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September always brings memories of notebooks and chalk and heavy texts filled with fascinating facts. As the new school year begins, you can continue lifelong learning with some films and books to expand your understanding of this vast and complex world.

The book “Trust Us, We’re Experts,” by investigative journalists Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, is a detailed exposé of the public relations industry. Its subtitle, “How Industry Manipulates Science and Gambles with Your Future” pretty much says it all. The authors provide eye-opening details about how highly paid public relations firms and so-called “independent experts” hired by corporations obfuscate the truth about such things as toxic chemicals, pharmaceuticals and genetic engineering. Once you read this book, you won’t so easily trust the “expert” analysis of a university professor who’s been paid to distort the truth.

The documentary “The Future of Food” examines the complexities of market and political forces that allow multinational corporations to increasingly control the world’s food. Besides showing the devastation brought by industrial agriculture and explaining how genetically modified organisms end up on supermarket shelves, the film also explains how organic farming can provide food for the world without damaging the environment.

Nena Baker has studied just how profoundly we are what we eat and what we breath and what we drink. She presents her findings in “The Body Toxic: How the Hazardous Chemistry of Everyday Things Threatens Our Health and Well-Being.” If you don’t have time to read the book, you can find an hour-long talk on video.google.com where Baker explains how chemicals in plastic drink bottles, non-stick cookware, the lining of cans and even dental floss invade our bodies. You’ll never eat a bag of microwave popcorn again.

Two more films are worth noting: “Manufactured Landscapes” by internationally acclaimed artist Edward Burtynsky and “Who Killed the Electric Car?,” topical in light of the recent bail-out of SUV- and Hummer-producing American car makers.

Absorbing such exposés and documentaries can be pretty grim. But there are plenty of movies to captivate, inspire and fill you with hope. Watch them with your kids to instill in them the love of the natural world and a respect for its miracles.

The award-winning feature documentary “The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill” is the story of Mark Bittner’s tender devotion to a flock of 200 wild parrots in San Francisco. Bittner, once homeless, shows how humans thrive when they cultivate a deep relationship with the creatures of the natural world. There’s also a surprise ending I won’t give away.

Watch “Winged Migration” next. Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary, the film consists of mostly aerial footage and covers all seven continents, literally flying with large flocks of migrating birds. It pays to watch the special features on the DVD to learn how the cameraman actually flew with the birds in a specially invented aircraft.

If you love “Winged Migration,” you’ll love David Attenborough’s “The Life of Birds,” a series of 10 hour-long DVDs with intriguing titles like: “To Fly or Not to Fly,” “The Insatiable Appetite,” “Finding Partners” “The Demands of the Egg “and “The Limits of Endurance.”

Finally, get a copy of “A Sense of Wonder” by Rachel Carson, the famous author of “Silent Spring.” Published posthumously in 1956, this lovely book is dedicated to her nephew Roger, who shared summers with her in her cottage in Maine. She writes: “If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in.”