Idealism pushes forward to make space for what we later call progress
341917
Nailed it! There are people who think this way at every company. Christine, gives them an identity and rallies them to community. These tribes will make progress that benefits lives globally. A candid assessment of the realities & struggles, but nonetheless, aspirational. There's no doubt it's worth it, whether progress happens in leaps or incrementally. A great book for anyone who believes business for good is good business.
419988
This book is an interesting review of the ways different sectors of society  business, governments, NGOs and communities  are coming together in new models to solve on-going and often systemic problems. The book is predicated on a belief  and one I subscribe to  that the traditional model of big government as the solutions provider is slowly being supplanted by new forces.

Why this is happening is fascinating and has important implications for all of us. There is a growing lack of trust in governments to provide the solutions; there are new geopolitical players that play by different economic models than pure capitalism; and the is a growing recognition that information-sharing and the applications of big data are transforming the way we get and use new solutions. Im a firm believer that this is already happening and you can see that in the first six chapters of this book (though there is less on why this is happening as there is on the results of this transformation).

The early chapters are a collection of anecdotes and analysis on those various partners and how they operate in the new environment, taking over the role of governments to provide solutions to challenges such as water and food security. The final chapter  seven  is where I suspect most people will be inspired. It covers what YOU can do to help contribute to the solution revolution.

In some ways, I wish the authors had started with this chapter and wove the other material into it. I believe it would bring the material more alive for the reader. However, I think most people who are interested in this topic will read it from beginning to end and see for themselves how they and their organizations fit into this new model.
3793637
The somewhat unique concept of this book is the blending of city planning, architecture, social psychology and cultural anthropology. Montgomery is a strong advocate for people-centered urban spaces and contends that this makes people much happier than the suburban sprawl common in America which leads to long commutes and frustrated people who never know their neighbors and lose a sense of trust. It's a concept Jane Jacobs advocated years ago when fighting for the preservation of Greenwich Village.

Montgomery describes examples from Bogot to Paris, Vancouver to Copenhagen of human scale urban landscapes that make people "happy." He damns city building codes and tax incentives that encourage big box stores with huge parking lots on urban fringes using tax funds to favor auto transportation over mixed use urban spaces with public transit and bike paths. Given their choice more and more people would choose the latter as prices of revitalized urban residential and commercial space is beginning to prove. Montgomery emphasizes the way sprawl discriminates against both young people who cannot safely walk or bike to school and elderly people who can no longer drive -- certainly an increasingly important issue as baby boomers age.

This book would be a solid five if it had an index but that lack makes it very difficult to return to an earlier point you would like to reconsider..
3176578
College professor John Loase's 8th book on sigfluence, The Sigfluence Generation: Our Young People's Potential to Transform America, is inspiring to today's youth.  Sigfluence, a term coined by John Loase, is defined as, "significant, long-term, positive influence."  In a nutshell, today's youth have great potential and share the burden of implementing a positive influence; however, Loase argues that the most effective way to fulfill their potential is with the help of the Baby Boomers.

Though many are clearly gifted individuals, it remains definitive that the assistance of those that have already traveled the road is required.  Unfortunately, the concept of sigfluence, despite being a universal and fundamental necessity, is widely neglected.  Being in the 18-25 age group, I can attest to the immense desire that youth have to enact change and transform the educational, economical, and all aspects of America.  Whether or not they will be matched with the right helpers remains in question; this is where Sigfluence becomes an enormous asset.

From redefining the concept of meaningful work to providing self-help strategies to push individuals to improve the quality of their life, and others around them, Sigfluence is a high-impact book that deserves to be in college classrooms and perhaps even high school classrooms.  More than anything else, it creates an awareness of the potential--and unfulfilled potential--of today's youth, and gives direction to their future.  A prosperous America is heavily dependent upon realizing the potential of today's youth.
368028
Elections are inherently divisive, but we don't have to accept ruptured relationships as predestined outcome. This concept may be particularly important to remember this November.

