Organizations Books

The book is extremely well researched and thorough and is not blase enough to put forth a framework. Where it succeeds is by putting forth what the most successful companies are doing to prepare themselves for the next century in all aspects of their operations

This book: describes the drivers of change; examines how the new enterprise views people; analyzes how companies are using new tools in information technology, innovation, speed and quality; and explores how organizations are changing. Chapters end with highlights that prove very helpful to serious readers with limited time.

The discussion about organizational drivers of change is based on research findings, which makes this book not only interesting but credible in a blizzard of publications spewing forth about organizational change. Given all these books on this subject, many based on the thin ice of one person's experiences in a few enterprises, a research-based work is appreciated. Reviewed by Gerry Stern, founder, Stern & Associates, author of Stern's Sourcefinder: The Master Directory to HR and Business Management Information & Resources, Stern's CyberSpace SourceFinder, and Stern's Compensation and Benefits SourceFinder.

THE ORGANIZATION OF THE FUTURE is the best compilation of essays that I have seen on different ways to organize businesses and nonprofits to achieve different kinds of results. The book is full of intriguing questions and choices, and lots of good ideas about how to make the desired changes you select. Anyone who manages people should read this book, and refer to it when effectiveness questions arise. The only thing that seemed to be missing from this book was a "clean slate" approach to organizations, by imagining what has never existed before. That would be an intriguing addition for future editions. The Drucker Foundation has done a real service to us all by creating its series (THE LEADER ..., THE ORGANIZATION ..., and THE COMMUNITY OF THE FUTURE). I hope that a future version will appear on THE MANAGEMENT PROCESSES OF THE FUTURE. That would be an invaluble complement to this outstanding series.

The three books of the Drucker Foundation Future series represent a wonderful collection of thinking by noted thought leaders. Each chapter in the LEADER of the FUTURE, the ORGANIZATION of the FUTURE, and the COMMUNITY of the FUTURE, is short, concise, and insightful. Authors include Peter Drucker, Stephen Covey, Peter Senge, Frances Hesselbein, Meg Wheatley, and others.

This package makes a wonderful gift for a student, a graduate, someone taking a new job, or someone hungry for renewal. The paperback editions of the books are attractive and easy to carry, and the boxed set is handsome.

Peter Drucker has hit the nail on the head. This is strategic planning at its best, particularly for nonprofit organizations. The process is simple and concise, based on Drucker's 5 basic questions. The approach is comprehensive and inclusive. I recommend it to the leadership of any nonprofit organization.

I am struck by its simplicity and by the depth of its value. Seeking to change the old paradigms of a beloved, yet antiquated traditional organization, while at the same time fostering the public support of long-time stakeholders, is daunting. But this no-nonsense approach perpetuates joint problem solving and ownership. DISCOVERY of the real, not assumed, answers to five essential questions helps to level the playing field. I am recommending its use and am seeking support for sponsorship of the two day seminars.

This book is not for the faint of heart. It is a hefty seven hundred page epic. However, I found the book spellbinding and finished reading it in less than three weeks time. I would especially recommend DUNANT'S DREAM to those interested in human rights or history. Caroline Morehead is a gifted writer who balances objectivity with revealing glimpses at the men and women who have made the International Committee of the Red Cross the premier human rights and relief agency in the world. I came away from Morehead's book with a clearer understanding of the complex circumstances involving humanitarianism during times of conflict and turmoil. I am sorry that this very worthwhile book is now out of print. However, I am glad that is available in libraries and through "out of print" dealers.

I am named after my aunt, a Red Cross nurse who was an Army nurse in World War II. I am also a nurse (and also a Red Cross nursing volunteer, although I have never worked full time for the organization), and a former officer in the Navy Nurse Corps. My speciality is international health; my work has taken me to some of the poorest and least developed places in the world. I have seen first-hand the work of the Red Cross in war zones and after natural disasters. I currently work in a human rights organization. I recently visited the ICRC Headquarters in Geneva, along with its spectacular museum.

