"Jobs will be created through paying more attention to our inner work - that of individuals as well as that of the community at large...Our times call out for work - work on the human species itself - its despairing and depressed, often self-hating and destructive youth; its racist, adultist, sexist, apathetic adults; its tired institutions of education, religion, politics, economics, art. Who says there is no work?" Published 1994, 342 pages. £11.50 incl p/p.
Price: £11.50
2005 244pp. £8.99 incl p/p.
Price: £8.99
Draws on his remarkable 25 years' experience to offer a thrilling and inspiring vision of the keys to economic success in the world today. Marrying vivid storytelling with acute analysis, he sets the stage by drawing a conceptual map of the world economy and explains why, over the past 200 years, wealth and poverty have diverged and evolved across the planet, and why the poorest nations have been so markedly unable to escape the trap of poverty. Sachs tells the remarkable stories of his own worldwide work to bring readers with him to an understanding of the different problems countries face. In the end, readers will be left not with an understanding of how daunting the world's problems are, but how solvable they are and why making the effort is both our moral duty and in our own interests. 2005 288pp.
Price: £9.99
Price: £18.00
"This is the most comprehensive book on community banks and complementary currency systems I know. Not only that - it is packed with fascinating information and is a delight to read." - Richard Douthwaite. 2005 321pp.
Price: £26.99
Price: £5.60
2005 289pp. Price includes postage.
Price: £16.75
Nasrudin is the archetypal wise fool, who lived in the Middle East over 600 years ago, his stories have travelled the world and been updated in every generation. Peter Hawkins has given a modern spin to 84 of these stories by turning Nasrudin into a management consultant. Simple truths are told in a straightforward and highly entertaining way. They shock us into seeing situations and ideas with which we have become familiar from a different perspective. Each story slips into our house by its engaging good humour, but once inside it can start to rearrange the furniture and knock new windows through the walls of our mind - a process that can be releasing and refreshing, but at times disconcerting! 2005 106pp.
Price: £8.99
2007 320pp. £18.75 incl. p/p
Price: £18.75
Important and timely book delivering a startling analysis of the clash of faith and reason in today's world. With penetrating clarity and accessibility he asserts that in the shadow of weapons of mass destruction, we can no longer tolerate views that pit one true god against another. While warning against the encroachment of organized religion into world politics, Harris also draws on new evidence from neuro-science and insights from philosophy to explore spirituality as a biological, brain-based need. He calls on us to invoke that need in taking a secular humanistic approach to solving the problems of this world. "Read Sam Harris and wake up" - Richard Dawkins. 2006 336pp. £9.including postage.
Price: £9.00
We have just acquired a stock of pre-publication edition, spiral bound copies of this eagerly awaited book, the result of years of development work by the renowned expert in the field. (This was to have been made available at the 2006 Be the Change Event but went astray between Colorado and London.)
Critical reviews are eagerly awaited!
2006, 358pp.Price includes postage
Price: £14.50
A very practical workbook. Balancing personal with career growth, business goals and spiritual goals, this could encourage new entrepreneurs. A very practical workbook.
1999 142pp. £10
Price: £10.00
2008 312pp £16.75 incl. p/p
Price: £16.75
For the first time in human history, he observes, "more" is no longer synonymous with "better" indeed, for many of us, they have become almost opposites. He puts forward a new way to think about the things we buy, the food we eat, the energy we use, and the money that pays for it all. Our purchases, he says, need not be at odds with the things we truly value. His animating idea is that we need to move beyond "growth" as the paramount economic ideal and pursue prosperity in a more local direction, with cities, suburbs, and regions producing more of their own food, generating more of their own energy, and even creating more of their own culture and entertain-ment.
2007 272pp. £9.99 incl p/p
Price: £9.99
2008 384pp £12.99 incl. p/p
Price: £12.99
2006 192pp. £19.95 Incl. p/p
Price: £19.95
Contemporary capitalism and a habitable planet cannot coexist! A sweeping indictment of a capitalism which contains the seeds of its own demise. Maybe a more regulated and democratized form of capitalism could be compatible with environmental salvation if it were accompanied by a profound change in personal and collective values. We need a 'post-growth' society with a more rounded definition of well-being. "People have conversion experiences and epiphanies - can an entire society have a conversion experience?" A hardhitting, radical, probing diagnosis, with tough observations on environmental movements.
2008 295pp. £17.50 incl p/p
Price: £17.50
A flexible, easy-to-use process for fostering collaborative dialogue, sharing collective know-ledge, and discovering new opportunities for action. The originators outline seven core design principles and provide practical tips and tools for convening and hosting conversations of real depth.
