Category: Reviews
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Book Review: Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning
Introduction Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning is a most interesting book. Eugene Gendlin examines the edge of awareness, where language emerges from non-language.1 This book is a philosophical work. Gendlin explores how concepts relate to experiencing.2 He adds a body of theory that refer to experiencing, and that can grasp the way in which experiencing…
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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…
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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…
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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,…
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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…
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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.…
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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…
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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,…
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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…
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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…