Everything changes, everything grows, everything evolves. We’ve seen it with technology, the internet, food, jobs, houses, social etiquette, clothes, etc. Just like everything else books and the book business have to evolve, despite any resisters. In the near future the publishing business will change from being mostly reliant on the sales of print books to being equally reliant on digital and print book sales. The evolution is inevitable and in some ways necessary. There is no reason to fight it, books haven’t always resembled the books we know today, and I’m sure many would say the past changes have been for the better. So even though many of us are resisting the e-book, there may come a time, if it’s not here already, when people believe an e-book is a superior alternative to the physical book.

Books started on wood, stone, or clay tablets. Could you imagine walking around with a chunk of clay to read in your down time? Definitely not. And at the time, books were mostly not used for this reason. They were generally kept as historical and daily records. Eventually, with the invention of paper, books evolved into something that is a bit more recognizable to today’s readers. Scrolls of paper were folded to create a butterfly effect. The production was still a slow process and books were not accessible to everyone. With the invention of the printing press, things became more streamlined and books were soon readily available to anyone who could read.

The publishing business started out as a mess for authors, mostly because it didn’t really start out as a business. There were no copyright rules, so people could copy a story and alter it as they wished, which, I suppose, is ideal for a reader who is unhappy with an ending, but not fair to the author’s intentions. Authors usually received some sort of fame for the stories they wrote, but their pockets remained bare as people copied the stories themselves. Those who wrote the stories down for others, scribes, made the money. Books, at this time, were beginning to be used more and more as entertainment. So there was significant value placed on being able to create a story, but authors lacked gate keepers to control the flow of production, demand, and revenue. If authors were going to continue writing, they would have to fight the exploitation their stories faced.

With advances in the printing press came the formation of book publishing as a business. There were many crossroads from the beginning of books to this point. And there have been more since then. Currently, books and the publishing business are at another crossroads. The e-reader has grown in popularity. I can’t help but note how the e-reader, an electronic tablet, pays homage to the way books started out on clay tablets. You couldn’t imagine walking around and reading from a clay tablet, but the e-reader resembles this in some ways. Instead of flipping through butterflied pages you simply read from the same slate. Granted the clay tablet had some space issues that the e-reader doesn’t have since it’s digital, but the resemblance is comparable.

What’s the point? Books evolve we know that. Advances in technology were made and, therefore, changes to books and book production. The same exact thing is happening right now. We are entering the digital era. Fighting tooth and nail to avoid it is not wise. There is no escape. Love it or hate it, it doesn’t matter, you, as a book publisher or author, have to embrace it (the reader still has a choice). The point though, is that all this talk about the impending doom of books and book publishing and how sooner or later the entire industry will seize to exist is nonsense. The format of books and the business of publishing have changed many many times before, but change doesn’t mean the end. As long as the businesses evolve with the format, there is nothing to worry about. Books and stories will always exist in some form or another. Readers, writers, and publishers will adjust as necessary to keep this amazing form of art and entertainment alive, but if they don’t, then extinction will become inevitable.

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“The first thing that came to mind as I looked at Earth was its incredible beauty. […] It was a majestic sight—a splendid blue and white jewel suspended against a velvet black sky. […] Next I thought of our planet’s life-supporting character. That little globe of water, clouds and land no bigger than my thumb was home, the haven our spacecraft would seek at the end of our voyage […] Then my thoughts turned to daily life on the planet. With that, my sense of wonderment gradually turned into something close to anguish. Because I realized that at that very moment […] people of Earth were fighting wars, committing murder and other crimes; lying, cheating and struggling for power and status; abusing the environment by polluting the water and air, wasting natural resources, and ravaging the land, acting out of lust and greed; and hurting others through intolerance, bigotry, prejudice and all the things that add up to man’s inhumanity to man. It seemed as though man were totally unconscious of his individual role in—and individual responsibility for—the future of life on the planet.”

These are the words of Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14 astronaut, moonwalker and visionary. He wrote the above quote in his book Psychic Exploration, published in 1974 just a few years after his visit to the moon. After years of being out of print, this book is now available again with Cosimo Books and is a testimony to Mitchell’s vision that the world can be a better place and that we can realize our human potential by being more conscious. After his Apollo trip, Mitchell moved on in 1973 to found the Institute of Noetic Sciences to support individual and collective transformation through consciousness research.

Mitchell is not only a visionary in his own right, he benefited from the vision of others, including the man who expressed this in September, 1962:

“We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.”

That man was President John F. Kennedy. Both he and Mitchell expressed visions for America and actually for mankind during the 20th century, visions with a profound effect even today: travel in outer space, as Kennedy envisioned, and exploring the mysteries of inner space, as Mitchell and IONS are working on. Now that we are in the year 2011, it seems that America and the world as a whole is lacking in vision for the future and lacking individuals able to express it. What vision do we hear from Washington, what vision is executed in Wall Street, and what vision is expressed in Hollywood? I haven’t seen or heard anything as inspiring as those of Kennedy and Mitchell. Moving forward without vision is like moving in a dark tunnel with no light at the end: not a very confident inspiring image, is it?
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Danny Schechter, author of Plunder, Investigating Our Economic Calamity and the Subprime Scandal and director of the movie Plunder, the Crime of Our Time, and its companion book, The Crime of our Time, has written an inspired blog post about his experiences marching on Washington and reporting on marches for almost 50 years. He discusses marches from the ’60s, when Dr. Martin Luther King was promoting a non-racial America, to economics, jobs, and tea party marches happening today. Included in the post is an interview by Democracy Now! about his experiences. You can read the whole post and watch the video here.

