Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design – Page 4

2015/02/28

Review: Occupy the Economy – Challenging Capitalism

6 Star Top 10%, America (Founders, Current Situation), Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Civil Society, Congress (Failure, Reform), Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Democracy, Economics, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Misinformation & Propaganda, Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Public Administration, True Cost & Toxicity, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)

Richard Wolff with David Barsamian

5.0 out of 5 stars SIX STAR Primer on the Necessary Socio-Economic Revolution, February 28, 2015

SIX STAR (my top 10% across 2000+ non-fiction book). This is an extraordinary book full of straight talk and common sense that sets the stage for a socio-economic revolution, first in the USA and then elsewhere. It does not address the many isolated incidents of collaborative capitalism and the commons that are in motion around the world — for that look up Michel Bauwens and the work of others on the economic commons — and it neglects the coincident need for a political revolution which is what my latest book on Open Power is about — but on balance this is easily a six-star offering.

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2014/12/062014/12/07

Review: EMERGE! The Rise of Functional Democracy and the Future of the Middle East

5 Star, Change & Innovation, Civil Society, Complexity & Resilience, Consciousness & Social IQ, Country/Regional, Culture, Research, Democracy, Diplomacy, Insurgency & Revolution, Intelligence (Public), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Politics, Public Administration, Survival & Sustainment, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)

Elza S. Maalouf, Foreword by Don Beck

5.0 out of 5 stars Extraordinary — Empowering, World-Changing, Rich in Substance, December 6, 2014

This book was recommended to me by Michael Ostrolenk, whom I consider one of the most inspiring transpartisan figures in America today, and endorsed by Elisabet Sahtouris, evolution biologist and “Yoda” to many of us. Given those two recommendations, my own review is pro forma, summary notes for smart people.

This is a most extraordinary book that I found deeply absorbing, inspiring, and practical. It is an original work in every possible sense of the word, and brings to the public insights, concepts, and methods that are essential to creating peace and prosperity among vastly diverse groups whose cultures, mind-sets, life conditions, and existing forms of governance and economics are not just in conflict, but downright pathologically dysfunctional.

Within this rich offering are a few things that are simply not found elsewhere, that could and should redefine and mature Western and Eastern understanding and practice:

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2014/12/022014/12/02

Review: Gaia’s Dance – The Story of Earth & Us

5 Star, Best Practices in Management, Change & Innovation, Complexity & Resilience, Consciousness & Social IQ, Cosmos & Destiny, Culture, Research, Disease & Health, Economics, Environment (Solutions), Future, Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Priorities, Stabilization & Reconstruction, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution

Elisabet Sahtouris

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant Story of Biological Evolution — Our Yoda Speaks, December 2, 2014

I met the author at the Findhorn Foundation in Scotland where we were both attending the New Story Summit. So let's start by me saying that this is what Yoda looks like in grandmother form. Elisabet Sahtouris is a HUGE brain packed into an earth form that is most kindly and hugely inspiring. Being around her is heart-warming, life-affirming, and intellectually stimulating — a full-brain massage in a cosmic-calm embrace.

Although I have read other work by her in the past — and I especially love her work as available free via YouTube — this book is a convergence of simple explanation about a relatively simple cosmos that we disrespect at our peril. This is a great overview of biological evolution and essential education for every adult who wishes to be responsible toward their children and Earth.

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2014/11/042014/11/05

Review: London – the Information Capital: 100 Maps and Graphics That Will Change How You View the City

5 Star, Atlases & State of the World, Best Practices in Management, Change & Innovation, Decision-Making & Decision-Support, Games, Models, & Simulations, Geography & Mapping, Information Society, Intelligence (Commercial), Intelligence (Public), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Public Administration

James Cheshire and Oliver Uberti

5.0 out of 5 stars From coffee table to scientific salon, a worthy offering, November 4, 2014

This is a spectacular offering on multiple fronts. On the low-end, it has got to be the coolest coffee table book around, something that could be usefully offered in every waiting room across London — and hopefully inspire copycats for other cities including Paris and New York and Dubai.

