Organizations Books

Without a doubt, John Saillant has done a service to American History in general and Christian History in particular. By rediscovering the depth and insight of Lemuel Haynes and dispensing this information with clarity and scholarship, Saillant has given to us one of our lost and brilliant intellectual and theological heroes. Lemuel Haynes was a post-revolutionary African-American pastor in New England. The sharpness of his mind was only matched by his zeal for the truth and its application to America at her most needful time. His words to his generation were prophetic, and through the thorough and scholarly work of Saillant, we can hear the voice of Rev. Haynes and see just how true his thought and heart were to the God he loved and the people he served. If you want to see how the passionate, theological Puritan mind addressed the issue of slavery and the true American responsibility, take up and read Black Puritan, Black Republican. You will not be disappointed - challenged and enlightened - but not disappointed.

John Salliant's research has uncovered the riches of a buried historical treasure. Lemuel Haynes' life and thought has often been neglected, but no longer. "Black Puritan" is a catching and appropriate title. Rev. Haynes was a theologian, writer, pastor, and educator. He pastored a bi-cultural congregation long before "multi-culturalism" was a buzz word. And, he defended the historic Christian faith against the rising New England tide of universalism. His self-written epitaph is worth the price of the book alone, as it summarizes well his commitment to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Reviewer: Bob Kellemen, Ph.D., is the author of Beyond the Suffering: Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care and Spiritual Direction, Soul Physicians, and Spiritual Friends.

This book is not just for students of black history. Introduced to Lemuel Haynes by its pages, I left this book very inspired. In fact, I wanted more, and I have since sought out works by Rev. Haynes. His vision was prophetic. Rev. Haynes was a Republican in the classic sense, desiring equality for all in a democratic society. As a Calvinist, he trusted a Sovereign God's words of liberation and justice would come to fruition. Reading Haynes' words, I was struck by how far ahead of his time he was. Later anti-slavery advocates often still looked upon minorities as inferior. Many advocated freed slaves be returned to Africa. Haynes advocated equality in a manner powerfully foreshadowing a dream that would not be repeated until voiced by Martin Luther King. This book is a fascinating read for those interested in democracy, religion, philosophy, race issues, or history.

Bountiful Harvest: Technology, Food, Safety, And The Environment by Thomas R. DeGregori (Professor of Economics, University of Houston) is a thoroughly "reader friendly" introduction and analysis of how modern technology has drastically affected our environmentally based, technology enhanced food supply. Exposing myths and presenting extensive, meticulous research on the history of pesticides, pollution, organic agriculture, and much more, Bountiful Harvest is a very highly recommended, fact-filled primer, which will provide the non-specialist general reader an invaluable instructional background with respect to what really is served up on the dinner plate.

Thomas R. DeGregori knows his food technology. A professor of economics at the University of Houston, DeGregori has written an excellent defence of modern agriculture and biotechnology.

I would recommend this book as an antidote to the frightening biotechnology-gone-mad scenarios painted by organisations such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth.

This book is a welcome addition to the biotechnology debate.

Radical environmentalists and nature-first types beware! Dr. Tom DeGregori dares to controvert your bluster, and has the courage not to "think small." DeGregori, a Professor of Economics at the University of Houston Central Campus, has long played the "Devil's Advocate" to Barry Commoner's "Runaway Technology Thesis." For a minimum of thirty years, he has steadily proffered logical counterpropositions to the knee-jerk anti-science of modern ecological Luddites.

In his wonderful new book, aptly entitled BOUNTIFUL HARVEST: TECHNOLOGY, FOOD SAFETY, AND THE ENVIRONMENT, DeGregori carefully integrates human evolution, reason, art, writing, and manufacture as the prerequisites and components of technology. As he has done elsewhere, DeGregori once again promotes the humanity of technology, which is both a phenomenon and process, in defiance of those who would spurn it as a materialistic vice. Early on, he declares that without technology, we pitiful humans would have had to adapt to our environments "by the much slower adaptive process known as speciation [the evolution of different species]." Technology, which is unique to the human species, saved us eons of evolution and gave us to ability to maneuver and develop throughout the world.

