Hello, Having sent out a rather formal announcement of my new book, Remembering Tomorrow and seen a large but not stupendous flurry of activity around it, it is hard not to wonder how to induce additional interest - and so here I give it a try.
Please go to the book page (https://www.zmag.org/remtom.html . Please check it out and maybe order it. Hmmmm, as I look over the above line of text I notice that perhaps it isn't a very compelling entreaty. But what more can I say? Well, Remembering Tomorrow uses provocative, personal, revealing, inspiring, laugh-inducing, gut-renching stories to relay the origins of Z, ZMI, and ZNet, including the ups and downs of their creation and maintanence. That seems like a natural topic for ZNet users to jump on, doesn't it? Maybe ... but wait, that isn't all. There is also an extensive very personal visit with a whole epoch from the Sixties Civil Rights Movement and SDS through the Vietnam War and the decades after that into the new century. Indeed, by all this, the book provides what Chomsky calls "revealing and often surprising insights into the exciting history of the past forty years, the popular movements and the institutional structures that have sought to contain and undermine them, their successes and failures, and the prospects for moving on." Yet, I can see, perhaps that is still not enough inducement. Well,, Remembering Tomorrow also revealingly treats diverse publishing, organizing, and life experiences. It visits the experiences and ways and whyfors of authors and activists whose work you know. It examines the origins and tribulations and a few triumphs of parecon. It journeys overseas from Poland during Solidarity days to Venezuela during Bolivarian days, and much more. Still...you may not be rushing to get it. What more can I say... Well, I know that as a prospective reader I pay some attention to jacket and early reader comments about a new book - so it might well matter to me if I got a message, as you did, that Noam Chomsky says this book is "truly remarkable," "lively," and a "great achievement" or that Barbara Ehrenreich says it is not only relevant now, but it will be "in the late Twenty First Century as well," or that Brian Kelly of SDS says it is a "must read," "wonderfully human and also inspiring and edifying," or that Cynthia Peters says it is "poetic, analytical, provocative, tenacious, and hopeful," or that Brian Dominick says it is "captivating." Still...though comments like that might get me to take a look at the book page to see if the 450 pages of it really have that much promise - it also might not. We are all very busy, after all. It is tough to get a nod from anyone toward anything, even reading an email message much less visiting a page to evaluate and perhaps order a book. Yes, the author interview - which we also sent you and which is now linked from the top page of ZNet - might tip the balance and motivate looking at the book page, or, then again, it might not. The interview shows that the author has high hopes, good intentions, and great eagerness. What else is new? Well, Remembering Tomorrow is among other things a chronicle of the events, people, feelings, motives, and especially the lessons, beliefs, and ideas that lay behind a web site and a broad organizational project that you often use - not to mention the book emotively and revealingly describing a whole panoply of organizing, demonstrating, schooling, teaching, movement building, funding, publishing, editing, writing, speaking, and just plain left living from the Sixties to the present, all of which is also, I hope, right up your radical ally. I mean, honestly, I just don't think I can do any better than this book. I poured everything I could generate into making it a highly engaging but still very worthy read for - well, yes - for you. So, what else is needed to get you to take a look at the book page and to at least consider the option of placing an order? Well, if I were in your shoes, I admit there is something more I might want to see to decide it I wished to take that plunge: The Table of Contents. That is, I realized while thinking about the difficult task of promoting this new book that I routinely use this easily perusable element, a new book's table of contents, as my key evidence for whether to plunk down for it or not. So, I figured, why shouldn't that be true of other people too? And if it is true of you, then why not direclty provide you Remembering Tomorrow's table of contents? So, since I regretably can't send the book itself - here is what may be the next best thing for deciding if Remembering Tomorrow is worth some of yout time: Remembering Tomorrow's table of contents with a bit of succinct annotation, too. And, by the way, if sending this table of contents, has a significicant effect, by