The founder of Utne Reader chronicles his adventures on the frontlines of American culture—from the Vietnam era to the age of Trump—as a spiritual seeker, antiwar activist, and minor media celebrity. “Fascinating . . . a remarkable piece of social history.”—Bill McKibben, author of Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? Far Out Man is the story of a life-long seeker who was occasionally a finder as well. In 1984, Eric Utne founded Utne Reader, a digest of new ideas and fresh perspectives percolating in the arts, culture, politics, business, and spirituality. With the tag line “The Best of the Alternative Press,” the magazine was twice a finalist for a National Magazine Award and grew to more than 300,000 paid circulation. In the nineties, the magazine promoted the Neighborhood Salon Association to revive the endangered art of conversation and start a revolution in people’s living rooms. More than 18,000 people joined, comprising nearly 500 salons across North America. Utne devoted the magazine to bringing people together to help make the world a “little greener and a little kinder.” Far Out Man serves as a chronicle of both an individual life and a generation, covering the conflicts of the Vietnam era, the hopes and excesses of the sexual revolution and the Me Decade, the idealism and depredations of the entrepreneurial eighties and nineties, and the promise and perils of the digital age. Ultimately, Far Out Man is the story of Eric Utne’s lifelong search for hope, how he lost it, and what he found on the other side that sustains him in his darkest moments. It is a book dedicated to helping all seekers become finders.

Jay Walljasper, Jon Spayde andThe Editors of Utne ReaderTable of Contents Acknowledgments Foreword by Eric Utne Introduction The Spirit Moving Us Introduction Thomas Berry Satish Kumar Stephen & Ondrea Levine Thich Nhat Hahn Zalman Schachter-Shalomi Starhawk The Sense of Community Introduction Ernesto Cortes Jr. Roberta Brandes Gratz Jane Jacobs Frances Moore Lappé Michael Lind David Morris Helena Norberg-Hodge John Papworth Andres Duany & Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk Virginia Valentine Social Action Introduction Noam Chomsky Gary Delgado Riane Eisler Colin Greer Ted Halstead Jim Hightower bell hooks Andrew Kimbrel lWinona LaDuke Geoff Mulgan Muhammed Yunus Seeing Green Introduction Kenny Ausubel & Nina Simons Fritjof Capra Theo Colborn Edward Goldsmith Paul Hawken Hazel Henderson Jerry Mander William McDonough Bill McKibben Donella Meadows Theodore Roszak Charlene Spretnak Creativity & Culture Introduction Gloria Anzaldua Octavia Butler Eduardo Galeano George Gerbner Barbara Marx Hubbard Kalle Lasn Bobby McFerrin Bill Moyers Neil Postman Rachel Rosenthal John Ralston Saul William Strickland Body, Psyche & Senses Introduction Larry Dossey Chellis Glendenning Susan Griffin James Hillman Tom Hodgkinson Henry & Karen Kimsey-House Jane Maxwell Vicki Robin Gabrielle Roth Alice Waters

Shortlisted for the Green Carnation Prize 2014 Laurie Penny, one of our most prominent young voices of feminism and dissent, presents a trenchant report on our society today--and our society tomorrow, as she is willing to fight to see it. Smart, clear-eyed, and irreverent, Unspeakable Things is a fresh look at gender and power in the twenty-first century, which asks difficult questions about dissent and desire, money and masculinity, sexual violence, menial work, mental health, queer politics, and the Internet. Celebrated journalist and activist Laurie Penny draws on a broad history of feminist thought and her own experience in radical subcultures in America and Britain to take on cultural phenomena from the Occupy movement to online dating, give her unique spin on economic justice and freedom of speech, and provide candid personal insight to rally the defensive against eating disorders, sexual assault, and internet trolls. Unspeakable Things is a book that is eye-opening not only in the critique it provides, but also in the revolutionary alternatives it imagines.

From the ancient Greek symposia to Gertrude Stein's famous Paris gatherings, salons have always been the incubators of provocative - at times even dangerous - ideas: the frontiers of cultural change. People who might elsewhere have been socially ostracized were included in salons, welcomed for their wit, intelligence, charm, and insight. And passionate conversation often led to passionate action.In 1991 Utne Reader launched a salon renaissance all over North America when it featured a cover story on salons. The response to the article was staggering, leading Utne to organize a National Salon Association that quickly drew over 20,000 members. Conceived and written by the folks at Utne, Salons is the quintessential authority on the subject, demonstrating that joining or starting your own salon is just a living room away.Salons offers a fascinating history of the salon and supplies all the tools readers need to join or start a group of their own. Classic salon-keepers like Julie deLespinasse, Mabel Dodge, and Gertrude Stein offer models for modern salons. Variations on the salon theme are explored, from studious book clubs and book circles to creativity salons, and finally online saloning. Chapters are grouped under such categories as choosing a salon site, finding salon members, and selecting discussion topics. A closing chapter looks at salons as bedrocks for activism and institutions for keeping social consciousness alive for the long-haul.

From a startling new voice in American fiction comes a dark, powerful novel about a tragic city and its inhabitants over the course of one Halloween weekend. Set in a decaying Midwestern urban landscape, with its goings-on and entire atmosphere dominated and charged by one Jesuit prep school and its students, parents, faculty, and alumni, THE NATURAL ORDER OF THINGS is a window into the human condition. From the opening chapter and its story of the doomed quarterback, Frank McSweeney, aka The Minotaur, for whom prayers prove not enough, to the end, wherein the school's former headmaster is betrayed by his peers in the worst way possible, we see people and their oddness and ambitions laid out bare before us.

A queer poet documents depression and grief in this autobiographical novel-in-verse.