Recommended Media

Warning - Mountains Beyond Mountains may make you want to become a doctor, work harder than you already do for social change, or travel to Haiti, Peru and/or Russia. Written by the Pulitzer Prize winner Tracy Kidder, the book chronicles the life and impact of famed social entrepreneur Dr. Paul Farmer and his organization, Partners in Health.  Their model is to partner with poor communities to combat both disease and poverty.

We were thrilled to see yesterday’s issue of The New York Times Magazine, all about the things we love—social entrepreneurship, microfinance, philanthropy and how to change the world by giving.

George Bernard Shaw once wrote, “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.” Those unreasonable people are now called social entrepreneurs, the ones we at Echoing Green work to identify and support everyday.  Thus, we were elated to hear about a book written by John Elkington and Pamela Hartigan, titled The Power of Unreasonable People: How Social Entrepreneurs Create Markets That Change The World. The book is a fantastic read, as it describes how these individuals are changing the way the world look

At Echoing Green, we get book recommendations from our fellows all the time and we’d like to share the wealth! These two come from 2006 Echoing Green Fellow Andrew Youn and 1993 Echoing Green Fellow Maya Ajmera.

Last year, former Echoing Green Fellows, Leslie Crutchfield and Heather McLeod Grant, released their groundbreaking book, Forces for Good: The Six Practices of High-Impact Nonprofits. Leslie and Heather spent more than three years researching and pondering a seemingly straightforward question: What makes great nonprofits great?

Though our fellows are an amazingly diverse group, with wide-ranging passions and goals, they do have one thing in common (besides all being bold!): they love a good book. When we polled our fellows about some of their top choices, we began hearing the same titles again and again. So, today, we’re sharing some of the most popular books amongst Echoing Green Fellows, straight from their personal reading lists.