An impressively detailed and knowledgeable primer on environmental, social, and governance issues in the workplace.
Sustainability expert Waite, leader of the Climate Finance Fund, offers a comprehensive overview of environmental, social, and governance initiatives at work.
The author delivers asecond edition of her slim book, first published in 2017, on the importance and practicality of various sustainability measures in all kinds of industries and at various scales. This new edition features new chapters on climate-related careers (involving supply chain, end users, stakeholder relations, and future sustainability) and another on justice, equity, diversity and inclusion, and how they intersect with climate change and other issues. The book also acknowledges recent changes in office life, including a greater emphasis on remote work. Overall, her definition of sustainable development is an institutional structure that meets “the needs of all generations, present and future, while improving their well-being through social, economic, environmental, and intergenerational efforts.” Waite organizes her overview into what she refers to as the four pillars of sustainability—society, economy, environment, and future generations—and she builds up on a “SURF” Framework, comprised of “Supply Chain” (“the building blocks that constitute a product or help bring about a service”), “User” (the consumer, the customer, the citizen, or the client), “Relations” (“Do employees feel that there is a positive, inclusive work environment?”), and “Future” (the ethically obligation to look out for generations yet to come). Waite alternates between broader observations—backed up by extensive research—and personal stories of people who faced sustainability challenges in their workplace, such as Pia Malmquist, a pediatrician at Stockholm’s Karolinska University Hospital, whose job of caring for patients regularly touched on many aspects of environmental responsibility. The sheer range of Waite’s book is a marvel, as she covers sustainability’s history, economic feasibility, ethics, and the practicality of specific tools, such as printing presses using vegetable-based inks and chlorine-free paper. She also insightfully touches on the ways that the climate crisis has exacerbated social inequalities. Her narrative drive and remarkable talent for concision pulls these topics together into readable chapters that never feel overcrowded, and may convince even the most skeptical readers.
An impressively detailed and knowledgeable primer on environmental, social, and governance issues in the workplace.Pub Date: June 19, 2024
ISBN: 9781032615837
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Routledge
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.
Words that made a nation.
Isaacson is known for expansive biographies of great thinkers (and Elon Musk), but here he pens a succinct, stimulating commentary on the Founding Fathers’ ode to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” His close reading of the Declaration of Independence’s second sentence, published to mark the 250th anniversary of the document’s adoption, doesn’t downplay its “moral contradiction.” Thomas Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people yet called slavery “a cruel war against human nature” in his first draft of the Declaration. All but 15 of the document’s 56 signers owned enslaved people. While the sentence in question asserted “all men are created equal” and possess “unalienable rights,” the Founders “consciously and intentionally” excluded women, Native Americans, and enslaved people. And yet the sentence is powerful, Isaacson writes, because it names a young nation’s “aspirations.” He mounts a solid defense of what ought to be shared goals, among them economic fairness, “moral compassion,” and a willingness to compromise. “Democracy depends on this,” he writes. Isaacson is excellent when explaining how Enlightenment intellectuals abroad influenced the founders. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Declaration’s “five-person drafting committee,” stayed in David Hume’s home for a month in the early 1770s, “discussing ideas of natural rights” with the Scottish philosopher. Also strong is Isaacson’s discussion of the “edits and tweaks” made to Jefferson’s draft. As recommended by Franklin and others, the changes were substantial, leaving Jefferson “distraught.” Franklin, who emerges as the book’s hero, helped establish municipal services, founded a library, and encouraged religious diversity—the kind of civic-mindedness that we could use more of today, Isaacson reminds us.
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781982181314
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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