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January 10, 2009
Recommended Books
Howard T. Odum: A Prosperous Way Down: Principles and Policies
(*****)Daniel H. Pink: A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future
Richard Manning: Against the Grain: How Agriculture Has Hijacked Civilization
- Edgar L. Hewett: Ancient Life in the American Southwest
Herman E. Daly: Beyond Growth : The Economics of Sustainable Development
Donella H. Meadows: Beyond the Limits: Confronting Global Collapse, Envisioning a Sustainable Future
Janine M. Benyus: Biomimicry : Innovation Inspired By Nature
William R. Jr. Catton: Bottleneck: Humanity's Impending Impasse
Patricia Smith Churchland: Brain-Wise: Studies in Neurophilosophy
Aldous Huxley: Brave New World Revisited (Perennial Classics)
Daniel C. Dennett: Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon
David Edwards: Burning All Illusions: A Guide to Personal and Political Freedom
To paraphrase a key point: There are no conspiracies as participants are simply acting within the framework that is in place.Jonathan Nitzan: Capital as Power: A Study of Order and Creorder (RIPE Series in Global Political Economy)
Fascinating book. Fortunately and unfortunately, I was able to renew this 2009 book twice because no one requested it at the major university library where I checked it out. This itself is fascinating as the contents are probably some of the most important for these times. (*****)Professor: City of the End of Things: Lectures on Civilization and Empire
Jared Diamond: Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
Lex Hixon: Coming Home : The Experience of Enlightenment in Sacred Traditions
Mitchell M. Waldrop: COMPLEXITY: THE EMERGING SCIENCE AT THE EDGE OF ORDER AND CHAOS
Robert R. Prechter Jr.: Conquer the Crash: You Can Survive and Prosper in a Deflationary Depression
William McDonough: Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things
Muhammad Yunus: Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism
- Richard Buckminster, Fuller: Critical Path
Martha Burk: Cult of Power : Sex Discrimination in Corporate America and What Can Be Done About It
Spencer Wells: Deep Ancestry: Inside the Genographic Project
Ivan Illich: Deschooling society (World perspectives, v. 44)
Amartya Sen: Development as Freedom
Recommended reading for anyone interested in development -- personal or otherwise. One can support most of the ideas of Hayek and still recognize that early opportunities to learn are a key ingredient in maximizing potential. I think that the author is a little ambivalent about population growth. I get the sense that he is unaware that finite resources and unlimited material growth are incompatible. (*****)- Russell Jacoby: Dogmatic Wisdom
Daniel H. Pink: Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
John Taylor Gatto: Dumbing Us Down : The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling
- William Ophuls: Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity Revisited: The Unraveling of the American Dream
William Bonner: Empire of Debt: The Rise of an Epic Financial Crisis
Chris Hedges: Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle
mis-identifies the author of "The Jungle" as Sinclair Lewis rather than Upton Sinclair. Too hard on positive psychology...I would recommend reading the last chapter alone...one of the best summaries of the state of the union...I give it 5 stars for this chapter alone (*****)Neil Postman: End Of Education, The: Redefining the Value of School
Richard Moore: Escaping the Matrix: How We the People can change the world
Satyajit Das: Extreme Money: Masters of the Universe and the Cult of Risk
Addison Wiggin: Financial Reckoning Day Fallout: Surviving Today's Global Depression
Nikolai Eberhardt: From The Big Bang To The Human Predicament
This book should be a bestseller. It demonstrates the root causes of the human predicament in a comprehensive fashion. (*****)Toby Hemenway: Gaia's Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture
James Redfield: God and the Evolving Universe: The Next Step in Personal Evolution
Sankara Saranam: God without Religion: Questioning Centuries of Accepted Truths
- R. Buckminster Fuller: Grunch of giants
