Let’s try a quick experiment that no one can stop us from conducting.
It is an important experiment that can spread rapidly and start something of consequence that will be fun and gain attention.
Let’s call it Bookstore by the Box.
Here’s how it works.
I’ll give you my list of book titles for your selection.
Each book title--see attached list--fills a box unopened from the publisher’s warehouse.
The average number of these book titles is twenty four.
Twenty four books of the same title.
No assortment.
You can select any box for purchase--$100 per box--(this includes shipping costs.)
On arrival, you can distribute your box or boxes either for free or at a small price per book—as you choose.
You can give them to anyone you want—individual or institutional, such as school classes or libraries.
Then you immediately become a BOOKSHAKER.
A BOOKSHAKER is a person who gives books away to family, friends and co-workers or utilizes them for door prizes at parties, fund-raising for neighborhood or community organizations, mentoring programs, libraries, texts for study groups or classrooms.
When you receive the books, you make the call.
Most people do not go around giving out books to people they know or would like to know.
A gift of one book—sure—but many books that you like of the same title—no tradition there.
So, we start a tradition and all the wonderful associations that go with it.
Like—starting good conversations about subjects—the beginning of all change starts with conversations.
Like—respecting peoples’ intelligence, including those who argue with you, when you give them a book which makes for a healthy reciprocity.
Like—a lasting way to gift your friends during the upcoming Holiday season.
Like—beginning a spreading method of book distribution that is decentralized, anywhere and everywhere, uncontrollable by giant box stores or excessive cost.
Like—building small communities of intelligent deliberation and self-education.
Like—proving that the gift relationship is far more fruitful than a commercial one for exchanges that matter.
Like—replacing some small talk with big talk that gets away from sound bytes and kneejerk reactions.
Like—Until you’ve experienced the joy of giving books away, you cannot imagine how rewarding it is.
Like—Enough Already!
Go to the next page and select your favorite books by the box of 24 (twenty four) books of the same title.
And click here to proceed to the Bookstore by the Box.
Thank you for spreading the word and being such a good sport.
Ralph Nader
PS: Please pass the word to friends and family.
The Bookstore by the Box offer ends midnight December 20, 2010.
Click here to make your purchase now.
Selection of books—24 or more to a box of the same title (While Supplies Last)
(HC indicates hard cover. PB indicates paperback.)
1. Cruel and Unusual by Mark Crispin Miller (2004) HC (Searing critique of Bush/Cheney’s New World Order)
2. Command Performance by Jane Alexander (2000) PB (An Actress in the Theater of Washington Politics)
3. The Cheating of America by Charles Lewis and Bill Allison (2002) HC (A galvanizing journey about tax avoidance and evasion by the Super Rich and What You Can Do About It)
4. Democracy at Risk by Jeff Gates (2001) HC (Rescuing Main Street from Wall Street)
5. The Good Years by Walter Lord (1960) PB (The best-selling rendition of America 1900 to 1914)
6. Huey Long by Harry T. Williams (1981) PB (The classic biography of the “Kingfish” and the tumultuous politics of the Twenties and Thirties from Louisiana to FDR’s Washington, D.C.)
7. Natural History of the Rich by Richard Conniff (2003) HC (Just what you can expect from the Upper Crust)
8. Women Pay More by Frances Cerra and Marcia Carroll (1993) PB (And How to Put A Stop to It—eye-opening for the men, but not the women)
9. Freedom for the Thought That We Hate by Anthony Lewis (2008) HC (A popular biography of the First Amendment and the stories and lawsuits that give it judicial spine)
10. Change for America ed. By Mark Green (2009) PB (Liberal policies—the whole nine yards)
11. We Who Dared to Say No to War by Murray Polner (2008) PB
12. Crimes of War by Richard Falk (2006) PB
13. Too Close to Call by Jeffrey Toobin. (2002) HC (The Thirty-Six-Day Battle to Decide the 2000 Election)
14. Uncovering Clinton by Michael Isikoff (2000) PB (A Reporter’s Story of uncovering the Lewinsky Scandal)
15. I Hate George W. Bush Reader by Clint Willis, ed. (2004) PB (part of the infelicitously titled “I Hate… series) (Leading progressives Molly Ivins, William Greider…let loose on “Shrub”)
16. The Triumph of Meanness by Nicolaus Mills (1997) HC (America’s War Against Its Better Self--returning with a vengeance in 2011.)
17. Against the Beast by John Nichols, ed. (2004) PB (A Documentary History of American Opposition to Empire)
18. American Rebels by Jack Newfield, ed. (2004) PB
19. Freedom’s Power by Paul Starr (2007) HC (The True Historic Force of Liberalism)
20. Grassroots Gardening by Donna Schaper (2007) PB (Gardens for sustaining activism)
21. Kidding Around Boston by Helen Byers (2000) PB (What to Do, Where to Go, and How to Have Fun in Boston)
22. Selling Women Short by Liza Featherstone (2005) PB (The Landmark Battle for Workers’ Rights at Wal-Mart)
23. The Cigarette Century by Allan M. Brandt (2009) HC (The Rise, Fall and Deadly Persistence of the Product That Defined America)
24. The Jonathan Schell Reader by Jonathan Schell (2004) PB (On the United States at War and the Fate of the Earth)
25. The Ten Minute Activist by Mission Collective (2006) PB (Easy Ways to Take Back the Planet)
26. University Inc. by Jennifer Washburn (2006) HC (The corporate corruption of Higher Education)
27. Vermont Hiking by Michael Lanza (2005) PB (Day Hikes, Kid-Friendly Trails and Backpacking Treks)
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