Category Archives: Book Reviews

12/21 — Seeing Through the World: An Invitation to Begin the Healing Work

December 2020 / Book Reviews

Cynthia Bourgeault

Cynthia Bourgeault

Well, the oasis of grace miraculously opened, and now it’s time to roll up our collective sleeves and get on with the healing work! I know that my own first assignment has something to do with helping to expose— and hopefully defuse— some of the reactivity and sanctimoniousness that boils just below the surface in my immediate peer group, the spiritual liberal intelligentsia.

Sometimes a book simply falls off the bookshelf when the time is right. …

7/31 – Book Review of Resilient: How to Grow an Unshakable Core of Calm, Strength, and Happiness by Rick Hanson

July 2020 / Book Reviews

Written by Brooke Linn

Brooke Linn

 “An experience of patience or any other psychological resource is a state of mind, and enjoying it helps turn it into a positive trait embedded in your brain” (Hanson 20). This is the foundation of Rick Hanson’s book titled Resilient, which is a timely resource for anyone looking to harness the power we have over our own brain and mental health. 

The book is structured into four parts, each of these parts comprised of …

12/21 – Understanding and Evaluating Research

December 2019 / Book Reviews

Natasha Mantler

Natasha Mantler

Understanding and Evaluating Research, written by Sue L. T. McGregor, and published by Sage, is a critical guide on how to become research literate. There are many textbooks available on how to do research oneself; however, far fewer on how to critique someone else’s research. The textbook has 8 parts. Each chapter begins with learning objectives, critical review questions are distributed throughout, and each chapter ends with wrap-up summaries and review and discussion questions. Following this template encourages a deep …

12/21 – A Compassionate Civilization

December 2019 / Book Reviews

Cosmas Gitta

Cosmas Gitta

Robertson Work joins a growing number of public intellectuals who warn of existential threats to humanity and the planet, while highlighting the unprecedented opportunities available to improve our life on a healthy planet. In the book A Compassionate Civilization, Work contends that the “world stands at the crossroads of interlocking crises of colossal dangers and exhilarating possibilities”. He then makes a prophetic call for a compassionate world order—one equipped with systems, policies and institutions to address the …

12/21 – A Transformation Journey to Creative And Alternative Planetary Futures

December 2019 / Book Reviews

Thomas Mengel

Thomas Mengel

Given my interest both in leadership and the futures, A Transformation Journey to Creative And Alternative Planetary Futures (Motti, 2019; Cambridge Scholars Publishing) caught my immediate attention. Futures and leadership are implicitly interwoven throughout this book. While I would have loved to see “the complexity of leadership” more explicitly being addressed and discussed, Victor only does so briefly in his description of the final leg of this fascinating journey. However, Victor’s book certainly offers a roadmap …

12/21 – Through a Still Imperfect Lens

December 2019 / Book Reviews

Elliot Talenfeld

Elliot Talenfeld

I have written a book that I would like to share with you. A work of narrative nonfiction, it is the story of my life and relationships, from a “psychospiritual perspective.” Beyond the behavioral events I’ve lived to tell about, my personal process – my thoughts, feelings and conflicts in the course of co-creating and navigating those events – are on full display here; and to a lesser extent, the processes of those whose lives have …

12/21 – Nurturing our Humanity

December 2019 / Book Reviews

Suzy Adra

Suzy Adra

Utopia. It is a buzzword these days. What I learned about Utopia during my early days in college was that it is an ideal society where everything is perfect. Eisler and Frye’s Nurturing our Humanity speaks of this Utopia in a more approachable way:  they call it Humane society. This book is full of footnotes and draws from a number of disciplines such as neurobiology, archeology, and history. It is a highly researched book with a lot of …

12/21 – Planetary praxis and pedagogy: Transdisciplinary approaches to environmental sustainability

December 2019 / Book Reviews

Sue L. T. McGregor

This book is edited by Canadians Shannon Moore and Richard Mitchell, both from Brock University in Ontario, Canada. Their edited collection is 150 pages in length with 7 chapters as well as an Introduction and Overview of the Volume. Nearly half (43%, 62 pages) of the book is devoted to two chapters (Chapter 2 Planetary praxis and pedagogy and Chapter 3, Marketing sustainable living). The remaining five chapters average 14 pages each. Each chapter …

06/29 – Leading Beyond the Ego

June 2019 / Book Reviews

Annabel Beerel

John Knights, President of the U.K based leadership development and coaching organization, LeaderShape Global, along with several members of his team, advocate a new leadership approach for the twenty-first century called Transpersonal Leadership. The steps to becoming a transpersonal leader, are explained in great detail in their cutting-edge book, Leading Beyond the Ego.

According to Knights, et al., traditional leadership behaviors are not working. Based on research dating back to 2005, and involving several thousand executives, Knights found …

06/29 – The Desire for Mutual Recognition: Social Movements and the Dissolution of the False Self

June 2019 / Book Reviews

Barbara Nussbaum

This book has already been singled out by its academic publisher, Routledge, nominating it for the best nonfiction book in 2018. But for me the compelling reason for a broader audience to read it, is the artful way it embodies its own timely message for humanity. Peter Gabel makes a compelling case for movements which catalyse whole system transformation and uses various lenses through which we humans perceive, think, feel and learn to claim our own agency in …