All this is to say that I bring more than an casual perspective to this book--and it dazzled me. Despite its incredible length, it felt too short. Ms. Moorehead writes lucidly, compassionately, and well. Her research is scholarly, her documentation is meticulous, her compassion and her critical abilities are always evident. She rightfully praises the individual courage of the Red Cross founders and leaders (not only Dunant, the Swiss banker, but the other significant figures in Red Cross history, including the American nurse, Clara Barton, who founded the American Red Cross and pioneered its role in natural disasters).

But the book is not just an encomium to the good deeds of idealists. Moorehead is frank in her appraisals of the weaknesses and foibles of both the people and the organization itself. She examines the evolving role of the Red Cross, which began as an adjunct to the gentlemanly wars of the 19th century, grew to a worldwide relief agency in the unimaginable horrors of the 20th century and, most recently, has had to become a competitor for the world's glory in humantarian activities.

Most importantly, she examines the historical record and the ethical dilemnas of an organization which was founded on the Swiss principles of neutrality and quiet diplomacy and was then faced with atrocities in its own back yard: she provides a very careful appraisal of the role of the Red Cross during the WWII Holocaust. It is clear that the Red Cross as an organization provided too little aid to the victims of Nazis, gave it too late and perhaps gave it for the wrong reasons--publicity rather than compassion. (A horrendous, but little known, fact is that the physician who was appointed head of the German Red Cross by Hitler was behind the savage medical experimentation done in the camps. He committed suicide before he could be tried as a war criminal).

Nonetheless, Moorehead is unstinting in her admiration for those individual Red Cross delegates whose independent actions were able to save thousands of Jews and others. There were Red Cross delegates who raced along lines of Jews being forcibly marched to their deportation and death, desperately throwing them food and attempting to rescue anyone they could by bribing, cajoling or fooling the guards.

Moorehead depicts the failures and the multitudinous successes of the Red Cross, and includes enough individual tales and humor to make her account extraordinarily readable. Despite its failings in some arenas, I remain an overall admirer of the Red Cross itself, and I am an unabashed admirer of this book. "Dunant's Dream" can be read for its comprehensive and engrossing history, but readers interested in the larger diplomatic and ethical issues of international aid will find it invaluable. Absolutely recommended.

Kirkpatrick Sale has written a vision of the future that should be drilled into politicians' subconscious and taught in grade school. Sustainable, sane, ecologically minded bioregions. I was particularly struck by his definition of "querencia"--"a deep, quiet sense of inner well-being that comes from knowing a particular place of the earth, its diurnal and seasonal patterns, its fruits and scents, its history and its part in your history . . . where, whenever you return to it, your soul releases an inner sigh of recognition and relaxation." Sale is a wonderful writer, balanced in perspective, and able to distill complex problems into a form that the average mind can comprehend, despite all the arguments pro and con. Read it.

If you've come to suspect that most of the world's problems--pollution, warfare, crime, transnational piracy, mental illness--are inherent in a civilization in decline, you might like this vision of small, face-to-face communities living in respectful accord with the natural world.

The author makes the same point as ecopsychologists and the great whale researcher Roger Payne: built by millions of years of evolution to live in close contact with the wilderness, we who have penned ourselves behind fences and buildings carry with us a ten-thousand-year-old wound....a self-inflicted wound of aching alienation (hence our tendency to alienate--to marginalize--other people).

Read this book, then tour the decidedly un-zoolike San Diego Wild Animal Park while seeing how you feel there. For some this might offer a glimpse of a sanity so centering that you can feel it throughout your body.

