Search for “Occupy Wall Street” on Amazon, and you’ll get more than 220 books and media choices relevant to OWS. (who knew!?)
Occupy Wall Street - Kindle edition
Ok, and there are still people out there saying Occupy hasn’t made an impact…?
Amazon is one of the best indicators of what we consume…The presence of so many Occupy and OWS themed books on Amazon not only indicates a niche market within the movement, it also presents an opportunity to learn more about Occupy Wall Street, and the 99%.
I picked 4 books from the Occupy Wall Street search results to preview on my Kindle, making sure to pick books ranging from mass media outlets like Time Magazine, to the self published authors acting as de facto Historians of OWS.
I plan to read the samples over the next week, and pick a book to purchase and review (thus creating jobs! woot I am a job creator!)
Anywho…these are the books I am sampling:
This Changes Everything: Occupy Wall Street and the 99% Movement
Frankly what initially attracted me to this book is the donation of royalties from the book to Occupy Wall Street. I am not quite sure how that is happening, and would love to see something more specific about the royalties and donations disclosed in the description, but I guess you can’t have everything 
TIME What is Occupy?: Inside the Global Movement
A TIME compilation of Occupy… I selected this book as representative of the “mainstream” opinion of Occupy. Plus.. a bit of a hat tip to Time for naming the protester Person of the Year for 2011.
40 DAYS THAT SHOOK THE WORLD: From Occupy Wall Street to Occupy Everywhere
This book was featured on a number of news programs and blogs I follow. It is a bit different in that it is only available as an e-book. I see this as a way to cut costs for production and purchase, and taking advantage of the kindle and e-book format by loading the book with active links and info. The active links encourage the reader to continue learning about the early history of OWS even after reading this book.
50 cents from the sale of each copy goes to Occupy Wall Street. At first glance that seems kind of slim, until you see the book is only $2.99. That’s a decent donation ratio.
This is an interesting concept, a day by day timeline of the movement, (starting Sept. 17, 2011) with updates promised by the authors. The current version goes through December 6, 2011.
This is a wonderful format for those with an intermediate level or higher understanding of OWS already. I am hearing rumblings in the blog-o-sphere of individual Occupy movements adopting this format to create and self publish their own personal time-lines and developments. I would love to see this practice adopted in other Occupy movements!
We may be watching history unfold…it would be nice to have a record of it as it happens.
I’ve already downloaded the digital sample available for each book, and I hope to have made it through all four this week, and have my reviews and take-aways posted by Monday.
Leave a comment if you have read any books about OWS or Occupy in general…I’d love to know which you have read, and what you think about the idea in general.
How do you think the writing and reading of books like these reflect the cultural phenomena of OWS embedding itself in American political discourse as a long-term social influence?
Will we continue to see more Occupy related books and media popping up on Amazon, or your local Barnes and Noble?
Or is this a fad about to fizzle?
Thoughts?
