedy (Penguin)
   A Pulitzer Prize winner’s shrewd study of the diceyness of fate. This modern Dante’s Inferno about life on skid row is especially poignant as homelessness continues to cast a shadow across our land.
6. The Secret Life of Bees, by Susan Kidd (Penguin)
   A stunning and lush story of race and gender set in South Carolina. In the struggle between bigotry and love, the latter wins out.
7. Animal Dreams, by Barbara Kingsolver (Harper Perennial)
   A wonderful tale of the Mexican-American experience in the Southwest.  Explores themes of authenticity, community, integrity, and truth.
8. The Diagnosis, by Alan Lightman (Vintage).
   A Kafkaesque tale that questions America’s compulsive love affair with modern technology, efficiency, speed, money and “making it.”
9. The Milagro Beanfield War, by John Nichols (Ballantine)
   Reveals how the economic and political “shell game” is being run on ordinary Americans. Part of the author’s New Mexico trilogy, it explores the underside of rampant development.
10. My Year of Meats, by Ruth Ozeki (Penguin)
    A feisty American filmmaker takes on the beef industry, chemical corporations, and commercial advertising. Muckraking, witty and provocative.A panoramic view of America.
11. Postcards, by E. Annie Proulx, (Collier)
    Winner of the Pen/Faulkner Award. A remarkable story of the struggle of New England farmers to confront the loss of home and place in economic hard times.
12. Moo, by Jane Smiley (Random House)
    The financial, academic, sexual, and political scandals of a Midwest university are laid bare in this insightful satire of higher education.

Arthur I. Blaustein is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, where he teaches community development, public policy, and politics. His most recent books are Make a Difference: America’s Guide to Volunteering and Community Service, and The American Promise: Justice and Opportunity. He is the chairman of the editorial board of Progressive Book Club.

Image: Flickr/Creative Commons

To all PBC members and friends: Happy Fourth of July! 

And to mark the day, here’s a sampling of recommended reading for true patriots everywhere!

Give Me Liberty: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries
By Naomi Wolf
The best-selling author of The End of America lays out a blueprint for the active citizenship.

 The Rise and Fall (and Redeeming Promise) of Our Country 
By William Greider
How America strayed from its founding ideals—and how We the People can bring the nation home.

The United States Constitution: A Graphic Adaptation
By Jonathan Hennessey (Author) and Aaron McConnell (Illustrator)
An information-packed, graphic-novel treatment of pivotal moments in the history of the Constitution.

America America
By  Ethan Canin
A remarkable exploration of how vanity, greatness, and tragedy combine to change history and fate.

A People’s History of the United States
By  Howard Zinn
Howard Zinn’s classic work of populist history, updated for a new generation.

Thomas Paine and the Promise of America
By Harvey Kaye
The best portrait yet of “the greatest radical of a radical age”

Rights of Man and Common Sense
By Thomas Paine
The classic pamphlets that inspired a nation to revolution.

Unruly Americans
By Woody Holton
Average Americans Were the True Framers of the Constitution

Photo: AP

I have to be honest, I don’t really get this “summer reading” thing (though of course I’m happy to pile on). As best I can tell, the idea is that a good summer book is an “easy” read? Easy reading has its place, don’t get me wrong. But I’ve always found that summer vacation is the only time I can really get into a book for long (more or less) uninterrupted stretches; in other words, the more concentration a book needs, the more likely I am to read it during the summer; whereas the breezy page-turner is about all I’m good for during the year, in the roughly 7 minutes between reaching over to the nightstand and crashing out.

But anyway: here, for your consideration, are some more summer recommendations from here and there.

• Amy Walter, editor in chief of National Journal’s Hotline (Book TV)
• Sen. Mitch McConnel, Senate Minority Leader (Book TV) (No, really.)
• Summer Nonfiction Recommendations (NPR)
• Librarian Nancy Pearl Picks Summer’s Best Books (NPR)
• Vote For The Best Beach Books Of All Time (NPR)
• Summer Reading: 25 Books You Can’t Put Down (Oprah’s Book Club)

We asked Maureen Corrigan, book critic for Fresh Air with Terry Gross, PBC editorial board member, and serious genre fiction buff, to recommend some favorite mysteries, thrillers, and police procedurals for summer reading. Here’s what she came back with.

The Way Home by George Pelecanos

If you don’t know of him, Pelecanos has been writing crime novels for years about the “other” Washington (i.e., not Capitol Hill or Northwest DC) He’s socially and racially conscious and a terrific writer.  Also wrote for The Wire.  The working class “hero” of this novel works for his family’s remodeling company.

