Berrett-Koehler Publishers
The connect effect; building strong personal, professional, and virtual networks.
Employment consultant Dulworth instructs how to take a conscious, systematic approach to networking in order to improve personal and professional development skills. After a brief introduction explaining the importance and benefits of networking, he presents a quiz for the reader to determine networking quotient. He then identifies three kinds of networks — personal, professional, and virtual — and examines each for their specific characteristics, further offering strategies, tools, and resources for increasing and making the best use of each network. Two resource-oriented appendices include information on forming a person board for decision-making, and online networking sites. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Framing the future; how progressive values can win elections and influence people.
Horn (Senior Director for Policy and Communications at the Center for Policy Alternatives) argues that progressive candidates can consistently win elections in the United States by learning how to frame their messages and gear them towards the "persuadable" voters, who believe in conservative principles but progressive policies. Using polling data to back up his arguments, he offers advice on how to structure political messages for a range of political issues and government processes. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Loyal to the sky; notes from an activist.
Handler (who has worked with Direct Action to Stop the War, U. for Peace and Justice, and the Tikkun Community) presents a memoir of her reporting on and participating in racial and social justice movements. The narrative takes her from her childhood in South Africa defending her parents' vote for the only legal anti-apartheid political party to her participation in protests against the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (formerly the School of Americas) at Fort Benning, Georgia. Along the way she travels to Israel/Palestine, Nepal, India, Ecuador, and Peru. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Making sustainability work; best practices in managing and measuring corporate social, environmental, and economic impacts.
Epstein (management, Rice U.) gives advice on how to implement corporate sustainability practices in large organizations, building upon his own research and the "best practices" of some 100 real world companies. He devotes separate chapters to the role of senior management in developing strategy; organizational design issues underpinning sustainability; capital investment, costing and risk management strategies; measurement of sustainability process and results; measurement of the social, environmental, and economic impacts of corporate activities; the role of feedback and internal reporting; and external communications. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Making waves and riding the currents; activism and the practice of wisdom.
Self-described social entrepreneur and activist Halpern is a co- founder of the Center for Law and Social Policy, an early public interest law firm; the founding dean of the City U. of New York Law School at Queens College, founded with a public interest mission; former president of the grant-making Nathan Cummings Foundation; and a founding figure of the Buddhist-influenced Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, "which works to integrate contemplative awareness and contemporary life, to help create a more just, compassionate, and reflective society." In this memoir, he describes his career involved with these and other projects, paying particular attention to the path that led him to his current spiritualism. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Out of poverty; what works when traditional approaches fail.
Polak (founder, International Development Enterprises) exposes and rejects the "Three great poverty eradication myths," namely, that donations alone, national economic growth, or Big Business (as it currently operates) will end poverty. He instead espouses a model that identifies market opportunities in high-value, labor-intensive cash crops for poor rural farmers and provides them with access to the tools they need. The first section of the book explores his own interest in eradicating poverty and describes the process he learned for finding creative solutions to major social problems. The second section describes the grass-roots approach to ending poverty in rural areas; a brief third section applies the principles to the poor in urban areas. The final section addresses the role poverty plays in environmental problems, and describes what donors, institutions, and governments can do to end poverty. As much time is devoted to one family throughout this book, the closing chapter addresses how one man in Nepal brought his family from poverty to the upper-middle class by the principles described in this book. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
