• Full House, by the late Stephen J. Gould. The presence of man on Earth was a random occurrence, and after the next Extinction Event life on the planet is likely to evolve differently. We are not the Crown of Creation.
• The Wealth of Man by Peter Jay. The life of pre-historic man was easy, idyllic, and very pleasant. Hunt big slow game an hour a day, relax and enjoy the rest.
• The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race, (online) essay by Jared Diamond Why the adoption of agriculture was 'a catastrophe from which we have never recovered'.
• Original Affluence, by Marshall Sahlins. If you wanted to defend a new society that featured rigid hierarchy, agonizingly hard work, suffering, frequent starvation and slavery, wouldn't you try to portray the alternative life as 'short, nasty and brutish'?
  
• Extinction, by Michael Boulter. Our planet's history is one of cycles punctuated by massive extinctions and new beginnings. Our only choice is whether to end this one sooner (a century) or later (several millennia).
  
• The Axemaker's Gift by Jame s Burke and Robert Ornstein. How innovativeness has been increasingly corrupted to concentrate and retain power, instead of making the world better.

• The Unconscious Civilization, by John Ralston Saul. How and why we've become helpless slaves of the political and economic system we built.
• Ockham's Razor, by Wade Rowland. What's wrong with our modern values, and where to look for new ones.
• People Before Profit, by Charles Derber -- How rampant corporatism ravaged the vast majority of people worldwide in the 1800s, and is doing so again.
• State of the World, by WorldWatch Institute, The 7 trends that most threaten eco-collapse: population growth, rising temperature, falling water tables, shrinking cropland per person, collapsing fisheries, shrinking forests, and the extinction of plant and animal species.
• World Scientists' Warning (online), by the Union of Concerned Scientists. "Human beings and the natural world are on a collision course. No more than one or a few decades remain before the chance to avert the threats we now confront will be lost and the prospects for humanity immeasurably diminished. A great change in our stewardship of the Earth and life on it is required if vast human misery is to be avoided and our global home on this planet is not to be irretrievably mutilated."
• Dream of the Earth by Thomas Berry. "We are in trouble just now because we do not have a good story. We are in between stories. The old story, the account of how we fit into it, is no longer effective. Yet we have not learned the new story."
• The Future of Freedom, by Fareed Zakaria Why we can't change another country's culture from outside it.
• The New Rules of the World, by John Pilger An accurate, devastating portrait of the world in 2003.
• The Demon in the Freezer, by Richard Preston. How vulnerable we all are to individual acts of terror, chaos and sabotage.
• Against the Grain, by Richard Manning. How grain monoculture evolved, and how it's ruining the Earth.
  
• Population Projections, by US Census Bureau. They're no longer assuring us that US and Global Population will level out at 300 million and 9 billion. Would you believe 1 billion and 12 billion by the end of the century, and still rising?
  
• Global Warming, by NOAA. An online synopsis of US scientists' consensus on the causes and consequences of global warming.
• This Overheating World - Worried? Us? (online essay) by Bill McKibben. Article in the UK journal Granta explaining the psychology, and cynical political expediency, of denial.
  
• Are Cities Changing Local and Global Climates?, (online) by NASA. Studies of urban microclimates and how they contribute to local climate change and instability.
• Restoring Scientific Integrity (online) by Union of Concerned Scientists. The Bush regime's distortion of scientific research to forward its own political agenda.
• Climate Collapse, by David Stipp (online article) from Fortune Magazine. The possibility and chilling implications of global warming producing sudden drastic climate shifts.
  
• Conservative Myths on Global Warming (online) by Blogger Carpe Datum. A brief but thorough explanation of the science behind global warming, and the reasoning behind scientists' connecting it to human activity and worrying about the risks of resultant instability
• The Empire Strikes Out, by Kenny Ausubel. Corporatism and acquisitiveness run amok are ruining our world, but nature always bats last.
  
• The Tragedy of the Commons, by Garry Harding. The commons, that which belongs in common to all of us, is disappearing -- Why nobody really cares.
• Elizabeth Costello, by JM Coetzee. Why we tolerate a holocaust against our fellow creatures on Earth.
• The Machine in Our Heads, by Glenn Parton. How the ecological crisis is rooted in a human psychological crisis.

• When Elephants Weep, by Jeff Masson. Compelling scientific evidence that animals feel deep emotions.
• Mind of the Raven, by Bernd Heinrich. Compelling scientific evidence that animals are intelligent, complex, rational and communicative.
  
• The Sacred Balance by David Suzuki. A passionate explanation of James Lovelock's Gaia Hypothesis, the need to redesign how we live, and the importance of spending more time in nature.
  
• The Hidden Dimension, by Edward Hall. We need space and a natural environment to be healthy and human. When we're deprived of them, we get mentally ill.
  
