Want to Change the World? Get Your Reading Glasses on!

The pen is more powerful than the sword - so it's time to invest in a good pair of reading glasses.

“The pen is mightier than the sword” is an adage coined by English author Edward Bulwer-Lytton back in the 1800s. And to this day words can still be a mighty force in the world in which we live. In fact, if you want to change the world, try investing in a pair of reading glasses. A recent feature in The Guardian newspaper was enough to inspire the most reluctant of readers to dig out their reading glasses. ‘Fifty books to change the world’ profiled the most influential and provocative books currently in print that leaders in sustainability have cited as their ‘essential reading’.

Reading Glasses – World Changing

As a weapon of change, reading glasses have been appropriated by many influential figures in history. Words are the most powerful tools we have – the power of oratory in politics is testament to that. Green politics have never been so high on the political and world agenda. As big questions such as global warming and how we will fuel and heat the world in the future pose bit problems, more movers and shakers in the Green movement are donning their reading glasses to get clued up on the bigger issues.

Book at Bedtime – Global Destruction?

One of the books that made the top 50 for sustainability leaders was George Monbiot’s book Heat, a book that warns of global destruction but offers suggested solutions too. Other books that are getting the reading glasses twitching include titles that investigate history and philosophy such as EF Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful. And some titles focus on politics and capitalism – it’s a reading list that would keep most people awake at night with furrowed brows peering over their reading glasses.

Get Your Reading Glasses Ready

But the majority of the books all offer ways to improve the environment and our future in it, offering a hopeful outlook to a disturbing situation. The top 50 sustainability book titles have been published in a pamphlet published by the University of Cambridge. Some of the books we should be digging our reading glasses out for include Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb and John Elkington’s Cannibals with Forks. In an introduction to the pamphlet, Polly Courtice who helped put the list together with corporate alumni of the university said the reading list aimed to be: “a collection of some of the world’s best analyses of the global social, environmental and ethical challenges we face and the creative solutions needed to tackle them.”

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