1967: Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung

Author/Editor: Zedong Mao

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“The Little Red Book”, as it was known, is one of the most printed books in history. It is a collection of the Chinese Cultural Revolution’s ideas and philosophies regarding the corruption of capitalism and the promotion of communism. During the 1960s, it was essentially required for every Chinese citizen to own and study this work and images from the time frequently depict people waving the distinctive red book in the air or clutching it under their arms.

This particular edition was translated into English by the Foreign Languages Press in Peking and features a preface by Lin Piao, Mao’s chosen successor. However, after Paio died during a suspected coup to overthrow Mao, he was posthumously declared a traitor and his preface was ripped out of existing editions.

1968: The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

Author: Tom Wolfe

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A journalistic rendering of the adventures of the adventures of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, as they crossed the United States in Further, a psychedelic school bus figuratively fueled by LSD. Upon their return to California the group participated in the ‘acid tests,’ where hundreds of individuals are introduced to LSD and the Grateful Dead. The cultural consequences of this congregation of freaks continues in the manifestation of raves, Rainbow Gatherings, and Burning Man Festivals.

This book documents some of the seminal events and individuals inextricably linked to mid-60s psychedelia in a fast-paced and accessible style.

1969: The Very Hungry Caterpillar & Slaughterhouse-Five

The Very Hungry Caterpillar

Author/Editor: Eric Carle

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A children’s picture book designed, illustrated and written by Eric Carle which is now considered a classic for children of all ages!  Cited by the New York Times as one of the best picture books of 1969, this book has gone on to sell over 30 million copies worldwide.   Carle’s web site provides a plethora of information about him as well as lots of creative inspiration.  In his own words, he reflects upon his writing! Carle says:

“With many of my books I attempt to bridge the gap between the home and school. To me home represents, or should represent; warmth, security, toys, holding hands, being held. School is a strange and new place for a child. Will it be a happy place? There are new people, a teacher, classmates—will they be friendly?

I believe the passage from home to school is the second biggest trauma of childhood; the first is, of course, being born. Indeed, in both cases we leave a place of warmth and protection for one that is unknown. The unknown often brings fear with it. In my books I try to counteract this fear, to replace it with a positive message. I believe that children are naturally creative and eager to learn. I want to show them that learning is really both fascinating and fun.”

The book is so popular there is even a salad named in its honor!

Very Hungry Caterpillar Fruit Salad

1 Apple
2 Pears
3 Plums
4 Strawberries
5 Oranges
Bunch of Mint Leaves

Peel, pare, seed, hull and section each fruit. Cut into bite-sized pieces. Then put them all together in a big bowl and chill. Garnish each serving with a sprig of mint. Serve to a small group of friends, after reading a good book. You’ll enjoy every bit of it. ( retrieved from the Eric Carle web site: http://www.eric-carle.com/home.html)

–http://www.eric-carle.com/home.html

Slaughterhouse-Five

Author/Editor: Kurt Vonnegut

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Slaughterhouse 5, or The Children’s Crusade was one of the first books to take a fantastical, anti-realist approach to World War Two. Vonnegut’s novel refrained from showing WWII as the Good War, and from showing it as an uncomplicated loss of innocence. Instead, he fragmented the story and added fantastical elements that destabilized what had come to be a well-known realist narrative.

Published in 1969, too, when the ethos of ‘trust no one over 30’ was strong and the Vietnam War was raging, the book took a childlike protagonist and put him in strange and hellish situations.

It was also in a way a documentary—recounting the firebombing of Dresden, which had been little known in the United States and which still generates controversy over whether it was a justified military target or an immoral act. As Billy Pilgrim said: “I just want you to know: I was there.”

Vonnegut himself recalled writing the book and experiencing the bombing like this:

“The Dresden atrocity, tremendously expensive and meticulously planned, was so meaningless, finally, that only one person on the entire planet got any benefit from it. I am that person. I wrote this book, which earned a lot of money for me and made my reputation, such as it is. One way or another, I got two or three dollars for every person killed. Some business I’m in.”

-Kurt Vonnegut, Palm Sunday, Dial Press, 2011 page 275.

1970: One Hundred Years of Solitude

Author/Editor: Gabriel Garcia Marquez

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Considered one of the best novels ever to be written in Spanish, this work of magic realism tells the story of the imaginary village of Macondo through seven generations of the Buendía family, the leading characters of the saga.

