At just two months old, the Occupy Wall Street movement already has its first book, released by Berrett-Koehler and the editors of Yes! Magazine on Nov. 17, OWS’s official Day of Action. Called This Changes Everything: Occupy Wall Street and the 99% Movement, it couldn’t have dropped at a more resonant moment: this week has seen the (occasionally violent) dispersal of a number of Occupy camps across the country, most notably the flagship demonstration in New York’s Zuccotti Park, which had amassed a 5,500-volume People’s Library being run by professional librarians. Two of those librarians were arrested trying to protect the collection, which was unceremoniously tossed into waiting dumpsters by police, along with laptops and furniture and personal belongings. The mayor’s assurance that all property would be held safely until protestors came to claim it proved empty: the librarians of Zuccotti Park found that most of the collection had disappeared—“between 2,000 and 4,000 books,” according to the People’s Library blog, and much of the remaining collection had been badly damaged or destroyed (including its laptops).
Whatever your opinion about the OWS movement, if you believe in books, this is dark stuff. It's a week where people are rallying behind ideas and the books that hold them. In that spirit, we've got a reading list from Brooke Jarvis, one of the editors behind Yes! and This Changes Everything with some further suggested reading, as well as our usual weekly fare.
