Reviews: The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economics
Short Quotes
?The Real Wealth of Nations gives us a template for the better world that we have been so urgently seeking. As practical as it is hopeful, this brilliant book shows how we can build economic systems that meet both our material and spiritual needs. It illuminates the way to a bold and exciting new future.?
~ Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Nobel Peace Laureate
“The Real Wealth of Nations is a call to action. It is not only politicians, businesses and financial institutions that must change, but each one of us must play a role in developing a more caring society. This book is an important tool that can help us make that happen.”
~ Jane Goodall, Founder, Jane Goodall Institute & UN Messenger of Peace?An essential tool for government leaders, politicians, economists, and everyone looking for ways to halt environmental destruction, eradicate poverty, stabilize population, and build a better future, The Real Wealth of Nations shows us how to construct a sustainable new economy ? and a good quality of life for our children and generations to come.?
~ The Honorable Vigdis Finnbogad?ttir, President of Iceland 1980-1996
?The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economics is a prescription for an economic system that is both equitable and sustainable. This book should be read and used by everyone who wants a better world!?
~ Deepak Chopra, author, Life After Death: The Burden of Proof
?This book should be mandatory reading for every CEO, every economist, every government official, every student, and every citizen of our world. In its pages lies nothing less than the blueprint for the world we must create if humanity is to ever achieve true justice, equity, and sustainability. We can be that great society. The Real Wealth of Nation shows us how.?
~ Jeffrey Hollender, President, Seventh Generation, Inc., author, Naturally Clean
?Why has conventional economics been so slow to offer compelling, useful responses to our most threatening challenges, such as environmental degradation or raging inequalities? Riane Eisler answers this question, and in doing so, reinvents the dismal science, infusing it with the essential ingredients it needs to get us out the terribly narrow box in which we?ve been stuck.?
~ Jared Bernstein, advisor to U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden
“Riane Eisler shows us how to value economically what is valuable humanly? and what could be more revolutionary than that? To imagine money not as the root of all evil, but the measure of all good, read The Real Worth of Nations.”
~ Gloria Steinem
?In The Real Wealth of Nations, Riane Eisler, long a voice of sanity and clarity in an increasingly confusing world, does what has been desperately needed for a long time: bring back a human- and nature-centric perspective to economics to show how ends and means can be integrated. We had better get this right, because time is running out on governing our societies by rules and institutions that lack any real sense of what truly matters.?
~ Peter Senge, author, The Fifth Discipline, Founder, Society for Organizational Learning, MIT
?Riane Eisler is one of the most important and influential thinkers of our time. In The Real Wealth of Nations she turns her attention to the importance of caring and issues a clarion call for contemporary societies to recognize and value the essential contribution of caregiving to human well-being.?
~ David C. Korten, author of The Great Turning & When Corporations Rule the World
“Riane Eisler has always been a revolutionary who has forced us to confront our conventional conceptions with unconventional thought. In her new book she applies her revolutionary insights to that most “dismal science,” economics, and in the process shows us how, with a bit of caring and a great deal of imagination, it need not remain dismal for long. A tour de force! ”
~ William F. Schulz, Executive Director, Amnesty International USA (1994-2006)
“Riane Eisler’s brilliant new book expands the scope and practice of economics beyond capitalism and socialism to a new economics in which equity, justice, and environmental sanity prevail. Must reading!”
~ Morris Dees, Co-founder, Southern Poverty Law Center
“Even more than in her landmark The Chalice and the Blade, Riane. Eisler’s The Real Wealth of Nations is a multi-faceted look at who we are and who we want to become through the lens of the role of money in our lives and in our world. Real Wealth will challenge you to reconsider not just where our nation, or any nation, is going, but also what role you want to play in our future, in your future. Don’t let Eisler’s engaging writing style deceive you: This is a call to action that should be read and discussed by parents with their children, in our schools, and throughout any and all not-only-for-profit organizations.”
~ Mark Albion, former Harvard Business School professor, co-founder of Net Impact
?Riane Eisler once again powerfully shows that we need to replace relations of domination with relations of partnership. In this lively and wide-ranging book, she calls attention to how the re-valuing of care is sorely needed and offers new perspectives to both those who think of themselves as carers and people who focus on our economic lives.?