• The Spell of the Sensuous, by David Abram. How to reconnect with nature, and rediscover wonder.
  

Radical Analysis, Radical Solutions (these are the most important readings, but you probably won't 'buy' their arguments unless you've first read much of the material above)

• Ishmael, The Story of B, and Beyond Civilization by Daniel Quinn. Also the IshCon discussion forum. The first two of these three books are fictionalized stories about human history from a different, anti-civilization perspective, with penetrating, astounding analysis and insight. Ishmael is more popular but I prefer The Story of B which recapitulates the entire theses in a series of 'lectures'. The two critical lectures are online here. Beyond Civilization is about what we should do about all this.
• A Language Older Than Words, by Derrick Jensen. A profound and disturbing argument for why moderate answers to our current predicament won't work.
• The World We Want, by Mark Kingwell. Why we are best served by trusting our instincts rather than what we are persuaded is moral or rational.

Toolkit for Change: Knowledge We Can Use to Save the World

• Freeman Dyson's Brain (online interview), in Wired Magazine. The twin keys to building a better world are (a) establishing viable self-sufficient local communities to replace big centralized states and governments, and (b) selective more-with-less technologies like solar/wind energy coops and biotech medicines.
• The Developing Ideas Interview (online) with economist Herman Daly. An economic and tax program that favours communities and commons instead of corporations, and a 'contract' to reduce our population and ecological footprint.
  
• The Unconquerable World, by Jon Schell. Why non-violence and consensus-building are the only viable way forward.
• The Support Economy, by Shoshana Zuboff A model for a post-capitalist economy.
• Unequal Protection, by Thom Hartmann. The case for denying 'personhood' to corporations.
• When Corporations Rule the World, by David Korten. The need to get corporations out of politics and create localized economies that empower communities within a system of global cooperation, overcoming the myths about economic growth and the sanctification of greed, and focusing instead on overconsumption, poverty, overpopulation, and reining in untrammelled corporate power.
• Radical Simplicity, by Jim Merkel. How to free yourself from possessions and wage slavery without sacrifice.
• The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell. What makes things change.
• Ten Ways to Make a Difference, by Peter Singer. A pragmatic recipe for change.
  
• The Truth About Stories, by Thomas King. The truth about stories is that that's all we are. Want a new society? Write a new story.
  
• The Boycott List, by Responsible Shopper, and Good Stuff, by the WorldWatch Institute. What not to buy, and what to buy instead.
• The Corporation, by Joel Bakan. An action plan for undermining corporatism.
• Humans in the Wilderness, by Glenn Parton. How we might reintroduce humans, well-spaced-out, into a primarily wilderness Earth.
• At Home in the Universe, by S tuart Kauffman. How self-organizing, self-managing systems work.
• EarthDance (entire book online), by Elisabet Sahtouris. Eleven steps to cultural metamorphosis (my summary is here)
• eGaia (entire book online), by Gary Alexander. How to achieve of peace, cooperation and sustainability (replacing war, competition and growth, the fuels of our current culture) and a future state vision with vignettes from individuals' lives in a balanced and harmonious future world.

• No longer blogging, it seems: The enormously helpful Charlie Z at Driver 8, the enormously successful Julie Powell of the Julie/Julia Project, Ray of Nobody Loves Raymond, whose blog is MIA, great story-teller Hugh Elliott at Standing Room Only, and Cat M. of Chronicles of an Anti-Apathetic. Their presence in this part of the blogosphere will be sorely missed.
• Good news: Penny of My So-Called Lesbian Life is back.
  
• Daniel X. O'Neil, the veteran Salon blogger at GoogObits who uniquely chronicles the deceased, has moved to his own site.
  
• The flight from Radio to Typepad seems to have stopped, at least for now.
• Of the roughly 100 new Salon Blog numbers assigned this past month, about 40 actually made at least one post, and the following 17 appear to be posting regularly. I especially recommend MallowDrama, Hermit's Notebook, Hoi Polloi and I Don't Know What Happened, which are off to sensational starts. Welcome, new Sloggers all.
  

• Total hits this month for Salon Blogs were about 1.1 million, up about 8% for the month, but they were very unevenly distributed (even more than usual), with 850 thousand of these hits going to the top 11 blogs. For the typical Slogger, December traffic was about 10% quieter than November, due probably to the holidays. The median for active Salon Bloggers was only about 700 hits per month, about 30 per day.
  
• Inbound blogs totaled about 3250, up about 5% month-over-month, with the top 11 blogs accounting for 50% of them. The median for active Salon Bloggers was 7 inbound blogs.
  
• About 42% of active Sloggers are female, up significantly from just over 30% three months ago. That's great news, but I don't know what to make of it.