Groundwork for unification starts in our local communities, not simply at the ballot box.

The increasing segregation of our nation, and dangers inherent in such separation, led to my first two novels suggesting that we might be only a generation away from risking permanent fracture. Several paths forward are evident, including several highlighted in "Integration Nation: Immigrants, Refugees, and America at its Best" by Brandeis University Professor Susan Eaton.

Successful integration projects she highlighted centered around:

 community centers in Fort Wayne, Indiana and Hazleton, Pennsylvania (the latter inspired by Chicago Cubs Manager Joe Maddon),
 a credit union in North Carolina,
 community gardens in Boise, Idaho,
 an interfaith initiative in Nebraska, and
 study circles in Maryland.

In each case, exposure across racial, ethnic and language boundaries helps bridge gaps between long-term residents and immigrants from various parts of the globe. Evidence also continues to be compelling for dual-language immersion programs. Im convinced the United States needs to adopt these programs across multiple languagesincluding Mandarin, Spanish, Hindi, Portuguese, Arabic and Russianto remain competitive as America becomes a smaller percentage of the global economic landscape. In Utah, dual-language immersion programs highlighted by Eaton increased test scores across multiple subjects for children in previously single-language English and Spanish households.

While I believe it essential to successfully integrate with anyone living inside our borders, I certainly understand frustration with a clearly broken system that discourages legal immigration while encouraging illegal entry. For its writing and the stories it shares, this book deserves five stars. I settled on four stars only as protest that it didn't tackle the equally hard challenge of identifying the best methods of determining how much immigration makes sense. Clearly, with average income for the lowest-earning 60 percent of U.S. households still below 2008 levels, we have an excess of labor supply that would be a consideration for immigrant entry in a well-functioning immigration system. But taking frustration out on the vast numbers of hardworking, family-oriented immigrants who simply take advantage of the broken system our elected leaders have created and/or failed to administer won't create the better nation we all seek, as Prof. Eaton clearly identifies.

While we make our separate decisions on what type of immigration system we demand going forward, we can certainly acknowledge that beginning or expanding integration work inside our communities will create long-term benefits regardless of who wins in November. This book does a great job of describing multiple paths forward.
823994
Mindy-Gibbins Klein's pertinent, well researched book has highlighted a vacuum in society: the need for people to step forward and own themselves as the real Thought Leaders in their field.

She provides both inspiration and practical strategies to enable the reader to move to the next level and fulfil this role, identifying the defining characteristics of a Real Thought Leader and encouraging us to set a new, higher standard for ourselves by taking up this mantle. Our society, particularly our young people, are desperate for true role models and mentors to inspire them to become something more worth while than "celebrities." As Real Thought Leaders step up and give people something to aspire to, we will see a positive future unfold for all of us.

Thank you, Mindy, for putting the spotlight on this subject, equipping us to become Real Thought Leaders in such a thought provoking, empowering manner.
4197830
If read with care, cover to cover, the book presents a persuasive argument, rooted in economic history, which ought to become in the decades ahead a viable framework, on the national, regional, then global level, for revolutionary transformations which will bring capitalism to heal while preserving its creative vitality.
3528387
If you want a clear-headed look at what is central to our past and therefore likely to be central to our future, read this.  If you want to raise your vision beyond contemporary politics and put it in perspective, this book will speak to you.