"The Dying of the Light" by Fr. James Tunstead Burtchaell. This is an enormous book, some 868 pages long. Fr. Burtchaell deals with the secularization of the Christian colleges, which, as with Harvard and Yale, changed from a church-started, church-supported institution into secular, non-sectarian schools. His method is to pick one, two or three institutions in the particular denomination and deal with the history of the changes from a religious school into a secular institution. Fr. Burtchaell has a chapter for the Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, Lutherans, Catholics and Evangelicals. The author's irony borders on humor once in awhile, as when he wonders why the Presbyterians found it so difficult to report the number of attending Presbyterians to church boards, but now find it so easy to report to the Federal government the racial make-up of the student body, down to the last Samoan. In the preface, Fr. Burtchaell notes that the reader will probably go directly to the section dealing with his/her religious affiliation. I did, but mainly because I was working on an MA thesis on Catholic colleges in the United States. I would recommend this encyclopaedia work to any one truly interested in the recent wave of secularization of church-related colleges in the US. Many details and stories from around the nation make this an interesting micro-history....

Antidisestablishmentarianism in contemporary Catholic religious-community sponsored colleges might well be a subliminal message in Fr. James Burtchaell's incisive disection of the historical disengagement of colleges and universities from their Christian Churhes. The biting humor and irony in Burtchaell's style counterpoints the euphemistic rationale vaunting past and current disengagement from the specific founding church's credo and etholgy. The present widespread disengagement by many Catholic colleges and uni-versities is the legacy of the historic, passive, submission of church related schools beneath whelming financial and enrollment pressures.

The Vatican might well use "The Dying of the Light" as its primer to argue the case for rescuing Catholic institutions from modern-day disengagement by means of episcopal appropriation.

In his asessment of the disengagement of seven-teen representative colleges and univer-sities, the author delved deeply into their ar-chival and historical references and posits a commonality of purpose, basically driven by economic necessity.

Is "greed" the dysphoric, but correct, syn-onym for what Burtchaell records? Is "naivete" an, assuaging, palliative for moral incom-petence? Is "hierarchic megalomania" being masked by ecclesiastical dogmatism? The answers to these questions are interpretable from Burtchaell's data. The answers are not easy. The information is complex, but the pattern is quite simple, money requires compromise. The issue becomes: is the loss worth the cost? Is the price of freedom too high? Is skewed pedantry inevitable with church involvement in education? Can academic excellence be acheived without academic freedom?

Issues seem to have been ignored during the evolution of the disengagement by the churches. Questions were left unasked, because the answers were too painful. The basic rationale, seems to have been that financial support became increas-ingly limited as ecclesiastical strictures re-duced enrollments.

The ultimate emergent question becomes, can there be intellectual probity in a religious insti-tution which limits the parameters of discussion and exploration according to a predetermined schema of dogma and morals?

Burtchaell's comprehensive, paradigmatic, exposition of the disengagement process by religious schools bodes ill for any continuance of a moral or spiritual underpinning for edu-cation in our contemporary society. An argument, inferable from "The Dying of the Light", is that State and Federal governments are restricting freedom of religion and ideas and relegating morality and knowledge to a moral and intellectual relativism under the guise of monetary benignity towards education.

Wm.G.Condon, csc e-mail Billcondon@AOL.com

I may be the only person to write a review for this book, as its price is a little steep for the casual business book reader and this is not a casual business book.

Dynamic Capabilities is an academically based book, a collection of co-coordinated articles about the nature of capabilities in general and the capabilities that change capabilities (aka dynamic capabilities). As an academic book it is very strong with the authors tackling many of the major economic and corporate strategy issues involving why enterprises are designed and work in a particular way. From this perspective it is theory that is well researched, carefully and clearly explained.

Capabilities in general and dynamic capabilities in particular are critical for enterprises in devising and realizing their strategies and performance goals. In this regard, this book is a must read for corporate strategists and corporate development processionals who need to understand how to organize and structure the enterprise for success.

The articles in this book lay down the rational and logic for your leaders should view and organize their resources to achieve their strategies. I will admit that the language and the structure of the chapter/articles are geared more for researchers and students, but taking the time to read, understand and reflect on the implications of these research pieces is well worth the effort.

I may be the only person to write a review for this book, as its price is a little steep for the casual business book reader and this is not a casual business book.

Dynamic Capabilities is an academically based book, a collection of co-coordinated articles about the nature of capabilities in general and the capabilities that change capabilities (aka dynamic capabilities). As an academic book it is very strong with the authors tackling many of the major economic and corporate strategy issues involving why enterprises are designed and work in a particular way. From this perspective it is theory that is well researched, carefully and clearly explained.

