Consumer activist Ralph Nader is a longtime library and literacy champion. He has been a speaker at ALA conferences, has written two articles for American Libraries, and has been a crusader for improving the public library system in his home city, Washington, D.C. I had a long telephone chat with Nader yesterday about his latest idea for getting Americans to read books. “Let’s call it Books By the Box,” he said, or during this holiday gift-giving season, he’s calling it “Christmas-By-the Box.”
Nader said he has purchased large numbers of remaindered books that are among his favorites. He’ll sell you 100 copies of any one of these books for $100—shipping included—so you can give them away to friends and strangers.
Here’s how Nader pitched the project in a follow-up e-mail from his office:
“Here’s how it works. I’ll give you my list of book titles for your selection. Each book title fills a box unopened from the publisher’s warehouse. The average number of these book titles is 24, that’s 24 books of the same title. No assortment. You can select any box for purchase.
“On arrival, you can distribute your box or boxes either for free or at a small price per book—as you choose. You can give them to anyone you want—individual or institutional, such as school classes or libraries. Then you immediately become a Bookshaker.
“A Bookshaker,” said Nader, “is a person who gives books away to family, friends, and coworkers or utilizes them for door prizes at parties, fundraising for neighborhood or community organizations, mentoring programs, libraries, texts for study groups or classrooms.”
Those who know Nader’s politics will not be surprised by which books are on the selection list of 27 titles. Among them are Command Performance: An Actress in the Theater of Politics by Jane Alexander, Against the Beast: A Documentary History of American Opposition to Empire by John Nichols, and The Ten Minute Activist: Easy Ways to Take Back the Planet from the Mission Collective.