Bennett and Lotus step back and give us a broad view of the centrality of the family to our independence.  Then they look forward, seeing a future with the optimism of futurists but the wisdom of that grounding in the past.  They do not see the transition as simple nor painless, but they do see a return to both values and customs that made our lives meaningful in the past.  It is cheering to read their solutions and refreshing to see a book that is not caught up in politics but rather the way a government (certainly a smaller, less intrusive, but sound one) can provide a structure in which the family and the good life can be lived.
2398984
Possibly centuries from now when the world has overcome hunger and war and has established a far more humane economic and social order than what we have, people will look back in the past and painfully regret that they did not have the opportunity to be born at the time of Prabhat Rainjain Sarkar, much less get the opportunity to speak to and meet him.
Sarkar's lofty genius, while relatively unheralded in our time, will be looked back upon in awe at such distant time when his ideas will become the basis of that future society's peace and progress.
Dada Maheshvarananda, as a disciple of PR Sarkar and as a reading light in the worldwide PROUT movement, is letting us now that it is not necessary to wait fot the future to unfold. We can implement PROUT ideas now and the book describes how this already being done in some parts of the world by smart people in search of something better.
This is a 'must read' book for those who see no future in global capitalism and sincerely desire a better world.
4564572
The Reconstructionist movement is both the newest and the smallest of the modern American Jewish movements, but its influence has been tremendous.  Mordecai Kaplan, its founder, conceived of Judaism as an evolving religious civilization (more than simply a religion) and of God as a process or transcendant power (not a supernatural being).  These ideas led him to a conception of Judaism that respects and honors the past while transforming it to provide a modern expression of traditional Jewish values.  Although Kaplan ended up founding a new movement, he spent most of his life (until his retirement at age 82) teaching and writing at the Conservative movement's Jewish Theological Seminary, and it is apparent from Neil Gillman's book "Conservative Judaism:  The New Century" and from the Conservative Statement of Principles "Emet ve-Emunah" (which expressly allows for Kaplan's conception of God) that Kaplan had a huge impact on the intellectual leaders of the Conservative movement.  Reform's recent trend toward more traditional practice is surely also at least partly a recognition that Kaplan was right to emphasize continuity with the past even while acknowledging the necessity of modernization.
In "Exploring Judaism," Rabbis Alpert and Staub provide a brief introduction to Reconstructionist belief and practice.  The emphasis in the first six chapters is on the fundamental beliefs that define the movement -- the conception of Judaism as an evolving religious civilization, the nature of God, the role of traditional practice and halakha, the interaction of practicing Jews with an open society, and the place of Zionism.  The ideas in these chapters are set out clearly and concisely and give the reader a good idea of what Reconstructionism is about.  These chapters are not meant to be theology or a rigorous exposition of Reconstructionist ideas; still, a little more detail on some of the more obvious difficulties (an asserted "solution" to the problem of theogony, which is not a solution at all) and tensions within the movement (did Kaplan go too far or not far enough in changing the liturgy, the language of prayer, the conception of "chosenness") would have been helpful.  As it stands, this part of the book seems to be pitched toward bright high school students or adults who have never thought about theological issues except in the most basic, "self help" terms.
The second half of "Exploring Judaism" is devoted to Reconstructionist practice -- study, prayer, ritual, social action, the development of inclusive communities, and the "structure" of the movement itself.  These chapters do an excellent job of demonstrating how Judaism can be reconstructed into a vital center of one's life and community.  Here the authors succeed in being inspirational without being preachy.
"Exploring Judaism" seems to have been written for people who were raised in another Jewish movement and who have either dropped out or become disenchanted.  A reasonable degree of familiarity with traditional Jewish practice and belief is assumed throughout.  If you are lacking that familiarity, you may be somewhat lost, particularly in the later chapters.  Recommended to anyone seeking to learn more about this path to reconnecting with Judaism.
