The dog days are almost over in the northern hemisphere. Team Shareable is shaking off the summer haze and looking forward to a (hopefully) abundant fall season. In familial tradition, we’re ushering this autumn in with a bountiful crop of insightful reads. Our latest round up of books features a cornucopia of ruminative titles perfect for cozying up, hunkering down and diving in.
As always, we’re on a year round mission to find the latest and greatest sharing-related books and we love sharing what we’re reading with you each quarter. If you have a great recommendation or think there’s a title that we missed, let us know at info@shareable.net. Happy reading!
Below are summaries, excerpted from each book’s website:
Bright Green Future: How Everyday Heroes Are Re-Imagining the Way We Feed, Power, and Build Our World by Gregory Schwartz & Trevor Decker Cohen
Bright Green Future chronicles a renaissance at the edge of a crisis. As climate change shifts our planet towards an uncertain future, a movement of unlikely heroes are building a blueprint for a better world. It’s a world where clean power grows wealth for local communities, resources regenerate themselves, city planning is driven by the people, and healthy soil is our greatest asset. These changemakers have opened a gateway for ordinary people to begin imagining and building the bright future we deserve.
The Day the World Stops Shopping: How Ending Consumerism Saves the Environment and Ourselves by J. B. MacKinnon
Consuming less is our best strategy for saving the planet–but can we do it? In this thoughtful and surprisingly optimistic book, journalist J. B. MacKinnon investigates how we may achieve a world without shopping.
Who Decides Who Decides? How to Start A Group So Everyone Can Have A Voice by Ted J. Rau
So many groups form. And so many groups fade. What distinguishes those groups that grow and flourish from those that fade and fail? The success factors are well-studied, even though the lessons learned hardly make it into the design of those who start groups.
The processes in this book are based on tools and principles from sociocracy, a consent-based, decentralized governance system that supports every voice to be considered and valued, while allowing groups to work efficiently towards the shared purpose.
Flux: 8 Superpowers for Thriving in Constant Change by April Rinne
Whether readers are sizing up their career, reassessing their values, designing a product, building an organization, trying to inspire their colleagues, or simply showing up more fully in the world, enjoying a flux mindset and activating their flux superpowers will keep readers grounded even when the ground is too often shifting beneath them.
Disasterology: Dispatches from the Frontlines of the Climate Crisis by Samantha Montano
In Disasterology, Dr. Montano, a disaster researcher, brings readers with her on an eye-opening journey through some of our worst disasters, helping readers make sense of what really happened from a emergency management perspective. She explains why we aren’t doing enough to prevent or prepare for disasters, the critical role of media, and how our approach to recovery was not designed to serve marginalized communities.
The Uncommon Knowledge of Elinor Ostrom: Essential Lessons for Collective Action by Erik Nordman
In The Uncommon Knowledge of Elinor Ostrom, author Erik Nordman brings to life Ostrom’s brilliant mind. Half a century ago, she was rejected from doctoral programs because she was a woman; in 2009, she became the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Economics. Ostrom’s research proved that people can and do act in collective interest, coming from a place of shared abundance. Ostrom’s ideas about common resources have played out around the world, from Maine lobster fisheries, to ancient waterways in Spain, to taxicabs in Nairobi. This message of shared collective action is more relevant than ever for solving today’s most pressing environmental problems.
Friendship in the Age of Loneliness: An Optimist’s Guide to Connection by Adam Smiley Poswolsky
*A Next Big Idea Club Summer 2021 Nominee*: After a year of social distancing and lockdown measures during the pandemic, it’s more clear than ever that our friendships and social bonds are vital to our health and happiness. This refreshing, positive guide helps you take care of your people and form deep connections in the digital age.
They Knew: The Us Federal Governments Fifty-Year Role in Causing the Climate Crisis by James Gustave Speth
What did the federal government know and when did it know it? Speth asks, echoing another famous cover up. What did the federal government do and what did it not do? They Knew (an updated version of the Expert Report Speth prepared for the lawsuit) presents the most compelling indictment yet of the government’s role in the climate crisis, showing a forty-year failure to take action.
The Privatization of Everything: How the Plunder of Public Goods Transformed America and How We Can Fight Back by Donald Cohen & Allen Mikaelian
America’s leading defender of the public interest and a bestselling historian show us how to prevent the private takeover of our cherished public resources.
“Donald Cohen is a bright star in the progressive firmament, and The Privatization of Everything brilliantly distills and illustrates the critically important idea that our public goods should be controlled by the American people.” –Nancy MacLean, author of Democracy in Chains
Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice by Rupa Marya & Rajeev Charles Patel
Raj Patel, the New York Times bestselling author of The Value of Nothing, teams up with physician, activist, and co-founder of the Do No Harm Coalition Rupa Marya to reveal the links between health and structural injustices–and to offer a new deep medicine that can heal our bodies and our world.
A Climate of Justice: An Ethical Foundation for Environmentalism by Marvin T. Brown
This open access book helps readers combine history, politics, and ethics to address the most pressing problem facing the world today: environmental survival. In A Climate of Justice, Marvin Brown connects the environmental crisis to basic questions of economic, social, and racial justice. Brown shows how our current social climate maintains systemic injustices, and he uncovers resources for change through a civic ethics of repair and reciprocity. A must-read for researchers and educators in the area of environmental ethics and those teaching courses in the fields of public policy and environmental sustainability.
*Full transparency: We’re committed to bringing you trustworthy sharing-related news and resources. Our honest opinions will never be for sale. That said, we use affiliate links from time to time to fund improvements and maintenance for our site. If you purchase any of the titles from the links above, you’ll be helping us earn a small commission for each sale made. Thank you!