all means, we will start sending this material for other ZNet authors too, supposing they make their book innards available to us to forward to you. === Remembering Tomorrow (https://www.zmag.org/remtom.html ) Table of Contents [In today's world social structures saddle us. Freedom flaunts us. Information inebriates us. Water wastes us. Climate crashes us. Images insulate us. Prisons parole us. Complacency constrains us. Doubt deadens us. Stomachs staunch us. Backs break us. Eyes blind us. Bombs burst us. Repression, inequality, and corpses curse us. False graveyards gnaw us. Should we revolt? To get where? How? Accomplishing what? Remember Tomorrow.] Introduction: Bang, Bang Goes The Beat Of My Drum What's In a Memoir Me as Memoirist Emulating My Muse Remembering Tomorrow Part 1: The Old Folks' Home at MIT [Part One has nine chapters, largely about attending a peculiar college located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It introduces the civil rights movement and the New Left, recounts fraternity rush through tumultuous expulsion, includes science, sniffing glue, designing corridors, chutzpah, burning draft cards, creating sanctuaries, attending finishing schools, career planning, elections, and riots. We meet Marxism, Abbie Hoffman, the Living Theater, drugs, Hubert Humphrey, the Grateful Dead, Muhammad Ali, and Mr. Basketball, Bill Bradley, and we consider tennis, intellectual chasms, mathematician's proofs, and human capacities. We meet Noam Chomsky and consider torching libraries, provost propositions, corporate seduction, paths bypassed, Dow Chemical, academic channeling, the calculus of dissent, and the contours of cynicism. I get elected, stand eyeball to gun barrel, and begin considering tomorrows.] 1 Too Young to Notice Civil Rights and the New Left Stage Three, Please 2 Dachau on the Charles Fraternity Rush Riot Summer Job, Something for Nothing Leaving AEPi MIT Teaches, Too Marxism Afternoon 3 Yesterday's Papers The Glue That Binds Us All Paint that Slogan Chutzpah Lessons & Results Interior Design Church Service 4 Spiritual Crossroads Sanctuaries Meeting Tactics Abbie Hoffman Theater Lives Getting High Stoned Cold Picnic Musical Interlude and Some Films Too 5 Star Gazing Debating Hump Fearing Killian There Ain't Nothing Like Ali Stars Are Us The Zone The Incongruous Star: Noam Chomsky 6 Why Do It? Would You Torch a Library? The Provost's Proposition Chemicals, Son? Reasons for Rejecting Lucre Chomsky and My Career 7 Campus Organizing Damning Dow The Calculus of Dissent Cynicism 101 Organizing Mechanics 8 Big Man on Campus UAP: To Win or to Educate, The Wrong Question The Fame Factor and Snowballing Individualism 9 Heating Up and Melting Down Divesting or Transforming Human Donuts Strategic Options Exiting MIT Yearbook Time Machine Part 2: The Ringing of Revolution [Part Two has ten chapters about organizing. Dreams of bombs lead from grassroots media to street rioting. Washington warfare leads from the Pentagon through CIA illogic and Mayday mayhem to Polish lessons. Dirty stories segue into Bread and Roses. Women and revolution fire up. We visit gender from the sadomasochistic to the masochistic-sadistic. I find sexism damaging, learn love, meet Lydia for life, assess marriage, examine women's intuition, and consider aging. Socializing or not-that is the question. Seattle Liberation macho, Weather storms, and planned mayhem. The Black Panthers rise, fall, and shine a light. I get mugged on Halloween. Lydia gets mugged on our steps. Between Labor and Capital highlights Ehrenreich, antagonizes Aronowitz, and inspires Albert and Hahnel. No Nukes illuminates class. Sixties books highlight Dellinger and Hayden. I learn fishing on Golden Pond. The ringing of revolution grows quiet.] 10 Bean Town The Old Mole Forever Surfacing CD Too White Rioting 11 Washington Bullets Hard Rain Pentagon Demo Mr. CIA May Day Poland No Joke 12 Bread and Roses Dirty Stories Women in the Movement Women Readjust the Left Curious Courtship Women and Revolution 13 Lydia and Life Dates and Lovers Lydia for Life Marriage Madness Women Know More: Yes and No Children Aging Living Radical and Socializing 14 The Action Faction SLF Booted Out Weather Forecast My Adventurism Timeline Confusions 15 The Black Panthers From Smack to the Little Red Book Intercommunalism 16 Black Like Who? Bar Mitzvahed into Radicalism? Blacks and Me MIT Blackness Halloween Bash It's Self-Image, Stupid 17 What about Class? Booking It Antagonizing Aronowitz Visiting Ehrenreich and a Sad Outcome The Real Deal No Nukes and Class 18 Sixties People and Books America's Gandhi Mr. SDS Fine-Tuning Music and Capitalism To Golden Pond and Fonda on Beauty About the Sixties 19 Still Walking Incomplete Symphony Where'd We Go? Part 3: Channeling Walking Butterflies [Part Three has four chapters about higher education and teaching. MIT and Harvard reveal educational inadequacy. Is economics astrology? Odd byways illuminate academia. Cheating disciplines life. I test well but obey poorly. I teach with Chomsky, but get fired from U. Mass Boston. I avoid a slippery slope, and learn from prison. Walking butterflies convey a key life lesson.] 