Thomas Croft’s Up From Wall Street: The Responsible Investment Alternative, recently published by Cosimo, has garnered a fantastic review from James McRitchie at CorpGov.net:

[S]hould be read by all working North Americans, concerned with the reckless loans and short-term stock market bets that nearly plunged the world’s economy into chaos….

Croft does and excellent job of explaining the rise of “financialization,” short-termism and how buyout and hedge funds “provided some of the black powder that quickened the landslide.” Trustees, union, and members of funds who want to influence them will benefit substantially from the chapter, “Action Steps for Trustees: How to Talk Back to Experts.” Here Croft lays out how to get fund consultants to expand their horizons to include consideration of investments that can earn high risk-adjusted returns over the long-run, which also help sustain employers and communities. The chapter includes 12 steps with specific advice, such as “Ask your consultant to independently verify the sources and amount of returns from private equity funds… disclose cash in/cash out documentation.”

Part two of the book is a “field guide” that provides information on six responsible private equity and venture capital funds. Each fund is profiled for structure, capacity, products, impacts, financial performance, experience of principals and at least a case study or two of the firm’s investments. Yes, you can make money while doing good. These firms have proven that and continue to do so through the financial melt-down.

Read the whole review at CorpGov.net.

Cosimo books are available at Amazon.com and from other online booksellers.

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The other day, 56 newspapers around the world published the same editorial on the climate crisis: an unprecendented event for potentially an unprecedented global emergency.

The editorial — drafted by editors at the Guardian — says, among other things:

Many of us, particularly in the developed world, will have to change our lifestyles. The era of flights that cost less than the taxi ride to the airport is drawing to a close. We will have to shop, eat and travel more intelligently. We will have to pay more for our energy, and use less of it…

In the U.S., only the Miami Herald ran the editorial, though it deleted a key sentence from it that focused on the particular need for the U.S. to change its carbon-hungry ways. It’s a telling indication of how poorly the message is being communicated when those who need to hear it most aren’t even being exposed to it.

Fred Branfman of the Sacramento News & Review offers a similar argument, in a piece entitled “Copenhagen Won’t Be Enough — Only a ‘Human Movement’ Can Save Civilization from the Climate Crisis” (via Alternet):

Our greatest challenge is to adjust ancient belief systems to the new climate realities that have undone them. If we can break through our fog and clearly see the existential threat we pose to our children, presently unthinkable actions to save them may become possible. But if not, we will remain locked in our cognitive cattle cars, moving inexorably toward the loss of everything we hold dear.

How do we adjust those ancient belief systems? How can we individually do our part in dealing with climate change? One answer is provided in Earth Fever, coming soon from Cosimo Books. In it, authors Jan Paul van Soest, Erik van Praag, and Judy McAllister bring to bear their diverse experience in the fields of sustainability, leadership, and entrepreneurialism on the problem of bringing about the change of consciousness and the new spirituality the endeavor will require. Along with the wisdom of international opinion leaders—including management consultant Peter Senge; Jeroen van der Veer, the former CEO of Royal Dutch Shell; cultural creative Paul Ray; Herman Wijffels, former governor at the World Bank; and others—Earth Fever delves into what is needed to bring about this essential new way of thinking.

Stay tuned for news of Earth Fever’s publication…

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Cosimo is proud to announce that our November book of the month is Up From Wall Street: The Responsible Investment Alternative, by Thomas Croft.

In 2008 we watched as trillions of dollars vanished before our eyes, enveloped in the crash and burn of Wall Street’s bottom line. As working Americans and retirees awake from the aftermath, we’re searching for answers and alternatives to the reckless loans and dicey short-term bets that ravaged our savings and retirement assets.

Up From Wall Street makes the case that there are strategic and socially responsible investment paths that have the capacity to rebuild our economy and infrastructure, reinvigorate our cities, and create the highly-anticipated green jobs of the future.

Through real-life stories and case studies, Croft illustrates how the responsible investment of savings assets, pensions, insurance funds, and other trusts can generate positive social, economic, and environmental benefits — along with financial returns. Included in the book is A Field Guide to Responsible Capital, which contains descriptions of investment funds that are together managing over $30 billion and provides a detailed analysis of some of the firms and projects in which they invest.

Dr. Tessa Hebb, author of No Small Change: Pension Funds and Corporate Engagement, says:

Anyone with an interest in making sure their savings are put to work in a manner that strengthens our economy must read this volume.

David Wood, director of The Institute for Responsible Investment, says:

Up From Wall Street offers a path towards, and real life examples of, investments in private equity and real estate that create value for investors by producing sustainable wealth for businesses, their employees, and communities alike.