Capabilities in general and dynamic capabilities in particular are critical for enterprises in devising and realizing their strategies and performance goals. In this regard, this book is a must read for corporate strategists and corporate development processionals who need to understand how to organize and structure the enterprise for success.

The articles in this book lay down the rational and logic for your leaders should view and organize their resources to achieve their strategies. I will admit that the language and the structure of the chapter/articles are geared more for researchers and students, but taking the time to read, understand and reflect on the implications of these research pieces is well worth the effort.

"Polak to katolik" (A Pole is a Catholic) is a traditional aphorism, but in what sense is it true? This has never been an easy question in Polish history, esp. in the past when Poland was a much more ethnically heterogenous state. Neither was it an easy question for American Polonia, as the existence of the Polish Roman Catholic Union of America (PRCUA) and the Polish National Alliance (PNA) attest. But, as Dr. John Radzi³owski shows in this sympathetic yet professionally critical history of the 131-year old PRCUA, the PRCUA/PNA divide was more than "simply a matter of one group that stressed Catholicism pitted against another group that stressed a broader nationalism" (p. 87). To reduce the difference between the PRCUA and the PNA to a "Catholic-versus-secular division" (p. 89) is facile. To the degree that it presumes what Richard Neuhaus calls "the naked public square" of contemporary radical secularism, it is also anachronistic.

The PRCUA/PNA difference lay at the level of ideals, emerging

from a longstanding division in Polish attitudes that had emerged by the end of the eighteenth century. . . . The Alliance emerged out of Poland's nineteenth-century Romantic tradition. . . . Romantics saw Poland as the 'Christ among nations,' and its problems were the result of the evil actions of its autocratic neighbors. . . . . [T]he Union . . . . came out of Poland's Positivist tradition. . . . They believed Poland had lost its independence due to its own weakness, and its problems could be best solved by building up the nation's internal resources" (pp. 89, 90).

For the PNA, priority belonged to naród, "all Poles and persons of Polish descent residing anywhere in the world" (p. 89). For the PRCUA, priority belonged to okolica, the local environment and neighborhood. The nationalists wanted to build from the top down, instilling ethnic consciousness in peasants who, prior to their emigration, probably never traveled far from their villages. The PRCUA wanted to build from the bottom up, starting with vigorous local communities centered on local parishes (p. 90).

In PNA eyes, at least at the start, American Polonia was ephemeral: "once Poland regained its independence, most Polish immigrants would return home" (p. 90). PRCUA more quickly recognized that American Polonia was something here-to-stay, and was thus more readily invested in building it up. Paradoxically, the PNA was the greater proponent of naturalization and assimilation, convinced that American Polonia could leverage their U.S. ties to the advantage of the Polish cause. The PRCUA, more fearful that a secularist, materialist and consumerist culture could lead Polish Catholics astray, sought to forge a comfortable Polonian subculture that would keep those evils at bay. How many people know, for example, that the PRCUA launched its own colonization program? In seeking to keep Polish villagers down on the farm, it promoted settlement in Polonian communities formed in Nebraska in the 1870s. That effort was not marginal: its impact could be felt a century later. "In 1980, Sherman County, Nebraska, had the highest percentage of Polish Americans of any county in the United States" (p. 64).

"Organic work" was the credo of Polish Positivism and the motto of PRCUA. Building up families and communities were the PRCUA's goals. Radzi³owski discusses their varied contributions, from establishing a social safety net through insurance funds and death benefits for immigrants thrust into the cauldron of 19th century industrial America to camps and sports programs aimed at maintaining Polish cultural identity among youth to efforts to provide relief and reconstruction assistance to Poles and Poland following two world wars. Polish Americans played a key role in the struggle of America's labor unions, and PRCUA assisted its working class members both by demanding workplace social justice as well as providing assistance to strikers.