2004 264pp. £14 includes postage
Price: £14.00
This second, thoroughly updated, edition of The Enemy of Nature speaks to this new environmental awareness. Kovel argues against claims that we can achieve a better environ-ment through the current Western 'way of being'. He suggests a radical new way forward, an integration of 'red' and 'green' politics.
2007 330pp £15.50 incl p/p
Price: £15.50
With current corporate economics, the environment is being depleted and destroyed at an unsustainable rate, but abandoning the quality of life offered by advances in science and technology to return to some primitive lifestyle, is not a realistic option. "The Tao of Holism" is a source of factual and statistical data on many topics of widespread concern - health, nutrition, education, economics, religion, breakdown of society, depletion of the environment's resources and exploitation of third world communities, with opinions from a number of experts in each field. This book aims to inform opinion makers to influence society and governments and empower people to live within our environmental resources, outlining the steps we must take as individuals and societies to live holistically and safeguard the planet to ensure economic stability and environmental preservation.
2008 368 pp, £16.50 including postage.
Price: £16.50
Around the world in Britain, the United States, Asia and the Middle East, there are people with power who are cashing in on chaos; exploiting bloodshed and catastrophe to brutally remake our world in their image. They are the shock doctors. Thrilling and revelatory, "The Shock Doctrine" cracks open the secret history of our era.
Exposing these global profiteers, she discovered information and connections that shocked even her about how comprehensively the shock doctors' beliefs now dominate our world - and how this domination has been achieved. Raking in billions out of the tsunami, plundering Russia, exploiting Iraq - this is the chilling tale of how a few are making a killing while more are getting killed.
2008 576pp £10.50 inlc p/p
Price: £10.50
You can shop anywhere you like - as long as it's Tesco. In this searing analysis, he tackles a subject none of us can afford to ignore. The book shows how the super-markets - and Tesco in particular - have brought: banality - homogenized high streets full of clone stores; ghost towns - superstores have drained the life from our town centres and communities; a supermarket state - this new commercial nanny state that knows more about you than you think; profits from poverty - shelves full of global plunder, produced for a pittance; and global food domination - as the super-stores expand overseas. But there's change afoot, with evidence of the tide turning and consumer campaigns gaining ground. Simms ends with suggestions for change and corporate reformation to safeguard our communities and environment - all over the world.
2007, 256pp. £10.99 incl. p/p
Price: £10.99
2008 240pp £14.95 incl p/p
Price: £14.95
2008. 205pp £16.50 Incl. p/p
Price: £16.50
Imagine a world in which the excess energy from one business would be used to heat another. Where buildings need less and less energy around the world, and where "regenerative" commercial buildings - ones that create more energy than they use - are being designed. A world in which environmentally sound products and processes would be more cost-effective than wasteful ones. This book shows how ordinary people at every level are transforming their businesses and communities. By working collaboratively across boundaries, they are exploring and putting into place unprecedented solutions that move beyond just being "less bad" to creating pathways that will enable us to flourish in an increasingly interdependent world.
2008 416pp £17.50, HB, inlc. p/p
Price: £17.50
"There is a big problem with the economy, namely that it is disconnected from both ecology and equity." So begins Satish Kumar in his introduction to this informal account of a think-tank held a Schumacher College that met in an attempt to seek an economic renaissance.
2008. 47pp. £5.50 Incl. p/p
Price: £5.50
For millions of years, humankind has used a brilliantly successful survival strategy. If we like something, we chase after more of it: more status, more food, more info, more stuff. Then we chase again. It's how we survived famine, disease and disaster to colonise the world. But now, thanks to technology, we've suddenly got more of everything than we can ever use, enjoy or afford. That doesn't stop us from striving though and it's making us sick, tired, overweight, angry and in debt. It burns up our personal ecologies and the planet's ecology too. We urgently need to develop a sense of 'enough'. Our culture keeps telling us that we don't yet have all we need to be happy, but in fact we need to nurture a new skill -- the ability to bask in the bounties all around us. ENOUGH explores how our Neolithic brain-wiring spurs us to build a world of overabundance that keeps us hooked on 'more'. John explains how, through adopting the art of enoughness, we can break from this wrecking cycle.
2008 304pp £9.50 incl p/p
Price: £9.50
…shows how, more than ever before, and perhaps more than anywhere else in the world, our children are being tracked and
targeted by big business, which sells them back their dreams, packages their childhood and exploits their vulnerabilities. It looks at why children torture their Barbies, how boys feel about David Beckham, why mums are cooler than dads, why children in the toughest families make the most ardent consumers and why, above all, too much marketing makes you unhappy. This hard-hitting expose is essential reading for anyone who is interested in the deeper implications of the runaway commercial world we live in.