DeGregori reminds us that anti-technology evolved "with, and probably before, Plato," who argued that with the creation of the alphabet (and writing), the young would be urged not to rely on their own memory. This in turn founded a viewpoint that we, as humans, somehow "lose something" with every technological advance. He unmasks the insanity (and inanity) of such sophistry in his chapters on food safety, where he cleverly refutes the would-be superiority of "organic foods." Indeed, we created artificial substances to fend off the very toxicities and incapacities, which organic farming reintroduces. The author boldly asserts that a return to purely organic farming might feed one-fifth of the current world population, involving farm output losses of 53 to 100 percent. Moreover, organic fertilizers often are accompanied by graveolent diseases that have been long since stymied, or eliminated, by technological countermeasures. DeGregori is best when he scoffs at the "whole foods" fad, which encourages well-to-do (and well-fed) customers to buy potentially fecally contaminated foods at a 57 percent mark-up!

The fact is that human beings never have, and never will, live in "harmony" with nature because "by nature" humans must transform or, at the very least, disturb environments to make the regions habitable. Without technology, our physically inferior species could only survive in tropical or, at best, subtropical environments. Even the simplest of farmsteads, say, a swidden plot, at least temporarily clears natural vegetation to make way for crop cultivation. The fact is that it is only through the implementation of suitable technologies that humans can minimize the disturbance and the dangers to themselves and their environments.

As Dr. DeGregori has reminded us for decades: never before have so many of us lived such long and such relatively healthy lives. The shortest lived and least healthy among us, as in Africa South of the Sahara, are comparatively miserable precisely because they do not have the technology to meet their needs. It is the ultimate irony that the anti-technologists, who oppose irradiated, genetically altered, and biotechnological foods, are harming the very people--whom they blatantly otherwise claim to defend--who most need the potential bounty of that advanced nutrition. Already bypassed by the Green Revolution, Africans can ill afford to miss the coming revolution in food technology.

Always stimulating and controversial, Dr. DeGregori once again takes up the cross of sensibility against those who make the headlines and only occasionally make sense. BOUNTIFUL HARVEST should be read by economists, geographers, anthropologists, ecologists, and any and all who value their fellow human beings and their environment. Highest rating*****!

I'm still laughing at this book. I swear I've been in these office's and worked for the managers he described before. A must read for anyone hitting the workforce.

Dianna Wells Shire, author "The Ordinary Life of a Military Woman".

This book is a real hoot for those in the corporate world! It says all the things you'd want to, but can't because you would get fired. The boring, the ridiculous, the impossible -- the demands and expectations of the shirts and ties on the little folks who do all the work. It is so Dilbert. You gotta love it. A great gift, (but you may have to use an AKA. )

The author has a great sense of humor and must have had a blast writing this. You will have fun reading it. I have no doubt that every reader will recognize a work-place situation or someone they know. There's something between these pages for anyone who has ever held a job.

Wow, Mr. Bennett has knocked the ball out of the park with this book. If you want to be successful and happy then this book is for you. How many individuals do you know that have acquired monetary success and yet they are unhappy? Without the, "Creating Meaningful Life Experiences" their equation for success is missing a key value. Clearly the expression itself says it all, and as humans we are wired to include this as part of our existence or we are truly never happy.

Looking forward to your next book!

Cigargatorfan

What a great find! This business book is informative, yet in an easy-to-read style. I usually don't like to read business books, but even I enjoyed this. There were lots of "lessons" I can apply to my day-to-day job (upper management), yet the book was not overwhelming. A good, solid book. Would be applicable to all levels of managers.

