Nov. 3, 2000 — If you are interested in community activism, grass-roots politics, photo- documentaries and oral history, this season you won't find a more inspiring book—or a better buy—than "Indivisible: Local Heroes Changing America."

In addition to 288 oversized pages filled with generous text and 240 images (half color, half black-and-white, all in excellent reproductions), readers get a CD-ROM of first-person interviews narrated by Ray Suarez, former host of NPR's "Talk of the Nation" and now senior correspondent and co-anchor for PBS' "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer."

The point of the book—a powerful point that is persuasively argued in both words and pictures—is that grass-roots initiatives in communities are improving the quality of life and extending economic and social justice across America.

The images, done in a variety of styles and formats, were taken by well-known photographers—including Sylvia Plachy, Danny Lyon, Eli Reed, Lynn David and Bill Burke—who worked with professional interviewers, documentarians and oral historians.

The book has grown out of the Indivisible Project, an ongoing national documentary funded by the Pew Charitable Trust and directed by Tom Rankin, the director of the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University in cooperation with the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona.

Each of the dozen projects documented is different, fascinating and central to community life: a midwifery and doula practice in Stony Brook, N.Y.; a Texas organization that helps Mexican American families build and purchase their own homes through a combination of sweat equity and low-interest loans; a rural Montana coalition of loggers, townspeople and environmentalists who resolve the conflicts of a timber economy; two volunteer organizations in Florida that work with law enforcement agencies to police their own neighborhoods; a San Francisco counseling service that trains young people to offer peer advice and crisis counseling on a toll-free hotline.

The point of the book is simple: Even at a time of obscene corporate money, powerful media celebrities and ruthless lobbyists, ordinary people can make a huge difference.