2046335
This book gives us an excellent vision forward.
684417
First published in 1957 with the intent to show some of the roots of the "modern mind" (which was then still recovering from McCarthyism),  Walter Houghton's book more than accomplishes its stated goals.  THE  VICTORIAN FRAME OF MIND is divided in to three parts in which Houghton  examines Victorian emotional, intellectual and moral attitudes. He bases  these discussions on the premise that 1830-1870 was an "age of  transition," and that the Victorian English were the first to think of  their own time as "an era of change FROM the past TO the  future."
The Victorians found the pace of their life compared to that of  their grandfathers to be inordinately fast, they both lamented and welcomed  the breakdown of old regimes and the coming into its own of the Industrial  Revolution.  Darwin's theory of evolution made thousands of them quake in  their boots--even though so many of them were raised on a wrathful God more  than a loving God, the prospect of no God at all sent many running for the  metaphorical hills.  Throughout the book, Houghton extensively quotes the  Victorians themselves (e.g. Ruskin, Arnold, Carlyle, Charles Kingsley) and  it is shocking and uncanny how many times what was written a good 150 years  ago resembles what you might find in the press and literature of today.  This from 1851: "everybody has his own little ISM . . . by which the  country can be saved."  How about this line from Carlyle's PAST AND  PRESENT: "we have profoundly forgotten everywhere that Cash-payment is not  the sole relation of human beings."
A key to understanding how Victorians  thought about themselves and their world, Houghton points out, lies in  accepting the many contradictions and tensions of the age, most importantly  their overwhelming optimism balanced against their high level of anxiety.  Of the book's fourteen chapters, particularly interesting and provocative  are those on "The Critical Spirit--and The Will to Believe," "The  Commercial Spirit," "Dogmatism," and "Hypocrisy."
Houghton admits from  the start that he's out for the "general sense" of how people thought, and  he narrows his purview even further to the literate classes.  He therefore  makes many sweeping statements that could still meet with criticism--even  with the quotations he provides from the writers of the time.  THE  VICTORIAN FRAME OF MIND is still a useful background text for scholars,  though it might put off those with ISMs on their shoulders.  Moreover, it  is a rich and engaging book for the student or amateur of the Victorian  era, which, while different in several important ways from our own American  society, is all too eerily similar when you come right down to it.  Highly  recommended!
3741469
As a 30-something New Yorker, Ive been experiencing a shift in my attitude toward consumption these past few years. A sustained delight in returning the cable box to Time Warner; in preferring e-books that take up no space; resoling a pair of boots instead of buying a new pair; saving for a trip by eschewing taxis and new clothes for a year. I haven't had a word  much less a movement  to which I could attribute this sense of wanting my life to involve less stuff and more experience. Turns out there is a word and a movement: Stuffocation.
With a conversational approach to the capitalist system and social values, the author explains how wespecifically, gulp, Americanscame to embrace and spread the gospel of materialism. He introduces us to colorful people who have become minimalists, medium chillers, consumer-minimalists, and finally, experientialists. He weaves studies and statistics into the narrative, raising the same questions that readers are asking.
The takeaway? What constitutes a satisfying consumer transaction is indeed shifting. The future will be an experience-based economy with goods that are more environmentally considerate; less bulky; more customized; easily updated and designed for sharing; and most importantly: they will promote activities that bring us closer to others and provide us with a shareable conversational currency.
My takeaway? Wanting fewer things and more experiences has set a domino-line of change into motion. It has the potential to transform mindsets, habits, lives, societies...and it starts with you, me, us.
304537
Another book, similar to some others that I have reviewed, that articulately describes the challenges confronting us in the postmodern world, the ways that congregations need to be transformed, and the leadership skills that are necessary for the task.

