From the editor's desk

We were called to jury duty last week. Of course it wasn't convenient-this summer issue of Peacework is even later than we had feared-but we went figuring that a) in Massachusetts it's "one day or one trial" so it couldn't be too bad, b) on a court questionnaire we listed our profession and beliefs in great detail; thus we expected we'd be excused out of hand in any event, as we always had been before, and c) we'd get a chance to read while we were waiting-that rare treat by itself seemed to make the whole enterprise worthwhile. We ended up instead caught in a three-day trial, learning much more than we ever want to know about insurance policies, and forced to judge a man's character. But that's another story.

It's easy to know that a Peacework summer issue devoted to books-and poems, plays, theater, film-is a grand idea. It's much harder to pull it off in 32 pages. If you have any doubts on that score, just try drawing up your own short list! No use lamenting what's not here; we are already looking forward to summer 2001. We didn't have the chutzpah to anoint "the season's best"; we have simply asked reviewers to recommend things they have been absorbed with recently.

It's no accident that we started off with a piece on libraries, among our favorite places, and probably, if a person had to choose, the most precious resource of any community, small or great. Our correspondent offers a short, basic reading list, and she suggests that we should all give our libraries at least these books. (Actually, in the town where we live, the public library acquires a book if a card-holder requests it. Worth finding out about your town.) In Boston people have been giving books to the Community Change library, a modest upstairs room in a building across from the Statehouse. This is a special phenomenon-an island of calm and reflection housed in a busy, activist, anti-racism organization's offices. It is also what is known as a "replicable model." Talk to Yvonne Pappenheim, head volunteer, and start building your own!

It's also no accident that we wind up the issue with a piece by another librarian-bookends are pleasing-and Gerson is one of that wonderful breed: a children's librarian. For sheer seduction and enticement, the children's rooms of many public libraries are without peer. Borrow a kid and check yours out if you haven't been there lately.

There's a lot between those bookends. Professor Zia Mian writes about Noam Chomsky and Eqbal Ahmad, two major intellectual forces of the age. Marty Jezer (we confess, at our request) took on a book many of us will not choose to read, but probably should know about before we dismiss out of hand: "liberal" Thomas Friedman's The Lexus and the Olive Tree. We are writing this while talks continue at Camp David, so Allan Solomonow's choice of Gaza is achingly appropriate. The two books Erin Miller highlights, on "criminal justice" in America, provide solid footing for debates we must insist on this election season. Vandana Shiva's writings have served as something of an ecological bible on the global economy for activists at Seattle and beyond. Michael True, scholar of peace studies, brings us sober analysis and some measure of hope. The Myers Center prize list will take a while to read through; the reward-insight into how people "have acted or could act" to address this nation's endemic racism and bigotry.

And that's just the nonfiction. Keep reading. Poet Fred Marchant considers some masters of his craft. David Thoreen visits Andre Dubus' masterly essays. A circle of women who write and perform together sit at their kitchen table and talk about the process. Elaine Mar alerts us to a not-your-usual mystery writer. Don West introduces us to the stunning work of "militant photographer" Sebastião Salgado. Two friends report on the latest August Wilson play. Siri Colom accompanies us to an exhibit of, incredibly, picture postcards of lynchings.

There are two poems in this issue: "The Conscientious Objector" by Karl Shapiro who died this year, and "My Brother's Battered Bible, Carried into Prison Repeatedly" by Dan Berrigan who will be reading from his poems Sept. 21 at the inauguration of a lecture series in honor of Peacework's founding editor, Pat Farren. Finally, there are voices-voices of the gallant, stubborn hibakusha, those nuclear survivors begging us to hear their pledge of "Never again!"

And what book did we take with us to Middlesex County Courthouse for jury duty? Do we really have to tell? A borrowed copy of The Perfect Storm.