20 Tech Tooling & Harvard Ed. MIT Learning High School Hijinks Not Much Ed. at the Harvard Ed. School 21 Becoming an Economist Off To Amherst Doctoral Revelation Doctoral Denial Drummed Out 22 The Responsibility of Intellectuals Teaching for Chomsky U Mass Teaching You're Fired! Dating and Power Relations 23 Prison School? Threats Work Inmates Teach the Teacher Walking Butterflies Part 4: Tomorrow's Seeds Today [Part Four has six chapters about alternative media. South End Press is born, foreshadows participatory economics, survives capitalism, endures ambition, and succeeds. We visit books from sexual revolution through friendly fascism. Herman and Chomsky uplift us. Toffler surprises us. We pass on fat. Small is our bugaboo. Seas aren't friendly. South End Press biases persist and what the hell is going on in a Left less diverse than the mainstream? We entice money from a clothing entrepreneur, a Rockefeller, and Hunter the headliner. House sales resuscitate us. Investment packages preserve us. Printer profusion and staring down the IRS protect us. Z Magazine spins off and beats bad odds. An NFL owner provides plenty of pain and no gain. Z Papers is prescient but disastrous for Albert and Hahnel. ZMI rocks. LBBS drains life and just misses generating big bucks becoming Left On Line, which morphs into Shareworld, which just misses generating even bigger bucks and morphs into ZNet, which makes okay bucks and becomes an international phenomenon. The megaphone problem leads to what makes alternative media alternative, keeping on keeping on, media and democracy, donor delusions, funding fiascos, and media politics writ larger.] 24 Redefining Publishing Emulating SEP Between SEP's Covers Friendly Fascism and Editing Others The Wharton School's Finest Noam Chomsky Published But Not Reviewed No Nukes The Toffler Wave Book Missed: Fat Is Beautiful Small Isn't Always Beautiful Unfriendly Seas Successes and Marginalization Soaring Mice Balancing SEP Bias Where to, Whitey? National Averages and Left Averages Do As I Say Or I Won't Pay Financing SEP into Existence Tandler Tango Rockefeller Rocks Donor Delusions Comfortable Anticapitalism Hunting Hunter Hypocrisy or Sound Policy? Zevin, Houses, Packages, Printers, and the IRS The Open Question: Restauranteering 25 Monthly Z Z Magazine Sporty Savior? Ostrich Eyes Cocky Cockburn Cockburn and Hitchens, Too Z Media Institute Z Papers, Robin Hahnel, and Me 26 Going Cyber Kapor and Bricklin: A Communications Problem LOL and ShareWorld ZNet: Cyber Success Keeping On Keeping On 27 Alternative Media Media and Democracy Time and Us Part 5: Mind Trips [Part Five, basically about ideas, has six chapters. Ideas transcend postmodernism. Kayaking teaches persistence. Marxism morphs into liberating theory with a major in economics that detours into class or multitude. Vision overcomes resistance via pop culture. Parecon leads through The Award of The President of the Italian Republic toward a participatory society. Sammy Reshevsky and Bobby Fischer beget strategy. Strategy traverses Egypt, addresses stickiness and class, unfolds the umbrella problem, revisits lifestyle, visits Australia, Turkey, and India, and considers elections. The Organization to Liberate Society and We Stand try to extend the lessons of the past into the future. I rant about Left defeatism, assess Life After Capitalism, seek serious intellectual engagement, visit Venezuela, and address my generation.] 28 Pomo: What Is It Good For? Postmodern Car Ride Close Encounter of the Pomo Kind 29 Better Flakes Theory: What Is It Good For? Marxism and Leninism Britain and Marxism Class or Multitude Liberating Theory Better Economics 30 Principia Utopia Thrillers Reveal Popular Consciousness Vision Problem Italy and Needing Vision Seeking Vision Brazil and Argentina Conclude the Case Parecon Australia, Austria, and Vision Gaining Ground Rimini and Vision Applauded Turkey, India, and Relevance Venezuela's Path: Pareconist? Parsociety 31 Preconditions History's Locomotion Chess a Go Go The Megaphone Problem Apocalyptic Organizing The Stickiness Problem The Umbrella Problem The Lifestyle Problem The Class Problem The Electoral Problem 32 Actualization Organization to Liberate Society We Stand for Peace and Justice Advocate or Overhaul Life After Capitalism Seeking Serious Intellectual Engagement My Case Studies IPPS 33 Our Generations Message to My Friends and Myself Bringing the Ship In Index
