Getting a Grip
Clarity, Creativity, and Courage in a World Gone Mad
Frances Moore Lappé
”Getting a Grip is not an ordinary book: it’s more like a new pair of glasses, allowing you to see everything around you with greater clarity. Suddenly the world is more comprehensible, more manageable, even more beautiful. You won’t want to take them off.” -- Barbara Kingsolver
Getting a Grip: Clarity, Creativity and Courage in a World Gone Mad is a little book with a big message. Frances Moore Lappé — author of sixteen books, including three-million-copy bestseller Diet for a Small Planet — distills her world-spanning experience and wisdom in a conversational yet hard-hitting style. Getting a Grip is a rare “a-ha” book that flouts conventional right-versus-left divisions and affirms readers’ basic sanity — their intuition that it is possible to stop grasping at straws and to grasp instead the real roots of today’s crises, from hunger and poverty to climate change and terrorism. Getting a Grip leaves readers feeling liberated and courageous.
Because we are creatures of the mind, says Lappé, it is the power of “frame” — our core assumptions about how the world works — that determines outcomes. She pinpoints the dominant, failing frame now driving our planet toward disaster. Then, with fresh insights, startling facts, and stirring vignettes of ordinary people pursuing creative solutions, Lappé uncovers a new, empowering frame emerging worldwide.
She writes: “My book’s intent is to enable us to see what is happening all around us, but is still invisible to most of us. It is about people in all walks of life who are penetrating the spiral of despair and reversing it with new ideas, ingenious innovation — and courage.”
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Reviews
“Lappé has succeeded, masterfully. No popular intellectual has been so very successful in reshaping the character and content of debates about environmental and food policy as this remarkable woman. She is saying what every presidential candidate should, and she is doing so with the boldness that is required.”
-- John Nichols, The Nation
“A fresh look constructed by an original mind, a woman who is grappling with real life problems worldwide and who is pragmatic and out-of-the-box in seeing where entry points for change can be made....If this book isn’t inspirational and helpful, then I don’t know what is.” -- David Belden, in Tikkun
“Lappé ‘s treatise on humanity’s potential for growth is a comforting source of inspiration.” -- Booklist
“I love Getting a Grip...its great positive energy awakens us to a whole new way to think and to act. Read it now.” -- Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, author of Failing the Faithful
“Lappé rallies her readers, striking a welcome tone of hope and optimism, and many of her reframing techniques are compelling and inspiring.” -- Library Journal
“An absolute must read! Very inspiring and empowering. It makes you want to jump out of your seat and do something that will better our world.” -- Lina Musayev, Co-founder of United Students for Fair Trade
“A terrific book. It is clear and handy, smart and not intimidating.” -- Kaethe Weingarten, author of Common Shock
“Lappé reaffirms people’s capacity for creating a good world out of the calamities — disease, poverty, animal extinction — endured by our current one. [Included are] plenty of anecdotes of how people, relying on their ‘basic sanity,’ can successfully meet the challenges of globalism and world terrorism.” -- Foreword
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Opening Note
CLARITY:
1. The Straitjacket
2. New Eyes
3. What Democracy Feels Like
CREATIVITY
4. Power Invisible
5. The Art of Power
6. Talking Democracy
COURAGE
7. Seize the Moment
8. When Fear Means Go
9. Sanity in Motion
An Invitation
Questions to Spark Talk and Action
Recommended Reading
Endnotes
Index
Books from the Small Planet Institute
IDEAS TO HELP US PROBE DEEPLY, IDENTIFY CAUSAL FORCES, CHOOSE ENTRY POINTS, AND SHIFT PATTERNS
Idea 1: Thin Democracy vs. Living Democracy
Idea 2: We All Have Public Lives
Idea 3: Rethinking Power
Idea 4: Ten Arts of Democracy
Idea 5: Toward a Language of Democracy
Idea 6: The Inner World of Living Democracy
Idea 7: Seven Ways to Rethink Fear
Idea 8: Living Democracy’s Checklist