From Russell Simmons and Deepak Chopra, spiritual journeys to business success, big bucks, and eternal happiness 
The Good: Simmons and Chopra find inventive new wrappers for old-fashioned business and management primers.
The Bad: Neither book is filled with business advice, just gratuitous product mentions and metaphysical talk.
The Bottom Line: Both authors are, at their core, entrepreneurs. And these books are their latest branded offerings.
To read the full review click here.
Posted in Books, Culture, social
Tagged Book Review, deepak chopra, green collar rap, respect the culture, russell simmons, super rich, the soul of leadership
“The 18th Annual African American Children’s Book Fair will highlight some of the best books our generation,” says Lloyd-Sgambati. “These authors and illustrators cover every aspect of African American lives. The books are well-written and beautifully illustrated. These books will open the door to a love of reading and enlightened children of all ages. This year also opens the door to our campaign to stress the importance of having a home library. Our mantra is “TAKE A BOOK HOME.” Every home should have an area that is the family reading center. Also getting our children to read means everyone in the family should be reading.”
Read more about this interview @ The Brown Book Shelf
Details:
18th Annual African American Children’s Book Fair
Saturday, February 27, 2010, 1-3 p.m.
Community College of Philadelphia (Gymnasium)
17th Spring Garden Street
Free and open to the public
For more information, please call 215-878-BOOK
NPR is the first place I heard of mary_roachb>. She was explaining the reasoning behind her new book Packing For Mars. I haven’t read it yet but it interested me enough to do some Internet research on her. That’s when I found this TEDTV video.
Here is a video that captures the essence of Packing for Mars.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ie52BGvaDd0&feature=youtube_g
Tagged book preview, Books, mary roach, packing for mars
Mark Frauenfelder. Made by Hand: Searching for Meaning in a Throwaway World. New York. Portfolio. 2010. $25.95.
In an America in which almost all things are boughten, Made by Hand celebrates what has become known as maker culture, which itself celebrates the pleasures of self-reliance and imperfection.¹ Mark Frauenfelder, co-editor of Boing Boing and editor of Make, has written not a manifesto but a sequence of engaging stories drawn from life, the first of which tells of moving with his wife and children from California to the South Pacific island of Rarotonga. Frauenfelder soon realized that the possibilities of a better life were to be found not in a different place but in a different approach to daily living: less buying, more making. Thus begin his efforts, back in California, to acquire various sets of skills — growing fruits and vegetables, modifying an espresso machine, raising chickens, keeping bees, building cigarbox guitars, carving wooden spoons, and making fermented foods, all undertaken with an intention of becoming “more mindful of our daily activities, more appreciative of what we have, and more engaged with the systems and things that keep us alive and well.” Continue reading
Posted in Books, Culture, D.I.Y., education, Transitioning
Tagged Books, environment, green collar rap, inspiration, made by hand, mark frauenfelder, nex millen, portfolio books, respect the culture, review
During the past forty years, thousands of studies have been carried out on the subject of happiness. Some have explored the levels of happiness or dissatisfaction associated with typical daily activities, such as working, seeing friends, or doing household chores. Others have tried to determine the extent to which income, family, religion, and other factors are associated with the satisfaction people feel about their lives. The Gallup organization has begun conducting global surveys of happiness, and several countries are considering publishing periodic reports on the growth or decline of happiness among their people. One nation, tiny Bhutan, has actually made “Gross National Happiness” the central aim of its domestic policy. How might happiness research affect government policy in the United States–and beyond? In The Politics of Happiness, former Harvard president Derek Bok examines how governments could use happiness research in a variety of policy areas to increase well-being and improve the quality of life for all their citizens.
