Marjorie Kelly - The Divine Right of Capital: Dethroning the Corporate Aristocracy

* Named one of the Best Business Books of 2001 by Library Journal

* Excerpted in the Harvard Business Review, Utne Reader,
San Francisco Chronicle, Minneapolis Star-Tribune,
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Tikkun, Earth Island Journal, and elsewhere

* Selected as a Recommended Book to Read by
Harvard Business Schools Working Knowledge

* Chosen as a Favorite Book by Wharton faculty
and staff, Wharton@Work

* Featured in BusinessWeek online

* Chosen for the September Book Club
by Minnesota Monthly magazine

* Used in classrooms at the University of Minnesotas
Carlson School of Management, the University of Massachusetts,
Marshall University, Western Kentucky University,
and many other places

I have read this work with great pleasureyes, even joy. Its sharp and right on the dot. It has a wonderful style and great passion.

Rolf Osterberg, former chairman, Swedish Newspapers Association, and author, Corporate Renaissance: Business as an Adventure in Human Development

Ive been recommending this book to everyone I know. This is a marvelous, wise, artful, and moving contribution to our world.

Frances Moore Lapp, author, Diet for a Small Planet and Hopes Edge

As the global decision makers search for answers, they should read Marjorie Kellys book The Divine Right of Capital. The book is an intelligently written, challenging romp through history, philosophy, and economics.

Patricia Panchak, editor-in-chief, Industry Week

This is the back story in the Enron fiasco, the one the mainstream media wont touch. Sure, we care about shareholders who lost their life savings. But what about the rest of us, our communities, and the planet? Kelly takes a reader through heavy conceptual territory with a deft, irreverent touch.

Jonathan Rowe, YES! A Journal of Positive Futures

None of the modest reforms in accounting, disclosure, and governance proposed by Washington or Wall Street will do any good unless corporations are encouraged to look beyond shareholder value, Kelly says. People say we need better alignment between management and shareholder interests. Kelly says nothats the problem.

Rex Nutting, CBS MarketWatch.com

This just might be one of the most important books of the past fifty years.

John Renesch, author, Getting to the Better Future:
A Matter of Conscious Choosing

If you want to be current on proposed corporate reform, read The Divine Right of Capital. To read it is to feel present in an Ivy League lecture hall at one moment, only to be transported to your best friends kitchen table the next. Downright fun.

Susan Wennemyr, SocialFunds.com

Kelly has a way of taking the complex concepts of economics and explaining them in a way that even people who cant balance their checkbooks can understand.

Terri Foley, Minnesota Monthly

Kelly is remarkably clear in her analyses and makes the arcane easy to understand.

David Cogswell, American Book Review

Kellys book will exhilarate you, because it is such a thorough de-masking of the indefensible.

Paul Hawken, Whole Earth

Until I read The Divine Right of Capital, I never really entertained the thought that stockholders are not even the rightful owners of corporations. This is Kellys seditious claim. She delivers a provocative plea for a dialogue on ownership and the nature of the corporation, in the bracing tradition of Thomas Paine.

William Bole, America: The National Catholic Weekly

I can think of no volume more worthy of American patriots attention than Kellys challenging new book.

E. E. Copeland, The Business Journal, Portland, Oregon

This is not another one of those bash capitalism/reinvent socialism books. The Divine Right of Capital is something far more valuable and rarea genuine, well-informed, and intellectually courageous attempt to see our economic system anew, and to suggest visionary improvements that might work in the real world.

Mark Satin, Radical Middle

If you ever wondered what exactly is so destructive about the Old Bottom Line, read this book.

Tikkun magazine

Chock-full of provocative ideas. Those interested in economic justice without scrapping free-market capitalism will find The Divine Right of Capital engrossing reading.

Marshall Glickman, Green Living

If you want mental stimulation and some really radical notions to consider, notions that make a great deal of sense, you will want to read The Divine Right of Capital.

Marlene Y. Satter, investment adviser

The Divine Right of Capital has influenced my thinking more than any book I have ever read.

Bill Gellermann, OD Practitioner: Journal of the Organization Development Network

I am impressed by this books deconstruction of the corporation. It is clear, paradigm-shifting, and convincing. The parallel between the blindness in our own society and the aristocratic privileges of the Old Regime is devastatingly effective.

Bernard Lietaer, author, The Future of Money: Creating New Wealth,
Work, and a Wiser World, formerly with the Belgian central bank

Reading this work left me breathless. It addresses the life topics I have wrestled with for twenty-five years, and someone articulate and passionate is finally giving voice to these thoughts. I think this could be one of the most important books I will ever see on the shelves.

Terry South, area general manager, Showtime Networks Inc.

This book offers an elegant and powerful argument for workplace democracy and for a new way of thinking about corporations.

Donna Wood, professor of management,
University of Pittsburgh

The book brimsactually spills overwith unsanctioned ideas and imaginative new directions. The style is like a loose and friendly conversation, an invitation to think and talk about what is possible, what might work. I believe this book is an important step toward generating a new politics.

William Greider, author, One World, Ready or Not, from the Foreword

This volume challenges conventional wisdom about the corporation with facts, wit, and verve. We have long needed a real iconoclast like Marjorie Kelly.

John Logue, director, Ohio Employee Ownership Center,
Kent State University

I have read this work with great admiration. Having read countless books on business ethics, I can say this is a breakthrough work. It could even range on the same level as Francis Fukuyamas work. The approach is revolutionary.

Jacques Cory, International Business Programs, Israel

I loved reading this. Marjorie Kelly has systematically deconstructed a sacred cowthat corporations exist to maximize shareholder wealthand reconstructed a social vision for a truly democratic system that rewards all who are responsible for profits, particularly employees.

Leslie Christian, president,
Progressive Investment Management

I found this work just excellent. I have been showing it and loaning it to friends.

Philipp Muessig, pollution prevention specialist,
Minnesota Office of Environmental Assistance

I enjoyed this work immensely. Kellys image of being an antiques collector but rummaging through antique thoughts rather than artifacts has a great charm. If we are to move to a more fair and sustainable world, it is imperative that we understand the concepts she presents.

Jim Tarbell, co-host, Corporations and Democracy
radio program, Caspar, California

I found this book startlingly thought-provoking and enjoyable.

Bob Eddy, management consultant and adjunct faculty member,
Rosemont College