Ford Library Blog

Kiernan, Matthew J. Investing in a sustainable world : why GREEN is the new color of money on Wall Street. Wiley, 2009.

Krosinsky, Cary and Nick Robins, eds. Sustainable investing : the art of long-term performance. Earthscan, 2008.

Traditionally, ethical and socially responsible investing has been driven by personal values. While this approach has been successful in some sectors in the U.S. and the U.K., the mainstream institutional marketplace has been out of reach. But now, research by Innovest Strategic Value Advisors shows that companies with superior positioning on sustainability issues achieved superior financial returns. Two new books discuss how both Wall Street and Main Street are now interested in investing in ethical, social and green companies to attain long term financial performance.

In Investing in a Sustainable World, Innovest founder and CEO Matthew J. Kiernan makes the business case for integrating environmental and social considerations into investment decisions. He presents conceptual and practical tools to help investors realize environmental, social and financial objectives at the same time. (more…)

Pearce, Fred. Earth then and now : amazing images of our changing world. Firefly Books, 2008.

The first image in the book, Earth Then and Now, is of downtown Dubai, skyscrapers and highways, taken from a helicopter. Until the mid 1990’s, the space was occupied by desert. Among the last images are satellite photographs of The Palms, the world’s largest humanmade islands near Dubai, constructed as vacation destinations for the global elite. Development in and around Dubai has transformed the environment of the Arabian Peninsula.

The book Earth Then and Now records environmental changes that have happened worldwide within the last 100 years. Using pairs of photographs, the images document changes caused by forces such as urbanization, war, and nature itself. These stark visual images show that as human population increases, the impact on the environment is soaring.

© Reviewer: Meg Trauner & Ford Library – Fuqua School of Business.
All rights reserved.

Szaky, Tom. Revolution in a bottle : how TerraCycle is redefining green business. Portfolio, 2008.

Once I carried some bags of semi-composted leaf litter from our neighbor’s curb to mulch a new garden bed in front of our house. The neighbor was furious. “I paid good money for those bags,” he shouted.
So when I read in Tom Szaky’s Revolution in a Bottle, that his neighbors called the police because he took plastic bottles out of their recycling bins on the curb, I was totally sympathetic. But I was already hooked on this account of the first product in the world that was made entirely from and packaged entirely in waste.

Author Szaky dropped out of Princeton in 2002 and founded a company that makes products from waste. Szaky’s company TerraCycle uses worms to recycle garbage into fertilizer, which is bottled into used plastic liters found in the trash. This is the story about a green entrepreneur and his company — how it started, overcame many challenges and grew to a successful venture. A company that began with garbage from Princeton Univ.dining halls grew to a company that produced 100 products in 15,000 big box stores. (more…)

If you have seen the documentary The Corporation you may remember Ray Anderson, owner of the carpet company Interface.  He retooled the company to take advantage of sustainable business practices after reading Paul Hawken’s book The Ecology of Commerce.

He has a new TED talk up on the business logic of sustainability.

Hot, flat, and crowded : why we need a green revolution– and how it can renew America by Thomas L. Friedman. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008.

Following his blockbuster book on globalization, The World is Flat, Thomas Friedman has written another destined for a multi-year stay on the New York Times Best Sellers list. Hot, Flat, and Crowded focuses on three global trends that will soon undermine the quality of life of earth: Global warming, the rise of the middle class world-wide and rapid population growth. As billions more people adopt middle class consumption patterns, the effect on climate, natural resources and biodiversity will be devastating. In addition, the world will experience tighter energy supplies, a division between electricity haves and have-nots, and a transfer of wealth to petro-powers, which are largely anti-democratic.

After focusing on the problems of global warming, population growth, and consumerism in the first half of the book, Friedman outlines his solution in the second. He proposes “Code Green” to transform our our current Dirty Fuels System to a clean-powered, energy-efficient, conservation-based system. Friedman calls for a revolution, the largest innovation project in American history.

Overall, this is an optimistic book. Friedman says that thirty years ago, America could be counted on to lead the world in response to the important challenges of the day, but recently the US lost its way. The green revolution is an opportunity to become that city on the hill once again, providing leadership on healing the earth.

© Reviewer: Meg Trauner & Ford Library – Fuqua School of Business. All rights reserved.