1971: Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh

Author: Robert C. O’Brien

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Winner of the Newbery Medal, and the book that the film “The Secret of NIMH” was based on, this is the story of Mrs. Frisby’s attempts (she’s a mouse) to save her family with the help of rats who have escaped from a laboratory where they acquired super intelligence.

The book is part fantasy, part adventure, and part science fiction.  Beautifully written, it’s on many top children’s book lists.  The book was also supposedly inspired, according to the New York Times, by the work of “Dr. John B. Calhoun, an ecologist who saw in the bleak effects of overpopulation on rats and mice a model for the future of the human race.”

1972: The Death of the Automobile

Author/Editor: John Jerome

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Published in 1972, this title could have been written just a few years ago!  The author, John Jerome, was an American writer of non-fiction, best known for his work associated with cars and technology.  The Death of the Automobile is a book focused on the Detroit auto industry, which Jerome called an ecological, economic and engineering disaster.  In the preface, Jerome states:

“ Technology isn’t evil, but the uses of technology often are.  The car is a bad machine – and the solution is not to build a better bad machine, but rather not to build bad machines.  Yet this huge, wealthy nation is trapped with what is virtually a single transportation system, and to suggest simply abandoning that system is to suggest paralyzing the nation.  We have become addicted to automobiles; they have become literally a necessity for sustaining life.  How we became addicted, what the future holds for such an addiction, and how we can escape the trap that the addiction ensures is what this book is about.“

He concludes the book with the following statement:

“When Alan S. Boyd became the first Secretary of Transportation, one of his first official acts was to decorate his new chambers.  On one wall, he hung a large photomural:  it showed a pair of well-shod feet.  It’s a transportation solution that hasn’t had a great deal of technological support in recent years, but it might be the salvation of us yet!”

What do you think Jerome would say about the state of transportation in 2013?

1973: The Master and Margarita

Author/Editor: Mikhail Bulgakov

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Mikhail Bulgakov completed this meditation on the power of art and love shortly before his death in 1940, but political repression in the Soviet Union prevented its full publication until 1973.

1974: The Lives of a Cell

Author/Editor: Lewis Thomas

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Lewis Thomas’s Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher began as a series of articles in the New England Journal of Medicine. Once collected into a book in 1974, it won the National Book Award in both Arts & Letters and the Sciences.

This book is a series of brief, insightful meditations, often linking biological questions to human questions—what is a ‘natural’ human? How do we live with germs? Is the earth like a single, busy cell?  But Thomas also speculates about the future of things we interact with daily—HMOs, computer networks. It’s fascinating to see how Thomas thought about these things as they began to affect society and then think about our expectations for the future.

In the mean time, if you’d like to take a look at the life of a cell as we now conceive it, take a quick look at this video of the workings of a cell.

1975: The Monkey Wrench Gang & Ecotopia

Author/Editor: Edward Abbey, & Ernest Callenbach

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For 1975, we found two nominees that address very similar concerns but take quite different approaches—The Monkey Wrench Gang, by Edward Abbey, and Ecotopia, by Ernest Callenbach.

Both address the question of human ecological destruction, and both inspired the growing environmental movement, but each follows a radically different path thereafter.

Ecotopia describes an ecological utopian society, consisting of northern California, Oregon, and Washington, which broke from the rest of the United States and successfully arranged a utopian society that functioned economically and ecologically. At the end of the book, the epistolary narrator is convinced to stay in Ecotopia.

The Monkey Wrench Gang looked at ecological destruction, and wondered what would happen if a small group of citizens took matters into their own hands and attempt to destroy the destroyers. By the end of the book, it’s implied, three of the four central characters may be on probation and at least apparently living law-abiding lives…but the fourth is out there, growing a bigger network of eco-revolutionaries.

1976: The Woman Warrior Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts

Author/Editor: Maxine Hong Kingston

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Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior is an autobiography, but it’s  more than just an autobiography. She blends folktales with her family’s history in early twentieth century China and her experiences in California.

The Woman Warrior was named one of the most influential books of the 70’s by Time and won the National Book Critics Circle award. Over time, it’s come to be one of the most widely taught texts at the college level, perhaps not surprisingly given the multiple perspectives from which it can be viewed and given Kingston’s focus on constructing a workable identity—a task that is of particular interest during college when one begins to assess and experience what it means to step up and shape one’s adult identity.