BuzzFlash Reviews
Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming (Hardcover)
By Paul Hawken
BUZZFLASH REVIEWS
Yes, it's true.
Paul Hawken, who has written several books that have gained international attention -- and who is a life-long innovative activist and socially responsible entrepeneur -- has penned his latest tome that argues that there is a rumbling in the world that is about to erupt. It is the coalescing force of advocates for environmental preservation, economic justice, and civil societies -- and it is reaching critical mass.
Up against the massive forces of nations that have yielded sovereignty to the interests of multi-national corporations, this grassroots movement that represents the best of democracy is about to come of age.
From the publisher:
"Blessed Unrest tells the story of a worldwide movement that is largely unseen by politicians or the media. Hawken, an environmentalist and author, has spent more than a decade researching organizations dedicated to restoring the environment and fostering social justice. From billion-dollar nonprofits to single-person causes, these organizations collectively comprise the largest movement on earth. This is a movement that has no name, leader, or location, but is in every city, town, and culture. It is organizing from the bottom up and is emerging as an extraordinary and creative expression of people’s needs worldwide.
Blessed Unrest explores the diversity of this movement, its brilliant ideas, innovative strategies, and centuries-old history. The culmination of Hawken’s many years of leadership in these fields, it will inspire, surprise, and delight anyone who is worried about the direction the modern world is headed. Blessed Unrest is a description of humanity’s collective genius and the unstoppable movement to re-imagine our relationship to the environment and one another. Like Hawken’s previous books, Blessed Unrest will become a classic in its field— a touchstone for anyone concerned about our future."
From Wikipedia:
Paul Hawken is author and co-author of dozens of articles, op-eds, papers, as well as six books including The Next Economy (Ballantine 1983) wherein he coined the term the "restoration economy", Growing a Business (Simon and Schuster 1987), and The Ecology of Commerce (HarperCollins 1993). The Ecology of Commerce was voted in 1998 as the #1 college text on business and the environment by professors in 67 business schools. In this book, he introduced the comprehensive outcome principle - taking account of the entire result of an event or process to all parties, not just the immediate participants. When considering a decision to build a factory, for instance, it would include the natural resource depletion, the pollution, and any side effects of the production, distribution and consumption processes. Hawken contrasted this to a merely culminative outcome which is simply the obvious result visible to the buyer at the moment and point of purchase, and the profit made thereby by the supplier.
His book, Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution (Little, Brown. September 1999) with Amory Lovins, has been referred to by several heads of state including President Bill Clinton who calls it one of the five most important books in the world today. It popularized the now-standard idea of natural capital and direct accounting for nature's services. The book includes a price of Earth analysis.
His latest book is entitled Blessed Unrest, How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming will be published by Viking Press (New York) May, 2007. In it Hawken describes a convergence of the environmental and social justice movements as the largest social movement in history, and the fastest growing movement, comprising over 1 million organizations in every country in the world.
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