Chris Hedges, author of War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning (PublicAffairs, 2002; paperback, Anchor, 2003) and Losing Moses on the Freeway: America's Broken Covenant with the Ten Commandments (Free Press, 2005), will speak at the University of Puget Sound (Schneebeck Concert Hall) at 7:30 p.m. on Thurs., Oct. 13. -- To help prepare for and then digest what Hedges has to say, UFPPC's book discussion group, Digging Deeper, will read and discuss these two books on the two Mondays (Oct. 10 & 17) before and after Hedges speaks. -- Copies of the books are widely available; UFPPC also has a few copies to lend (or for purchase)....
On Oct. 10, UFPPC's Monday evening book discussion group will begin discussion of two books by Chris Hedges, who will speak at 7:30 p.m. on Thurs., Oct. 13, on the campus of the University of Puget Sound. -- The two books to be discussed are: War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning (PublicAffairs, 2002; in paper, Anchor, 2003), and Losing Moses on the Freeway: America's Broken Covenant with the Ten Commandments (Free Press, 2005).
WHAT: Study circle on 2 books by Chris Hedges
WHO: Facilitated by members of United for Peace of Pierce County
WHEN: October 10 & 17, 2005, 7:00 p.m.-8:30 p.m.
WHERE: Mandolin Café, 3923 South 12th St., Tacoma, WA
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DIGGING DEEPER X: CHRIS HEDGES ON WAR & AMERICAN SOCIETY
United for Peace of Pierce County (WA)
October 10 & 17, 2005
For more than a year, United for Peace of Pierce County has been conducting Digging Deeper, a Monday night book discussion group. Topics have included peak oil, climate change, and the corporation, as well as abiding themes of war, peace, and social change. Continuing in this tradition, on Oct. 10 & 17, 2005, Digging Deeper X will hold a two-week study circle examining two works on war and the United States by former New York Times war correspondent Chris Hedges.
· War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning (PublicAffairs, 2002; paper, Anchor, 2003). A reader's comment, posted on Amazon.com: "Everything about Chris Hedges's book, War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, is disturbing. The vivid eyewitness accounts of war crimes, the rambling disjointed highly personal style that mirrors the chaos of battle, the link between brutality and sexuality, the use of historical literature that obliterates the distance mankind has traveled from Troy to Kosovo, and his own deep addiction to the thrill of war as a long time war correspondent . . . Hedges likens war to an addiction, the high of which is all-consuming . . .[P]erhaps the most disturbing aspect of Hedges's narrative is trying to figure out why we ever stop fighting. . . . Hedges is a warrior, he is not a pacifist. Hedges is addicted to war and he knows it and he hates it."
· Losing Moses on the Freeway: America's Broken Covenant with the Ten Commandments (Free Press, 2005). Publishers Weekly: Hedges, a correspondent at the New York Times, first made a name in the book world with his remarkable study War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. Now Hedges, the son of a Presbyterian minister, brings together ruminations on the 10 Commandments. Inspired by Krzysztof Kieslowski's The Decalogue (a series of 10 films, each based on one of the commandments) each of these pieces profiles someone who has "struggled on a deep and visceral level with one of the commandments." Some of the chapters -- like Hedges's meditation on how consumerism becomes a way of taking the Lord's name in vain -- are quite profound. And some of the connections he makes are refreshingly creative."
MEETING SCHEDULE -- Mondays from 7:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. on October 10, & 17 at the Mandolin Café, 3923 S. 12th St., Tacoma, WA.
Chris Hedges's books are widely available in bookstores and libraries; UFPPC also has a few copies for borrowing or purchase. There is no charge for participation, but a purchase from the Mandolin Café, which hosts this activity, is graciously expected of participants. For more information, contact Mark Jensen at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or 253-756-7519.
