… via clear understandings of the human condition.
Peach: An Exceptional Teen’s Journey for Universal Acceptance, and My Poems are Yours, The Poetic Soliloquies of Hope and Courage
Demonstrable value: These books should be in every school’s curriculum.” Don Nusser, Vice President, Development, Mott McDonald Consultants
Professional support:” Peach is a gift who has given us brilliant literature–a gripping story of a young woman’s courageous daily battle with a life-altering illness. I was truly captivated with her very first words…” Rebecca A. Clemens, M.Ed., Professional School Counselor
“She is a peach of a daughter: compassionate, insightful, and, perhaps above all. forgiving and courageous in the face of extreme adversity. She blesses everyone …” Antoinette DeLorenze, Peach’s mom
Excerpt: Are lives equal? I ponder the answer. Equal, I say to myself. I wonder what that exactly means. Can we affect the equal? Or rather, what is equal? ‘Equal’ can be defined many different ways in many different scenarios. I search for the answer to EQUAL and realize that being EQUAL is a feeling inside more than a reality. People define EQUAL by the way we treat one another. So, in effect, I thought to myself, it’s people who tell you or make you feel unequal. Such power, I thought. Why do we care so much about being EQUAL?
Summary: PEACH and My Poems–are lyrical, soulful, and heartfelt accounts of Jenevieve Woods’ life as the invisible girl, shunned because she is afflicted with a life-altering disease. Her books are part of her mission to “celebrate our differences, and to treat each other with kindness and dignity”.
Hugging a Cloud: Profits + Meaning from the Human side of Business
Demonstrable value: “In this age of information, innovation, and speed, the human side of business has become the differentiator in the race for sustainable competitive advantage …”
Professional support: “We badly need a new measure for economic success that goes beyond earnings per share.” Paul Roberts, 1939-, American economist and co-founder of Reaganomics, in his book The Impulse Society: America in the Age of Instant Gratification.
“The human side–the side that is difficult to measure but impossible to ignore– is the future of business; it complements but does not replace the hard side–the side that can be measured and is equally impossible to ignore.” From the book
Excerpt: Leaders cannot afford to ignore the thinking, behaviors, and relationships that define the human side of business. All, separately and together, contribute in some way to profits + meaning. And they can be measured–perhaps not as precisely as financial ratios can be measured–with simple metrics that create the Profits+Meaning Index, or PMI.
PMI, when combined with financial ratios, realistically evaluates the short- and long-term efficiency and prospects of a business and its leadership. Enlightened and forward-thinking leaders will hug the cloud that is the human side of business.
Summary: This book is about the aspects of leadership that are difficult to measure but impossible to ignore. It implores leaders to adopt new ways to think, behave, and relate to create profits + meaning, to create that elusive and euphoric state of knowing what really matters today and in the distant future.
MUSHROOMS FOR DINNER
Summary: Brigitta Day is a remarkable woman with a remarkable story that is reminiscent of All Quiet on the Western Front. In her compelling and heartfelt monologue, she invites readers into her contradictory world of fear and contentment, hunger and plenty, cruelty and compassion, defeat and victory. Her story of life in Germany during the early years of World War Two spans 26 years, from her birth in 1938 to her immigration to America in 1963 with an infant daughter. Brigitta lived in Leipzig and surrounding small towns with her extended family and watched as Allies’ bombs reduced a thriving city to rubble and desperation. She details with considerable angst how she and her family subsisted on mushrooms and berries picked form nearby woods, and how they fled from East to West Germany to escape the cruelty of the Russian army and find the protection of the more compassionate Americans and British.