At the high end, the book offers the most current available understanding of just what can be gleaned from “big data” that is available from open databases — one can only imagine the additional value to be had from closed data bases (money movement, for example). And of course we have to persist in our demands that all data and the software and hardware needed to process the data be open source so that it is affordable, interoperable, and scalable.

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2014/10/292014/10/29

Review: The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid

5 Star, Best Practices in Management, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Economics, Intelligence (Commercial), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Stabilization & Reconstruction, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)

C. K. Prahalad

5.0 out of 5 stars Nobel-Level Work Essential to Understanding Our Bright Future, October 29, 2014

Sadly, the author is deceased. I have always considered him a contender for the Nobel Prize.

I am upset with Amazon for not carrying over reviews from past editions — new readers are advised to look up older editions of any books if they wish to take advantage of some of the extraordinary material provided by past reviewers. I will not replicate those other reviews — they are worth finding.

This book review should be read together with my review of Stuart Hart's Capitalism at the Crossroads: Next Generation Business Strategies for a Post-Crisis World (3rd Edition) which points to several other related books, and Kenichi Ohmae's book,The Next Global Stage: Challenges and Opportunities in Our Borderless World (paperback). All three are published by Wharton School Publishing, which has impressed me enormously with its gifted offerings.

Here's the math that I was surprised to not see in the book: the top billion people that business focuses on are worth less than a trillion in potential sales. The bottom four billion, with less than $1000 a year in disposable income, are worth four trillion in potential sales.

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2014/10/272014/10/27

Review: 1381 – The Year of the Peasants’ Revolt

6 Star Top 10%, Consciousness & Social IQ, Country/Regional, Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Culture, Research, Democracy, Disease & Health, Economics, History, Insurgency & Revolution, Intelligence (Public), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Philosophy, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Priorities, Public Administration, Religion & Politics of Religion, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)

Juliet Barker

5.0 out of 5 stars SIX STAR SPECTACULAR — COULD BE A CATALYST FOR REVOLUTION USA, October 27, 2014

This work is not being properly marketed in the USA. Harvard, the US publisher, is not doing all that it should which I find especially distressing because this could well be the single most important book any US citizen could read going into the farce of an election in 2014 and the travesty of 2016, when it appears that Jeb Bush will face off against Hillary Clinton, each so ably representing their side of the two-party tyranny that has sold out to Wall Street, barred the other parties (Constitution, Green, Libertarian, Natural Law, Reform, Socialist — and the Independents) from any possible access to political office, and sent two generations to elective wars mounted on the basis of greed and 935 lies.

Put as strongly as I can put it, this book could be a catalyst for revolution in the USA, and for that reason alone, I place it in my top ten percent, beyond five stars, this is a six star book.

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2014/10/252014/10/25

Review: Fusion Economics – How Pragmatism is Changing the World

5 Star, Best Practices in Management, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Change & Innovation, Complexity & Resilience, Culture, Research, Environment (Solutions), Future, Leadership, Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Politics, Public Administration, Stabilization & Reconstruction, Survival & Sustainment, Technology (Bio-Mimicry, Clean), Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution

Laurence Brahm

5.0 out of 5 stars Common Sense Community-Based Economics, October 25, 2014

Laurence Brahm is one of those unsung heroes who was changing the world for the better, and influencing various governments in most positive ways, long before ecological economics and social enterprise became fashionable turns of phrase. I regard him as the anti-thesis to the predatory capitalism mantras and methods of our time. His proven focus on community development and evolutionary blends of state planning and market incentives is precisely what we need now that everyone understands that Western governments have been corrupted and Western economies destroyed by financial interests devoted to extracting value instead of creating value. This is a practical book, a spiritual book, and one that should be required reading among those intent on creating collaborative economies and social enterprises.

His recommended gradualist evolutionary approach is ethical and focused on stable transformation, not rapid looting by foreign bankers.

Quote (41): The fundamental failure of ivory tower cookie-cutter models, for all of their theoretical perfection, is that they ignore local conditions, culture, mindset, and historical burdens.”

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