Members of our Founding Member Council have shared some of their favourite books to help inspire you this season! From corporate sustainability strategy, to personal development, and biographies, enjoy cozying up this winter with some of our favourite reads.
Good Economics for Hard Times by Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo
Original, provocative, and urgent, Good Economics for Hard Times makes a persuasive case for an intelligent interventionism and a society built on compassion and respect. It is an extraordinary achievement, one that shines a light to help us appreciate and understand our precariously balanced world.
Burn Out: The Endgame for Fossil Fuels by Dieter Helm
Low oil prices are sending shockwaves through the global economy, and longtime industry observer Dieter Helm explains how this and other shifts are the harbingers of a coming energy revolution and how the fossil fuel age will come to an end. Surveying recent surges in technological innovations, Helm’s provocative new book documents how the global move toward the internet-of-things will inexorably reduce the demand for oil, gas, and renewables—and prove more effective than current efforts to avert climate change.
The Glass Closet: The story of John Browne (former CEO of BP)
Part memoir and part social criticism, The Glass Closet addresses the issue of homophobia that still pervades corporations around the world and underscores the immense challenges faced by LGBT employees. In The Glass Closet, Lord John Browne, former CEO of BP, seeks to unsettle business leaders by exposing the culture of homophobia that remains rampant in corporations around the world, and which prevents employees from showing their authentic selves.
Winning Sustainability Strategies by B. Leleux and J. van de Kaaij
Despite recent optimism and global initiatives the implementation of corporate sustainability programs has been slow at best, with less than a third of global companies having developed a clear business case for their approach to sustainability. Presenting numerous award-winning cases from companies alongside original ideas based upon 20 years of consulting experience, this book reveals how to design and implement a stronger sense of focus and move sustainability programs forward.
The Truth About Green Business by Gil Friend
The Truth About Green Business, by Natural Logic CEO Gil Friend, with Nicholas Kordesch and Benjamin Privitt, brings together 52 crucial facts and insights leaders must know to successfully “go green.” This book delivers quick, plain-English explanations that executives, decision-makers, and entrepreneurs can actually use, no matter what kind of businesses they’re running, or what their environmental and profit goals are.
Factfulness by Hans Rosling
In Factfulness, Professor of International Health and global TED phenomenon Hans Rosling, together with his two long-time collaborators, Anna and Ola, offers a radical new explanation of why this happens. They reveal the ten instincts that distort our perspective―from our tendency to divide the world into two camps (usually some version of us and them) to the way we consume media (where fear rules) to how we perceive progress (believing that most things are getting worse).
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey
In this seminal work, Stephen R. Covey presents a holistic, integrated, principle-centred approach for solving personal and professional problems. With penetrating insights and pointed anecdotes, Covey reveals a step-by-step pathway for living with fairness, integrity, honesty and human dignity — principles that give us the security to adapt to change, and the wisdom and power to take advantage of the opportunities that change creates.
We are the Weather: Saving the Planet Starts at Breakfast by Jonathan Safran Foer
In We Are the Weather, Jonathan Safran Foer explores the central global dilemma of our time in a surprising, deeply personal, and urgent new way. The task of saving the planet will involve a great reckoning with ourselves―with our all-too-human reluctance to sacrifice immediate comfort for the sake of the future. We have, he reveals, turned our planet into a farm for growing animal products, and the consequences are catastrophic. Only collective action will save our home and way of life. And it all starts with what we eat―and don’t eat―for breakfast.
Utopia for Realists and How we Can Get There by Rutger Bregman
In Utopia for Realists, Rutger Bregman (yes, it’s the guy who calls out the World Economic Forum elite for avoiding taxes) shows that we can construct a society with visionary ideas that are, in fact, wholly implementable. Every milestone of civilisation – from the end of slavery to the beginning of democracy – was once considered a utopian fantasy. New utopian ideas such as universal basic income and a fifteen-hour work week can become reality in our lifetime.