The changing demographics of Polonia, new patterns of immigration and the atomization of American life to the detriment of civil society and voluntary organizations all have their impact on PRCUA today. Radzi³owski is aware of the problems faced by Polish-American organizational life, but he keeps perspective while sounding an upbeat note:

. . . [E]arlier generations faced far greater problems with far smaller resources. The PRCUA, today an organization with close to $300 million in insurance . . . began as a loose collection of church societies with no central administration, no funds, no death benefits, no headquarters, no library, no museum, and only a semi-official newspaper. The Polonia of that time was universally poor, poorly educated, politically impotent, and oppressed. The Polish homeland was little more than a colony of foreign powers. A century and a quarter later, the picture is completely different, like night and day" (p. 313-14).

Amply illustrated and well documented, this book deserves to be on the bookshelves of all Polish-Americans. The photographs and cartoon sketches truly prove that "a picture is worth a thousand words." A special chapter is dedicated to the unappreciated "Smithsonian" of American Polonia, the Polish Museum of America. As always, Radzi³owski anchors the history of PRCUA against the larger backdrop of the histories of American Polonia, Poland, and America. Highly recommended.

This review appeared in no. 3 (2004) issue of Nihil Novi: The Bulletin of the Kosciuszko Chair in Polish Studies, the University of Virginia:

John Radzi³owski, The Eagle and the Cross: A History of the Polish Roman Catholic Union in America, 1873-2000 (Boulder, CO. and New York: East European Monographs and Columbia University Press, 2003).

For many years, the history of the Polish diaspora in America has been treated as a topic of minor importance. Polish scholars have tended to view immigrants as part of the history of other countries and no longer germane to the story of Poland. American scholars have also largely ignored Polonia, whether through unfamiliarity with the Polish language or ignorance.
Yet this immigration of millions of people from one country to the other had a major impact on both Poland and America. Millions left the Polish countryside during the crucial years of the late nineteenth century and significant numbers left after World War II and again in recent decades. But these immigrants did not merely affect Polish history by their absence. In America, many immigrants developed a heightened sense of Polishness. When Polish culture was restricted and even banned in the old country, many immigrants first heard Chopin, read Mickiewicz, or celebrated May 3rd in America. Many immigrants who came from impoverished rural areas were first exposed to the glories of Poland in Chicago, Buffalo, or Detroit rather than in Krakow, Warsaw, or Poznan.
In addition, Polish immigrants sent millions of dollars to rebuild Poland after both world wars. Tens of thousands joined a volunteer army during World War I to fight on behalf of Polish liberty. Having experienced democracy, freedom of speech, and the right to vote in America, immigrants transmitted those ideals back to their friends and family in their home villages through letters and visits. If today Poland is considered one of the most pro-American countries in Europe, this is a result of attitudes engendered by Polish immigrants.
In America, Poles shaped urban, industrial life. They were a driving force behind the development and expansion of major urban centers such as Chicago and Detroit. Poles played a crucial though often forgotten in role in America's first civil rights movement-the struggle for the rights of workers in the decades prior to World War II.
John Radzi³owski's book, The Eagle and the Cross, is an effort to shed light on this often-overlooked history by focusing on the history of the first significant Polish organization in the New World, the Polish Roman Catholic Union of America (PRCUA). The Union, a fraternal insurance society founded in 1873, was based on the ideals of Catholic positivism and was in harmony with the intellectual and cultural trends that were prominent in Poland at that time. Many of its founders had their roots in a rejection of Romanticism. Instead, they sought to build up Poland's moral, economic, educational, and cultural resources through "organic work."
These ideas were adapted to the needs of Polish immigrants in America by the priests and sisters of Congregation of the Resurrection, founded in Paris by Polish expatriates in the 1830s. The Resurrectionists were engaged in a vigorous counterattack against socialism, materialism, and modernism. Through the PRCUA, they sought to keep Polish immigrants faithful to the Catholic Church, true to their Polish heritage, and to avoid the temptations and perils of the new industrial cities. As Radzi³owski shows, by the 1920s the PRCUA developed a major and impressive range of activities that reached out to the Polish community in America but which also mobilized that community to aid the cause of Poland where needed.
The book breaks new ground in that it is the first English-language history of this important organization, which continues to play a key role in American Polonia to this day. Radzi³owski argues that in the past, scholars of Polonia have focused more attention on secular, radical, or dissenter organizations, often overlooking groups like the PRCUA and generally taking for granted the importance of Catholicism (in all its complexity) in shaping the character of the Polish diaspora. It chronicles the range and impact of PRCUA activities and shows how connected American Polonia has been to both American and Polish history over the last century and a half. Intriguingly, the book suggests, but does not fully develop, a connection between the ideals of late nineteenth and early twentieth century Polish positivism and the philosophical roots of Pope John Paul II.
The Eagle and the Cross fills an important gap in our knowledge about Polish and American history and challenges scholars to rethink the role of the millions of people who helped build two nations.

