Radical Middle Newsletter
Thoughtful Idealism, Informed Hope

 

BLOG, AKA ONLINE  NEWSLETTER:

HOME

Sign Up to Receive Monthly Article Alerts

Site Map

Selected E-mails to the Editor

ARCHIVES:

ARCHIVE A: Access Past Mark Satin Articles, 2005- Present

ARCHIVE B: Access Past Mark Satin Articles, 1999- 2004

ARCHIVE X: Access Past John Avlon Articles, 2004-06

RADICAL MIDDLE, THE BOOK:

Book's Home Page

Book's Preface

Author's Publicity Schedule

Press Clips and Blog Snips

RESPOND TO OUR ARTICLES AND VIEW OTHERS' RESPONSES:

E-mail the Editor!

Feisty E-mails to the Editor, 2008

Feisty E-mails to the Editor, 2007

Feisty E-mails to the Editor, 2006

Feisty E-mails to the Editor, 2005

Feisty Letters to the Editor, 2002-04

Feisty Letters to the Editor, 1999-2001

WHO WE ARE:

About the Editor (In-House Version)

About the Editor (By Marilyn Ferguson)

About Our Wonderful Pledgers -- and How You Can Join Them

About Our Directors and Advisors

About Our Sponsor, the Center for Visionary Law

RADICAL MIDDLE  CONGRES- SIONAL SCORECARDS:

109th and 110th Congresses (2005-08)

108th Congress (2003 & 2004)

107th Congress (2001 & 2002)

RADICAL MIDDLE POLITICAL BOOK AWARD WINNERS:

1998 - Present

SOME PRIOR RADICAL MIDDLE BOOKS:

50 Best "Third Way" Books of the 1990s

25 Best "Transformational" Books of the 1980s

25 Best "New Age Politics" Books of the 1970s

SOME PRIOR  BOOKS BY MARK SATIN:

New Options for America (book drawn from New Options News- letter, 1983-92)

New Age Politics: Healing Self and Society, 1976

Manual for Draft-Age Immigrants to Canada, 1968

25 Best “New Age” Political Books of the 1970s

The Seventies were an exciting time: Although the New Left collapsed, a new political movement -- oriented more to ecology, voluntary simplicity and sexual liberation than socialism -- came to the fore. Detractors called it the “New Age” movement, but from the beginning it struggled to develop a coherent new analysis of society and strategy for social change (see New World Alliance elsewhere on this website).

Today many New Age political ideas, dressed up in more sober garb, have entered and are continuing to enter the mainstream. Some are called “radical centrist” or “radical middle” ideas, a concept popularized by Marilyn Ferguson in her 1980 bestseller, The Aquarian Conspiracy.

The following books were the backbone of that movement. Most of them hold up well. And they’re far more visionary than what’s coming off the presses today -- which suggests, sadly, that the sense of possibility in the Seventies was far greater than it is today.

The list was created by Mark Satin, editor of Radical Middle Newsletter, in collaboration with former members of the New World Alliance, a national New Age political organization active from 1979-83.

Radical Middle will receive a 15% referral fee (at no cost to you) whenever you "click" on a blue-highlighted book and order it from Amazon.com; so we hope you'll make any purchases of highlighted books through the "channel" of this website. (Clicking on a highlighted book doesn't obligate you to order the book.  The click simply takes you to the book's site at Amazon.com. . . .)

Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture

Helen Caldicott, Nuclear Madness: What You Can Do

Ernest Callenbach, Ecotopia

Herman Daly, Steady-State Economics. Out of print. But see his For the Common Good

Andrea Dworkin, Woman Hating. Out of print. But see her Letters from a War Zone: Writings, 1976-1989

Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be?

Willis Harman, An Incomplete Guide to the Future. Out of print. But see his Global Mind Change

Hazel Henderson, Creating Alternative Futures: The End of Economics

John Holt, Escape from Childhood: The Needs and Rights of Children

Ivan Illich, Deschooling Society

Ivan Illich, Tools for Conviviality

Amory Lovins, Soft Energy Paths. Out of print. But see his Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution

Donella and Dennis Meadows, The Limits to Growth: A Report for the Club of Rome. Out of print. But see their Beyond the Limits

Kate Millett, Sexual Politics

Lewis Mumford, The Pentagon of Power: The Myth of the Machine

Michael Phillips, The Seven Laws of Money

Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values

James Robertson, The Sane Alternative: A Choice of Futures

Theodore Roszak, Where the Wasteland Ends. Out of print. But see his The Cult of Information: A Neo-Luddite Treatise

Mark Satin, New Age Politics: Healing Self and Society

E.F. Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful: Economics As If People Mattered

Philip Slater, Pursuit of Loneliness: American Culture at the Breaking Point

William Irwin Thompson, At the Edge of History and Passages About Earth

Alvin Toffler, Future Shock

Barbara Ward, The Home of Man

William Julius Wilson, The Declining Significance of Race: Blacks and Changing American Institutions

THE RADICAL MIDDLE CONCEPT:

Why "Radical Middle"?

Over 40 Good People (Try to) Describe the Radical Middle

50 Best Radical Middle Books of the '00s (so far)

Five Best Radical Middle Magazines, annotated

Over 20  Arguably Radical Middle National POLITICIANS

GREAT RADICAL MIDDLE  GROUPS AND BLOGS:

NEW:
Over 250 Great Radical Centrist Groups and  Organizations - all linked to their home pages AND to our articles!

Over 50 Great Radical Centrist Blogs - all with their bloggers named and described!

NOT JUST RADICAL MIDDLE:

Ten Best U.S. Political Novels, annotated

25 RED- HOT RADICAL MIDDLE INITIATIVES:

Ashoka

Breakthough Institute

Center for Global Development

Centrist Coalition

Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget

Communitarian Network

Consensus Building Institute

Environmental Defense

Ethical Markets

Giraffe Heroes Project

Global Business Network

Information Technology & Innovation Foundation

Institute for Alternative Futures

National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation

NDN/New Politics Institute

New America Foundation

Progressive Policy Institute

Republican Main Street Partnership

RESULTS

Reuniting America

Search for Common Ground

Third Way

Unity08

Vasconcellos Project

World Future Society

SOME PRIOR RADICAL MIDDLE INITIATIVES:

Generational Equity and Communitarian platforms,1990s

U.S. Green Party's "Ten Key Values" statement, 1980s

New World Alliance, 1970s

Civil Rights Movement, 1960s (your editor is HERE, 6th from bottom)