As we head into spring and summer vacation seasons, I wanted to note four important books I’ve read recently.  Each will make a good house gift or a hammock companion.

I've included links to the books' pages at my favorite bookstore, Powell's.  I've listed them alphabetically by author.

George Monbiot, Heat: How to Stop the Planet Burning.  Can we reduce the emissions leading to global warming without ending civilization as we know it?  George Monbiot believes we can and provides a roadmap.  His solutions are not without pain; we must retrofit our homes and give up jet flight.  But this is at root an optimistic book befitting a new father.  As one would expect from this veteran columnist, author and campaigner, Heat is well written, carefully researched and annotated, and passionately argued.  If you’re going to read one book on what to do about global warming, this should be it.  http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio?inkey=66-0713999233-0

Geoffrey Robertson, The Tyrannicide Brief: The Story of the Man who Sent Charles I to the Scaffold.  When Americans think of the moments that produced our legal system, the Revolution and the Civil War come immediately to mind.  Few, myself included, realize how great a debt our Constitution owes to the Parliamentary victors in the bloody English Civil Wars of the 1640s:  the right to counsel, the right to know the evidence the prosecution relies on, the right to a public trial, the right of cross examination, the notion that all—including the King—are subject to the law....  All these rights came from the prosecutions of Charles I and his supporters, and they are largely attributable to John Cooke, the Solicitor General who tried the cases.  The relevance of Robertson's book to contemporary Americans will be clear within the first couple of pages.  http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio?inkey=1-1400044510-3

Nick Robins, The Corporation That Changed the World: How the East India Company Shaped the Modern Multinational.  A key member of Henderson's socially responsible investing (SRI) team, Nick Robins, is also an historian and a gifted writer.  This brief meditation on perhaps the single most important corporation the world has known illuminates the challenges of a globalizing economy and the astonishing power of corporations to effect change across cultures, vast distances and time.  In its 268 year history (ending in 1867), The Honourable Company created vast wealth for its British shareholders, conquered much of the Indian subcontinent with its private army, contributed to the loss of the American colonies (remember the Boston Tea Party?), nearly lost the subcontinent in the Mutiny which then led to the establishment of the Raj....  The East India Company's foreign policy still affects relations between India and China and the West.  And in every area—from governance to ethics to human rights—the experience of the East India Company anticipates today's proxy issues.  (Disclosure:  I reviewed an early draft of this book, and Nick and I are friends.)  http://www.powells.com/biblio/61-0745325238-0