Robinson argues that we need the following transformations: from worship as talk about God to worship as experience of God; from Christian education to Christian formation; from givers to receivers who give; from board culture to ministry culture; from community organization to faith-based ministry; from democracy to discernment; from budget as end to budget as means; from fellowship to hospitality; and from passive membership growth to active membership growth.

Robinson didn't say a whole lot that I thought was new and different from a number of other books I have been reading recently, but on the other hand the more I wrestle with the changing world and the more I read books like this, the greater clarity I achieve about the task that lies ahead, and my role in it.
2547286
There is a good deal of anxiety, anger, and discussion today about how our society -- indeed, humanity itself -- stands at a crossroads reflected in the pervasive sense of imminent crisis and upheaval. There are many movements, organizations and self-help books that seek to instruct us on how to live a better life, but Robert Wasley stands apart with a unique approach called "Transitionalism". Transitionalism is both a worldview and program advocating positive social change in response to the current and future challenges facing us.

What distinguishes Transitionalism from traditional practices is its future oriented perspective, which recognizes that the future will be fundamentally different than the past. The book provides a systematic method for dealing with the issues that face us, both individually and as a society, and how the principles can be practically applied to the development of a sustainable productive relationship between the individual, society, and the environment.

This is an interesting book with valuable ideas that deserves 5 stars, but not an easy read, which is why I gave it a 4 star rating. The language and concepts are more philosophical in nature. I found the background history of humans and critique of religious doctrine to be too long, in proportion to the main focus of the book. The illustrations are very helpful in explaining the concepts discussed. However, I did like the principles and methods proposed by Transitionalism. This book helped me change the way I view the world, as well as my relationship to society.
2573467
Matt ridley's new book captures and explicates an idea whose time has Finally arrived: People and events may shape history but they are, themselves, shaped by the unfolding, inexorable tide of evolutionary forces that provide structure and impetus to unconscious, relentless, progress. When the time is ripe, circumstances will conspire to bring about changes unbidden by a demiurge or "skyhook" orchestrating a top-down imposition on the natural order. Far from doom and gloom, the emerging world foreseen by Ridley is one where, finally, the naturally embedded forces of evolutionary change will usher in a decentralized world where individuals and society will be given the chance to reach their true potential. Required  reading for enlightened minds.
1236870
An alternate sub-title for this book could be: "Leaving Supernatural Beliefs Behind."  Caught in the Pulpit should be widely read for the issues it raises about the roles of the clergy and the future of churches in an increasingly secular, pluralistic society.  Its major value is in stimulating the kinds of conversations that need to be ongoing among believers, non-believers, atheists, humanists, Christians, adherents of the world's religions, and all those who care about creating a humane world for all peoples.  The authors describe many kinds of faith and unfaith, focusing on both 1) clergy who struggle to maintain their integrity in institutions that are changing and who are supported by their members even when their understandings differ; and 2) churches that are evolving in a cultural context that no longer provides a "sacred canopy" to support their world views. (Full disclosure: I was "Rick," one of the original five "subjects" in the study in 2010; I was an "outlier" who never felt "caught").
  Neither clergy nor religious communities have a clear blueprint for how to adapt.  The authors prescribe strong doses of honesty, but they do not provide many positive or practical suggestions for moving beyond the ancient "atheist versus theist" debates, or how churches as social institutions might be helped to change.  But they do give an inside glimpse into some of the problems that must be confronted if religious communities and their leaders are to evolve into cultural movements capable of continuing to contribute to creative human transformation and ecological flourishing.
  Dennett and LaScola persuasively describe the discomfort of clergy who can no longer affirm "acceptable" orthodoxy.  They also consider the potential evolutionary extinction of churches.  They wonder whether removing supernatural elements from beliefs about God, the Bible, Jesus, creeds, and doctrines might help churches evolve into more relevant social movements in our increasingly secular scientific culture.
  While the purpose of the study was to raise questions, I wish they could have done more to identify already existing non-supernatural ways to interpret and re-construct religions that honor the humane values that non-believers and believers alike can affirm.  Some theologians, biblical scholars, church bodies, and progressive clergy are contributing to these efforts of reimagining, drawing on the core historical principle of many churches: "reformed and always reforming."
  Yet the authors are correct in their assessment that while many liberal and evangelical churches have made significant contributions to ethical discourse, social justice, human rights, and equality for gays, women, and racial/ethnic communities, most of them have not updated their statements of faith to reflect our modern scientific world view (which, it must be admitted, has itself not been free from violence, war, repression and bloody conflict).  Finally, the book leaves open the question of whether the churches will evolve or die.  That may be partly up to courageous clergy like those in this study, to the religious communities which formed them, and to whether there can be cooperation between them and the emerging communities of humanists and freethinkers that are evolving alongside them.
  -Mark Rutledge