Summer is not only a great time to escape and re-energize, but to see films and read books that you couldn’t squeeze in during the hectic academic year. Some little-known progressive films and books listed here explore big topics, some offer no-nonsense information, others just offer loads of inspiration. Take your pick.

Films

Outsourced This romantic comedy follows a young “fulfillment executive” in Seattle who is sent to India to train workers who will be taking over the work his team used to do. In the process, he falls in love and finds out that Indians too are subject to the whims of global capital.

War Made Easy This 73-minute documentary collects virtually all of the key media clips from U.S. presidents since Lyndon Johnson and juxtaposes them war after war. The film exposes a pattern of misleading critics, and then insisting that withdrawal would cause more damage than continuing the wars indefinitely.

Freeheld The 38-minute Oscar winner for short documentary tells the story of a 25-year female police officer in Ocean County, New Jersey, who is dying of cancer. County politicians refuse to pass her pension on to her female partner, and the male officers she has worked lead a community movement that forces change.

Superheroes This feature film takes the viewer inside the head of a returning Iraq war veteran whose wounds — physical and psychological — dominate his life.

Secrecy An 87-minute, dispassionate documentary interviews intelligence and military insiders as well as watchdogs on the question of how to balance the public’s need for information to make democratic decisions and agencies’ desire to maintain secrecy.

7,500 Miles to Redemption This half-hour documentary about Asian-American inmates in an Oregon prison who raise money to build a school in rural Vietnam underscores the waste of human potential when millions of Americans are behind bars.

August Evening This gorgeous independent feature about cross-generational relationships in a Mexican family in Texas has the authentic emotion missing from most Hollywood blockbusters. Key roles are played powerfully by people who never acted before.

Books

The Big Squeeze by Steven Greenhouse. One of the few labor reporters left at an American newspaper, the New York Times reporter draws on years of interviews to paint a human picture of declining living standards and workers’ rights. He contrasts the Wal-Marting of the economy with the high road employers such as Costco have followed.

Unafraid by Jeff Golden. A novel with this starting point: What if the bullet fired at John F. Kennedy in Dallas in 1963 only wounded him, and in the process gave him a new willingness to take risks for progressive policies and an intense sense of urgency? How might the years since then have been different?

Keeping the Promise? The Debate Over Charter Schools Most charter schools are smaller than traditional public schools. Some are operated by profit-making chains. Nearly all are nonunion. This collection of essays examines whether they are fulfilling their promise, and what they are teaching about education policy.

Swim Against the Current by Jim Hightower with Susan DeMarco. The populist with a sense of humor chronicles grassroots activists across the United States who have made a difference in their communities.

Stand Up Straight by Robert Creamer. A long-time political organizer provides nearly 600 pages of thoughtful advice for campaigners of all kinds about how to communicate and organize effectively for progressive issues and candidates.

Tree Barking by Nesta Rovina. A home health therapist schooled in South Africa and Israel provides an unvarnished memoir of her work with desperately poor county clients in Northern California.

The Teaching Penalty: Teacher Pay Losing Ground by Sylvia Allegretto, Sean Corcoran, and Lawrence Mishel. This report shows that earnings for teachers have lost ground any way you slice it and explains how teachers did not share in the earning gains experienced by most U.S. workers in the late 1990s. www.epi.org.

Linked Labor Histories by Aviva Chomsky. New England and Colombia are used as case studies to show that globalization is not new, that its long existence is a major reason for the wealth gap around the world, and that U.S. unions have historically sided with capital against workers in other countries.

Greening Your Office by Jon Clift and Amanda Cuthbert. Practical tips on reducing contributions to global warming.

Music

Beautiful World by Eliza Gilkyson. The singer-songwriter finds herself “on the corner of ruin and grace,” looking for hope in the darkest times.

Chameleon by Tim O’Brien. This solo album from a leading bluegrass and folk musician features the joyful “Get Out There and Dance.”

— Excerpted from World Wide Work, an occasional newsletter published by the American Labor Education Center, an