Kirsten Snow Spalding, California director of Ceres, says:

This study captures a rising wave of progressive investment activity that will define the ‘prudent investor’ standard for all investors in the future

Richard L. Trumka, secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO, says:

I hope that … many of the people who pushed for change in Washington, D.C. across America and our neighbors to the North will read this book.

Read Robert Kropp’s review of Up From Wall Street at Social Funds.

THOMAS CROFT is an international expert on innovative capital strategies and jobs-oriented economic revitalization policies. He serves as Director of the Heartland Network (www.heartlandnetwork.org) and Executive Director of the Steel Valley Authority (www.steelvalley.org) and has authored or commissioned vital new perspectives on alternative pension investment strategies and a fair economy.

Up From Wall Street: The Responsible Investment Alternative is available at Amazon.com and from other online booksellers.

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This fall, Cosimo celebrates the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson’s journey on the Dutch ship the Half Moon to the shores of what is now New York City by presenting a number of unique classic books covering Hudson’s life and his courageous journey.

Henry Hudson in Holland, by Henry C. Murphy, is a significant early treatise on Hudson’s voyages. This volume, a replica of the original 1859 monograph, collects all the original documents known to exist about Hudson’s third voyage — the one in which he sailed up what is now called the Hudson River.

Hard to find in print, this is an important new edition of an essential work of documentation of one of the most inadvertently profound incidents of global history: the beginnings of the city that is arguably the capital of the world today.

Other Henry Hudson titles from Cosimo include:

• Henry Hudson, The Navigator — edited, partially translated, and annotated by Georg Asher — which collects the eyewitness documentation of Hudson’s voyages of exploration.

• Henry Hudson, A Brief Statement, by Thomas Janvier, which comes complete with charming etchings from the original 1909 edition.

For more information news and events honoring the 400th anniversary of Hudson’s history-making 1609 voyage, visit HenryHudson400.com.

Cosimo books are available at Amazon.com and from other online booksellers.

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Cosimo is proud to announce the publication of Reading Baby Toes: What Your Baby’s Toes Know That You Don’t, by Imre and Margriet Somogyi, our August book of the month:

Every parent wonders, while looking down at their newborn child, what kind of person he or she will grow up to be. This book can help parents answer that question without waiting a dozen years or more for the child to grow up. Imre & Margriet Somogyi’s research as led them to believe that parents can learn to read their baby’s toes for clues to their personality and behavior. “We came to realize that the toes symbolize the many facts of our personalities. Not only is their shape important, butso are their various features and positions.” By learning how to read baby toes, not only will parents be able satisfy their curiosity about their newborn, but this knowledge will provide parents with a tool that will allow them to better understand their child’s earliest stages of life and development and help them optimize their child’s full potential, allowing him or her to develop into a healthy and well-balanced individual.

Imre Somogyi is a journalist and producer at Dutch Radio & Television. Margriet Somogyi worked as a medical assistant at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. Both authors have been active polarity therapists and teachers.

And don’t miss:

The Cosimo Classic of the Month: The Travels of Marco Polo, by Marco Polo:

It was perhaps the first book to achieve best-seller status before the invention of the printing press — it was certainly the most controversial. Did Venetian trader and explorer Marco Polo (1254-1324) actually reach the court of Kublai Khan, serve the emperor as his emissary, and journey the distant lands of Cathay for 17 years, as he relates in his Travels of Marco Polo? The question still hasn’t quite been settled today… but whether Polo experienced firsthand the wonders of ancient China, retold tales he heard from Arab travelers along the Silk Road, or simply invented half his stories, this remains a delightful read for fans of history, adventure, and medieval literature. The new edition features illustrations from a 14th-century French version of Polo’s manuscript.

The Cosimo Kindle of the Month: The Kingdom of God is Within You by Leo Tolstoy:

He is considered one of the greatest novelists in any language in all of human history, but Leo Tolstoy was also an influential social reformer and peace advocate. Subtitled “Christianity Not as a Mystical Teaching but as a New Concept of Life,” this powerful exploration of the preachings of Jesus from a pacifistic perspective. First published in 1893, it introduced such important 20th-century figures as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King to the concept of nonviolent resistance. This edition is vital reading for anyone wishing to understand the history of protest around the world or gain a deeper appreciation of pacifistic Christianity.

Download to your Kindle and read instantly!

Cosimo books are available at Amazon.com and from other online booksellers.