2009 378pp £10.50 incl. p/p
Price: £10.50
The authors use the core Quaker principle of "right relationship"- interacting in a way that is respectful to all and that aids the common good-as the foundation for a new economic model. They pose five basic questions: What is an economy for? How does it work? How big is too big? What's fair? And how can it best be governed? They propose new answers that combine an acute awareness of ecological limits with a fundamental focus on fairness and a concern with the spiritual, as well as material, well being of the human race.
2009, 216pp, £12.95 incl p/p
Price: £12.95
Powerful, impassioned essays on living and being in the world, from a bestselling author. For a generation, Bill McKibben has been among America's most impassioned and beloved writers on our relationship to our world and our environment. For the first time, the best of his essays--fiery, magical, and infused with his uniquely soulful investigations of modern life--are collected in a single volume. Whether meditating on today's golden age in radio, the natural place of biting black flies in our lives, or the patriotism of a grandmother fighting to get corporate money out of politics McKibben inspires us to become better caretakers of the Earth--and of one another.
2008. 442pp. £12.75 Incl. p/p
Price: £12.75
The authors map out how financial and economic crisis has blighted organisations in every sector. They also provide a wealth of practical tools, including showing how to build a "purposeful self-renewing organization" designed to work in any type of organization, for testing your capabilities and renewing your thinking.
2010, 327pp, HB £22.50 incl p/p
Price: £22.50
Many people feel that money and what we perceive as the psyche, or soul, are bitter enemies - do we choose money or soul, finance or feelings, markets or commonhumanity? This book traces the origins of these opposing concepts, and the feelings that money provokes. Economic ideas often stand out as being universal, globallyvalid and without cultural ties. But money is narrative and image just as much as it is a means of exchange and of preserving wealth. By viewing money asculture and philosophy, it becomes evident that the money of today is a system of symbols, something that society itself has devised over many centuries. Having considered the nature of money and psyche, the author asks how our culture makes us feel and think about them; and proposes how the framework around money can be expanded. This develops the idea of extended accounting to include natural and
social capital in addition to the manufactured capital we are used to entering in the accounts - currently to the exclusion of all else. Money and Soul opens up new methods of looking at, thinking about and using money. It points to a future where our ideas about money will be greatly expanded, and there will be different kinds of money, with different social purposes, in circulation. “The need for new ideas has never been more pressing….Now is precisely the time to start thinking very differently indeed - and Per Espen Stoknes certainly rises to that particular challenge.” Jonathan Porritt.
2009 297 £14.50 incl p/p
Price: £14.50
2008 240pp £13.50 Incl. p/p
Price: £13.50
2008 126pp £8.95 Incl. p/p
Price: £8.95
Shows how local money can help unleash the financial power of communities to build a resilient, low carbon future. An inspiring yet practical new book, it helps you understand what money is and what makes good and bad money. It draws on the considerable track record of experimentation with local money around the world and gives ideas to those in the Transition movement and beyond about what has been tried, what works, and what to avoid.
2010, 192pp, £14.95 incl p/p
Price: £14.95
Schumacher College, set up as an international centre for ecological and spiritual studies, has developed a worldwide reputation for the quality of the unique learning experience it offers. Individuals and groups come from across the world to learn about subjects relating to environmental and social sustainability. Students are often so inspired that many express a wish to set up similar
organisations elsewhere in the world. Educators and trainers ask how the College was set up, what the magic ingredients were, and what students have done after having been there. This book is an attempt to answer those questions, and describes how the College came to be setup by The Dartington Hall Trust in Devon, England. It explains the policies and practices adopted to ensure that the learning processes were consistent with - and reinforced - the topics being studied. It includes examples of what former students have gone on to do, and reflections on the College by visiting teachers including Fritjof Capra, Vandana Shiva, Wolfgang Sachs and David Orr. This book could be used as a guide to design a place of holistic learning: the key is to remember the ecological principle of context, and to apply liberal doses of local wisdom.
2208 141pp £11.00 incl p/p
Price: £11.00
Communities, Councils and a Low Carbon Future: What We Can Do If the Governments Won't by Alexis Rowell
Includes current examples of best eco- practice from local authorities across the UK and elsewhere, as well as a look at the background to unsuccessful projects. This book is designed to inform and inspire councils and councillors, as well as local environmental activists, community groups and Transition Initiatives.
