Category: Reviews

  • Book Review: The Garden Awakening

    The Garden Awakening: Designs to Nurture Our Land and Ourselves by Mary Reynolds is a book about designing gardens that are beautiful, radiant with life, bursting with energy, in harmony with the Earth.1 Mary Reynolds has discovered through her work as a garden and landscape designer that gardens can become very special if we invite…

  • Book Review: The Myths We Live By

    The Myths We Live By by Mary Midgley is based on the view that our imaginative visions are central to our understanding of the world. They are necessary parts of our thinking.1 The challenge is that our imaginative visions may mislead us if they are fired up by a particular set of ideals.2 Myths are are…

  • Book Review: Mind and Nature

    Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity by Gregory Bateson is built on the opinion that we are parts of a living world.1 Bateson offers the phrase the pattern which connects as another possible title for the book.2 He writes that we have been trained to think of patterns as something fixed. It is easier and lazier that way,…

  • Book Review: Many Voices One Song

    Many Voices One Song: Shared Power with Sociocracy by Jennifer Rau and Jerry Koch-Gonzalez is a new book on sociocracy. The book is a collection and description of sociocratic tools and practices.1 Sociocracy is a set of principles and tools for shared power. The assumption is that power sharing requires a plan.2 Sociocracy is designed…

  • Book Review: Generative Scribing

    Generative Scribing: A Social Art of the 21st Century by Kelvy Bird is, as the title says, a book about generative scribing, which is a visual practice and an art form, functioning in the moment, across boundaries, as a device for social seeing.1 The primary value of generative scribing is in-the-moment collective sourcing and reflection.…

  • Book Review: Walk Out Walk On

    Walk Out Walk On by Margaret J. Wheatley and Deborah Frieze is a book about walking out of limiting beliefs and assumptions, and walking on to create healthy and resilient communities. The message is that more is possible, and that walking out walking on can propel us beyond the safety of our daily routines, the security of…

  • Book Review: The Spirit of Leadership

    The Spirit of Leadership: Liberating the Leader in Each of Us by Harrison Owen is an amazing book! Its message is perhaps even more valid today as when it was written 28 years ago? Harrison Owen writes that “leadership is not the exclusive property of the few or The One.” Leadership is, on the contrary,…

  • Book Review: Leadership Agility

    Let me first say that I was provided with a complimentary copy of this book so that I could review it. I accepted writing this review since I’m interested in deeper generative organizing. The dance between leadership and followership is part of this dynamic. So, here is my summary of the book together with some…

  • Book Review: Reinventing the Sacred

    Reinventing the Sacred by Stuart Kauffman describes a scientific worldview that embraces the reality of emergence.1 We live in a universe, biosphere, and human culture that are not only emergent but radically creative. Kauffman attempts to lay out the scientific foundations for agency and therefore value in the biological world.2 He has a great deal…

  • Book Review: The Werkplaats Adventure

    The Werkplaats Adventure by Wyatt Rawson is about Kees and Betty Boeke’s pioneer comprehensive school, it’s methods and psychology.1 The Werkplaats, or Workshop, aimed at making all types of education available. It seeked to give the children an understanding of all aspects of life – the world within as well as of the world without.2 The…