Living Democracy, Feeding Hope
Getting a Grip 2: Clarity, Creativity and Courage for the World We Really Want
ISBN 9780979414237
By Frances Moore Lappé
“My book’s intent,” says Lappé, “is to enable us to see what is happening all around us but is still invisible to most of us — people in all walks of life penetrating the spiral of despair and reversing it with new ideas, innovation and courage.”
Winner of the annual Nautilus Best in Small Press award, and designated a must-read for the next president in a New York Times Book Review feature, Getting a Grip2 invites readers to try on a new, invigorating way of seeing the world. Barbara Kingsolver said that reading it is like putting on “a new pair of glasses.” With Lappé's characteristic boldness and fresh insight, she takes on a set of disempowering ideas driving economic and ecological crises, challenging readers to rethink the meaning of power, democracy, and hope itself.
Watch Frances discuss Getting a Grip2 at YES! Magazine
Table of Contents
CLARITY
Chapter 1: A Species Grows Up
Chapter 2: Where Did Our Power Go?
Chapter 3: New Eyes
Chapter 4: What Democracy Feels Like
CREATIVITY
Chapter 5: Power Invisible
Chapter 6: The Art of Power
Chapter 7: Talking Democracy
COURAGE
Chapter 8: Seize the Moment
Chapter 9: When Fear Means Go
Chapter 10: Sanity in Motion
IDEAS
Idea 1: The 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 Checklis
WHAT THE READERS SAY
This 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
Displaying her usual laser-like logic…crystalline assessments virtually leap off the page."
—Booklist
Original… out-of-the-box… if this book isn’t inspirational and helpful, then I don’t know what is."
– Tikkun
A whole new way to think and act… I love Getting a Grip… great positive energy… Read it now."
– Kathleen Kennedy Townsend
No popular intellectual has been so very successful in reshaping the character and content of debates…as this remarkable woman… Lappé has succeeded masterfully."
— John Nichols, Author, The Nation
There is a small number of people in every generation who are forerunners in thought, action, spirit, who swerve past the barriers of greed and power to hold a torch high for the rest of us. Frances Moore Lappé is one of those."
— Howard Zinn, Author, A People’s History of the United States
"Getting A Grip 2 is described by some of my students at Berklee College, as a living bible. Indeed it is."
— Dr. Teodros Kiros, Professor, Berklee College