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Cosimo Books is pleased to announce the publication of Red Hot Internet Publicity: An Insider’s Guide to Promoting Your Book on the Internet. Leading Internet publicist Penny Sansevieri releases this revised edition with writing both intelligent and energetic: its main focus is on getting your work out on the web efficiently and effectively.

The Internet has changed the landscape of book publishing forever. That’s why four of the largest New York book publishers hire Sansevieri to mentor their own Internet publicity department employees. It’s also why these major publishers routinely recommend Sansevieri to their authors as an Internet publicist. Sansevieri made one of her own books an Amazon.com best seller for three months running. She’s the inventor of the Virtual Book Tour and a leading expert on using the Internet to promote books of all kinds. She firmly believes that self-published books and niche titles can benefit even more from the Internet than celebrity and mass-market books.

Learn:

• 12 blockbuster techniques to use blogs for book publicity
• the best way to design, write and promote a Web site to sell your book
• the 6 “need-to-know” rules of publicity for the Internet age
• proven “live promotion” techniques you can use to reach a worldwide audience — from the comfort of your own home!
• 13 Web sites where you can post your press release for free
• the documented secret of author who sell 3 times as many books as anyone else
• …and much, much more!

With an exceptional foreword by publishing veteran Laurence J. Kirshbaum, founder of LJK Literary Management, this essential manual to navigating the wilderness of online publicity is the ideal guide for learning the fine points of book marketing on the Web.

Visit www.redhotinternetpublicity.com for more information.

BONUS! Get Penny Sansevieri’s “Ultimate Twitter Resource Guide” free at Cosimo’s Scribd page.

Red Hot Internet Publicity is available at Amazon.com and from other online booksellers.

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We in the United States take for granted the orderly and peaceful transition of power that occurs once every four or eight years, but before the Founding Fathers such a wonder was barely even dreamt of by oppressed citizenry.

Yet for more than 200 years we have witnessed precisely this wonder in the inauguration ceremonies of each new President of the United States. From the first inauguration of George Washington, in New York City in 1789, to today, the Presidential inauguration has always represented both national renewal and continuity of leadership. (Go here for a history of Presidential inaugurations and an official schedule of Inauguration events.)

As a new Presidential administration offers a vision for America’s future that promises change and progress, we look back at how similar promise has played out in the past.

Join us in reading about how America arrived at this historic moment in books including:

Through times of war and times of peace, times of prosperity and times of scarcity, through hours dark and bright, the continuation of the American government through legal, Constitutionally guaranteed means has never faltered. There can be no better representation of that marvel, unequaled in world history, than the inaugural addresses of incoming Presidents, gathered in our new edition of Inaugural Addresses of the Presidents of the United States: From George Washington, 1789 to George H.W. Bush, 1989.

This collection of the first speeches of each of the nation’s new leaders, plus the subsequent inaugural words of reelected Presidents-Franklin Delano Roosevelt gave a record four inaugural addresses-gathers in one important volume the thoughts of every leader from George Washington to George Bush (41) as they entered office. Their words set the tenor for their administrations, and this firsthand document of American history is vital for understanding their work in the White House, and the legacy they left for the future ahead of them.

Aggressive voices promote minority special interests. Wealth is concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. The middle class is under siege. Giant corporations and big business threaten democracy itself. Such was the state of the United States after the Civil War, and if it sounds familiar, then it only underlines the continuing relevance of Herbert Croly’s The Promise of American Life, first published in 1909.

In The Life of Abraham Lincoln: Volume I, a 1900 work as charming as it is important, American author Ida M. Tarbell — famous as a muckraking journalist — shows a softer side as she traces, with a laudatory and admiring spirit, the development of the character and morals of Abraham Lincoln. Volume I covers Lincoln’s life from before he was even born, with the origins of the Lincoln family back to the early 17th century, through his education, his service in the Black Hawk War, his early dabblings in politics, his experiences and attitudes as a lawyer, and the presidential campaign of 1860.

Cosimo books are available at Amazon.com and from other online booksellers.

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The financial news may be dire these days, but the outlook isn’t all bad for all businesses. Followers of consultant Darwin Gillett’s “Noble Enterprise” model have every expectation of succeeding no matter how poor economic outlooks are, because Noble Enterprises focus on people and profit: morale and income rise simultaneously, as Gillett demonstrates, when management concentrates on both.