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From the Power of One Invitation:

Power of One is inviting the world to make a profound and historic “Declaration of Interdependence” on 10.10.10. We are calling for all of humanity to join together, either physically at the Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall or virtually, from wherever they are around the globe from 10:00am to 10:00 pm on October10,2010 (10.10.10.) to declare their commitment to the survival and evolution of humanity and all life on earth.

There is a clear need for a major shift in consciousness worldwide and 10.10.10 is a day when humanity can begin to acknowledge and experience the depth of our interconnection with each other and all life.

Our hope is that this Declaration of Interdependence will become a global statement of resolve that helps to inspire humanity to unleash its unlimited creative potential and initiate its entrepreneurial drive to co-create a peaceful and globally sustainable society.

For further information, see quick links below or visit our website at www.powerofone.org

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An article in The New Yorker this week about the century-long drive to bring universal health care to American citizens opens with this:

“At present the United States has the unenviable distinction of being the only great industrial nation without compulsory health insurance,” the Yale economist Irving Fisher said in a speech in December. December of 1916, that is. More than nine decades ago, Fisher thought that universal health coverage was just around the corner. “Within another six months, it will be a burning question,” he predicted. Oh, well. What’s a century, give or take?

Fisher, an earlier driver for universal health care, was also the author of How to Live: Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science (mentioned in the New Yorker piece, currently available in a new edition only from Cosimo Classics.

Fisher’s interest in public health was prompted by a bout with tuberculosis — a major menace to public health at the time — after which he wrote this book, published in 1915 under the auspices of the Life Extension Institute. In it, Fisher presents information on deep breathing, the kinds and quantities of food to consume, poisons, the importance of being active, rules of general hygiene, and more. Specific tip cover overweight or underweight, alcohol consumption, posture, tobacco use — and even how to avoid colds.

Irving Fisher earned the first Ph.D. in economics awarded by Yale University, where he also taught political economy. He was an accomplished mathematician and an engaging and talented writer on even the most technical of subjects whose investigations ranged beyond economics to encompass astronomy, health and hygiene, mechanics, philosophy, poetry, science, and myriad public policy issues. He died in 1947, and he’d probably be appalled to discover that affordable health care for all — which every industrialized nation in the world except the U.S. extends to all its citizens, at lower cost and with better results than the U.S. manages — continues to be withheld from Americans.

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What’s going on with the wildly fluctuating stock markets, in the U.S. and around the globe? As The New York Times explains, the motivating factors certainly are not about logic — they’re about fear:

Anybody searching for cause-and-effect logic in the daily gyrations of the market will be disappointed — even if the overarching problem of a crisis of confidence in the global economy is now becoming clear.

Instead, the market has become a case study in the psychology of crowds, many experts say. In normal times, it runs on a healthy mix of fear and greed. But fear now seems to rule, with investors often exhibiting a Wall Street version of the fight-or-flight mechanism — they are selling first, and asking questions later…

This, of course, is nothing new. Almost a century ago, in the classic 1919 work of social psychology Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War, Wilfred Trotter introduced the concept of “the herd instinct” in relation to human behavior and explored the fundamental importance of gregariousness among animals as well as among humans. Trotter drew incisively on the concept of social habit to provide a deeper understanding of the nature of human behavior as well as its affect on the national morale… particularly in times of war. As Trotter noted, these ideas may also be of use to “a tired nation seeking peace.”

Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War is available at Amazon.com and from other online booksellers.

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Galveston, Texas, is under mandatory evacuation today as massive Hurricane Ike barrels toward it. According to the Associated Press, “the National Weather Service warned residents of smaller structures on Galveston they could ‘face certain death’ if they ignored an order to evacuate.”

This has all happened before, on September 8, 1900, as detailed by newspaper journalist Nathan C. Green in his book Story of the Galveston Flood: Complete, Graphic, Authentic, available from Cosimo Books. In Chapter 1 he writes:

One of the most awful tragedies of modern times has visited Galveston. The city is in ruins, and the dead will number possibly 6,000. The wreck of Galveston was brought about by a tempest so terrible that no words can adequately describe its intensity, and by a flood which turned the city into a raging sea.

This compilation of news coverage and survivor stories was published almost immediately after the disaster, the turn-of-the-20th-century equivalent of current-events documentary. With a dispassionate eye but with a flair for finding the dramatic in the eyewitness accounts he relays, journalist Green gathers startling accounts of the death and ruin of the city, the national relief efforts that sprung up in the aftermath, and scientific assessment of the storm, and more. In the wake of the destruction of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina and now the current threat to Galveston, this is a historical story with a fresh new relevance.

