Suggested Reading: Books

Featured Reading:
 

The Trojan Horse of Love
by Susan Davis
In 1991, Susan Davis gathered together key social investment thought leaders, developed Investors' Circle, and ultimately helped shape the impact investing space.  Susan went on to create multiple other investor networks and has recently chronicled her efforts and the history of these groups. 

 

The following is a list of books that the Investors' Circle staff believes are seminal works in our field.  This list ranges from nuts-and-bolts business analysis to the personal journeys of leaders in the responsible business movement to visionary overviews of how to build a sustainable economy. 

  • American Angel Investing, Edited by John May & Elizabeth O'Halloran
  • Social Business: The New Kind of Capitalism that Serves Humanity's Most Pressing Needs, by Muhammad Yunus
  • The Power of Unreasonable People, by John Elkington, Pamela Hartigan, and Klaus Schwab
  • Believing Cassandra, by Alan AtKisson
  • The Soul of Business, by Tom Chappell
  • Managing Upside Down, by Tom Chappell
  • Cradle to Cradle, by William McDonough & Michael Braungart
  • Every Business Needs an Angel, by John May & Cal Simmons
  • How to Change the World, by David Bornstein
  • Mid-Course Correction, by Ray Anderson
  • Natural Capitalism, by Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins and Hunter Lovins
  • Small is Beautiful, by E.F. Schumacher
  • The Birth of the Chaordic Age, by Dee Hock
  • The Ecology of Commerce, by Paul Hawken
  • The Divine Right of Capital, by Marjorie Kelly
  • The Limits to Growth, by Donella Meadows, Jorgen Randers, and Dennis Meadows
  • The Republic of Tea, by Mel Ziegler, Patricia Ziegler and William Rosenzweig
  • The Soul of Capitalism, by William Greider
  • The Unsettling of America, by Wendell Berry
  • What Matters Most, by Jeffrey Hollander & Stephen Fenichell
  • The Company we Keep, by John Abrams
  • Inqueries into the Nature of Slow Money: Investing as if Food, Farms, and Fertility Mattered, by Woody Tasch
  • The Genius of Money, by John Bloom
  • The HIP Investor: Make Bigger Profits by Building a Better World, by R. Paul Herman
  • The Responsibility Revolution: How the Next Generation of Businesses Will Win, by Jeffrey Hollender


We also encourage you to visit Chelsea Green Publishing and Berrett Koehler Publishers, two publishers that are dedicated to sustainability and responsible business practices and that have received investment from IC members.