Rosen, Jared, and David Rippe. The Flip: Turn Your World Around! Hampton Roads, 2006. 247p. $23.95. 978-1-57174-474-6. Index.

“Imagine yourself on a bridge between two worlds,” standing poised to choose one or the other. The Upside-Down world offers stress, war, seemingly insurmountable debt, pollution, crime and violence, poisoned food, and pharmaceutical remedies. The Right-Side Up world is calm, meditative, mindful, nurturing, healthful and organic, and lighthearted. Barry lives in the readily recognizable Upside-Down world; Mary is living in the Right-Side Up world that offers glimpses that readers will and new possibilities. In each chapter Rosen and Rippe present their unabashedly biased views without preaching, use Barry and Mary’s lives for illustration, converse with four experts or celebrities who have experienced The Flip, and close with “flip tips” for flipping into the Right-Side up world. Web addresses throughout the text facilitate further research.

Leaving room for readers to choose, Rosen and Rippe present an impassioned plea for sane and sustainable practices. After recognizing the upside-down aspects of today’s world, readers appreciate how easily the Right-Side Up world could be attained. Paced for short attention spans, this comprehensive resource is useful for any content classroom as well as many electives. English classes could examine persuasive argument and comparison. Civics classes might explore societal structures, resource allocation, economics, value systems, and wealth distribution. Science curriculums covering fossil fuels, renewable energy, medical practices, and stressors-planetary and human-could benefit. Investigations of compound interest, exponential growth, ratios and proportions, and the effects of the Federal Reserve and the fluctuating interest rates could provide
real-life uses for mathematics. Even short, infrequent glimpses will lure readers to empowering the message.-Cynthia Winfield.