Extensive coverage of the history and practice of Dominican Spirituality. Recommended for anyone considering further investigation of the Order of Preachers and the Dominican Life.

It was not until I read Fr. Tugwell's book that I fell in love with the Order of Preachers. This massive collection, beginning with a short history of the Order's beginnings, includes the Primitive Constitutions of the Order, letters of Blessed Jordan of Saxony, and Humbert of Roman's tips on how to preach; any one who reads this volume is sure to have a firm grasp of the Order founded by Saint Dominic. Paints a startling picture of the early years of the Dominican Order. A goldmine!

The editor of this volume has put together some amazing works from the early period of the Dominicans. Perhaps what is best about this volume is that it gives the reader the work "On the Formation of Preachers" by Humbert of Romans; to my knowledge, this is the only English translation of what has been called the most important work on homiletics in the Western Church. An absolutely wonderful book, well worth the price.

In this new book John Bellamy Foster has assembled a great deal of evidence (in a dozen chapters written and published over the last decade) that the earth's ecology is incompatible with capitalism. But is there an alternative?

Foster says: "A shift toward a broad movement for ecological conversion and the creation of a sustainable society also means that that the partnership between the state and the capitalist class, which has always formed the most important linchpin of the capitalist system, must be loosened by degrees, as part of an overall social and environmental revolution. This partnership must be replaced, in the process of a radical transformation of the society, by a new partnership between democratized state power and popular power" (p. 132).

Reading just that far, one might conclude that such a loosening by degrees could be achieved within the two-party system in the United States or in other regimes where voters choose between conservatives and liberals. Certainly many environmental progressives (if that's not a contradiction) have opted to work within the existing political duopoly.

But the Ralph Nader campaigns of 1996 and 2000, and the concomitant rise of the Green Party, presage a different direction. It is one, however, which will require both a deeper and more ecological understanding of the incompatibility of ecosystems with a profit system, and a more radical politics than the market-regulation offered by the Green Party platform and Citizen Nader's narrower planks.

Foster goes on to say: "Such a shift requires revolutionary change that must be more than simply a rejection of capitalist methods of accumulation and their effects on people and the environment. Socialism -- as a positive, not just a negative, alternative to capitalism -- remains essential to the conversion process, because its broad commitment to worldwide egalitarian change reflects an understanding of 'how the needs of the various communities can be fit together in a way that leaves nobody out, and that also satisfies global environmental requirements'."

In his major opus, Marx's Ecology (2000), Foster showed Marx's development of an ecological perspective that drew from the latest natural science discoveries. These included the discovery of the micro metabolic cycles by the cell theorists, Theodor Schwann and Matthias Schleiden, which Marx linked with the discovery of the grand metabolic cycles of earth and sky by the agrochemist Justus von Liebig. To this one would have to add the influence on Marx of Karl Fraas, an important figure in forest ecology neglected by Foster and most scholars in this country.

Marx's resulting awareness of the ecological care necessary to plan a sustainable socialism was ignored, however, by the Soviet Union under Stalin, as Foster showed, despite profound contributions by scientists like Vladimir I. Vernadsky, whose 1924 book, The Biosphere (1998), has become an internationally-recognized classic of ecology. Critical radicals today, and particularly those in the ecosocialism paradigm, reject the lack of democracy and bureaucratic centralism of such regimes, which
played a key role in the adoption of policies that degraded the environment.