~ Julie A. Nelson, Global Development and Environment Institute, Tufts University, author, Economics for Humans
?What if the world’s economic system supported everyone and Mother Earth too? What if we were all part of the economic solution to end global distress with a new economy of caring? And what if this new caring economy made money for all of us? This is now possible thanks to Riane Eisler?s The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economics.?
Dr. Robert Muller, former UN Assistant Secretary General
“Visionary social critic Riane Eisler offers readers challenging new ways to think about economics, caring, and ending domination in The Wealth of Nations. Breaking new ground, with keen insight and brilliance she charts the journey to freedom and well-being.”
~ Bell Hooks, author, All About Love
?When there’s a Nobel Prize in Caring, Riane Eisler deserves to be the first recipient. With the skill of a world-class therapist, she put the dismal science of economics on the couch, pierces through its double-speak and contradictions, and suggests creative yet practical ways to rectify its shortcomings and how it can become, at last, a powerful tool for humanizing a planet riddled with cruelty. There can be no better act of caring than giving this book to every politician, civil servant, CEO, professor, and decision-maker in your life.?
~ Michael Shuman, author, The Small-Mart Revolution: How Local Businesses Are Beating the Global Competition
Academy of Management Learning and Education
Thomas F. Hawk, Emeritus Professor of Management, Frostburg State University, wrote this review of Riane Eisler’s The Real Wealth of nations.
A Real Reason to Get Out of Bed in the Morning
As you open your eyes on another day of global warming, tribal and regional conflict, and general transnational chaos, it will feel wonderful to have Eisler on your team, sharing her straightforward prescription for planetary rescue. ~ Deb Reich in The Baltimore Chronicle, April 2007
Stanford Social Innovation Review
Eisler’s art–her wisdom–lies in her ability to integrate learning from many disciplines and translate her vision of the future into vivid prose that awakeness our sense of possibility . . . Let’s hope Eisler’s wisdom finds its way into the decision-making circles in government and business before it’s too late. ~ Mal Warwick, “Notable Books,” Stanford Social Innovation Review, Summer 2007
Booklist
Eisler precisely maps her detailed vision of a caring economy and diligently supports her concept with a fascinating spectrum of information and analysis of everything from how little we value child care to the true cost of war and pollution.
~ Donna Seaman in Booklist, 2007
Forward-thinking social scientist Eisler, author of The Chalice and the Blade (1987) and Tomorrow’s Children (2000), is renowned for her innovative perspectives on relationships, education, sex, and spirituality. Now in a similar vein as Bill McKibben in Deep Economy (2007), she addresses the need for a “more equitable and sustainable economic system” based on the “essential work of caring for people and nature.”
Current economics fails to value the most fundamental aspects of people’s daily lives, Eisler observes, and she identifies the “lack of caring” as the “common denominator” underlying grave social and environmental problems. Eisler precisely maps her detailed vision of a caring economy and diligently supports her concept with a fascinating spectrum of information and analysis of everything from how little we value child care to the true cost of war and pollution. On a deeper level, Eisler writes about how the cultural stories we absorb–women are inferior to men, nature is indestructible–perpetuate an economics that is proving disastrous. Eisler argues cogently that now is the time to invest in life.
Donna Seaman
Copyright ? American Library Association. All rights reserved
Publishers Weekly
A clearly written and compelling account of how the masculine “dominator” mentality brought us to our present juncture, and how a feminine “partnership” mentality can help us redefine key concepts such as “value” and “needs.”
~ March 3, 2007
Accomplished feminist social theorist and activist Eisler follows up her 1987 international bestseller The Chalice and the Blade with an inquiry into the nature and causes of “the real wealth of nations” in a contrarian work of grand economic theory. She begins with her original thesis: that we inherit and inhabit a personal and social world that masculinity has built by consistently devaluing and subordinating the feminine.
Pointing out the socially and ecologically destructive flaws inherent in both capitalist and socialist economies, she then asserts that our emerging global society needs a new story of what human nature and economics are and can be. For Eisler, economies are social inventions imbedded in larger social systems. She offers a clearly written and compelling account of how the masculine “dominator” mentality brought us to our present juncture, and how a feminine “partnership” mentality can help us redefine key concepts such as “value” and “needs.”
Citing the most recent economic data and offering numerous relevant examples of places where efforts to practice a caring economics have succeeded both in preindustrial and modern societies, such as the Nordic nations, the book is ambitious in breadth, depth and scope. Eisler delivers another impressive work that’s remarkably well referenced, well argued, insightful and hopeful.(Apr.)