United for Peace of Pierce County holds regular meetings at 7:00 p.m. on 1st and 3rd Thursdays at First United Methodist Church, 423 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Tacoma, WA
Digging Deeper, UFPPCs book discussion series, has been meeting weekly since July 2004. We have considered these books bearing on matters related to UFPPCs mission statement: "We nonviolently oppose the reliance on unilateral military actions rather than cooperative diplomacy": Kevin Phillips, American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush (Viking, 2004); Craig Unger, House of Bush, House of Saud: The Secret Relationship between the World's Two Most Powerful Dynasties (Scribner, 2004); Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack (Simon and Schuster, 2004); Evan Wright, Generation Kill: Devil Dogs, Iceman, Captain America, and the New Face of American War (Putnam, 2004); Richard A. Clarke, Against All Enemies (Free Press, 2004); David Ray Griffin, The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions about the Bush Administration and 9/11 (Interlink, 2004); James Mann, Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush's War Cabinet (Viking, 2004); Dana Priest, The Mission: Waging War and Keeping Peace with America's Military (Norton, 2003); Chalmers Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (Metropolitan Books, 2004); Joel Bakan, The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power (Free Press, 2004); Catherine Lutz, Homefront: A Military City and the American Twentieth Century (Beacon, 2001); Robert McChesney, The Problem of the Media: US Communication Politics in the Twenty-First Century (Monthly Review Press, 2004); Peter Dale Scott, Drugs, Oil, and War: The United States in Afghanistan, Columbia, and Indochina (Rowman and Littlefield, 2003); Rahul Mahajan, Full Spectrum Dominance: US Power in Iraq and Beyond (Seven Stories Press, 2003); Anonymous [Michael Scheuer], Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror (Brassey's, 2004); Daniel Yergin, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power (Simon & Schuster, 1991); Michael T. Klare, Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing Dependency on Imported Petroleum (Metropolitan Books, 2004); Ross Gelbspan, Boiling Point: How Politicians, Big Oil and Coal, Journalists and Activists Are Fueling the Climate Crisis -- and What We Can Do to Avert Disaster (Basic Books, 2004); Thom Hartmann, The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight: Waking Up to Personal and Global Transformation (Three Rivers Press, 1999); Richard Heinberg, The Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies (New Society, 2003); Kenneth S. Deffeyes, Hubberts Peak: The Impending World Oil Shortage (Princeton UP, 2001); Amory Lovins et al., Winning the Oil Endgame: Innovation for Profit, Jobs, and Security (Rocky Mountain Institute, 2005); Mark Lynas, High Tide: The Truth about Our Climate Crisis (Picador, 2004); Brian M. Fagan, The Long Summer: How Climate Changed Civilization (Basic Books, 2004); Patrick J. Michaels, Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians, and the Media (Cato Institute, 2004); Richard B. Alley, The Two-Mile Time Machine: Ice Cores, Abrupt Climate Change, and Our Future (Princeton University Press, 2002); T.E. Graedel and Paul J. Crutzen, Atmospheric Change: An Earth System Perspective (W.H. Freeman, 1992); Spencer R. Weart, The Discovery of Global Warming (Harvard University Press, 2003); Douglas V. Hoyt & Kenneth H. Schatten, The Role of the Sun in Climate Change (Oxford University Press, 1997); Jim Wallis, God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It (HarperSanFrancisco, 2005); Jared Diamond, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (Viking, 2004); Ted Nace, Gangs of America: The Rise of Corporate Power and the Disabling of Democracy (Berret-Koehler, 2001); P.W. Singer, Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry (Cornell University Press, 2003); Roland Marchand, Creating the Corporate Soul: The Rise of Public Relations and Corporate Imagery in American Big Business (University of California Press, 1998); Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, and L. Hunter Lovins, Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution (Back Bay Books, 2000); Elizabeth A. Fones-Wolf, The Selling of Free Enterprise: The Business Assault on Labor and Liberalism, 1945-1960 (University of Illinois Press, 1994); David C. Korten, When Corporations Rule the World, 2nd ed., (Berret-Koehler, 2001); Elliott D. Sclar and Richard C. Leone, You Dont Always Get What You Pay For: The Economics of Privatization (Cornell University Press, 2001); Ezra N. Suleiman, Dismantling Democratic States (Princeton University Press, 2003); Naomi Klein, No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies (Picador, 2002; orig. ed. 1999); John Perkins, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man (Berrett-Koehler, 2004); Kevin Phillips, Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the American Rich (Broadway Books, 2002); Paul Roberts, The End of Oil: On the Edge of a Perilous New World (Houghton Mifflin, 2004); Arundhati Roy, An Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire (South End Press, 2004); Lester R. Brown, Outgrowing the Earth: The Food Security Challenge in an Age of Falling Water Tables and Rising Temperatures (W.W. Norton, 2005); Thomas L. Friedman, The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 2005); Ron Hira & Anil Hira, Outsourcing America: What's Behind Our National Crisis And How We Can Reclaim American Jobs (AMOCOM, 2005); Bruce Lincoln, Holy Terrors: Thinking about Religion after September 11 (University of Chicago Press, 2003); Samantha Power, A Problem from Hell: America in the Age of Genocide (Basic Books, 2002; paper, Perennial, 2005); Geraldine Brooks, Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women (Anchor, 1995); Kalle Lasn, Culture Jam: How to Reverse Americas Suicidal Consumer Binge -- And Why We Must (Perennial, 2000); Derrick Jensen, The Culture of Make Believe (Chelsea Green, 2004; orig. ed. 2002); Emma Larkin, Finding George Orwell in Burma (Penguin, 2005); Robert Pape, Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism (Random House, 2005); Matthew Simmons, Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy (Wiley, 2005); Andrew Gumbel, Steal This Vote: Dirty Elections and the Rotten History of Democracy in America (Nation Books, 2005); George Lakoff, Dont Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate -- The Essential Guide for Progressives (Chelsea Green, 2004; orig. ed. 2002); V.S. Ramachandran, A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness: From Impostor Poodles to Purple Numbers (Pi Press, 2004 [paper 2005]); William Engdahl, A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order, revised ed. (Pluto Press, 2004).