Shortly after reading "The Breathing Organization" I left a management position with a consulting firm that was saddled with a toxic culture and no prospects of achieving anything extraordinary. This book inspired me to start a new company that actually adheres to the wise principles it espouses. I truly believe that my colleagues and I are destined for great success together by following the blueprint laid out in this insightful and inspirational book. The culture, environment, and mindset that we have created together are enabling us to fully utilize our collective talent and human potential. The company's initial success has been stunning. I wholeheartedly recommend "The Breathing Organization" to anyone looking to build a successful and truly rewarding business today.

Mark Bergethon
Sage Fundraising Solutions
www.sagefundraisingllc.com

This book really does fill a void in the market. Most books on the history of Christian worship are excessively simple or excessively complex. Occasionally an educated lay person will ask me for a book that they can understand (without a divinity degree) but that goes beyond the simple "altar guild" books one might use as an absolute introduction. I am very pleased that Professor White is able to maintain the middle ground.

White does an excellent job tracking several spiritual themes through the various Christian epochs. He compares things as what was the process of becomming a Christian and other themes that most consider timeless, but instead shows the changing in what was considered normative from the early church, patristic period, medieval ages, enlightenment period and modern Christianity. I have read many many books on worship, and this one is definately worth reading and White's analysis is honest, reasonable and very informative.

This history book breaks the molds of stereotype. The format is simple: 1) worship of the New Testament Era 2) worship of the early Christian centuries 3) worship of the middle ages 4) worship of the reformation period 5) worship of modern times, and 6) worship of the future.

What causes me to give this book a 5-star rating is its honesty. Most books of this nature try to plug a certain perspective at the risk of almost becoming dishonest. This book simply lays it out. If you become uncomfortable learning that your style of worship is not as universal as you would like, or that your theology hasn't always been central to Christian practice, so be it.

I found myself challenged by the questions I began asking. This is the kind of book I like.

The inspired word of God known as the Holy Scriptures is a blueprint for our Christian lives. It doesn't end there, God continues to inspire Christian writers like Francis Schaffer to help us along our wonderful walk with Christ Jesus.

Recently I had the privaledge to read Broken Cisterns.It's truely an interesting book to read, if you've been there, done that and never could understand why, reading this book can help you mend the broken cistern. You see God will hear and forgive, but we have to forgive ourselves also and the heavenly fathertake hold of us. There's so much to learn from your writing this is only one. I would advise everyone who has the oppertunity to read and dwell on broken cisterns. Looking forward to reading anotherinspirational book given to you from our heavenly father.
A SISTER IN CHRIST

Is the Church today a fountain of living waters full of power or a broken cistern in need of a radical change? Francis Schaffer brings a prophetic call to the Church taken from Jeremiah 2:13. The Church has made the same mistake as ancient Israel by building religious cisterns that have no power. A return to God, the "fountain of living waters"is desperately needed in the Church today! This book will open the blind eyes to see God is calling the Church to a radical change that will bring God's unlimited power forth. This book is a must read!

Don't be fooled by the first part of the title; for this book is really about Blacks, Jews, and the Changing Face of the Ghetto. Pritchett studies Brownsville in details, but never forgets to see the bigger picture, which should be of interest for any historian or social scientist. Pritchett is very good at giving you the facts, the analysis and the feelings as well. This book is not just about a ghetto in Brooklyn, it is indeed about urban change and inequality.

As someone who lived not far from Brownsville in the 1950s and early '60s, I can say this is an exceptionally accurate book. It is well-written and is the best attempt I've seen yet at explaining the phenomenon of the changing urban neighborhood. Not only does Pritchett provide many well-reserached, well-thought-out answers but, just as important, he raises insightful, penetrating questions. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in American urban history, particularly as it relates to New York City.