Is notion of ?caring economics? just pie in the sky?
Having a more rounded vision for the future economy is an essential first step out of our current social, economic and environmental predicament and Eisler provides both the vision and a constructive way forward. ~ Bob Douglas in The Canberra Times, June 13, 2009.
Five GoodB Stars *****
Eisler convincingly expresses the need for a system where “feminine” principles of caring and partnership trump socially destructive “masculine” strategies of domination. In the wake of the current global economic crisis and the profoundly tragic human suffering resulting from it, this book is worth its weight in gold.
~ Monika Mitchell in Good Business International, 2008.
Most traditional business people cringe when they see the words “caring” and “economics” next to each other in the same sentence, let alone on the cover of a powerful book.Yet the sheer depth of insight behind this book and its scholarly author, Riane Eisler, forces readers to take a second look. Social scientist and former UCLA law professor, Eisler methodically lays out compelling guidelines for an economic system that includes human compassion. Lest you think Eisler is pipe dreaming, the feminist scholar makes a compelling argument that people and the natural environment are the most valuable assets in an economy. Eisler writes, “Conventional economic models fail to value and support the most essential human work: caring and caregiving.”
Caring economics is not a new idea and goes by many other names in recent years.Yet the concept that traditional “women’s work” is one of humanity’s greatest acts is radically refreshing. Ask anyone with children, elderly parents, or disabled loved ones and they will heartily agree.
A unique aspect of The Real Wealth of Nations follows the author as she moves away from specific economic systems like capitalism and socialism and calls for a new finanical system that honors the people who support it. Eisler convincingly expresses the need for a system where “feminine” principles of caring and partnership trump socially destructive “masculine” strategies of domination. In the wake of the current global economic crisis and the profoundly tragic human suffering resulting from it, this book is worth its weight in gold.
Reviewed by Monika Mitchell
5 GoodB Stars *****
Winning Workplaces
Creating an addendum to Scottish economist Adam Smith’s classic treatise on free trade and capitalism . . . is no small feat. Yet, Eisler . . . adds a worthy and timely perspective ? namely, that in addition to market forces, people and our natural environment enable nations to realize their full economic potential.
~ Ken Lehman in Winning Workplaces, 2008
Creating an addendum to Scottish economist Adam Smith’s classic treatise on free trade and capitalism, which was published just as America declared its independence, is no small feat. Yet, Eisler, who is president of the Center for Partnership Studies, adds a worthy and timely perspective ? namely, that in addition to market forces, people and our natural environment enable nations to realize their full economic potential.
In her third of 10 chapters in this insightful book, Eisler writes that investment in people “is the best way of enhancing their productive capacities ? and hence ensuring business profits and economic effectiveness.” Ideally, the author argues, this investment “should start before birth, with prenatal care for mothers and health care, high-quality child care, and education for children.”
New Workplace Magazine
[The Real Wealth of Nations] is not a book for the narrow-minded intellect. This is a treatise that challenges conventional thinking . . . Obama and other world leaders would do well to read this book. If conventional economic thinking has gotten us to where we are now, perhaps Eisler?s new perspective can pave a better way. ~ New Workplace Magazine
?This is not a book for the narrow-minded intellect. This is a treatise that challenges conventional thinking. . . Obama and other world leaders would do well to read this book. If conventional economic thinking has gotten us to where we are now, perhaps Eisler?s new perspective can pave a better way.?
New Workplace Magazine
Reviews ? The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future
Short Quotes
?Some books are like revelations, they open the spirit to unimaginable possibilities. The Chalice and The Blade is one of those magnificent key books that can transform us.?
~ Isabel Allende, author of The House of the Spirits
“Apart from Darwin’s Origin of Species no book has impressed me as profoundly as The Chalice and The Blade.?
~ Ashley Montagu, Princeton anthropologist
?The Chalice and The Blade may be the most significant work published in all our lifetimes. Read The Chalice and The Blade. . .it may make the future possible.?
~ L.A. Weekly
?To read Eisler is to glimpse new vistas of human possibilities.?
~ New Woman?Eisler?s visionary, passionate scholarship is a revealing psychosexual exploration of love and power relations.?
~ Publisher?s Weekly
?A gem. . .A rare combination of poetic expression and sober substance.?
