Loose Canon Part 2

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Bob Dylan: Highway 61 Revisited (1965). 'How does it feel?' Dylan sang -- and pop music (and numerous other things) would never be the same again. Iris DeMent: The Way I Should (1996). A honky-tonk singer-songwriter, full of rollicking good-time rhythms and twanging hard-luck stories, but also outrage at America's escalating injustice.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez: One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967). Garcia Marquez' saga of a Colombian family introduced something new to the modern novel: a fusion of political concern, exquisitely inventive fantasy, and a sense of the immortality of human desire. Tony Kushner: Angels in America (1993). In this magical multilayered play about a gay man dying of AIDS, Kushner widens the American mind and heart.

Aretha Franklin: Queen of Soul: The Very Best Vols. 1 & 2 (1960s-1990s). Franklin's ecstatic renderings brought the sweet soul of gospel music into R&B. Marion Williams: Surely God Is Able (1989). This superb gospel singer -- called 'America's greatest living singer' by rock critic Dave Marsh -- gives a powerful, rollicking voice to the Holy Spirit.

Michael Murphy: Golf in the Kingdom (1972). Carlos Castaneda with a nine iron: a mystical fantasy of one man's quest for perfect golf -- and inner peace -- under the tutelage of Shivas Irons, the Don Juan of the driving range. Steve James, Fred Marx, & Peter Gilbert: Hoop Dreams (1994). Visions of NBA stardom and the realities of life in Chicago's inner city shape the lives of two black high school stars in this poignant documentary that raises serious questions about the American sports machine.

E.F. Schumacher: Small Is Beautiful (1973). A surprise best-seller from an English economist making the simple but exceedingly radical observation that large-scale projects tend to turn into disasters. Ivan Illich: Tools for Conviviality (1973). A maverick thinker takes aim at the institutions of modern technological society, from medicine to transportation, convincingly showing that most of them offer us far less than is commonly assumed.

Ursula K. Le Guin: The Dispossessed (1974). A science-fiction journey to an anarchist utopia filled with intriguing theories about society, science, and spirituality. Starhawk: The Fifth Sacred Thing (1993). A thought-provoking novel about an ecotopian society of the future forced to defend its green lands and gentle ways against an invading technofascist army.

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