New Yorkers see constant small changes in their city, and the cumulative effect of those changes can remake the character and composition of a neighborhood almost overnight. That is what happened in Brownsville during the late 1950s and early 1960s. What had been an entirely Jewish neighborhood of sidewalk synagogues and old-world customs became an entirely black and Latino neighborhood. Pritchett captures that period of change and the various players -- community activists, business interests, government agencies and politicians -- masterfully. He tells a poignant story of idealistic neighborhood leaders who fought for integrated public housing to meet the needs of their community and were instead given massive projects built to house the city's poor who had been displaced by urban renewal. This is a great book for anyone interested in New York or urban history generally.

Richard Barrett again does an outstanding job of clearly stating his main points, then building on them with facts and good examples. He is able to expertly blend some of the key principles of other authors -- Ken Wilbur and Don Beck -- with some of his material. The text provides some excellent evaluation tools, both for individuals and organizations. He references a number of websites for additional clarity of some of his points. He has an excellent reference list at the end of the book. Anyone who is looking at leadership and organizational values/vision/mission will do well to read this timely book.

Harry Owens, Jr., MD, MIM

Richard does another excellent job describing the seven levels of consciousness model and how this framework can be used to effectively measure an organization's culture. This process provides a values-based approach within a whole system perspective. Regardless of the status of an organziation's cultural health, this whole system approach provides the opportunity to integrate where an organization is (its current strengths, opportunities, systems and resources) and provides a map to get to where the organization wants to be. A great book that helps make sense of the complexity of organizational culture and how to improve it. Nice work!

Many of us read Richard Barrett's best-selling book, Liberating the Corporate Soul, and admired his visionary and soul nurturing approaches to building sustainable and enduring organisations. Now he has given birth to another major leap forward in how to develop and sustain values-based organisations. In this new book, Richard demonstrates again his genius at delivering clear conceptual and experience-based thinking on organisation culture as a new frontier of competitive advantage. Building on his experience in carrying out over 600 cultural values assessments in 35 countries, he shows how to build full-spectrum consciousness in leaders and organizations and how to carry out whole-system change to meet the challenges of accelerating change, deepening complexity and growing systemic risks.
George Starcher, President, European Baha'i Business Forum

Purington & Butler do an outstanding job of providing a systematic approach to managing positive change in training & development. The book is full of very specific & useful recommendations to upgrade an organization's culture cost effectively and gain competitive advantage in its ability to learn quickly. It shares many examples of what worked well along with a few examples of flexibility with plans that needed to be changed. The only negative to the book ... and it is only a minor negative is that it sometimes repeated some of the examples. If you are in a training department, are in a position to influence or approve a training department's strategies or are selling & marketing to the training & development market ... this is a must read!!

Purington and Butler have succeeded by detailing how to implement the strategy they so clearly recommend in the book. The book sets forth in an orderly and easily understood manner the steps that will greatly improve any training department. If there is any one book that will pull it all together for the training professional, this is the one. A must read book.

This book provides a step by step process to make any training department successful. The book is written in easy to understand language with detailed success strategy for creating the ideal learning organization. Most training books fail to inform the reader how to execute the strategy they are recommending. Purington and Butler have done a masterful job putting the detail in the puzzle. Outstanding and a must read book for all training professionals!

Written by a spokesperson for the Earth Liberation Front from its inception in 1997 to September 2001, Burning Rage Of A Dying Planet: Speaking For The Earth Liberation Front presents the viewpoint of an organization that uses economic sabotage to inflict financial losses on individuals, corporations and governments that, in the ELF's view, place monetary wealth ahead of the natural environment. In February 2002, the FBI declared the ELF to be the largest and most active US-based terrorist group, even though ELF's operations have never claimed a single human life. Burning Rage Of A Dying Planet describes the ELF's history and ideology, scrutinizes the the short and long-term benefits and drawbacks of using violence, and presents a vision of the future of the environmental movement - as well as an American democracy increasingly threatened by the so-called Patriot Act. A sharply worded yet highly literate manifesto, and a must-read for anyone seeking to better understand the ELF's point of view - whether out of sympathy for its goals or antipathy toward its means.