~ Jessie Bernard, author of The Future of Marriage and The Female World
?Validates a belief in humanity?s capacity for benevolence and cooperation in the face of so much destruction.?
~ San Francisco Chronicle
?As important, perhaps more important, than the unearthing of Troy or the deciphering of cuneiform.?
~ Bruce Wilshire, Professor of philosophy, Rutgers University
?Everyone?should have the opportunity to read it.?
~ Chicago Tribune
Publishers Weekly
Women played leading roles in the first Christian communities; Jesus’ teachings had a feminist bent; ancient Hebrews worshipped the prehistoric goddess-mother well into monarchic times; and Nazis, with their system of male dominance, were a direct throwback to the Indo-European or Aryan invaders whom they crudely imitated. These controversial ideas and findings suggest the thrust of Eisler’s highly readable synthesis. She convincingly documents the global shift from egalitarian to patriarchal societies, interweaving new archeological evidence and feminist scholarship. In her scenario, as women once venerated were degraded to pawns controlled by men, social cooperation gave way to reliance on violence, hierarchy and authoritarianism. The book is an important contribution to social history.
Library Journal
In this first of a projected three-book series, Eisler covers terrain also described by Marilyn French in Beyond Power ( LJ 6/1/85) and Gerda Lerner in The Creation of Patriarchy ( LJ 7/86). In prehistorical times, Eisler argues, women and men lived together in egalitarian communities devoted to nurturance; with the imposition of male domination, female values gave way to creeds of hierarchy, aggression, power, obedience. Eisler, a futurist, posits a new society based on the recovery of more humane values. She gives us a broader reach of time than Lerner, and she does not swamp her outline in detail as French did. An imaginative and persuasive work. — Cynthia Harrison, American Historical Assn., Washington, D.C.
Reviews: Sacred Pleasure: Sex, Myth, and the Politics of the Body ? New Paths to Power and Love
Short Quotes
?Eisler outlines a new sexual ethic that aligns pleasure with our capacity to feel and act
empathically. Her visionary, passionate scholarship is a revealing psychosexual exploration of love and power relations.? ~ Publisher?s Weekly
?Fascinating…?
~ New York Times
?Riane Eisler’s most stunning, far-reaching, and practical gift ? both to readers and to a world that must change or perish.? ~ Gloria Steinem
?This extraordinarily powerful and beautiful book will stand as one of the epic works of our generation.?
~ John Robbins, author of Diet for a New America ?Everything you have always wanted or should have wanted to know about sex ? and about love, pain, pleasure, spirituality, and society…A monumental opus: fascinating and important.”
~ Ervin Laszlo
“You must read Riane Eisler’s Sacred Pleasure.”
~ John Bradshaw, author of Family Secrets and Creating Love
?Sacred Pleasure is Riane Eisler?s masterpiece. Each page presents the reader with pulse-quickening insights and the shock that comes from truths no longer hidden. Enjoy the author?s burning mind and seductive advocations. You will never be the same.?
~ Jean Houston, author of A Mythic Life
?A startling book, a passionate indictment of contemporary sexual politics. An essential guidebook.?
~ Michael Kimmel, author of Against the Tide and professor at SUNY-Stony Brook
?Bold and provocative . . . a joy. This world will welcome it.?
~ Bishop John Shelby Spong, author of Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism
Breathtaking and inspiring . . . words of wisdom and of hope.
~ Judy Chicago, artist, The Dinner Party
?Candid, scholarly, and thrilling – tour of the body . . . Eisler is a consummate thinker and researcher whose work lays the foundation for a healing between the sexes that could dramatically change society.?
~ Joan Borysenko, author of Minding the Body, Mending the Mind
?I devoured Sacred Pleasure with great interest (mortification – that?s what men have done to women) and hope. The last chapter ends on a powerful note. This work will, like the Chalice and the Blade, perform a profound service to humanity.?
~ Walter Wink, professor of Biblical Interpretation, Auburn Theological Seminary, author of Naming the Powers
?Broadly and impeccably researched, sweeping in scope, beautifully written, grounded in human compassion and hope, Sacred Pleasure is a worthy successor to The Chalice and the Blade.?
