Getting A Grip

Clarity, Creativity, and Courage in a World Gone Mad

Getting a Grip: Clarity, Creativity & Courage in a World Gone Mad is a little book with a big message. Frances Moore Lappé — author of fifteen books, including three-million copy bestseller Diet for a Small Planet — distills her world-spanning experience and wisdom in a conversational yet hard-hitting style to create a rare "aha" book. In nine short chapters, Lappé leaves readers feeling liberated and courageous. She flouts conventional right-versus-left divisions and affirms readers’ basic sanity – their intuitive knowledge that it is possible to stop grasping at straws and grasp the real roots of today’s crises, from hunger and poverty to climate change and terrorism.

Because we are creatures of the mind, says Lappé, it is the power of "frame" — our core assumptions about how the world works — that determines outcomes. She pinpoints the dominant failing frame now driving our planet toward disaster. By interweaving fresh insights, startling facts, and stirring vignettes of ordinary people pursuing creative solutions to our most pressing global problems, Lappé uncovers a new, empowering "frame" through which real solutions are emerging worldwide.

She writes: "My book's intent is to enable us to see what is happening all around us but is still invisible to most of us. It is about people in all walks of life who are penetrating the spiral of despair and reversing it with new ideas, ingenious innovation — and courage."

Interviews with the Author

Audio with the Author

About the Author

Frances Moore Lappé is the author or co-author of 15 books, beginning with the 1971 three-million-copy Diet for a Small Planet. Her most recent, Democracy's Edge: Choosing to Save Our Country by Bringing Democracy to Life, is used in two dozen university courses. Lappé is a sought-after public speaker and in the last five years has appeared on hundreds of radio shows as well as PBS NOW, All Things Considered, the Diane Rehm Show, Air America, and San Franciso-KPFA’s The Forum. She is co-founder of the Institute for Food & Development Policy (Food First), the Center for Living Democracy, and the Small Planet Institute. She is a founding councilor of the World Future Council and has received 17 honorary doctorates as well as the Right Livelihood Award, sometimes called the "Alternative Nobel."