Korten Books in Print

Agenda for a New Economy: From Phantom Wealth to Real Weatlh. Why Wall Street Can't Be Fixed and How to Replace it. Most public discussion of the financial crisis has focused on finger-pointing. Many call for stronger rules and closer oversight. The author of When Corporations Rule the World  cuts through the chaff to a clear bottom line. Wall Street is corrupt beyond repair. There is no justification for opening the national purse strings to shower it's institutions with trillions of dollars to save them from the consequencs of their own excess. There are other ways to provide necessary and beneficial financial services with greater effectiveness and at lesser cost. It is time to let go of Wall Street and build a New Economy on the foundation of Main Street with a financial system accountable to Main Street designed to serve its needs. Agenda for a New Economy tells how.

 "The most important book to emerge thus far on the economic crisis. David Korten provides real solutions."
-- Peter Barnes, cofounder of Working Assts and author of Capitalism 3.0

 The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community: David Korten's classic bestseller, When Corporations Rule the World, was one of the first books to articulate the destructive and oppressive nature of the global corporate economy. Now, ten years later, Korten shows that the problem runs deeper than corporate domination-with far greater consequences.

David Korten never fails to shake me out of my complacency, and reveal complacencies I didn't even know I had. This work is a stunning and compassionate tour de force, calling on history, science, economics and our human goodwill to illuminate the fact that we are at a fundamental choice point. I can't stop thinking about the issues he raises nor what I'm going to do with my awakened consciousness. Thank you David.
-Margaret J. Wheatley, author Leadership and the New Science

When Corporations Rule the World:  INTERNATIONAL CLASSIC BEST SELLER WITH WORLDWIDE SALES OVER 120,000; COPIES SOLD IN FIFTEEN LANGUAGES! The Second Edition of When Corporations Rule the World, released in April 2001, updates and expands the original edition. It is more accessible to the general reader in language and price. Five new chapters trace the further deepening of the destructive forces of corporate globalization and document the emergence the citizen protest movement dedicated to democracy, economic justice, and environmental sustainability. It concludes that the power and legitimacy of the institutions of the global economy rest on the foundation of a falsified culture. It finds new reasons for hope in both the growing citizen resistance and the evidence of an awakening of cultural consciousness that is preparing the way for deep transformational change.

The Post-Corporate World: Life After Capitalism: THE VISIONARY LIFE-AFFIRMING SEQUEL TO WHEN CORPORATIONS RULE THE WORLD. OVER 25,000 COPIES SOLD IN EIGHT LANGUAGES. Protest to stall corporate globalization's assault against democracy, community, and the natural environment is essential. Yet protest alone is a losing strategy. Those seeking to create a world that works for the whole of life must work toward consensus on proactive agendas grounded in the principles of healthy living systems. This is the underlying premise of The Post-Corporate World: Life After Capitalism, the visionary sequel to When Corporations Rule the World. An extensively researched, powerfully argued, eye-opening critique of how today's corporate capitalism is destroying the things of real value in the world, The Post-Corporate World also portrays a hopeful future--alternatives to a corporate-dominated and money-ruled world--in showing how to restore health to markets, democracy, and everyday life.

Globalizing Civil Society: Reclaming Our Right to Power: The world is headed toward deepening poverty and environmental destruction not for lack of money, but because the power to set human priorities resides with deeply flawed institutions. A more hopeful human future depends on restoring control to people and communities control of the resources on which their livelihoods depend. Globalizing Civil Society: Reclaiming Our Right to Power is a pamphlet size condensation of the basic arguments of When Corporations Rule World.

Getting to the 21st Century: Voluntary Action and the Global Agenda: Driven by the imperatives of economic growth, humanity's dominant institutions are destroying the resources on which all life depends and intensifying the competition between rich and poor for what remains. Because these institutions lack the capacity for self-transformation, change necessarily depends on the voluntary action of people with the courage and freedom to work outside the framework of conventional institutional financial and political rewards. Published in 1990, Getting to the 21st Century: Voluntary Action and the Global Agenda presents the ideas that launched the People-Centered Development Forum (PCDF), which is the organizational home of the Great Turning Initiative,  and anticipated the emergence of global civil society as a people power counter to the forces of corporate empire.

Alternatives to Economic Globalization: A Better World is Possible is the official consensus report of the International Forum on Globalization edited by John Cavanagh and Jerry Mander. Written by a team of 21 leading thinkers from around the world, including Korten, Alternatives provides detailed alternatives to the current rules and institutions of economic globalization, and lays out alternatives to corporate globalization more fully, specifically, and thoughtfully than has ever been done before.