Small Crimes by Dave Zeltzerman

I really really loved this noir that came out last year.  A police officer newly released from prison tries to put his life back together in a small town in upstate NY and only proves himself to be one of fortune’s fools.  Pure, updated James M.Cain.

The Moe Prager mysteries of Reed Farrell Coleman

My find of the year.  Coleman is superb but relatively unknown.  Hailed by Michael Connelly and most of the Big Guys in Hard Boiled Detective fiction. His Moe Prager series is terrific (Jewish ex cop detective) and one of them, Redemption Street, is my favorite because it’s set in the crumbling Catskill resort area.  A perfect summer setting! [Listen to Maureen Corrigan’s

The Adamsberg series of Fred Vargas

Terrific, psychologically dense police procedurals set in Paris.  Reminiscent of the classic  Per Wahloo/Maj Sojwall police procedural series. This series stars Inspector Adamsburg and a recurring cast of police detectives and considers all the big questions about the nature of evil.  Vargas is one of the biggest names in crime fiction in Europe but, again, not widely known here except to real crime fiction fans.  (And, yes, she’s a she.)

Death of a Nationalist by Rebecca Pawel

Came out in 2003 and is set in the Spanish Civil War but its political story loops around in unexpected ways.  Pawel spun a series out of it but this was her debut book (she was a young Spanish teacher at the time) and it’s really smart and politically inflected.

The Hours Before Dawn by Celia Fremlin

This one is probably not in print (1958 is the date on my first edition) but I’d love to make a pitch for it.  It’s the first mystery that I know of in which a woman who’s recently given birth and is sleep deprived as a result sees things she shouldn’t see in the small hours of the evening.  Proto-feminist in its politics.

Rinku Sen is the President and Executive Director of the Applied Research Center (ARC) and Publisher of ColorLines magazine. She is the author of  Stir It Up: Lessons in Community Organizing, and, most recently, of The Accidental American: Immigration and Citizenship in the Age of Globalization, available at Progressive Book Club.

Which books have most influenced you?

There are two; they’re both novels. One is The Known World by Edward P. Jones and the second one—you’ll note a similar theme—is The In-Between World of Vikram Lall by M.G. Vassanji.  I happened to read these books in 2005, one right after the other, and they’re very interesting because they’re both about the middleman position in a society.  The Known World is about a community of freed slaves in 1860s Virginia who own slaves themselves but largely as a way of freeing their family members from slaveholders. The In-Between World of Vikram Lall is about an Indian man growing up in Kenya just before the anti-colonialist revolutions in Kenya.  In both cases, the story is really about that person who is in between the oppressed and the oppressor, and that’s a position that I relate to very closely, being brown-skinned Indian immigrant from a professional family in the United States trying to figure out where my place is in the racial hierarchy of the U.S., and what my role is to be contributing towards everyone’s liberation.  So I highly recommend those two very moving books.

One of America’s most distinguished historians and critics, Garry Wills is the author of numerous books, including Saint Augustine, Papal Sin, and the Pulitzer Prize–winning Lincoln at Gettysburg. He has won many other awards, among them two National Book Critics Circle Awards and the 1998 National Medal for the Humanities. He is currently Professor of History Emeritus at Northwestern University.

Which books have most influenced you?

Augustine’s Confessions and Trinity, since they explore the human soul as God’s Image; in politics, the non-Communist attacks on capitalism in John Ruskin’s Unto This Last made their mark - as they did on Gandhi and George Bernard Shaw; Lord Acton’s Lectures on the French Revolution give a sense of what his great unwritten work on liberty would have been.

Robert Lipsyte has been an award-winning sportswriter for the New York Times and was the Emmy-winning host of the public affairs show The Eleventh Hour. He is the author of a number of acclaimed novels, including The Contender, The Brave, The Chief, Warrior Angel, and One Fat Summer.

Which books have most influenced you?

Reading John Steinbeck as a kid made me want to be a writer, especially Cannery Row, Tortilla Flat, The Moon is Down and The Grapes of Wrath. I have not gone back to them. Maybe I’m afraid they won’t hold up. In any case, they were there when I needed them.

Peter Singer is Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics in the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University. He is the author of many books, most recently The Life You Can Save.

Which books have most influenced you?

Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy was the first book of philosophy I ever read. Russell’s style of presenting philosophical issues made me want to keep reading and thinking about philosophical questions; Henry Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics is simply the best book on ethics ever written; R.M. Hare’s Freedom and Reason was a challenging attempt to show that ethics could include both the elements mentioned in its title; and J.J.C. Smart’s little book An Outline of a System of Utilitarian Ethics (subsequently reprinted as part of J.J.C. Smart and Bernard Williams, Utilitarianism For and Against) showed that utilitarianism was alive and well during my student days.