After reading about the case of Jeff 'Free' Luers, sentenced to 22 years and 8 months in prison for torching 3 SUVs, I decided to research more about The Earth Liberation Front--also known as ELF--and found "Burning Rage of a Dying Planet: Speaking for the Earth Liberation Front" by Craig Rosebraugh. While Luers denies any connection with ELF, the severity of his sentence is a reflection of the increasingly stiff jail terms being handed out for sabotage events termed "eco-terrorism."

Author Craig Rosebraugh served as the media spokesperson for ELF from the first action in 1997 until his resignation in 2001. He charts his life as an activist, and during the first Iraqi war, Rosebraugh quickly found his social attitudes shifting and developing. He became a member of People for Animal Rights, but parted ways with this group when they refused to support the actions of ALF (Animal Liberation Front). Rosebraugh decided he "would philosophically support illegal activity such as civil disobedience and property destruction as long as it was nonviolent." Gradually, Rosebraugh shifted from his single focus on animal rights and embraced a broader based philosophy that addresses various social and political issues. As a founding member of the Liberation Collective, he was recognized as a prominent activist in the Portland area.

In 1997, Rosebraugh began to receive anonymous 'communiques' from individuals announcing various acts of sabotage conducted in the name of the Earth Liberation Front. ELF is an underground movement--composed of individual cells--with no hierarchy, no leadership, and no membership. The Earth Liberation Front basically embraces a radical philosophy that includes the idea that activists have tried 'normal' channels for social change in the environment (petitions, demonstrations, court, etc,) but since those legal channels have failed, and a state of emergency exists with the planet's entire future at risk, individuals take matters into their own hands with sabotage actions committed according to one's conscience. Targeting urban sprawl, animal experimentation, animal cruelty, genetically modified crops, and various instances of anti-environmental travesties (such as gas-guzzling behemoth vehicles, logging of old growth trees, and road building in previous unroaded areas) individual activists conduct acts of sabotage against the property of those they hold responsible for crimes against the environment.

Rosebraugh charts the acts committed in the name of ELF, brushes with law enforcement personnel, numerous encounters with the FBI, and a series of Grand Jury subpoenas. Copies of many of the anonymous ELF communiques are included in the book--along with the ELF guidelines for Direct Action. The book also details efforts of various politicians to crack down on ELF activity (particularly since 9/11), the introduction of the Juvenile Justice Bill, and the amendment of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act (RICO) to include "Animal Enterprise Terrorism and Ecoterrorists." Since the underground group's first acknowledged action in 1997, approximately $100 million dollars of damage has been wreaked against those targeted by ELF as enemies of the environment, and the group is considered to be the "number one domestic terrorist threat" in the U.S.

"Burning Rage of a Dying Planet" is primarily an account of Rosebraugh's involvement with the ELF as a spokesperson, but it's also a remarkably well-written account of Rosebraugh's development as an activist and as a human being. The book is not a political rant, and while Rosebraugh makes no apologies for his strong political opinions, his complex beliefs are laid out lucidly, sincerely, and with striking humility. "Burning Rage of a Dying Planet" is a gripping read, and anyone interested in environmental issues or in the radical actions of ELF should find it extremely interesting. Frankly--and surprisingly--this is one of the best non-fiction books I've read this year--displacedhuman

Author Craig Rosebraugh was spokesperson for the ELF from 1997 until a few days before 9/11 and recounts his experiences reporting on their activities while being continually harassed by the authorities. Branded as a terrorist organization, the ELF was the focus on several grand jury investigations and the author recounts his many adventures avoiding subpoenas and taking the fifth while under constant threat of prosecution. The extent of ELF activities during this time and since 9/11 surprised me, as we read little about them in the national press and we hear even less of their motives and aims. In addition to being a great read for anyone interested in learning more about the radical environmental movement, it raises some important social questions.