March is Women’s History Month, and though the month is almost over, there’s still time to check out the Cosimo Classics that celebrate contributions to society made by women from around the world.

As interest in 19th-century English literature by women has been reinvigorated by a resurgence in popularity of the works of Jane Austen, readers are rediscovering a writer whose fiction, once widely beloved, fell by the wayside. British novelist Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell — whose books were sometimes initially credited to, simply, “Mrs. Gaskell” — is now recognized as having created some of the most complex and progressive depictions of women in the literature of the age. Gaskell’s one work of nonfiction is The Life of Charlotte Brontë, her 1857 biography of her close friend. At once a triumph of the biographical form and a charming celebration of the writer by someone who knew her well, this has been hailed as a remarkably insightful and highly readable life of Brontë, one that makes up for its lack of objectivity with its warmth, admiration, and respect. It offers a significant view of one woman writer’s perspective on another’s work at a time when women writers were afforded little respect at all.

One of the earliest works of protofeminist thought, A Vindication of the Rights of Women — by British writer and educator Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797), the mother of Frankenstein author Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley — is a startlingly prescient 1792 work, the first published argument advocating for the societal elevation of women as the intellectual and emotional equals of men. Written against the background of the French Revolution — the debate over which caused an uproar in both England and France — and the 1791 statement by French diplomat Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord to the French National Assembly that women should be educated only in domestic matters, this is a furious reprimand of the prevailing attitudes of late-18th-century Europe that women should be docile, virtuous, and untroubled by any matters beyond the home. Well received in its day and still an important resource for anyone wishing to understand the history of feminism, this extended essay demolishes the sexual double standard of the day, offers a rational defense for the education of girls, and demands merely that women be treated as people.

Mrs. Hill’s New Cook Book: Housekeeping Made Easy is a classic of post-Civil War Southern cooking, designed to aid well-to-do women forced into their kitchens for the first time with the end of slavery — it’s a charming example of education in the domestic arts in the late 19th century. In her stern but helpful manner, Annabella P. Hill (1810-1878) guides her fellow homemakers-and those today seeking a soupçon of old-style Southern elegance. With further instruction on other housekeeping chores, such as soapmaking and the preparation of medicines, this is an enlightening peek into the mundane chores of a bygone age.

Startling in its observations and radical in its conclusions, Women and Economics — a classic of women’s rights literature by pioneering American feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935) — was a phenomenon when it was first published in 1898, and was eventually translated into in seven languages and reprinted around the world. From her characterization of women as virtual economic, social, and sexual slaves, dependent on men for everything from food to friendship to protection, to her call for women to free themselves from these shackles, Women and Economics electrified Victorian readers. It remains a foundational work of feminist theory, essential reading for anyone wishing to understand women’s struggle for full and self-determined personhood.

Cosimo books are available at Amazon.com and from other online booksellers.

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The International Institute of Monetary Transformation has a proposal for fixing all that ails us, economically speaking, with its “Tierra Solution.” What is the Tierra Solution? It’s global, for one, and may well also incorporate the fix for the climate crisis at the same time. Get all the details here.

Sustainability expert Frans Verhagen — who is currently writing a book on the Tierra Solution for Cosimo — will present a public lecture on the Tierra Solution at Pace University, at the downtown New York City campus, on April 5. The lecture is open to the public.

For more information, please monitor the International Institute of Monetary Transformation site.

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Cosimo authors Jean Houston and Barbara Marx Hubbard — coauthors of The Power of Yin — and Emily Squires — coauthor of Spiritual Places In and Around New York City (recently out in a new updated edition) — are among the founding signatories to “A Call for Conscious Evolution,” and urge others to join them in a paradigm shift in how we think about human civilization:

Climate change, economic disparity, educational inequities, geopolitical tensions — these mounting concerns are symptoms of a world that is out of balance. Together we can shift consciousness by co-creating a new way of being together.

The Call to Conscious Evolution was born following a gathering of global visionaries. It’s a movement that fully supports that the future is not what happens to us, but rather what WE create.

Together, we can co-create a new narrative of conscious evolution by:

* Building a global community and creating a culture of peace.
* Restoring ecological balance to nourish all life, and mitigate the effects of climate change.
* Engaging in social and political transformation by calling for a more conscious democracy.
* Promoting health and healing by acknowledging the profound mind-body-spirit connection.
* Supporting research and education that optimize human capacities.
* Encouraging integrity in business and conscious media.

In this great time of uncertainty, join us in elevating consciousness to create a better world. One governed by meaning and purpose. Accept nothing less.

Go here to join the revolution by signing the petition and learning what else you can do to help foster a new kind of awareness.

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Danny Schechter, author of the Cosimo book Plunder: Investigating Our Economic Calamity and the Subprime Scandal, has been quoted in an extensive article at Amped Status about the potential for the economic crisis to provoke massive unrest in the U.S… as it has around the globe. “Economic Crisis = USA Riots” opens with this chilling reminder:

As the global economy continues its downward spiral, rioting due to this Wall Street led meltdown is spreading through the globe like wildfire. The list of countries experiencing civil unrest is growing by the day, to name some recent hotspots: Bolivia, Bosnia, Brazil, Britain, Bulgaria, Cameroon, China, Egypt, France, Greece, Germany, Haiti, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Ivory Coast, Latvia, Lithuania, Mexico, Montenegro, Morocco, Nigeria, Pakistan, Panama, Philippines, Russia, Senegal, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine and Yemen.

