There are a lot of books out there — including a whole library about the Bush administration — that tell you what's wrong with things today. There are relatively few that tell you what's being done about it.

What makes Democracy's Edge so refreshing and so valuable — and sometimes a bit exhausting — is that it is packed with hundreds of examples of ways in which people in the U.S. are working to decentralize power and promote democracy. Frances Moore Lappé does spend some time outlining what's wrong, using some well-chosen data. Personal bankruptcies are up by a third since 2000, half of them triggered by paying for a health crisis. The net worth of the top 1% of the population rose by 63% in the 1980s and 1990s, while the net worth of the bottom 40% dropped by 44%. More than 40% of independent bookstores closed in the last decade. Corporations' share of federal income tax has dropped from 50% to 14% since 1940. And so on.

The heart of the book, though, lies in its success stories, many of them first reported through the American News Service, which Lappé created in 1995. Here are just a few of the many intriguing facts and stories in the book, many of which deserve books of their own: