Megacommunities or Great Risk Shift

Megacommunities: How Business, Government and Civil Society Leaders Can Master This Century's Global Challenges--Together

Author: Mark Gerencser

A hurricane strikes a city; terrorists attack a nation; global warming threatens the environment--such problems are too large for any one authority to solve alone. Our increasingly globalized and interconnected world calls for a new type of tri-sector leadership in which business, government and nonprofits work together in a state of permanent negotiation. To be effective, tomorrow’s leaders will need to reach across national and sector divisions to form a collaborative “megacommunity.”

 

Based on interviews with over 100 leaders from around the world including Bill Clinton, Henry Kissinger, Kenneth Chenault and Richard Parsons, MEGACOMMUNITIES: How Leaders of Government, Business and Non-Profits Can Tackle Today's Global Challenges Together introduces a radically new framework for reaching solutions to today’s thorniest problems.  Written by four senior consultants from global consultancy Booz Allen Hamilton, and with a Foreword by Walter Isaacson, this important book explains how a megacommunity approach is:

 

COUNTERING AIDS, ALZHEIMER’S AND GLOBAL PANDEMICS 
In India, a megacommunity battles HIV/AIDS by bringing together both public, private, and civil-sector organizations, including PepsiCo, the Gates Foundation, U.S. healthcare experts, UN development programs, and local NGOs.

 

CONSERVING THE ENVIRONMENT AND ENERGY
In saving the world's rainforests, providers, distributors, sellers, and consumers of lumber team up with local communities, the World Wildlife Fund, and Goldman Sachs.

 

HELPING COMMUNITIES GROW In changing neighborhoods like Harlem, the megacommunityincludes local small businesses, community groups, global companies, and foundations like Bill Clinton's.

 

“What is required are leaders who know how to identify the vital interests they share with others, who are prepared to seek the benefits from which all can gain,” write the authors.

 

Visit their website at: megacommunities.com

 

Look this: Last Minute Speeches and Toasts or Hugh Johnsons Pocket Wine Book

Great Risk Shift: The Assault on American Jobs, Families, Health Care and Retirement and how You Can Fight Back

Author: Jacob S Hacker

America's leaders say the economy is strong and getting stronger. But the safety net that once protected us is fast unraveling. With retirement plans in growing jeopardy while health coverage erodes, more and more economic risk is shifting from government and business onto the fragile shoulders of the American family.
In The Great Risk Shift, Jacob S. Hacker lays bare this unsettling new economic climate, showing how it has come about, what it is doing to our families, and how we can fight back. Behind this shift, he contends, is the Personal Responsibility Crusade, eagerly embraced by corporate leaders and Republican politicians who speak of a nirvana of economic empowerment, an "ownership society" in which Americans are free to choose. But as Hacker reveals, the result has been quite different: a harsh new world of economic insecurity, in which far too many Americans are free to lose.
The book documents how two great pillars of economic security--the family and the workplace--guarantee far less financial stability than they once did. The final leg of economic support--the public and private benefits that workers and families get when economic disaster strikes--has dangerously eroded as political leaders and corporations increasingly cut back protections of our health care, our income security, and our retirement pensions.
Blending powerful human stories, big-picture analysis, and compelling ideas for reform, this remarkable volume will hit a nerve, serving as a rallying point in the vital struggle for economic security in an increasingly uncertain world.

Table of Contents:

Preface to the Revised and Expanded Edition

Preface to the First Edition

Introduction: On the Edge

1. The New Economic Insecurity

2. Risking it All

3. Risky Jobs

4. Risky Families

5. Risky Retirement

6. Risky Health Care

Conclusion: Securing the Future

Acknowledgements

Notes

Index