This is a timely and groundbreaking book from the bestselling author of "The Fifth Discipline" series and "Presence". "The Necessary Revolution" reveals how corporations and organizations are, in the face of looming environmental crises and pressure from social issues, finding solutions that ensure both long-term survival and real-time business success. "The Necessary Revolution" is destined to become the essential handbook for everyone who understands the need to act and work together now to create a sustainable world for ourselves and the generations to come. A revolution is underway, and spreading fast. Organizations everywhere are boldly leading the change from the dead-end of 'business as usual' to new strategies and transformative practices that promote a flourishing, sustainable world. Pragmatic and powerful, today's most innovative leaders know that revolutionary - not incremental - changes in the way we live and work are necessary for their, and our, survival. Brimming with inspiring stories from around the globe, and organizations ranging from Alcoa to Oxfam, DuPont to GE, "The Necessary Revolution" clearly shows that ordinary people at every level within every organization have the ability and innovative spirit to do extraordinary things. By working collaboratively across boundaries, they are amplifying their creativity to find unprecedented solutions in an intensely interdependent world. "The Necessary Revolution" contains a wealth of strategies to help anyone, regardless of role or title, build the confidence and competence to respond effectively to the greatest challenge of our time. It is destined to become the essential handbook for everyone who understands the need to act and work together - now - to create a sustainable world for ourselves and the generations to follow.

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. A world in which corporations such as Costco, Nike, BP, and countless others are forming partnerships with environmental and social justice organizations to ensure better stewardship of the earth and better livelihoods in the developing world. Now, stop imagining – that world is already emerging. A revolution is underway in today’s organizations. As Peter Senge and his co-authors reveal in The Necessary Revolution, companies around the world are boldly leading the change from dead-end “business as usual” tactics to transformative strategies that are essential for creating a flourishing, sustainable world. There is a long way to go, but the era of denial has ended. Today’s most innovative leaders are recognizing that for the sake of our companies and our world, we must implement revolutionary—not just incremental—changes in the way we live and work. Brimming with inspiring stories from individuals and organizations tackling social and environmental problems around the globe, THE NECESSARY REVOLUTION reveals 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. Among the stories in these pages are the evolution of Sweden’s “Green Zone,” Alcoa’s water use reduction goals, GE’s ecoimagination initiative, and Seventh Generation’s decision to shift some of their advertising to youth-led social change programs. At its heart, THE NECESSARY REVOLUTION contains a wealth of strategies that individuals and organizations can use — specific tools and ways of thinking — to help us build the confidence and competence to respond effectively to the greatest challenge of our time. It is an essential guidebook for all of us who recognize the need to act and work together—now—to create a sustainable world, both for ourselves and for the generations to follow.

By examining the wider dimensions of the Industrial Revolution, the authors draw conclusions to answer the question of the title.

How did the French Revolutionaries explain, justify, and understand the extraordinary violence of their revolution? In debating this question, historians have looked to a variety of eighteenth-century sources, from Rousseau’s writings to Old Regime protest tactics. A Natural History of Revolution suggests that it is perhaps on a different shelf of the Enlightenment library that we might find the best clues for understanding the French Revolution: namely, in studies of the natural world. In their attempts to portray and explain the events of the Revolution, political figures, playwrights, and journalists often turned to the book of nature: phenomena such as hailstorms and thunderbolts found their way into festivals, plays, and political speeches as descriptors of revolutionary activity. The particular way that revolutionaries deployed these metaphors drew on notions derived from the natural science of the day about regeneration, purgation, and balance. In examining a series of tropes (earthquakes, lightning, mountains, swamps, and volcanoes) that played an important role in the public language of the Revolution, A Natural History of Revolution reveals that understanding the use of this natural imagery is fundamental to our understanding of the Terror. Eighteenth-century natural histories had demonstrated that in the natural world, apparent disorder could lead to a restored equilibrium, or even regeneration. This logic drawn from the natural world offered the revolutionaries a crucial means of explaining and justifying revolutionary transformation. If thunder could restore balance in the atmosphere, and if volcanic eruptions could create more fertile soil, then so too could episodes of violence and disruption in the political realm be portrayed as necessary for forging a new order in revolutionary France.

This book carries further what was brought in the previous book (Legends and Stories for a Compassionate America), from the present into the future. There is a thematic continuity between original Native American impulses (of the Iroquois in particular), the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution, and a twenty-first century impulse that strives to radically and peacefully transform American society. America is at a crossroads. We can choose a culture of denial, a growing politics of secrecy and the continual erosion of individual rights; or we can open the doors to new possibilities. This is both a personal and a national choice, which we are continuously facing. A new civil culture has emerged and grown progressively over the last sixty years. It is now gathering strength and visibility, offering America and the world something completely different from an economic globalization run amok. This movement is already creating new cultural values; promoting a fuller and participatory democracy that meets the needs of all; and fostering a sustainable economy. All elements of the vision add to each other, and form a new paradigm; they bring new meaning and possibilities to the American Dream. Luigi Morelli is also the author of A Revolution of Hope: Spirituality, Culture and Social Change

Are all governments--east and west, Muslim and secular, authoritarian and constitutional, Republican and Democratic--fundamentally the same, all of them under the extraordinary, growing power of "technique" and bureaucracy? Is all politics, then, just an illusory affair of lies, deception, propaganda, partisan passions, and chaos on the surface of government and party? In his vast and penetrating writings, Bordeaux sociologist Jacques Ellul (1912-1994) points in those directions. Political Illusion and Reality is a collection of twenty-three essays on Ellul's political thought. Veteran as well as younger Ellul scholars, political leaders, activists, and pastors, discuss aspects of Ellul's thought as they relate to their own fields of study and political experience. Beginning with his 1936 essay "Fascism, Son of Liberalism," translated and published here in English for the first time, Ellul and these authors will provoke readers to think some new thoughts about politics and government, and think more deeply about the main issues we face in our politically divided and troubled times.