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 powerful reiteration of principles—and some fresh ideas—from the longest-serving independent in congressional history.
Another chapter in a long fight against inequality.
Building on his Fighting Oligarchy tour, which this year drew 280,000 people to rallies in red and blue states, Sanders amplifies his enduring campaign for economic fairness. The Vermont senator offers well-timed advice for combating corruption and issues a robust plea for national soul-searching. His argument rests on alarming data on the widening wealth gap’s impact on democracy. Bolstered by a 2010 Supreme Court decision that removed campaign finance limits, “100 billionaire families spent $2.6 billion” on 2024 elections. Sanders focuses on the Trump administration and congressional Republicans, describing their enactment of the “Big Beautiful Bill,” with its $1 trillion in tax breaks for the richest Americans and big social safety net cuts, as the “largest transfer of wealth” in living memory. But as is his custom, he spreads the blame, dinging Democrats for courting wealthy donors while ignoring the “needs and suffering” of the working class. “Trump filled the political vacuum that the Democrats created,” he writes, a resonant diagnosis. Urging readers not to surrender to despair, Sanders offers numerous legislative proposals. These would empower labor unions, cut the workweek to 32 hours, regulate campaign spending, reduce gerrymandering, and automatically register 18-year-olds to vote. Grassroots supporters can help by running for local office, volunteering with a campaign, and asking educators how to help support public schools. Meanwhile, Sanders asks us “to question the fundamental moral values that underlie” a system that enables “the top 1 percent” to “own more wealth than the bottom 93 percent.” Though his prose sometimes reads like a transcribed speech with built-in applause lines, Sanders’ ideas are specific, clear, and commonsensical. And because it echoes previous statements, his call for collective introspection lands as genuine.
A powerful reiteration of principles—and some fresh ideas—from the longest-serving independent in congressional history.Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2025
ISBN: 9798217089161
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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