Story of the Galveston Flood: Complete, Graphic, Authentic is available at Amazon.com and from other online booksellers.

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This past week New York Times columnist and Princeton economics professor Paul Krugman wrote a column called “The Great Illusion,” about the illusion that economic rationality could prevent war. He’s discussing the ongoing conflict between Russia and Georgia and how it might signal an end to globalization as a force for peace. In the column Krugman reminds us that this has happened before:

Shortly before World War I another British author, Norman Angell, published a famous book titled “The Great Illusion,” in which he argued that war had become obsolete, that in the modern industrial era even military victors lose far more than they gain. He was right — but wars kept happening anyway.

As it happens, the only U.S. edition of Angell’s book is available from Cosimo: buy it at Amazon and watch history repeat itself.

(Technorati tags: Great Illusion, Norman Angell, Paul Krugman)

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If you’ve already finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and are desperately seeking a new magic fix, why not read up on the historical roots of the mythology of magic?

Start with Aradia: Gospel of the Witches, by Charles Godfrey Leland, the 1899 classic that has become a foundational document of modern Wicca and neopaganism. Leland, an American journalist, claimed that a “witch informant,” a fortune-teller named Maddalena, supplied him with the secret writings that he translated and combined with his research on Italian pagan tradition to create a gospel of pagan belief and practice. Here, in the story of the goddess Aradia, who came to Earth to champion oppressed peasants in their fight against their feudal overlords and the Catholic Church, are the chants, prayers, spells, and rituals that have become the centerpieces of contemporary pagan faiths.

Also from Leland is Gypsy Sorcery and Fortune Telling, in which he explores the origins of witchcraft, vindictive and mischievous magic, charms and conjurations, love potions, fortune telling, gypsy amulets, and much more. Cosimo’s edition is a replica of the original 1891 book, complete with Leland’s beautifully evocative drawings and diagrams.

Modern wizards will want to add the 1911 book The Book of Ceremonial Magic, by Arthur Edward Waite, to their magical libraries. Culled from the rare and often inaccessible actual manuscripts of magical grimoires from the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries, this classic work on magic and its secrets reveals all you need to know in order to begin communing with the supernatural and appropriating its power. Waite, a preeminent 19th-century expert in esoterica and a cocreator of the famous 1910 Rider-Waite Tarot deck, discusses the difference between white and black magic, the rituals of transcendental magic, the rituals of black magic, the names and offices of evil spirits, the mysteries of “infernal evocation,” and much more. But be warned: Dabbling in the paranormal arts is an adventure undertaken at your own risk.

What happened to medieval magicians caught casting spells? Fifteen-century Inquisitors Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger reveal all in The Malleus Maleficarum, also known as “The Witch Hammer.” A handbook for hunting and punishing witches, this is mostly a compilation of superstition and folklore, but it was taken very seriously at the time it was written and became a kind of spiritual law book used by judges to determine the guilt of the accused. Cosimo’s is a replica edition of the 1928 translation by Montague Summers.

Did you know that Albus Dumbledore’s old pal Nicholas Flamel was a real alchemist of historical lore? Learn about Flamel — and more than fifty other alchemists — in Alchemists Through the Ages, another work by Arthur Edward Waite. The word alchemy conjures up images of charlatans mixing potions and concocting remedies during the Middle Ages in a futile quest to transform lead into gold, but the roots of alchemy can be traced back more than 2,500 years to locales as disparate as Egypt, India, and China, and it was considered serious science until as recently as the 16th century. In this highly regarded volume first published in 1888, Waite examines the lives and works of alchemists from the year 850 through the end of the 18th century. Was alchemy the true precursor to modern chemistry or a pseudo-science populated by quacks? Decide for yourself.

For more on alchemy, check out Alchemy Rediscovered and Restored, by Archibald Cockren. According to practitioners and students of alchemy, the body’s Vital Energy, or Quintessence, is best obtained from minerals and metals. Using everyday language and an accessible style, Cockren — considered the greatest British alchemist of the 20th century — explores the different uses and manifestations of this ancient science, from the physical to the medicinal and even the spiritual. Along the way, he provides engaging sketches of alchemy’s early pioneers, including St. Germain, Basil Valentine, and the legendary Paracelsus, providing a solid foundation to his belief that within the world’s metals “can be found elements to cure all discords in the human body.”

(Technorati tags: Harry Potter, magic, alchemy)

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All this news about the supposed new video of the Loch Ness Monster and the accompanying frenzy has me bursting to tell you about the new edition of the 1892 cryptozoology classic The Great Sea-Serpent by A. C. Oudemans that Cosimo will be publishing soon. This comprehensive treatise on the history of sea-monster sightings — at least through the end of the 19th century — describes 150 sightings back to the 16th century, including hoaxes, and theorizes on what, exactly, sailors and other witnesses were really seeing. This new edition is part of a new cryptozoology series we’re presenting with renowned cryptozoologist Loren Coleman.

We know geeks are psyched for this book, and I’ll let you know as soon as it’s available for sale.

(Technorati tags: Loch Ness Monster, Great Sea-Serpent, AC Oudemans, Loren Coleman)

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