Schechter is one of the many experts quoted who warn that we would be foolish not to be prepared for the same thing to happen in the United States:

Things have obviously been bad for the past year, but things are just beginning to get much worse. As economic forecasters predict another two years of decline, the Associated Press reports: “The economy’s downhill slide at the end of last year was likely much steeper than the government initially thought and it is probably doing just as poorly now — if not worse — as a relentless slew of negative forces feed on each other, pushing the country deeper into recession.” Danny Schechter, a journalist who was one of the first to sound the economic alarm and author of Plunder: Investigating Our Economic Calamity, explains: “It seems endless, and we are not even touching the surface of the real economic time bombs on the horizon from credit default swaps, derivatives and credit cards.”

Read the introduction to Plunder here. (Alert: PDF.)

Plunder is available at Amazon.com and from other online booksellers.

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I always find more stories that I want to blog about than I have time to cover in depth, but they’re still worth pointing out:

• Spotted on Boing Boing: “Why the Real Estate Boom Won’t Bust and other funny books still for sale on Amazon” (it’d be funny if the state of the economy weren’t so scary)

• At Publishers Weekly: “The Kindle for iPhone: Good App with Flaws” (early review of the new iPhone app)

• “Innovation and the Future of e-Books” (download a PDF with three examples of innovative e-books that illustrate the potential and pitfalls of electronic publications)

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Rao Kolluru, author of the Cosimo Paraview book River of a Thousand Tales: Encounters with Spirit, Reflections from Science, is launching his new book, Begin Anew: Re-setting Your Mind’s Odometer, on March 12.

Kolluru’s new work centers on three ideas, three “pillars of Personal Renaissance”:

1. Declare independence from the past - reset your mind’s odometer
(enjoy Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of New Beginnings)

2. Discover who you are (Know thy Self), what you really want
(know your Calling, fulfill your Purpose in life, be your Self)

3. Orchestrate who you are with new brain-mind architecture
(experience personal renaissance, building a rich legacy)

More information is available at BeginAnew.info.

River of a Thousand Tales is available at Amazon.com and from other online booksellers.

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In what might be considered a long overdue move, The New York Times has created a new list of bestselling books: graphic novels.

Of course, this is probably a defensive movie on the Times’ part, just as it was when the Harry Potter books threatened to dominate the Times’ fiction bestseller lists, and so the Times created a new, separate list for children’s literature.

See, the Watchmen graphic novel — which collects 12 issues of the limited-series comic book in one volume — is currently the No. 1 ranked book on Amazon. Which means it probably would have shown up in the Times regular bestseller list.

But the Times explains its creation of the graphic-novel list this way:

Comics have finally joined the mainstream.

Except comics have been the mainstream for quite a while — at least since the original publication of the collected Watchmen almost 20 years ago — and if the Times thought it was time to finally acknowledge that, it would have let Watchmen sit on its main list of book bestsellers.

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It seems that with literally each passing day these days, the news of the decline of corporate publishing mirrors more and more the decline of corporate music: just as music and bands continue to flourish even as the big music publishers continue to complain about the Internet, reading and books and authors continue to flourish even as corporate book publishers appear to be orchestrating their own downfall by misunderstanding the sea changes the Net, print-on-demand, and e-books are bringing.

A piece at The Big Money by Marion Maneker, though, gets it:

The Kindle Revolution

Digital readers will save writers and publishing, even if they destroy the book business.

The Kindle may be little more than a novelty device today. With each passing day, though, it begins to have the potential to change the business model for writers of all types and stripes.

That’s how it begins. And it’s chock full of more revolutionary goodness:

Forget all the myths about the book business: the parties, the poring over manuscripts, and passionate arguments. The book business is a distribution business, pure and simple. It’s about getting the words and ideas of a writer into the hands of a reader.

…

Theoretically, the Kindle will give writers greater access to the public. Some of contemporary publishing’s biggest success stories are self-propelled sensations. The Secret and the Twilight series were self-published works that became independent industries. A publishing house played no role in their initial success.

This is only the beginning…

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Publishers Weekly announced today that F+W Media has launched a test program to draw readers by giving away e-books:

Last week marked the soft launch for F+W’s month-long test to increase subscribers to its e-newsletters for its Writing, Woodworking and Genealogy communities by offering free e-books. The free downloads include Bob Mayer’s 70 Solutions to Common Writing Mistakes, Tom Begnal’s Popular Woodworking Pocket Shop Reference and a compilation of Maureen A. Taylor’s Photo Detective columns from Family Tree magazine.

Much more exciting: users of the iPhone and the iPod Touch (which is basically an iPhone without the phone) will now be able to read everything available to Kindle users (as reported by The New York Times):

Starting Wednesday, owners of these Apple devices can download a free application, Kindle for iPhone and iPod Touch, from Apple’s App Store. The software will give them full access to the 240,000 e-books for sale on Amazon.com, which include a majority of best sellers.

The publishing revolution continues…

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You wouldn’t think this would constitute much of an innovation, but the fact that it is is an excellent example of how backward the corporate publishing industry is:

Thomas Nelson announced today the launch of NelsonFree, a program that allows readers to receive content in multiple formats—physical book, audiobook and e-book—without making multiple purchases. With NelsonFree, the price of the hardcover book includes both the audio download and the e-book.

…

Once readers purchase a book with the NelsonFree logo, they are directed to a Web site where they register and answer a security question. They then can download an audio MP3 file and several types of e-book files, including EPub, MobiPocket and PDF.

…

Nelson president and CEO Michael S. Hyatt said, “I believe that the industry is shifting and we, as publishers, need to explore new methods of getting our content into the hands of customers”…

Now we’ll wait and see which major publishers follow Nelson’s lead. I’m not holding my breath…

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