The Smith College summer reading selection for 2009 is The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems by Van Jones. Copies are available in Neilson and Young Science Libraries.

Van Jones argues that the old top-down approach to solving environmental problems will not work. In order to solve our ecological problems the solution must be based in the lives of ordinary people. The author lays out a detailed plan for addressing the environmental crisis through job training and the development of new business and employment opportunities. This program confronts the global climate crisis while at the same time offering a means of healing country’s racial and class divisions.

For more information about the book and the summer reading program for first-year and entering students, please see the Summer Reading website.

Visit the Harper One website, publisher of The Green Collar Economy, to view full page images and look inside the book.

Van Jones is a noted human rights and social justice activist, lawyer, and author, recently appointed as a Special Advisor to the President on the Green Economy. He is the founder of Green for All – “a national organization dedicated to building an inclusive green economy strong enough to lift people out of povery.” Visit this organization’s blog at http://www.greenforall.org/blog

Mr. Jones also is the co-founder of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, “a strategy and action center working for justice, opportunity and peace in urban America.” To visit this organization’s blog at http://www.ellabakercenter.org/blog/.

Read about Van Jones from the HarperCollins web site.

Biography Resource Center - Read a more detailed biographical overview. (Enter your Smith Novell/GroupWise username and password when accessing from off-campus).