BOOK REVIEWS & RECOMENDATIONS
I love books. I have an extensive library and read voraciously. Years ago I started reviewing books for Amazon. I stopped doing that because I realized I was feeding a machine that was undermining local booksellers and compromising a way of life. My practice today is to almost exclusively buy books through local bookstores. If I read a review of a book I like or someone recommends something interesting, I email the title to the owner of my local book shop, Jessica's Book Nook, and he orders it for me. I pay a little more for a book - but believe me it is worth it.
The goal of this section is to direct people interested in Shelley and his circle to books of interest. I will try to review as many of them as I can, but in other instances I may simply point you to books of outstanding importance that fall into the category of essential reading.
"What Should We Do to Resist Trump" by Sandy Grant. Comment by Graham Henderson
As the famous French proverb says, "plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose": the more things change the more they stay the same. This oft repeated truism seems to have real relevance in 2017. If Shelley was to drop in on us today, I think what would most surprise him would not be rockets and computers, but rather that in two hundred years so little has changed. Wealth is, if any thing, more concentrated in the hands of the few. We are a priest-ridden society and authoritarian regimes are not in recession, they are advancing. Entire civilizations are dominated by theocracies. That should be a sobering message to all of us. What progress we make is wrung from the entrenched power-brokers at great cost and can just as easily be snatched away. Sandy Grant is not wrong: we must resist, protest and create with others the possibilities of change. We must harness our emotions for the eternal struggle. Oh, and we must read Shelley!