The Cosimo book Noble Enterprise: The Commonsense Guide to Uplifting People and Profits — about how stagnant or even near-death companies can transform themselves for success — offers the insights, leadership tools, and inspiration to create a noble enterprise and lead employees to new heights of performance. Here, business owners learn how to:

• Strengthen your organization: Awaken and activate the rich array of human energy, wisdom, passion, and purpose in your people
• Revitalize your company: Create and implement a plan for turning around (and turning on) even the most “stuck” operation
• Build sustainable growth and profitability: Learn the secrets of corporate revitalization and apply them to achieve sustainable success
• Expand your leadership impact: Build employee morale and commitment, and help your people achieve big performance goals
• Inspire your people: Increase enthusiasm and confidence, and turn your company into a high-performing noble enterprise

Noble Enterprises are great places to work, great places to do business with, and great successes as business ventures, and Noble Enterprise focuses on the often overlooked and typically hidden inner qualities that make these companies succeed by tapping the full range of human energies. The current economic enviroment, with all its challenges and demands, is ideal for shaping currently struggling companies into Noble Enterprises that will succeed long into the future.

Noble Enterprise is available at Amazon.com and from other online booksellers.

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Cosimo is proud to announce the publication of a new, updated edition of Looking for Orthon: The Story of George Adamski, the First Flying Saucer Contactee, and How He Changed the World, by Colin Bennett.

On November 20, 1952, George Adamski first made contact with extraterrestrials — including a long-haired youth from Venus named Orthon — in the California desert…or so he claimed. He offered photographic proof. He wrote books about his encounters, including the sensational bestseller Flying Saucers Have Landed. He never stopped advocating the truth of his claims even as he came under extraordinary ridicule. And in the process, however inadvertently, Adamski invented the modern mass counterculture.

This new edition of Colin Bennett’s modern classic posits, in the author’s uniquely engaging style, Adamski as a kind of unwitting performance artist who “structured one of the most blatant acts of visionary cheek of the twentieth century,” introducing the jittery postwar Western world to the image of the UFO, which confounded and tweaked authority while also fully embodying Cold War neuroses. Whether Adamski was telling the truth or not is almost irrelevant — though Bennett has his own ideas about Adamski’s veracity. What remains compelling about Adamski’s bizarre and compelling tale of alien visitations is the transformative power of stories, even if they’re false, to warp our culture on a grand scale.

Looking for Orthon is available at Amazon and other online booksellers.

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What better way to spend a chilly Halloween night than curled up with a good, spooky book? Like Cosimo’s new collection, Loren Coleman Presents, beautiful new editions of cryptozoology classics with brand-new introductions by Coleman, one of the most respected names in the field.

The latest book in the series is The Book of Werewolves, the 1865 work by Sabine Baring-Gould. One of the many chilling episodes he details are a 1521 case heard by a French Inquisitor-General of two men — Pierre Bourgot and Michel Verdung– were accused of witchcraft and cannibalism. Among the horrific crimes allegedly committed by them:

On another occasion they fell upon a little girl of four years old, and ate her up, with the exception of one arm. Michel thought the flesh most delicious.

Another girl was strangled by them, and her blood lapped up. Of a third they ate merely a portion of the stomach. One evening at dusk, Pierre leaped over a garden wall, and came upon a little maiden of nine years old, engaged upon the weeding of the garden beds. She fell on her knees and entreated Pierre to spare her; but he snapped the neck, and left her a corpse, lying among her flowers. On this occasion he does not seem to have been in his wolf’s shape. He fell upon a goat which he found in the field of Pierre Lerugen, and bit it in the throat, but he killed it with a knife.

Michel was transformed in his clothes into a wolf, but Pierre was obliged to strip, and the metamorphosis could not take place with him unless he were stark naked.

He was unable to account for the manner in which the hair vanished when he recovered his natural condition.

Other recent books in the series include Abominable Snowmen: Legend Come to Life, the hard-to-find 1961 work by Ivan T. Sanderson; The Great Sea Serpent, the classic 1892 survey by A. C. Oudemans; and The Romance of Natural History, the 1860 bestseller by Philip Henry Gosse.

Armchair monster hunters will also enjoy Thunderbirds: America’s Living Legends of Giant Birds, the 2004 book by Mark A. Hall, with an introduction by Coleman, a publication of Cosimo partner Paraview.

Coleman’s own books as author delve into the world of bizarre creatures: Mothman and Other Curious Encounters, also from Paraview; Mysterious America: The Ultimate Guide to the Nation’s Weirdest Wonders, Strangest Spots, and Creepiest Creatures, available in a new edition from Paraview Pocket Books; and Bigfoot!: The True Story of Apes in America, also from Paraview Pocket Books.

These and other Cosimo books are always available at Amazon.com and other online booksellers.

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