In Doing More with a Life, best-selling author Piasecki welcomes the reader into his home, revealing the heart-breaking early death of his father, and his deep respect and love for the women in his life, especially his mother, who devoted her life to her children, both foster and biological. He explores the life-shaping moments in his personal history and imagines what is to come next in a series of well-wrought vignettes.   Piasecki’s upbringing was laced with poverty and trauma. He began reading at an early age, seeking out the wisdom and relevance from the “magical clan of writers� who helped him strengthen his writing muscle and feed into his creative hunger.   Bruce’s journey to becoming a writer is spiritual and practical, as he discovers and uncovers what is truly valuable in a life. As well as being a writer, Piasecki is also an environmentalist, a speaker on climate and society, and AHC Group founder. He has also founded the family-endowed Creative Force Foundation.   Doing More with a Life can be read as biography, or inventive memoir, or even as magical realism. Piasecki leaves that choice up to his reader. Readers and followers of Piasecki’s expansive career in environmental and community issues will be deeply moved by his tales of loss and his determination to make himself—and his world—into something profoundly better.

Thanks to the sharp increase in mergers, acquisitions, and takeovers, the number of powerful worldwide corporations has quadrupled in the past twenty years. These are firms whose yearly revenues are greater than those of most countries. They employ millions of workers in almost every nation on our planet, and their influence on the global economy and the fate of citizens keeps increasing. What does this rapid development mean for your family, your friends, and your own firms? Beneath all the chatter on these differing brands and products, are there actually a small set of rules that they all breathe by, and live under?

There is a new reality that is reshaping the future of capitalism: whether we are aware of it or not, these New World companies shape our personal behavior, both as investors and as consumers, both as social advocates and as agents of change within our own family and our own circles of influence. But, like all great empires, some of these businesses will flourish while most will fail. In his new book, New World Companies, best-selling author Bruce Piasecki explains which twenty-first-century companies will thrive, which will fall short, and why.

One of the country s leading authorities on the behavior of big business, Piasecki analyzes both the levers of control that these companies wield and what they require to sustain their position in the global marketplace. Piasecki offers an hourly clock image to disclose the urgency and complexity of these ceaselessly related impulses within the modern firm. He offers, based on his thirty years as a management consultant, a set of explanations on what makes that clock tick, rather consistently, in most firms of consequence from a GE and CAT to SHELL, Suncor Energy and Toyota.

Part One explores how capitalism has changed in response to global needs and the connections between corporate needs for water, land, energy and innovation. Rapidly, we have left the simpler confines of the Quality Revolution. These chapters examine the nature of global competition today, the dance of globalization of supply chains, the evolution of shared value in business networks, as well as the new flow of money management today. In the process, part one ends with a chilling description of corporate leadership by explaining actually how the world s largest firms compete for talent and skill.

Part Two details the key elements of a corporation s responsibility to its shareholders, its customers, and the world. According to Piasecki, every corporate mansion sits in a discernable neighborhood. While many see the mansion has reflective glass in its windows, Piasecki describes how his firm and his teams get invited up the stairwell of these corporations. Insightful case studies highlight how specific companies, such as Toyota and Suncor, have met massive environmental challenges and, in so doing, outperformed their competition. Innovation and sustainability have become the two new sisters in the family of a boardroom, and Piasecki s new book offers each of us an understanding of what s at stake.

Whether you are an investor, an executive, or a consumer, New World Companies will give you the tools to measure companies potential growth and their potential for failure. The book offers a unique perspective from a top consultant who has helped some of the world s largest companies meet their gravest challenges and responsibilities.

The toxic legacy of Love Canal vividly brought the crisis in industrial waste disposal to public awareness across the United States and led to the passage of the Superfund legislation in 1980. To discover why disasters like Love Canal have occurred and whether they could have been averted with knowledge available to waste managers of the time, this book examines industrial waste disposal before the formation of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970.

Colten and Skinner build their study around three key questions. First, what was known before 1970 about the hazards of certain industrial wastes and their potential for causing public health problems? Second, what were the technical capabilities for treating or containing wastes during that time? And third, what factors other than technical knowledge guided the actions of waste managers before the enactment of explicit federal laws?

The authors find that significant information about the hazards of industrial wastes existed before 1970. Their explanations of why this knowledge did not prevent the toxic legacy now facing us will be essential reading for environmental historians and lawyers, public health personnel, and concerned citizens.