Nevertheless, Foster argues, "Within a socialist framework, the sources of the largest-scale and most severe environmental destruction could be dealt with head-on, in a way that has already shown itself to be beyond the capacity -- not to say against the interests -- of capital."

Foster acknowledges a range of collaborators and rivals in the crafting of his new book. Most important is Paul Burkett, whose
Marx and Nature: A Red and Green Perspective (1999) finally clarified the distinction between the human use of nature and the exploitation of the exchange value of commodities. Foster also cites James O'Connor, author of Natural Causes (1998)as showing that "While there are many variations in economic growth theory, all presuppose that capitalism cannot stand still...that it must 'accumulate or die,' in Marx's words" (p. 80).

Although Foster's new book appeared at the same time as Joel Kovel's The Enemy of Nature (2002), which has the same basic theme, the books are quite different. Foster's collection of articles is intended to deal with specifics, it is "an attempt to intervene directly in contemporary political-economic debates on capitalism and the environment..." (p. 7). Kovel's book is actually an intervention into eco-politics and provides a sustained exploration of Ecosocialism as compared and contrasted with Deep Ecology, Bioregionalism, Anarchist Social Ecology, and particularly with Populism and variants of small-business capitalism.

If Foster's new book is focused on what needs to be undone in an ecological and economic conversion, Kovel's is much more a manual of what needs to be done to build the alternative to capitalism. The books actually complement each other, and both are essential tools for the ecological activist and the open-minded citizen.

John Bellamy Foster's "Ecology Against Capitalism" is a collection of essays that addresses some of the various aspects of capitalism's crisis of accumulation and the environment. Importantly, the author compares and contrasts the failures of the ecological economics model with the more promising ecosocialist paradigm, arguing that the latter is humanity's best chance to create a stable, healthy and humane world.

I haven't read any other books by Foster, but it is hard to imagine a better effort. This powerful little book is written with passion, clarity and purpose. Foster seems to pack more meaning in 170 pages than others who use twice the space. Consequently one can imagine the book serving as an excellent supplemental textbook for students who may be interested in rapidly developing their critical thinking skills.

Many of the articles discuss how the growth of capitalism is leading to environmental collapse. Foster shows that assigning market values to nature and introducting relatively less harmful technologies will not end the destruction. Rather, these so-called Green Economics solutions will merely lead to a "more efficient exploitation of the environment" (pg. 58) by the capital markets.

Foster strongly believes that a moral element is at play. The "higher immorality" of the bourgeoise class is implicit in its accumulation of material goods and profits at the expense of the poor and the environment; but it is also sometimes explicitly stated, such as in Lawrence Summers' infamous World Bank memo where a policy of exporting pollution to poor countries was rationalized because the economies are less developed there.

In my opinion, one of the best passages on the issue of morality concerned Foster's devastating critique of Malthus, who was one of the original apologists for the privileged class. Foster brilliantly turns the cult of Malthusianism on its head by arguing that the environmental crisis is a result of overconsumption by the rich, not the poor. Foster points out that neo-Malthusianism remains influential within neoliberal thought and argues forcefully that it must end if we are to ever stop deluding ourselves and get to work on real solutions to the crisis.

Foster's personal experiences with the timber industry conflicts in the Pacific Northwest are related in the book's lengthiest essay. The author discusses the limits of achieveing environmental sustainability without class struggle and the support of labor. Interestingly, Foster demonstrates the practical value of ecosocialist theory by articulating a workable solution that went beyond the rhetoric of "jobs versus logs". Perhaps not surpisingly, the author tells us that the promising proposal was quashed by a Bush Sr. administration official in favor of a pro-industry solution.

Ultimately, Foster shows that an ecosocialist society that values democracy, community and nature can indeed create "a positive, not just a negative, alternative to capitalism" (pg. 132). I urge you to read this outstanding book.