~ Edith Gelles, Senior Scholar, Institute for Research on Women and Gender, Stanford University
Booklist
Eisler’s Chalice and the Blade (1987) has sold hundreds of thousands of copies, proving her own assertion that people are hungry for fresh perspectives on the human condition. In her new book, the bold paradigm-challenger continues her quest for a more comprehensive understanding of the cultural, spiritual, and political forces that drive us by exploring the complex realm of intimate relationships and posing some startling questions about our attitudes toward pain and pleasure, sex and spirituality. Why, Eisler asks, did sex, once the “sacred gift of the Goddess,” become synonymous with evil? Why did veneration for women and their capacity for sustaining life change into such contempt and loathing? As Eisler traces the path of this destructive and pervasive bias, she reveals just how adverse its effect has been on every aspect of human life. Eisler makes some stunning points in this strongly argued, well-supported, and mind-stretching narrative, then urges us to imagine viable alternatives to the “sacralization of pain” and the “eroticism of violence” that stand in such stark and baffling contrast to our inherent “yearning for connection” and our aptitude for love. This is a gutsy and very important book.
~ Donna Seaman
Publishers Weekly
From Sumer to ancient Athens and Rome, medieval Europe, the Islamic world and traditional China, rigidly male-dominated societies, argues feminist historian Eisler (The Chalice and the Blade), relied on pain or the fear of it to maintain hierarchical relations of dominance and submission. Patriarchy, she believes, represses sexuality, distorts the natural bonds of erotic pleasure and love between men and women and diminishes women’s status. Drawing on archaeological evidence and Paleolithic and Neolithic art, Eisler argues that prehistoric societies were relatively free of the domination, exploitation and misogyny that have marked Western societies up to the present. She emphasizes that Christianity’s hostility toward sex and, particularly, women’s sexuality has conditioned men and women to accept coercion and repression. Discussing abusive child-rearing practices, genital mutilation, natural childbirth, abortion, sex education, the men’s movement, AIDS and much else, Eisler outlines a new sexual ethic that aligns pleasure with our capacity to feel and act empathically. Her visionary, passionate scholarship is a revealing psychosexual exploration of love and power relations.
Library Journal
Eisler (The Chalice and the Blade, LJ 6/15/87) calls for a new sexual revolution, centered on a move toward partnership sexuality and its integration with spirituality and society in order to develop a place where everyone can realize a more satisfying and pleasurable life. She traces the course of sexual relations from prehistory through the present, along the way deflating sexual myths and misconceptions. She also examines the prevalence of sexual violence today and projects a future in which men and women will thrive together in harmony. Principally, however, Eisler examines the history of humanity’s deep and powerful yearning for connections within intimate relationships. Recommended for libraries with history and women’s studies collections. Marty D. Evensvold, Magnolia P.L., Tex.
Reviews- Tomorrow?s Children: A Blueprint For Partnership Education In The 21st Century
Short Quotes
?As the world responds in shock and horror to the violence that seems to be infecting our schools, Riane Eisler offers a practical approach to creating schools that teach partnership, respect, and global understanding.?
~ Tim Seldin, President, the Montessori Foundation
?Tomorrow’s Children is an important and powerful manifesto?a blueprint for how to take the first steps toward a saner and more humane educational system.?
~ Michael Lerner, author of The Politics of Meaning
?Bold and persuasive, Eisler?s plan to reform education is an education in itself. Her evolutionary insights are timely and needed for the whole-brain learning that each child deserves. Bravo, for lighting this pathway to a child-honoring society.?
~ Raffi, Children?s Troubadour
?Timely and timeless – Tomorrow?s Children brings Riane Eisler?s powerful partnership model to the classroom, where it can inspire teachers now and benefit children for generations.?
~ Parker Page, President, Children?s Television Education & Resource Center
?Tomorrow?s Children, Riane Eisler makes another huge contribution to find a better way. This book opens many new paths for everyone who wants to prepare our children to envision and create a more rewarding world for all of us.?
~ Nancy Gruver, Founder of New Moon Publishing: The Magazine for Girls and their Dreams
?Tomorrow?s Children is a wonderful guide for teachers and parents who are concerned about preparing young people to build a fairer society.?
~ Christine Sleeter, professor of multicultural education, California State University, Monterey Bay
?I recommend this book as a MUST for all educators, parents, and individuals.?
~ Sister Ruthmary Powers, President, Sisters of the Humility of Mary
“…[an] intriguing blueprint for the kind of proactive education children will need to meet the demands of the 21st century.”
