The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf (1991)
The woman who made feminism sexy by being gorgeous and shaving her
legs also taught her readers to eat a hearty meal. This book argues
that a cult of thinness has desexualised and disempowered women
just when, after the acceptance of free love and the introduction
of the contraceptive pill, the opposite should have happened. The
most important feminist text of the past 20 years.
The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield
(1993)
Deep in the South American jungle an intrepid explorer is about to
stumble on a sequence of ancient prophecies that could change our
way of living, even save the world. If only we didn’t have to buy
the other novels in that the series to find out what they were! For
a similar effect on the cheap, rent an Indiana-Jonesalike film –
Tomb Raider, say – and ask a hippy to whisper nonsense in your ear
while you're watching it.
The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail by Michael
Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln (1982)
Similar territory to The Da Vinci Code but earlier, less balefully
stupid and with the nerve to claim factual accuracy (its authors
took Dan Brown to court and lost). The usual song and dance about
Templars, bloodlines of Christ and global conspiracies, but somehow
still chilling for all that. Staple text of the bonkers
brigade.
No Logo by Naomi Klein (2000)
Few books have caught a political moment better than Naomi Klein’s
stylish and impassioned report on the abuses of brands, and the
activists who fight them. It was published in 2000, just as
"antiglobalisation" crashed into the mainstream, and Klein was
adopted as its poster-girl.