Category: Reviews
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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…
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Book Review: The Future of Humanity
The Future of Humanity: A Conversation by Jiddu Krishnamurti and David Bohm is a small book and a quick read. The book contains a transcript of two dialogues that took place between Krishnamurti and Bohm in June 1983. Bohm writes in the preface that these two dialogues took place three years after a series of…
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Book Review: The Art of Leading Collectively
The Art of Leading Collectively: Co-Creating a Sustainable, Socially Just Future by Petra Kuenkel is a book about the art of collaborating for a sustainable future. Collaboration is a form of co-creation.1 Kuenkel reminds us that everything we do, or do not do, contributes to the co-creation of the world.2 What we need to do…
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Book Review: Essays on the Quaker Vision of Gospel Order
Essays on the Quaker Vision of Gospel Order by Lloyd Lee Wilson address facets of (Conservative) Quaker faith and practice. Here is a summary of the book together with some conclusions. I’ve chosen to focus on the Quaker vision of good order, waiting worship, faith community, meeting for business, and leadings and discernment. Gospel, Right,…
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Book Review: The Structure of Value
The Structure of Value: Foundations of Scientific Axiology is Robert S. Hartman’s seminal work on Formal Axiology. Robert S. Hartman was born in Germany in 1910. Seeing the Nazis organize evil, he fled Nazi Germany for his opposition to Hitler. He devoted the rest of his life to organize good. This led him to a…
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Book Review: A Key to Whitehead’s Process and Reality
A Key to Whitehead’s Process and Reality by Donald W. Sherburne is a great guide to Whitehead’s philosophy! Alfred North Whitehead’s book Process and Reality (commonly referred to as PR) is extremely difficult to read.1 PR is rich and suggestive, but its opacity is monumental.2 The text of PR is in very poor condition. Whitehead…
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Book Reeview: A Quaker Approach to Research
A Quaker Approach to the Conduct of Research: Collaborative Practice and Communal Discernment by Gray Cox with Charles Blanchard, Geoff Garver, Keith Helmuth, Leonard Joy, Judy Lumb, and Sara Wolcott has grown out of a decade of experiments employing Quaker processes of communal discernment in research.1 The book itself is the product of collaborative work.…
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Book Review: How Does Societal Transformation Happen?
How Does Societal Transformation Happen? Values Development, Collective Wisdom, and Decision Making for the Common Good is a small 87 page book, or booklet, by Leonard Joy. Joy has more than half a century of experience of development research and fieldwork, and a long involvement with collaborative decision-making processes.1 Valuing human dignity Leonard Joy sees…
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Bok Review: If Aristotle Ran General Motors
Tom Morris asks in his book If Aristotle Ran General Motors: The New Soulf of Business what Aristotle would have done to “create lasting excellence and long-term success in the business world” (p.ix)? Tom Morris believes that “there are some basic truths … which undergird any sort of human excellence or flourishing” (p.x). “Regardless of…