Bella DePaulo, PhD | Atria Books, 2015 | Book
Bella DePaulo has the most modern exploration I could find on all of the creative ways that people are creating living situations that work for them, people she calls ‘lifespace pioneers.’ She writes about everything from multi-generational housing to single moms living together to married couples who live apart.
Nick Hanauer and David Rolf | Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, 2015 | Article
In this fascinating article, a billionaire activist and a labor organizing guru team up to make the argument that in our increasingly fragmented economy, we must re-imagine the social safety net. At a time when many workers have more employers in a week than their parents has in a lifetime, we have to get creative and flexible if we want to preserve the middle class, and America’s economic thriving more generally.
E.F. Schumacher | Blond & Briggs, 1973 | Book
Before we were violently reminded about the perils of a ‘too big to fail’ mentality in the most recent recession, E.F. Schumacher had written this beautiful book about the virtues of the small and the local. It’s not just a hippie manifesto; it’s a studied, courageous template for a different way of thinking about the unfinished project of the true American Dream.
Deborah Stone | Nation Books, 2008 | Book
If you want to think philosophically about America’s relationship to caretaking and how we create or neglect policy solutions around it, this is a fascinating read. It helps put the fact that we are among the last industrialized country’s to not have paid maternity leave in stark perspective and makes you feel empowered to talk to people about why that is not only undignified, but bad for the nation.
Krista Tippett interviews David Sloan Wilson | On Being, 2013 | Listen
In this great one-hour podcast, Krista Tippett and David Sloan Wilson explore all of the ways in which social cohesion within neighborhoods and communities makes us safer and healthier. Think of it as inspiration to stop “bowling alone,” in the infamous words of sociologist Robert Putnam.
| Explore
In this crowdsourced online project, people from all over the world take photos of the few items they would save from a burning home and reflect on why each item has such significance for them. It puts into stark relief just how little of our stuff we actually value, and there’s a freedom in that realization.
David Bornstein | New York Times, 2015 | Article
This article is a wonderful exploration of the cutting-edge ways that people are creating ethical communities even as they drift away from organized religion. It focuses on a new report by two Harvard Divinity School masters students, Angie Thurston and Casper ter Kuile, called ‘How We Gather.’
