The Age of Unreason
We are living through The Age of Turbulence, opines Alan Greenspan; The Age of Abundance, says Lindsey Brink; An Age of New Possibilities, argues Reinhard Mohn; Art Kleiner documents brilliantly the "Radical Thinkers Who Reinvented Corporate Management" in The Age of Heretics; Vince Poscente will show you how to thrive in The Age of Speed; and George Magnus will explain the shifting demographics of The Age of Aging. It's an Age of Ages, folks, that is what this really is.
Jean-Paul Sarte's brilliant 1945 novel, The Age of Reason, made a profound impact on me during my formative years in high school. And, though I don't remember much of that book anymore, it did compel me to read Sartre's Being and Nothingness, a book I have never quite finished, and never truly recovered from. Jack had a much better experience with a book of the opposite title, one that helped shaped his appreciation of business books—The Age of Unreason by Charles Handy. Armed not only with technical knowledge and business expertise, but with deep thought and purpose to boot, this is a book that even those uninitiated in the business book subculture will quickly become immersed in. And, originally released in 1989, it was one of the first of its kind—a business book with a heavy dose of philosophy, a book that looks not only at the nature of work, but the nature of life and state of our very existence on Earth. Sound heavy, hyperbolic perhaps... consider this passage:
George Bernard Shaw once observed that all progress depends on the unreasonable man. His argument was that the reasonable man adapts himself to the world, while the unreasonable persists in trying to adapt the world to himself; therefore for any change of consequence we must look to the unreasonable man, or, I must add, to the unreasonable woman.While in Shaw's day, perhaps, most men were reasonable, we are now entering an Age of Unreason, when the future, in so many areas, is there to be shaped, by us and for us—a time when the only prediction that will hold true is that no predictions will hold true; a time, therefore, for bold imaginings in private life as well as public, for thinking the unlikely and doing the unreasonable.
"The purpose of this book is to promote a better understanding of the changes which are already about us, in order that we may, as individuals and as a
society, suffer less and profit more."
The Age of Unreason, Page 5
Unconvinced? Let Jack take a stab at it.
We have 25 copies available.
Sorry! This offer has expired. Check out today's offer instead.
