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Edited By Mike Wallace Thomas Nelson, $42.95 What is our vision for the future and how do we achieve it? This is the simple premise that inspired Mike Wallace to interview sixty of the most inspired thinkers and pose the provocative question, what is the shape of the...

By Marcus Buckingham Free Press, RRP $29.99 Marcus Buckingham, in “The One Thing You Need to Know”, describes what common elements he sees throughout examples of outstanding achievement in managing, leadership and career success. His ideas need not be confined to the...

By Howard Gardner Harvard Business School Press, RRP $61.99 Five Minds is structured in five different parts, each representing a different “mind” that will “command a premium” in the years ahead. Each of these different minds will enable people to cope with the...

By Alan Greenspan Penguin Books, $65. The combination of an increasingly globalised world economy and a change in the way we do business is rapidly changing the way the world works. In the long term, the sheer velocity of such change could lead us to just about...

Edited by Nikki Harre & Quentin D. Atkinson Craig Potton Publishing, $35. Climate change has become one of the central issues of our time, yet it is an issue weighed down by messages of doom and gloom and a pervasive sense of helplessness about how we should...

By Robert F. Kennedy Penguin Books, pb $28 In this powerful indictment of George W. Bush's White House, environmental attorney Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., presents an impassioned, excoriating account of how Bush and big business are plundering the environment while taking...

By Mark Lynas Fourth Estate, $35 Six degrees refers to the possibility that average global temperatures will rise by up to six degrees within the next hundred years. Utilizing highly up-to-date scientific research and political forecasting Lynas paints a reliable...

By Rod Oram Penguin Books, trade paperback, $35.00 This collection of columns by the highly influential and award winning business journalist, Rod Oram, is essential reading for those interested in NZ place in the global market. Pulling together his writing over the...

By Thomas Homer-Dixon Text Publishing, trade paperback $40. This is not just a catalogue of crisis points and doom prophecy, “The Upside of Down" sets out a theory of the growth, crisis, and renewal of societies. Today's converging energy, environmental, and...

Steven Carden with Campbell Murray Random House NZ, paperback $40. In this book Steven Carden doesn't outline what New Zealand should do, rather he argues how New Zealand should be ; how we, as a country and culture, can thrive on the uncertainty of the future, rather...

Edited by Alex Steffen Abrams Publishing, Hardback, $70.00 An incredibly interactive book designed to allow, indeed empower, individuals to effect change. Based on the idea that it’s not enough to wait around for policy and top down decision making to dictate issues...

By Godo Stoyke New Society Publishers, paperback. $29.00 Most people are unaware that environmental problems such as climate change can be easily mitigated, at a profit, on a personal level, through the intelligent application of appropriate technology. The Carbon...

By Jonathan Dawson Green Books, $28.00 In recent years, ecovillages - local communities which aim to minimise their ecological impact but maximise human wellbeing and happiness - have proliferated worldwide.  They incorporate a wealth of radical ideas and approaches...

Else Vintage, $28 pb It’s the summer of Pacific settings for NZ novels. Lloyd Jones’ Mister Pip, the runaway bestseller seen in most hands across NZ all January, is set in Bougainville. Like this month’s review title, it makes lucid and informed comment on the...

by Ralph Chapman, Jonathan Boston and Margot Schwass Victoria University Press, pb $40.00 For those who are tired of a climate change debate communicated through vague hand-waving gestures and pretty pictures, VUP’s Confronting Climate Change addresses the crucial...

James Howard Kunstler Atlantic, pb $30 Global warming has become increasingly prominent in our social consciousness in the past year and, as always, this brings an excess of literature to choose from. With this book, Kunstler cuts through the chaff by adopting a...

By Ronald Wright Da Capo Press, pb $35 One of the central questions Wright seeks to answer in this concise and gripping work is, "Why, if civilizations so often destroy themselves, has the overall experiment of civilization done so well?" He tries to answer it, with...