~ Monterey HERALD
“Eisler is a revolutionary thinker in the best sense of the word…”
~ Choice Books
“More than idealistic chatter, her book gives specific and useful ideas for making the three R’s more meaningful.”
~ Magical Blend
?Tomorrow?s Children argues for … new approaches that will set education right. Eisler?s model calls for gender equity, respect for the natural world, nonviolence, and cultural tolerance, as evidenced by attention to educational process, content, and structure. No philosophical, meandering treatise, this book presents practical activities for encouraging collaboration in the classroom.?
~ American School Board Journal
“Riane Eisler is a seminal thinker and cocreative human.”
~ Library of Conscious Evolution
?…a compelling framework for developing lessons that speak to the urgency of the environmental and social challenges facing us…Inviting readers to think outside conventional boxes of educational reform, this is an ambitious, imaginative and practical guide to a better educational future.?
~ Publishers Weekly
?Timely, inspirational, and challenging, this book offers a balanced and useful approach to education and the development of humanity.?
~ Library Journal
?Tomorrow?s Children is a profoundly important call and a blueprint for educational reform… As we enter the millennium, this compelling book, with its treasure of insightful materials, serves as a beacon for effective education and collaboration across all boundaries. It should be read by educators, parents, and all who care about our childrens tomorrows.?
~ Professor Darlene Clark Hine, Michigan State University
?Riane Eisler eloquently and powerfully makes the case that our future, indeed our survival, depends upon a profound transformation of our educational system. Her book provides not only the vision but also the action plan necessary to realize this essential change.?
~ Jean Kilbourne, author of Deadly Persuasion
?Tomorrow?s Children is holistic and helpful, idealistic yet practical. Its written by a scholar who is also a grandmother and it?s filled with knowledge, experience and love.?
~ Mary Pipher, author of Reviving Ophelia
?I hope the vision [Eisler] has put forward here can be realized. With her, I believe that human happiness, if not survival itself, depends on it.?
~ Professor Nel Noddings, Stanford University
?This book is a clarion call for and guide to an historic transformation… a rich historical and cross-cultural tapestry that will inform and delight teachers, parents, and all those active in building a better life for ?Tomorrow’s Children.?”
~ Professor George Gerbner, Temple University
?…a catalyst for educational transformation which offers exceptional knowledge, skills, vision, and tools to create a better future.?
~ Angeles Arrien, author of The Four-Fold Way
?As a college instructor and a home schooling parent, I am profoundly grateful to Riane Eisler for this practical and inspirational approach. Tomorrow?s Children renews my hope for achieving a future that is sustainable and equitable, creative and caring.?
~ Jean Hegland, author of Into the Forest
?Based on a real understanding of our past and present, here are realistic and realizable inspiring visions and concrete proposals which lead to a vastly improved future for all our planet’s children. Riane Eisler’s vision offers us real hope.?
~ Professor Harry Brod, University of Northern Iowa
?Tomorrow’s Children provides an inspirational, highly creative partnership model for educating ourselves and future citizens of the planet.?
~ Professor Carolyn Merchant, University of California, Berkeley
Publishers Weekly
In The Chalice and the Blade, Eisler described the evolution of Western society in terms of two competing forms of social organization: the “dominator” model, characterized by authoritarian relationships, war and male domination, and the “partnership” model, characterized by democratic, egalitarian social structures and gender equity. Now she brings her theory of cultural transformation to bear on education and the complex problem of how to prepare children for a “partnership” society, or, how to encourage them to become nonsexist, nonracist, “healthy, caring, competent, self-realized adults.” Eisler has done her homework, demonstrating a sophisticated grasp of learning theory, child development, interdisciplinary curricula and the complex social contexts of education. Though many of her suggestions–such as teaching a multicultural curriculum that emphasizes examples of partnership and “asking questions that do not have yes or no ‘right’ answers but, instead, provoke thought”–are familiar, she synthesizes a variety of classroom techniques into a compelling framework for developing lessons that speak to the urgency of the environmental and social challenges facing us in the next century. Inviting readers to think outside conventional boxes of educational reform, this is an ambitious, imaginative and practical guide to a better educational future.