Paul R. Ehrlich: Human Natures: Genes, Cultures, and the Human Prospect
- Kirkpatrick Sale: Human Scale
This is the book that first caused me to seriously think about the course of humanity. Highly recommended. Robert Kegan: In Over Our Heads: The Mental Demands of Modern Life
(*****)Carl Honore: In Praise of Slowness : How A Worldwide Movement Is Challenging the Cult of Speed
KEN WILBER: Integral Psychology : Consciousness, Spirit, Psychology, Therapy
Peter Seidel: Invisible Walls: Why We Ignore the Damage We Inflict on the Planet--And Ourselves
Micah Sifry: Is That a Politician in Your Pocket? : Washington on $2 Million a Day
Crissy Trask: It's Easy Being Green: A Handbook for Earth-Friendly Living
Peter Unger: Living High and Letting Die : Our Illusion of Innocence
- Mihajlo and Pestel, Eduard Mesarovic: Mankind at the Turning Point
George Leonard: Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment (Plume)
Tracy Kidder: Mountains Beyond Mountains: Healing the World: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer
- Joanna R. Macy: Mutual Causality in Buddhism and General Systems Theory: The Dharma of Natural Systems (S U N Y Series in Buddhist Studies)
Ken Wilber: No Boundary : Eastern and Western Approaches to Personal Growth
Paul R. Ehrlich: One With Nineveh: Politics, Consumption, and the Human Future
William Catton: Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change
Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in Human and Natural Systems
Recognizes that the lack of an integrative framework is a problem for sustainable development. Published in 2002. I wish I had found out about it earlier. Tough book to find. Expensive. Textbook? I would like to see chapter 14 published by itself as it may help lay people visualize the various development factions. (****)Spencer Wells: Pandora's Seed: The Unforeseen Cost of Civilization
Margaret Atwood: Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth
Richard Heinberg: Peak Everything: Waking Up to the Century of Declines (New Society Publishers)
William Ophuls: Plato's Revenge: Politics in the Age of Ecology
Russell Finley: Poison Darts: Protecting the Biodiversity of Our World
Fred L. Block: Postindustrial Possibilities: A Critique of Economic Discourse
Peter Senge: Presence: Human Purpose and the Field of the Future
Christian de Quincey: Radical Nature: Rediscovering the Soul of Matter
- Abraham H. Maslow: Religions, Values, and Peak-Experiences
Abraham H. Maslow: Religions, Values, and Peak-Experiences (Compass)
Recommended by Jonathan Haidt (in The Happiness Hypothesis)- William Ophuls: Requiem for Modern Politics : The Tragedy of the Enlightenment and the Challenge of the New Millennium
- Mary Douglas: Risk and Culture
- Elinor Ostrom: Rules, Games, and Common-Pool Resources (Ann Arbor Books)
Michael Downing: Shoes Outside the Door: Desire, Devotion and Excess at San Francisco Zen Center
I found this book helpful as a "what not to do" guide in building an organization. (****)Mark Lynas: Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet
(*****)E. F. Schumacher: Small Is Beautiful : Economics as if People Mattered
Ian I. Mitroff: Smart Thinking for Crazy Times: the Art of Solving the Right Problems
Geoffrey Miller: Spent: Sex, Evolution, and Consumer Behavior
Jane Jacobs: Systems of Survival: A Dialogue on the Moral Foundations of Commerce and Politics
Thomas Paine: The Age of Reason: Being an Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology
James S. Russell: The Agile City: Building Well-being and Wealth in an Era of Climate Change
Peter Block: The Answer to How Is Yes: Acting on What Matters
Harry Binswanger: The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z (Ayn Rand Library, Vol 4)
Steven Pinker: The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature
Alan Watts: The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are
Sam Weller: The Bradbury Chronicles : The Life of Ray Bradbury
Charles Freeman: The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason
Joseph Tainter: The Collapse of Complex Societies (New Studies in Archaeology)
Sarah Hayden Reichard: The Conscientious Gardener: Cultivating a Garden Ethic
