Page 22 RAIN June/July 1983 ACCESS: Good Reading The Hearts ofMen: American Dreams and the Flight From Commitment Barbara Ehrenreich Anchor Press/Doubleday 501 Franklin Ave. Garden City, NY 11530 $13.95,1983, 206 pp. Barbara Ehrenreich has sifted through the trends of post WWII American society and isolated what she found to be the single greatest threat to the "American Family." Guardians of morality beware! The enemies are not the feminists, 3-piece suit clad professionals, or pro- choice advocates. It is men, Ehrenreich argues, and not women. Male rebels of the breadwinner ethic have brought about the breakdown of the family. In The Hearts ofMen, Ehrenreich traces the male role change from a model of "responsibility, self-discipline and a protective commitment to women and children" to "irresponsibility, self-indulgence and an isolationist detachment from the claims of others." This is a highly readable survey, a sociological study of masculine roles, a reflective stroll down the urban and suburban streets of the past V-k decades. In the final chapter, Ehrenreich the author and feminist steps in. She departs from an objective view of the male model, and addresses the situation from a feminist perspective. "However we judge the male revolt... the consequences for women are the same." Men have won their freedom. They have effectively stepped out of the restraints of the breadwinner role leaving financial and emotional responsibility behind like so much extra baggage. And now women, stuck with the children, the home, and the lowest paying jobs, are following behind them, picking up the pieces. —Robin Havenick How to Get to the Wilderness Without a Car by Lee W. Cooper PO BOX 80584 Fairbanks, AK 99708 $7.95 ppd., 1982,192 pp. Cooper's self-published handbook brought a broad grin to my face when I first saw it on RAIN's bookshelf. I visualized myself organizing my backpack and climbing gear and gadgets, dutifully scratching items off my "things to bring" list, heading out of the city, driving hundreds of miles in my car to arrive at the trailhead tired, ready for instantaneous transformation. I never thought of taking a bus or train to the wilderness. Now there's no excuse; the information is all here with illustrations, too. Cooper contends that "you don't need a car to reach many of the national parks, wilderness areas or other unspoiled lands scattered throughout the United States and Canada." Public transportation directions and traveling tips are provided for dozens of parks and wilderness areas in Alaska, Alberta, Arizona, British Columbia, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, Wyoming, and the Yukon. Ready for a new dimension in wilderness travel? This book gives you the "how-to" details. —Mimi Maduro From: How to Get to the Wilderness Winds of the People Songbook Food for Thought Books 67 N Pleasant St. Amherst, MA 01002 $5.75 post paid, paper, 1983,161 pp. Winds of the People is a synergistic blend of songs for the "New Culture." It is a cornucopia, thoughtfully gathered from the men's and women's movements, the peace, ecology and anti-nuclear movements, the dvil ri^ts struggle, and the folk song tradition (contemporary folk songs included). The book's sbc hrmdred songs are grouped by themes such as human liberation, unity cmd community, ecology, friendship and love, better world, changes, and play. Many artists from the folk tradition and sodallpo- litical movements are represented, including good old Anonymous. Each song is cross- indexed by title, artist, and special category to make finding it easier. The one weak point of the book is that melody notations aren't included with the lyrics, though cords are. To remedy this, listings of records and songbooks containing the melodies are given below each song. This book reminds us that song has been, and is, an important element of cultural change movements. The emotionally expressive nature of singing acts as a powerful instrument for individual and collective transformations. Singing together from Winds of the People and similar songbooks, draws us out of our individual heads into a shared vocalization of our values and visions for the future. —Carolyn Hitchcock Algem) Jeremy Rifkin Viking Press 40 West 23rd St. New York, NY 10010 $14.75,1983,298 pp. As with Rifkin's other books—notably Entropy—Algeny proclaims itself as a revolutionary work, one that "will radically transform our conception of Kfe." The claim is not too far-fetched. Algeny is a disturbing book, bringing us closer to rmderstanding what the future may be like. "Algeny" is a term coined by biologist Dr. Joshua L^erberg. The term means "to change the essence of a living thing by transforming it from one state to another; more specifically, the upgrading of existing organisms and the design of wholly new ones with the intent of "perfecting" their performance." Rifkin attempts to summarize the present state of bio-engineering/genetic engineering and to lay the groimdwork for understanding how these—now relatively crude—new tedmiques for actually "creating" life fundamentally chcmge the myths by which we live. Rifkin describes the transition in terms of fire. We are, he says, moving from the pyrotechnological age, which used fire to convert raw materials of the earth into utilities for human use, to a "biotechnological" age in which computers will turn new life forms into utilities for human use, using recombinant DNA technology. The primary "scientific myth" Rifkin sets out to dismantle is the Darwinian theory of evolution, the myth which was appropriate for the industrial era but inadecjuate to deal with the conceptual shift necessary to understand our place in the universe, when
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