Library Journal
Eisler (The Chalice and the Blade, 1987) introduced the concept of the partnership model, a model of society that embodies equity, environmental protection, multiculturalism, and gender-fairness. Here, she applies the partnership model to modern education, giving readers a picture of how education might function in the 21st century. Eisler proposes an “expanded approach to educational reform that can help young people meet the unprecedented challenges of a world in which technology can either destroy us or free us to actualize our unique human capacities for creativity and caring.” Timely, inspirational, and challenging, this book offers a balanced and useful approach to education and the development of humanity. School teachers, educators, administrators, and parents will find the additional resources at the end of this book useful. Recommended for both public and academic libraries.
~ Samuel T. Huang, Northern Illinois Univ., DeKalb, IL
An Overview of Riane Eisler?s Tomorrow?s Children
by Ron Miller, founder of Foundation for Educational Renewal
Tomorrow’s Children is an important book about education, because it addresses topics that normally concern teachers and administrators-curriculum, teaching/learning methods, and school culture-within a larger philosophical and historical context than educators normally consider. As its subtitle indicates, in Tomorrow’s Children Riane Eisler proposes a new blueprint for education in the 21st century.
Much of modern educational practice still views children as impersonal components of an efficient social machine to be molded, tested, graded, and sorted like any other mechanical products or commodities. Eisler provides a stirring alternative vision for education. She argues that postindustrial society requires men and women who are flexible, creative, and independent thinkers, and that different educational practices are needed to cultivate these qualities. But the education Eisler proposes goes much further. Education, after all, does not simply involve a package of techniques practiced in school buildings: it is a cluster of beliefs, values and assumptions representing a culture’s explicit endeavor to define who we are as human beings and what our lives mean.
Reviews ? The Power of Partnership: Seven Relationships that Will Change Your Life
Short Quotes
?Stunning…the map to a world that works for all of us.?
~ Marianne Williamson, author of A Return to Love
?If the Obama Bin Ladens of this world were required to read this book and absorb its message, the human race would surge on to the fast track toward love and creativity.?
~ Howard Bloom, author of Global Brain
?The Power of Partnership is the right medicine for virtually everything that ails our society and planet right now. . . a brilliantly accessible plan for transforming ourselves and our world.?
~ Christiane Northrup, M.D., author of Women?s Bodies, Women?s Wisdom?Nothing can vanquish anxiety like clarity, which is what Riane Eisler delivers abundantly in the Power of Partnership. Read it and you?ll come away with a new understanding of how the world works (and why it so often works atrociously). Even more important, you?ll feel better about it (because you?ll feel less helpless about it) – and in a world that seems to be going mad, we can all use some of that!?
~ Daniel Quinn, author of Ishmael
?This brilliant book will teach you, entertain you, and enlighten your view of our extraordinary potential. Eisler is one of our world?s wisest counselors, our most insightful visionaries, and one of the holders of our deepest truths.?
~ Thom Hartmann, author of Rebooting the American Dream, radio and TV host
?A step by step approach to personal development. Eisler is a brilliant role model as a global citizen – and one of the preeminent minds of our time.?
~ Hazel Henderson, producer of Global Marketplace
?Great book. Great ideas.?
~ Morris Dees, Co-founder, Southern Poverty Law Center
?This extraordinary book is a life work in itself, and a gift to anyone exploring how we can do our lives better, do our relationships better, do our work experiences better, do our schools better, do our world better.?
~ David Mallory, Director of Professional Development, National Association of Independent Schools
?From intimacy, to politics, to service, to sustainability?this remarkable book touches every critical node. . . a compelling argument for the reality of conscious evolution.?
~ Jim Kenney, Council for Parliament of the World?s Religions
?Brings compassion, intelligence, and practical advice to the essential work of personal and social transformation. this book will be a treasured resource for helping us move forward in the twenty-first century.?
~ Judith V. Jordan, Co-Director of Jean Baker Miller Training Institute, Wellesley College
Marc?s Picks: Riane Eisler?s The Power of Partnership by New World Publisher Marc Allen
The Power of Partnership by Riane Eisler is one of the most powerful, life-changing books I have ever read. It cleared up a whole lot of confusion and anxiety; it made my path much clearer, for it gave me simple, clear guidelines for what works and what doesn?t work in life.
In the book, Eisler gives us what she calls a ?lens? for viewing our lives and the world. Through this lens we see all our activities on a simple scale, with perfect partnership and respect on one end, and exploitation, domination, and the need to try to control others on the other. Over and over, the book shows that all forms of exploitation or domination create far more problems than they resolve, and that working in partnership with others is the best, most lasting solution to all of life?s problems.
