By Bob Doppelt
Earthscan
€20, ISBN:9781844075959

This is a valuable book by someone who has wrestled deeply with the meaning of 'sustainable'. But it raises more questions than it answers and the cognitive shift that the author says we must all make will not necessarily lead to sustainability, (though in saying that this reviewer could be accused of expressing resignation, one of the cognitive traits Doppelt says we must rid ourselves of).

Imagine you are diagnosed with cancer but a major change in lifestyle might save you. Do you defiantly reject the diagnosis, resign yourself to it or rationalize it away from a false sense of immunity? Or do you turn over a new leaf and voilà, get better?

If global warming is humanity's cancer diagnosis, then 90% of us are stuck in denial or rebellion when we should be urgently turning over a new leaf, says Doppelt. Sustainability is not about the environment, but about us, he argues. It's about painful change premised on a new, low carbon mindset.

Three 'live' examples are narrated - Doppelt's restoration of an old house to make it carbon positive, his decision to cut flying and whether or not to import organic food. In every case the 'truly sustainable' answer is tortuously ascertained, but whether the result is truly sustainable remains unanalysed.

The SUV dilemma crops up constantly, and buying a hybrid car is assumed, self-evidently, to be a more sustainable option. But Doppelt never questions motoring's sustainability.

Doppelt asks us to consider every action in light of Kantian imperatives. If everyone else in the world did this, would it still be OK? In transport matters the only truly sustainable solution would be the bicycle, not six and a half billion hybrids stuffed with internal combustion engines and carbon-intensive batteries. Similarly, at one point the author categorically states, "Thinking that leads to a continued increase in human populations is not sustainable." Agreed - so no one should be having babies if they are being truly sustainable. The weakness of the book is not that it doesn't spell out these hard truths (it doesn't), but that it glosses over the big elephant in the room, namely a global population that is already and irrevocably unsustainable despite the fact that hundreds of millions of its poorest people don't even have bicycles. RL

Lessons from Private Equity Any Company Can Use
By Orit Gadiesh and Hugh MacArthur
Harvard Business Press
€10, ISBN 9781422124956

A bit of a gem this volume, like all good strategy notes its message is kept brief and to the point as part of Harvard's 'Memo to the CEO' series. The six bullet points in the memo are: define the potential of the company; develop a blueprint for change; accelerate performance; harness talent; make equity sweat and foster a results-oriented mind-set. If that sounds a bit locust-like, the authors mount a robust case for running a very tight ship that includes high debt levels drawn from LBO economics. However it's not obvious that this approach works so well in a recession. Challenge yourself with this book. RL

The Management Gurus:
Lessons from the best management books of all time
By Chris Lauer
Atlantic Books
€16, ISBN 9781843549338

The title's audacious claim that here are "the best management books of all time" reverberates in the lurid language of Lauer's short summaries of classic texts, which feel a bit like adverts for the original books. The 90% success rate of Bradford D. Smart's 'Topgrading' hiring technique is, for example, gleefully repeated seven times in six pages, while no new insights are offered. Of course, the hype can't justify the omission of the likes of Drucker from the authors considered. Those summaries that are here, though, are clear and, if you can stomach the irritating hype, useful for those without time to read. AC

Branson
By Tom Bower
Harper Perennial
€11, ISBN 9780007266760

Updated over the last eight years - and published a month before Branson's latest business self-help guide is published - Bower's book charts Branson's rise from producer of a flailing student magazine to billionaire 'brand in himself', Bower clearly enjoys writing about Branson's adulterous, "sex-obsessed" personal life, alongside the law-flouting tempest of Virgin's volatile existence. The man is cast as an "anti-intellectual" - culturally ignorant, yet magnificently motivated. But is any of this hugely surprising? It's Branson's bounce-back qualities rather than Bower's criticisms, that makes this book so readable. AC

Supercapitalism: The Battle for Democracy in an Age of Big Business
By Robert Reich
€16 ISBN 10 1848310072

"To confuse greed with opportunity", writes Reich, professor of public policy at Berkeley and Secretary of Labour under Bill Clinton, "is to confound desire with availability". In other words, you can't blame people for simply following their natural capitalist urges.

Instead, Reich believes companies should be held as accountable as individuals and that corporate income tax should be abolished and shareholders charged of negligence. He points out how companies have become entrenched in politics, and how taxation, education, trade unions - have withered. A timely critique in a time of recession. BF

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