Access over 250 PBS videos online through the NC Live Video Collection. See many of Ken Burns’ films (Jazz, Baseball, Inside Hamas, The West, etc.) as well as several Frontline and American Experience documentaries.

Some business titles of interest include Buffett and Gates Go Back to School, Feeding and Fueling the World: Healthier Alternatives for Planet Earth, and The Persuaders (a Frontline special on how the culture of marketing and advertising influences not only American’s buying but also the world around them).

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April is Earth Month at Duke. Also, the 8th Annual MBA International Retreat will be held on Energy & the Environment (May 31st-June 1st).

See these new titles at the Ford Library on energy, the environment, and sustainability issues. As always, you can click on any title below to check availability or to place a hold.

• Saving Energy, Growing Jobs: How Environmental Protection Promotes Economic Growth, Profitability, Innovation and Competition by David. B. Goldstein
• Carbon Strategies: How Leading Companies are Reducing Their Climate Change Footprint by Andrew J. Hoffman
• Terra Incognita:A Navigation Aid for Energy Leaders by Christopher E.H. Ross and Lane E. Sloan
• Managing Green Issues by Tom Curtin
• Harvard Business Review on Green Business Strategy by Harvard Business School Press
• Markets and the Environment by Nathaniel O. Keohane and Sheila M. Olmstead
• The Commonwealth of Life: Economics for a Flourishing Earth, 2nd Edition by by Peter G. Brown
• Sustainability in Manufacturing: Recovery of Resources in Product and Material Cycles edited by Gunther Seliger
• Future Energy: How the New Oil Industry Will Change People, Politics, and Portfolios by Bill Paul
• Green Seduction: Money, Business, and the Environment by Bill Streever
• Business, Ethics, and the Environment: Imagining a Sustainable Future (Basic Ethics in Action)by Joseph R. Des Jardins
• Cut Carbon, Grow Profits: Business Strategies for Managing Climate Change and Sustainability edited by Kenny Tang and Ruth Yeoh
• Organizations and the Sustainability Mosaic: Crafting Long-Term Ecological and Societal Solutions edited by Sanjay Sharma, Mark Starik and Bryan Husted

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The Ford Library has started off the Spring Semester by adding lots of great new books. Come check out our New Books section for even more titles than are shown here. We add many new ones every month on a wide variety of business and related topics. (Click on any of the titles below to check availability or to place a hold.)

Business Trends & Events

• From Higher Aims to Hired Hands: The Social Transformation of American Business Schools and the Unfulfilled Promise of Management as a Profession by Rakesh Khurana
• World Event Trading: How to Analyze and Profit from Today’s Headlines by Andrew Busch
• Trading Catalysts: How Events Move Markets and Create Trading Opportunities by Robert I. Webb
• Coming Attractions?: Hollywood, High Tech, and the Future of Entertainment by Philip E. Meza
• Speechless: The Erosion of Free Expression in the American Workplace by Bruce Barry
• The Secrets of Economic Indicators: Hidden Clues to Future Economic Opportunities by Bernard Baumohl

Finance

• The New Market Wizards: Conversations with America’s Top Traders Jack D. Schwager
• Building Financial Models with Microsoft Excel: A Guide for Business Professionals by K. Scott Proctor
• Forecasting Expected Returned in the Financial Markers by Stephen Satchel

The Environment, Nature, and Natural Resources:

• Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature by Janine M. Benyus
• Cut Carbon, Grow Profits: Business Strategies for Managing Climate Change and
  Sustainability edited by Dr. Kenny Tang CFA and Ruth Yeoh
• The Commonwealth of Life: Economics for a Flourishing Earth, 2nd Edition by Peter G. Brown
• Terra Incognita: A Navigation Aid for Energy Leaders by Christopher E.H. Ross
  and Lane E. Sloan

Leadership & Ethics*:

• The Moral Leader: Challenges, Insights, and Tools by Sandra J. Sucher
• What Really Matters: Service, Leadership, People, and Values by John Pepper
• Ethics and Business: An Introduction by Kevin Gibson
• The Sentinel CEO: Perspectives on Security, Risk, and Leadership in a Post- 9/11
  World by William G. Parrett
• The Leadership Experience by Richard L. Daft
• Radical Trust: How Today’s Great Leaders Convert People to Partners by Joe Healey
• Leadership Communication by Deborah J. Barrett

* Many leadership and ethics titles are part of the library’s Dorothea F. Peterjohn Leadership Collection

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