Books : Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Social Movement in History Is Restoring Grace, Justice, and Beauty to the World
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 333.72
EAN: 9780143113652
ISBN: 0143113658
Label: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 352
Publication Date: April 01, 2008
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Sales Rank: 12695
Studio: Penguin (Non-Classics)
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Product Description:
The New York Times bestselling examination of the worldwide movement for social and environmental change
Paul Hawken has spent more than a decade researching organizations dedicated to restoring the environment and fostering social justice. From billion-dollar nonprofits to single-person dot.causes, these groups collectively comprise the largest movement on earth, a movement that has no name, leader, or location and that has gone largely ignored by politicians and the media.
Blessed Unrest explores the diversity of the movement, its brilliant ideas, innovative strategies, and centuries of hidden history. A culmination of Hawken’s many years of leadership in the environmental and social justice fields, it will inspire all who despair of the world’s fate, and its conclusions will surprise even those within the movement itself.
Average Rating: 
Rating:  -
All that is good, all that is kind, all that brings about social progress: these are recounted in Paul Hawken's latest book. The stories of activists, alone, in groups, scattered over the world, are fascinating and well told. Who can argue with Hawken's view that "the world is a system, and it will soon be a very different world, driven by millions of communities who believe that democracy and restoration are grassroots movements that connect us to values we hold in common"? Hawken impressively lays out his case that "grace, justice and beauty" are advanced by humans who are, in the publc good, directly and indirectly attacking establishments. Especially impressive is his version of the Rachel Carson story, presented by the author as a morality tale--the intelligent, focused, painfully suffering, ultimately dying woman, a lone writer, a crusader, a quiet scientist who takes on the chemical industry to save wildlife and humans from pesticides. It's a moving story. My problem with the book is that the salient theme running through these stories is that economic enterprise (especially industrial enterprise) is the bane of human existence.
At one point in this slim volume (half the book is an Appendix of terms and scattered thoughts), Hawken provides two lists. The "list of companies and agencies that legally or illegally impose their will on indigenous cultures" runs for four pages. A listing of "organizations promoting environmental and social justice" covers another ... Read More
Rating: -
Really a three minus... I have a good vocabulary but still found I required a dictionary close at hand to make it through this book. Although there is much good information here, it can be read in a number of other books that are more accessible and deliver the data in a more concise manner. I love exact words and have no problem with learning more, but when used more to impress than elucidate, as it seems here, I am underwhelmed.
And who said "no one saw it coming?" I find that underwhelming hyperbole - maybe Paul failed to see it coming, and maybe he is in the majority, but it is preposterous to slam those who toil in these fields with that broad brush. Some activists have worked consciously to support and even create the blessed unrest that Paul purport's to announce to us as invisible. This problem continues through the length of the book: what Paul describes as a hidden phenomena and unabashedly rips away the veil for us, the supposed blind, might be HIS epiphany, but it is not universal. Paul has discovered a true thing of beauty, it's just several years after the fact. (Do not misread me: This IS a beauteous and wonderful thing and it IS exciting and we DO need to acknowledge we are on the very lip of an abyss that needs our attention NOW. I do not quarrel with this.)
I review books for Touch the Soil magazine (touchthesoil.com) and so I wade through a number of books in this general genre monthly. Blessed Unrest is the kind of work that ... Read More
Rating:  -
First, the book promoted me to think about what the social change would have been in the past for different cultures if it was carried out in peace.
To help you understand what I mean, let me elaborate a little. With technology breakthrough, the whole planet is becoming smaller and thus different cultures come closer to each other. A lot of collision happened when different cultures "discovered" each other. In reality, it had been a very bloody history. In the past, you won if you were better at killing people. The history of mankind was mostly driven by this force. Because this destructive force was so dominant, other peaceful forces (for example the force of knowledge or skills) cannot be fully functioning. That is why we don't need any war, and we should live by peace. Thus I try to imagine how the history would have been if people had dealt with each other peacefully when different cultures came closer to each other.
In peace time, history is driven by the real essential human needs. And it is from grassroots level, instead of being dictated by a few people (who get the power by being better at killing people). Imagine how different cultures (the Native Americans, the Africans, the east, the west) might have communicated and learned from each other if all the changes are happening during peace time. (The Native Americans' agriculture society don't have t be totally destroyed.) It is too bad that we went through a very bloody period when different cultures ... Read More
Rating:  -
Some of my friends found this book really inspiring. I tend to look for things like detailed and balanced analysis of issues, in-depth descriptions of the work of political groups, and sophisticated understanding of the way in which voluntary organizations interact with elite politics and economic factors. This book is weak on all of those - but it DOES have a lot of inspirational rhetoric.
Rating: -
Paul Hawken has a wonderful gift of pattern recognition that enables him to draw from diverse sources and sew together a patchwork of information that is compelling in its message: We must work together if life on this planet as we know it today is going to survive the threats of devaluation of individual life, depleted resources, pollution and global heating. (Heating is my term. I feel that `warming' is an unacceptable euphemism!)What is most appealing to me after the excellent summary of facts and issues is Hawken's positive spin on the situation.
When asked at colleges if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science that describes what is happening on earth today and aren't pessimistic, you don't have the correct data. If you meet the people in this unnamed movement and aren't optimistic, you haven't got a heart. What I see are ordinary and some not-so-ordinary individuals willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in an attempt to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world. (p. 4)
Healing the wounds of the earth and its people does not require saintliness or a political party, only gumption and persistence. It is not a liberal or conservative activity; it is a sacred act. (p. 5)
In total, the book is inadvertently optimistic, an odd thing in these bleak times. I didn't intend it; optimism discovered me. (p. 8)
Hawken points out that ... Read More
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