Category: Books
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Book Review: Anam Ċara
Introduction Anam Ċara: Spiritual Wisdom from the Celtic World by John O’Donohue is a book which is intended to be an oblique mirror where we might come to glimpse the presence, power, and beauty of both inner and outer friendship.1 John O’Donohue was born in Ireland and spoke Irish as his native language. Anam is the…
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Book Review: Walk Through Walls
Walk Through Walls by Marina Abramović with James Kaplan is a memoir. It’s the story of Marina Abramović’s life and how she became a performance artist. Marina grew up in Belgrade and was often punished for the slightest infractions. The punishments were almost always physical. Marina Abramović’s mother and aunt used to hit Marina black and blue.…
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Book Review: Freedom from Command and Control
Freedom from Command and Control by John Seddon is a book about a better way to make work work. The focus of the book is on the translation of the principles behind the Toyota Production System for service organizations.1 The better way has a completely different logic to command-and-control, and that, perhaps, is the reason…
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Book Review: A Feeling for the Organism
A Feeling for the Organism: The Life and Work of Barbara McClintock by Evelyn Fox Keller is a story of the interaction between an individual scientist, Barbara McClintock (1902–1992), and a science, genetics.1 The book serves simultaneously as a biography and as an intellectual story. Evelyn Fox Keller shows how science is both highly personal…
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Book Review: Waking
Waking: A Memoir of Trauma and Transcendence is a book where Matthew Sanford shares his own story without judgment, protection, and sentimentality.1 It’s a book about appreciating and believing in your own experience.2 At the age of thirteen, Matthew was in a car accident that killed his father and sister. It also left him paralyzed…
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Book Review: Focusing
Focusing: How to Gain Direct Access to Your Body’s Knowledge by Eugene T. Gendlin is a most interesting book. Focusing is a skill which was discovered through fifteen years of research at the University of Chicago. Eugene T. Gendlin studied, together with a group of colleagues, why therapy so often failed to make real difference…
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Book Review: Survival in the Organization
Survival in the Organization: Gunnar Hjelholt Looks Back at the Concentration Camp from an Organizational Perspective by Benedicte Madsen & Søren Willert is a small book and a quick read. The book is about Gunnar Hjelholt’s life with a focus on his time in a German Concentration Camp during World War II. I found the…
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Quotes of John Welwood
This is a compilation of my tweets from John Welwood’s book Toward a Psychology of Awakening. Hence all these quotes are the length of tweets. … how we relate to another inevitably follows from how we relate to ourselves … … our outer relationships are but an extension of our inner life … … we…
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Book Review: A Brief History of Thought
A Brief History of Thought: A Philosophical Guide to Living by Luc Ferry is, in a way, a beginner’s guide to philosopy. I particularly like that Luc Ferry addresses a nonacademic audience. I also like that Luc Ferry tries to place the different philosophical systems in the best possible light, without seeking to criticize.1 I…
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Book Review: Artful Leadership
Artful Leadership: Awakening the Commons of the Imagination by Michael Jones is a most unusual leadership book. Michael Jones is a leadership educator, composer, and improvising pianist. He brings a unique and most profound sensibility to the art of leading in the now. We are all leaders and followers at the same time. This is such…