Category Archives: Book Reviews

Book Review: Child Man—The Selfless Narcissist

Book Reviews / January 2011

Child Man—The Selfless Narcissist by Ashok Malhotra

Arundhati Ghosh

Ashok Malhotra, graduated in Philosophy before doing a post graduation in Management. His career comprises a stint in teaching at the  Administrative Staff College, leading the HR function in Indian as well as Multinational companies. He is now a management consultant who has over two decades of experience of working with individuals, groups and organisations in the areas of personal growth and organisation development. In this interview he speaks to

Book Review

Book Reviews / June 2010

Book Review
The Empathic Civilization by Jeremy Rifkin
Bruce L. Gibb

rifkin coverJeremy Rifkin. The Empathic Civilization. New York: Penguin, 2009.

If you are a spiralcrat, you are going to love Jeremy Rifkin’s book, a wonderful compilation of historical, psychological, and sociological stories chronicling the human journey through the vMemes of the Spiral.

One might conclude that Rifkin’s COG is at green because the values he espouses and the demons he denounces are typically those of a person at green. …

Review

Book Reviews / June 2010

Review
Michael Horace Barnes, Stages of Thought
Science and Religion through History As Seen through the Lens of Stage

by Lucas Alexander Haley Commons-Miller

barnes coverMichael Horace Barnes. Stages of Thought: The Co-Evolution of Religious Thought and Science. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.

In Stages of Thought, Michael Horace Barnes explains how societies have evolved in what he calls “style of thought.” In Piagetian terms he is speaking of stage change. This stage change is not in an …

Book Review

Book Reviews / June 2010

Mark G. Edwards. Organisational Transformation for Sustainability:
An Integral Metatheory. New York: Routledge, 2010.

by Russ Volckmann

About The Book

edwards coverBill Torbert, interviewed in this issue of Integral Leadership Review, wrote the foreword. There he wrote, “Once every generation or so, a field-defining scholarly statement appears. Mark Edwards’s metatheory for organizational transformation is such a book for the field or organizational change and transformation.” I very much agree. This comment captures the metaview of this book. Not only is …

Review

Book Reviews / March 2010

Michael Stron’s Be the Solution –
How Entrepreneurs and Conscious Capitalists
Can Solve All the World’s Problems

by John Bunzl

be the solution coverAs the title suggests, Be the Solution argues that our planetary crisis can be solved through the flowering of responsible entrepreneurship along with a stakeholder approach to business known as Conscious Capitalism. “Focused entirely on entrepreneurial and Conscious Capitalist solutions to the challenges and opportunities facing humanity,” the flyleaf tells us, “Be the Solution shows how the entrepreneurial passion to …

Reveiw

Book Reviews / March 2010

Raul Quinones Rosado
Consciousness-in-Action:
Toward an Integral Psychology of Liberation & Transformation
Caguas, Puerto Rico: Ile Publications, 2007
by Russ Volckmann

rosado covervolckmannHave you ever been to an integral event? Workshops near Boulder, Colorado? Or ILP sessions in San Francisco or New York? Or Integral Leadership in Action in Texas? Or the Integral Theory Conference in Concord, California? I have not been to all of those, but I have been to enough to hear myself wondering, “Where are the people of …

Book Review

Book Reviews / January 2010

Measuring Hidden Dimensions of Human Systems:
“Foundations of Requisite Organization”, Vol. 2,
Otto Laske, (2009) Interdevelopmental Institute Press,
Medford, MA, USA

by Bernardo A Merizalde

laske coverIn Volume 2 of his series, Measuring Hidden Dimensions of Human Systems: Foundations of Requisite Organization, Otto Laske presents the second, but not less important, strand of his Constructive Developmental Framework (CDF). The book does not just follow Volume 1; it is an inseparable part of the model. Here, he describes, integrates, and develops, …

Review

Book Reviews / January 2010

Monologism and Dialogism in Sense-Making and Meaning Making
Per Linell, Rethinking Language, Mind, and World Dialogically.
Charlotte, North Carolina:
Information Age Publishing, Inc., 2009
Russ Volckmann

linnel coverruss volckmannRecently I have been musing a bit about language and meaning making. This has included exploring Otto Laske’s notions of dialectical thinking and the mindset that goes with it, that is, seeing developmental problem solving as a dialectical activity of meaning making (http://www.integralleadershipreview.com/archives-2009/2009-10/2009-10-12-article-laske.php). This meaning making takes place in the context of people …

Book Reiview

Book Reviews / January 2010

Howard Bloom’s
The Genius of the Beast:
A Radical Revision of Capitalism
New York: Prometheus Books, 2009
by Keith Bellamy

Recently, the thought of reading yet another Integral Theory book, or even an integrally informed book, has filled me with a sense of dread. Sadly, many of the books being published in this genre are, paradoxically, attempts by the author to demonstrate not only how well they understand integral theory, but how their understanding surpasses that of most of the …

Review

Book Reviews / January 2010

A Holistic View for Responsible Leaders
Review of Peter Merry, Evolutionary Leadership
Pacific Grove: Integral Publishers, 2009
by Antonio Marturano

Merry Evolutionary Leadership coverAntonio MarturanoBritisher Peter Merry calls himself a synnervator (from “Syn-“ to interconnect, and “-nervate” to vitalise) who spent much of his life moving around, living in Canada, France, Germany, Switzerland, Ghana, and currently he is in the Hague, the Netherlands, with his Dutch wife. From 1999 Peter “felt in love” with Spiral Dynamics Integral (indeed he was trained on that by …