2010, 216pp, £14.95 incl p/p
Price: £14.95
The earth's resources are finite, climate change threatens to dramatically transform how and where we live, and the global economic system is in disarray. One way or another we have to change. In this timely book Zac Goldsmith argues for the creation of what he calls 'a constant economy'. Since the industrial revolution, our economies have grown at the expense of the natural world. We can deny the need for change, in which case we will be at the mercy of events and the adjustments will be harsh. Or, as this book shows, there is an alternative. A 'constant economy' is one in which resources are valued not wasted, where food is grown sustainably and goods are built to last. Energy security is based on the use of renewable sources, and communities are valued as a country's strongest hedge against social, economic and environmental instability. The constant economy operates at the human scale, and above all it recognizes nature's limits.
2009 256pp £18.50 HB including p/p
Price: £18.50
This pocket guide explains how you can: - Reduce carbon emissions and dependence on fossil fuels - Encourage leaders to make wise decisions - Buildcommunity relationships It also explains what the Transition movement is, its aims and gives pointers for how you can get involved with your local Transition initiative, or guide you to set up your own if you don't already have one. The book provides resources and examples of Transition initiatives throughout the UK.
2010, 108pp £5.95 incl p/p
Price: £5.95
An astonishing, galvanizing book that tells the story of all the 'stuff' we use everyday - where our bottled water, mobile phones and jeans come from, how they're made and distributed, and where they really go when we throw them away. Our out-of-control consumption habits are killing the planet and threatening our health, but Annie Leonard provides hope that change is within reach.
2010, 256pp, £10.85 incl p/p
Price: £10.85
Economics sometimes seems to be stacked against social, environmental and individual well-being. It doesn't have to be like this though and a new approach has begun to emerge. Sceptical about money as a measure of success, this new economics turns our assumptions about wealth and poverty upside down. It shows that real wealth can be measured by increased well-being and sustainability rather than just having and consuming things. This book is the first accessible guide to new economics and an essential guide to understanding it.
2009 191pp HB £19.00 incl p/p
Price: £19.00
2009 224pp £8.50 incl p/p
Price: £8.50
Economics is about choices, but who gets to make them? This book offers a fresh and accessible way to think about economics and the choices we will all need to make in order to create a sustainable economy and society. Part one asks how we can rebalance society and limit markets, part two answers by showing how social organizations, in America and around the globe, are finding new ways to describe the world's worth. If we don't want the market to price every aspect of our lives, we need to learn how such organizations have discovered democratic ways in which people, and not simply governments, can play a crucial role in deciding how we might share our world and its resources in common.
2009, 176pp, £13.50 incl p/p
Price: £13.50
This is the second edition of Andrew Simm's highly regarded guide to ecological debt. He shows how millions of us in the West are running up huge ecological debts from the amount of oil and coal that we burn to heat our houses and run our cars, to what we consume and the waste that we create, the impact of our lifestyles is felt worldwide. Whilst these debts go unpaid, millions more living in poverty in the majority world suffer the burden of paying dubious foreign financial debts. The book explores a great paradox of our age: how the global wealth gap was built on ecological debts, which the world's poorest are now having to pay for. Highlighting how and why this has happened, he also shows what can be done differently in the future. Now updated throughout, this is a clear and passionate account of the steps we can take to stop pushing the planet to the point of environmental bankruptcy.
2009 318pp £16.50 incl p/p
Price: £16.50
Reveals the vital importance of understanding our early emotional lives, arguing that by focusing on the attention we give to
our children we can create a better society. We have come to inhabit a culture of selfish individualism which has confused material well-being with happiness. As society became bigger and more competitive, working life was cut off from child-rearing and the new economics ignored people's emotional needs. We have lived with this culture so long that it is hard to imagine it being any different. Yet we are now at a turning point where the need for change is becoming urgent. If we are to build a more reflective and collaborative society, Gerhardt argues, we need to support the caring qualities that are learnt in early life and integrate them into our political and economic thinking.
2010, 400pp, £14.50 incl p/p
Price: £14.50
Gentle Action: Bringing Creative Change to a Turbulent World (by F. David Peat
How can we build a better world for our families, our businesses, our institutions, society and ourselves? Rather then treating situations as external to ourselves, the keys to the issues we face today demand solutions from within. F. David Peat's latest book shows we can exercise more effective, creative and non-invasive action in everything from the local to the international level. The book is packed with examples of ways in which individuals and groups have totally transformed economies, societies and situations though gentle and creative actions. It also highlights cases in which well meaning attempts to help or to provide aid have gone disastrously wrong; because the organizations failed to understand the complexities involved.
2009, 175pp, £10.95 incl p/p
Price: £10.95