Social Change —

Wendell Berry, Citizenship Papers: Essays
     Shoemaker & Hoard, 2004          ISBN 781593760373
      The Christian Science Monitor described Kentucky farmer and writer Wendell Berry — the author of more than forty books of essays, poetry and novels — as “the prophetic American voice of our day.”
     Citizenship Papers collects twenty new essays — from celebrations of exemplary lives to critiques of the American experience, including “A Citizen’s Response [to the new National Security Strategy]” — and sounda a ringing call of alarm to a nation standing on the brink of global catastrophe.
     There are those in America today who seem to feel we must audition for our citizenship, with “Patriot” offered as the badge for those found narrowly worthy. Let this book stand as Wendell Berry’s application, for he is one of those faithful, devoted critics envisioned by the Founding Fathers to be the life’s blood and very future of the nation they imagined. Adams, Jefferson, and Madison would have found great clarity in his prose and great hope in his vision. And today’s readers will be moved and encouraged by his anger and his refusal to surrender in the face of desperate odds. Books get written for all sorts of reasons, and this book was written out of necessity.
     “My work has been motivated,” Wendell Berry has written, “by a desire to make myself responsibly at home in this world and in my native and chosen place.”

Paul Hawken, Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming
     Viking, 2007          ISBN 0670038520
      Hawken has spent over a decade researching organizations dedicated to restoring the environment and fostering social justice. From multimillion-dollar nonprofits to single-person dot.causes, these groups collectively comprise a movement that has no name, no leader, no location, and that has gone largely ignored by politicians and the media. Like nature itself, it is organizing from the bottom up. Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming, explores the diversity of the movement, its ideas, strategies and hidden history. Hawken is an environmentalist, entrepreneur, journalist and author. He has been involved in the startup of several businesses, including Erewhon natural foods and Smith & Hawken, the garden and catalog retailer. His other books — published in more than 50 countries — include Growing a Business (also a PBS series), The Ecology of Commerce, and Natural Capitalism.

Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins, Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution
     Back Bay Books, 1999          ISBN 0316353000
     

Claudia Horwitz, The Spiritual Activist: Practices to Transform Your Life
     Penguin, 2002          ISBN 0142196061
      The Spiritual Activist is a practical guide to individual and social transformation through spirituality and faith. It will help you to make opportunities to slow down, to build stronger relationships at home and at work, and to embrace the world around you. Claudia Horwitz shows you how to use reflection, ritual, silence, movement, and the happenings of daily life to help you find unity between your inner journeys and outer commitments.

David C. Korten, The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community
     Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2006          ISBN 1887208070
      Korten makes the case that we humans are a choice-making species that at this defining moment faces both the opportunity and the imperative to choose our future as a conscious collective act. We can no longer deny the need nor delay our response. A mounting perfect economic storm is fast approaching. A convergence of climate change, peak oil, and the financial instability inherent in an unbalanced global trading system will bring an unraveling of the corporate-led global economy and a dramatic restructuring of every aspect of modern life.
     We cannot avoid the unraveling. We can, however, turn a potentially terminal crisis into an epic opportunity to bring forth a new era of Earth Community grounded in the life-affirming cultural values shared by most all the world’s people and eloquently articulated in the Earth Charter.
     The Great Turning is an essential resource for those who understand this need and are prepared to engage what Thomas Berry calls the Great Work. It cuts through the complexity of our time to illuminate a simple, but elegant truth. We humans live by stories. We are held captive to the ways of Empire by a cultural trance of our own creation maintained by stories that deny the higher possibilities of our human nature—including our capacities for compassion, cooperation, responsible self-direction, and self-organizing partnership.

Lynne Twist, The Soul of Money: Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Life
     Norton, 2003          ISBN 0393050971
      Awise and inspiring exploration of the connection between money and leading a fulfilling life. This compelling and fundamentally liberating book shows us that examining our attitudes toward money--earning it, spending it, and giving it away--can offer surprising insight into our lives, our values, and the essence of prosperity. Lynne Twist, who is continuing her work through the Soul of Money Foundation, is a global activist and fund-raiser who has raised more than $150 million in individual contributions for charitable causes. Through personal stories and practical advice, she demonstrates how we can replace feelings of scarcity, guilt, and burden with experiences of sufficiency, freedom, and purpose. She shares from her own life, a journey illuminated by remarkable encounters with the richest and poorest people on earth, from the famous (Mother Teresa and the Dalai Lama) to the anonymous but unforgettable heroes of everyday life.

Margaret Wheatley, Finding Our Way: Leadership for an Uncertain Time
     Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2005          ISBN 1576753174
      Margaret Wheatley is one of the most innovative and influential organizational thinkers of our time who has tested her ideas and perceptions in many different settings and cultures. Finding Our Way is a collection of her practice-focused articles, where she applies themes she has addressed throughout her career to detail the organizational practices and behaviors that bring them to life.
     Provocative, challenging, poetic, and often deeply moving, Finding Our Way sums up Wheatley's thinking on a diverse scope of topics, from leadership and management, to social change, to our personal role in these turbulent times; from provocative social commentary to specific organizational practices and more.