PAUL H. RAY, Phd.: The Cultural Creatives : How 50 Million People Are Changing the World
John Michael Greer: The Ecotechnic Future: Envisioning a Post-Peak World
Ph.D., Ken Robinson: The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything
Sam Harris: The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason
Dianne Dumanoski: The End of the Long Summer: Why We Must Remake Our Civilization to Survive on a Volatile Earth
Quoting Gus Speth [p.164]: "The climate convention is not protecting the climate, the biodiversity convention is not protecting biodiversity, the desertification convention is not preventing desertification, and even the older and stronger Convention on the Law of the Sea is not protecting fisheries. Nor are they poised to do so in the immediate future."Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: The Evolving Self: A Psychology for the Third Millennium
Abraham H. Maslow: The Farther Reaches of Human Nature (An Esalen Book)
Richard Florida: The Flight of the Creative Class: The New Global Competition for Talent
- Peter Russell: The Global Brain
Karen Armstrong: The Great Transformation : The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions
Jonathan Haidt: The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom
I like his integration of Eastern and Western methods. I find his psychological method of envisioning "the elephant and the rider" to be helpful. Other helpful concepts/terms: Cross-Level Coherence, effectance motive (*****)Guy Claxton: The Heart of Buddhism: Practical Wisdom for an Agitated World
Kenneth E. Boulding: The Image: Knowledge in Life and Society (Ann Arbor Paperbacks)
- Ronald Gross: The Independent Scholar's Handbook
- Upton Sinclair: The Industrial Republic
G. J. Sawyer: The Last Human: A Guide to Twenty-Two Species of Extinct Humans
Timothy Freke: The Laughing Jesus : Religious Lies and Gnostic Wisdom
Christopher Alexander: The Luminous Ground: The Nature of Order, Book 4
Iain McGilchrist: The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World
Ketan Patel: The Master Strategist: Power, Purpose and Principle
- The Meaning of the Humanities: Five Essays (Essay and general literature index reprint series)
From the preface: ...developing and training human intelligence so that, freed from the mists of ignorance and prejudice, man may live a life of more abundant goodmess. David Livingstone Smith: The Most Dangerous Animal: Human Nature and the Origins of War
Michael Pollan: The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
- Masanobu Fukuoka: The One-Straw Revolution: An Introduction to Natural Farming
Andrew Bard Schmookler: The Parable of the Tribes: The Problem of Power in Social Evolution
Dennis Genpo Merzel: The Path of the Human Being : Zen Teachings on the Bodhisattva Way
James Redfield: The Secret of Shambhala : In Search of the Eleventh Insight
Peter Dauvergne: The Shadows of Consumption: Consequences for the Global Environment
Karen Armstrong: The Spiral Staircase : My Climb Out of Darkness (Armstrong, Karen)
Ori Brafman: The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations
Alan W. Watts: The Supreme Identity
If you have a shadow of a doubt that a Supreme Being does not exist, read this book.Thorstein Veblen: The Theory of the Leisure Class (Penguin Classics)
John Ralston Saul: The Unconscious Civilization
A highly recommended book. Outlines the underlying reason why society is stuck in the doldrums.Joanne B. Ciulla: The Working Life: The Promise and Betrayal of Modern Work
- Herman E., Comp. Daly: Toward a Steady-State Economy.
Christopher Lasch: True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics
Understanding Knowledge as a Commons: From Theory to Practice
Jonathan Coulson: University Planning and Architecture: The Search for Perfection
Jennifer Washburn: University, Inc.: The Corporate Corruption of American Higher Education
John Ralston Saul: Voltaire's Bastards : The Dictatorship of Reason in the West (Vintage)
Morris Berman: Wandering God: A Study in Nomadic Spirituality
Rachel Botsman: What's Mine Is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption
Morris Berman: Why America Failed: The Roots of Imperial Decline
Robert M. Pirsig: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