Continue reading
Posted in Books, Culture, Politics, Transitioning
Tagged Books, derek bok, green collar rap, happiness, of, Politics, the, transition
To prepare today’s students to meet growing global environmental challenges, colleges and universities must make environmental literacy a core learning goal for all students, in all disciplines. But what should an environmentally literate citizen know? What teaching and learning strategies are most effective in helping students think critically about human-environment interactions and sustainability, and integrate what they have learned in diverse settings? Educators from the natural and social sciences and the humanities discuss the critical content, skills, and affective qualities essential to environmental literacy. This volume is an invaluable resource for developing integrated, campus-wide programs to prepare students to think critically about, and to work to create, a sustainable society.
Posted in Books, education, Global Environmental News
Tagged Books, education, environmental, global, green collar rap, Literacy, teaching
We live in an oil-dependent world, and have got to this level of dependency in a very short space of time, using vast reserves of oil in the process – without planning for when the supply is not so plentiful. Most of us avoid thinking about what happens when oil runs out (or becomes prohibitively expensive), but The Transition Handbook shows how the inevitable and profound changes ahead can have a positive outcome. These changes can lead to the rebirth of local communities, which will grow more of their own food, generate their own power, and build their own houses using local materials. They can also encourage the development of local currencies, to keep money in the local area.
The book has three sections, the Head, the Heart and the Hands. The Head explores the issues of peak oil and climate change, and how when looked at together, we need to be focusing on the rebuilding of resilience as well as cutting carbon emissions. It argues that the focus of our lives will become increasingly local and small scale as we come to terms with the real implications of the energy crisis we are heading into. The Heart looks at where we find the personal tools for responding to what can feel like overwhelming challenges. It argues that key to our success will be our ability to generate positive visions of future, to harness the power of engaged optimism, and overcome powerlessness. The Hands offers a detailed exploration of the Transition model, setting out its principles, its origins, the 12 Steps of Transition, how they were applied in the first year of Transition Town Totnes, as well as offering a taste of how the model has been applied in a range of other settings. The book also contains lots of ‘Tools for Transition’, exercises and activities that can help to deepen this work in your community.
Click here to order a copy of The Transition Handbook
Posted in Books, Culture, education, Global Environmental News, Home Efficiency
Tagged Books, environment, green collar rap, rob hopkins, transition handbook
The highly anticipated sequel to the best-selling Freakonomics was released on October 20, 2009. Steven Levitt, professor of economics at the University of Chicago, and author Stephen Dubner have teamed together to apply economic reasoning to a wide range of real-world questions. As with the original Freakonomics book, SuperFreakonomics is largely based upon the research of Professor Levitt, who has tackled problems inside and outside the field of economics.
Ranked #2 on the New York Times bestseller list!
Check Out the Freakonomics Daily NY Times Blog
Posted in Books
Tagged blog, Books, green collar rap, stephen dubner, steven levitt, superfreakonomics
Contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine and the author of The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World, Michael Pollan delivers this Avenali Lecture on the stories of four familiar plant species: the apple,the tulip, the potato, and cannabis.
Story:: By SARA CORBETT
This is a story about a nearly 100-year-old book, bound in red leather, which has spent the last quarter century secreted away in a bank vault in Switzerland. The book is big and heavy and its spine is etched with gold letters that say “Liber Novus,” which is Latin for “New Book.” Its pages are made from thick cream-colored parchment and filled with paintings of otherworldly creatures and handwritten dialogues with gods and devils. If you didn’t know the book’s vintage, you might confuse it for a lost medieval tome.
And yet between the book’s heavy covers, a very modern story unfolds. It goes as follows: Man skids into midlife and loses his soul. Man goes looking for soul. After a lot of instructive hardship and adventure — taking place entirely in his head — he finds it again.
Some people feel that nobody should read the book, and some feel that everybody should read it. The truth is, nobody really knows. Most of what has been said about the book — what it is, what it means — is the product of guesswork, because from the time it was begun in 1914 in a smallish town in Switzerland, it seems that only about two dozen people have managed to read or even have much of a look at it.
Posted in Books, Global Environmental News, Spirituality
Tagged Books, carl, grail, green collar rap, holy, jjung, psychology, spiritual, unconscious
