Reader recommendation: Last Stand

Monitor readers share their favorite book picks.

I recently picked up Todd Wilkinson's new book, Last Stand: Ted Turner's Quest to Save a Troubled Planet. What an eye opener. I knew Ted Turner was preserving large tracts of land around the country, and, of course, I know about his reputation for having quite a mouth on him. Wilkinson reveals a lot about Turner's upbringing and what lead him to his amazing philanthropic, environmental, and humanitarian projects that are utilizing his wealth to do good in our world. It's an unapologetic picture of Turner and a fascinating read.

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About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

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But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

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