The Nation Guide to the Nation

(Subscribe to this RSS feed)The Nation Guide to The Nation, just published by Vintage Books, is your guide to living liberally in America. Watch this blog for podcasts, excerpts and for Nation Guide promotional events. Illustration by Edward Koren.

  • Nation Guide: Report from Chicago

    By The Nation

    Written by Matthew Filipowicz.

    On a bitter cold February night, close to 100 Chicago area liberals braved the weather to attend "The Nation Guide To Living Liberally", a night of comedy, music, and guest speakers celebrating liberalism in Chicago and the release of "The Nation's Guide To The Nation".

    The event, hosted by Chicago's Drinking Liberally and Laughing Liberally Local 312 took place at the fabulous No Exit Café in Roger's Park, which is featured in the Nation Guide along with it's sister establishment, the Heartland Café. Another business featured in the Nation Guide, local book store Quimby's, was on hand to sell copies of the book.

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    March 3, 2009
  • Nation Guide: Report from DC

    By The Nation

    When the elements come together in their proper form, there's nothing better than speaker nights at Drinking Liberally. Book makers sell books, restauranteurs sell food and drink, and every one has a good time. This was certainly true on February 19 at Timberlake's when DCDL hosted Chris Hayes to speak about the Nation's new book, "The Nation Guide to the Nation." And, of course, we all heard a few of Chris's thoughts on the Obama administration, and the need to criticize a Democratic administration from the left. The crowd was brimming at 60+, a fairly generous spread of ages, and one hundred percent passionate about, as Chris Hayes put it, the need to live "in a just, humane, and equitable society."
    -- by Kim Davis

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    February 23, 2009
  • Nation Guide: The Reaction

    By The Nation

    Published last month, The Nation Guide to the Nation is an essential lifestyle guide for millions of progressives nationwide. Identifying small businesses, lefty cultural institutions, activist organizations, and hip gathering places, the collection is a new source for finding art collectives, food co-ops, independent bookstores, reading clubs, camps for radical kids, slow food restaurants, eco-friendly products, political tourism or left-leaning cemeteries.

    It's also your guide to the top protest songs, political films and left-wing murder mysteries of all-time, as Paper Cuts, the New York Times book blog, recently emphasized in a post on the book as well as a compendium of "an amazingly large, if informal, progressive infrastructure in place, locally and nationally," as Nation Guide author Richard Lingeman explained in a recent interview with the Progressive Book Club.

    This is just one example of the almost universally positive reception the book has so far received. (For the rare less-than-positive [but still commercially useful] press, click here.)

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    February 10, 2009
  • Nation Guide: Report from SLC

    By The Nation

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    Liberals and progressives from all over the nation move to Utah just to ski and snowboard in the fluffy snow of the nearby mountains. At Drinking Liberally we often hear stories of how people were initially reluctant to move here to Salt Lake City, simply because they knew it is one of the most conservative places in the nation (and difficult to get a drink too). Once they've moved here though and found that not everyone here agrees that Bush was the best president we've ever had, it's usually a matter of time before they find other things that make them feel more at home.

    Drinking Liberally is a nice way to quickly find friends and talk to them about what the liberals in town like to do. But if you're a frequent traveler or take a lot of vacations in the states, you might not be in town the night Drinking Liberally meets. And that's where "The Nation Guide to the Nation" becomes indispensable. You can read through the book and bookmark all things liberal that you want to see, experience, or do. Then you're fully prepared for your next visit to Salt Lake City, Tulsa, Oklahoma or Boise, Idaho.

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    February 4, 2009
  • Nation Guide: Organic Mattress Store

    By The Nation

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    As the name says, the Organic Mattress Store in Hellertown, PA, specializes in bedding and sell some interesting products like organic buckwater pet beds and Peruvian organic cotton sheets.

    This material is excerpted from The Nation Guide to the Nation published by Vintage Books in January, 2009.

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    February 4, 2009
  • Nation Guide: Green Architects

    By The Nation

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    Alchemy Architects, based in St. Paul, Minnesota (651-647-6650) make modular housing units that look like LEGO boxes of varying sizes, which you can combine into what Alchemy calls weeHouses. They're single dwellings or hideaways and summer cottages. Alchemy also designs larger "not-so-wee" houses and does other types of residential and commercial building utilizing recycled and reused materials. They specialize in building strategies that reduce waste.

    This material is excerpted from The Nation Guide to the Nation published by Vintage Books in January, 2009.

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    February 4, 2009
  • Nation Guide: Co-ops in Brooklyn

    By The Nation

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    Founded in 1973, the Park Slope Food Co-op is the largest member-owned and operated co-op in the United States with 12,000 members. Unlike many co-ops, this one is for members only. Each member is required to work at the co-op for three hours every four weeks. The strict rules and lefty politics of Park Slope have led the co-ops detractors to compare it with the collective farms of Stalinist Russia but its members says it's well worth the hassle; the produce is fresher and cheaper than at other local stores and collective organizing has its costs.

    Are there local food outlets in your city? Share a recommendation in the comments box below.

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    January 11, 2009
  • Nation Guide: Read An Excerpt

    By The Nation

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    Read a special excerpt from The Nation Guide to The Nation, just published in the January 26, 2009 issue of The Nation.

    This material is excerpted from The Nation Guide to the Nation just published by Vintage Books.

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    January 8, 2009
  • Nation Guide: Coffee in Orange, MA

    By The Nation

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    Dean's Beans is a coffee roasting company that sells 100 percent fair trade (and 100 percent organic) coffee. The 100 percent is key: most coffee companies that advertise themselves as fair trade actually buy only a very small percentage of their beans at fair-trade prices. Dean's goes ever further and works with the foreign communities from whom it buys beans, sponsoring People-Centered Development projects which include Miriam's Well, a revolving loan fund in Ethiopia that helps farmers build wells in their communities.

    Got a recommendation for a great coffee house? Share it in the comments box below.

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    December 30, 2008
  • Nation Guide: RadioNation Interview

    By The Nation

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    Listen to a podcast of a RadioNation special with Katrina vanden Heuvel and Richard Lingeman in conversation with Laura Flanders in a discussion of the alternative culture that marks the heart of the Nation Guide. Listen here.

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    December 30, 2008
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