Moral ambition Stop wasting your talent and start making a difference

Rutger Bregman, 1988-

Book - 2025

"A career consists of 2,000 workweeks, and how you spend that time is one of the most important decisions of your life. Still, millions of people are stuck in in mind-numbing, pointless, or just plain harmful jobs. There's an antidote to this waste of talent, and it's called moral ambition. Moral ambition is the will to be among the best, but with different measures of success. Not a fancy title, fat salary, or corner office, but a career dedicated to the best solutions to the world's biggest problems -- whether that means tackling climate change, making pandemics history or fighting Big Tobacco. In Moral Ambition, internationally bestselling author Rutger Bregman reveals how our conventional definitions of success are h...arming us and the planet, and shows how we can shift the focus from personal gain to societal benefit. In the process, he explains, we will join a growing movement of pioneers who are already living out this ethos. They're the builders, the problem-solvers, the doers who have chosen a path less traveled. A guidebook to finding that path for ourselves, Moral Ambition reminds us that the real measure of success lies not in what we accumulate, but in what we contribute, and shows how we, too, can build a legacy that truly matters."--

Saved in:
6 people waiting
3 being processed

2nd Floor New Shelf Show me where

331.702/Bregman
0 / 1 copies available
Location Call Number   Status
2nd Floor New Shelf 331.702/Bregman (NEW SHELF) Due Jun 4, 2025
Subjects
Genres
Self-help publications
Published
New York, NY : Little, Brown & Company 2025.
Language
English
Dutch
Main Author
Rutger Bregman, 1988- (author)
Other Authors
Erica (Translator) Moore (translator)
Edition
First edition
Item Description
Translated from Dutch.
Physical Description
xiii, 285 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 235-275) and index.
ISBN
9780316580359
  • Prologue: The happiest brain on earth
  • No, you're not fine just the way you are
  • Lower your threshold for taking action
  • Join a cult (or start your own)
  • See winning as your moral duty
  • Learn to weep over spreadsheets
  • Enroll at Hogwarts for do-gooders
  • Find out what the world needs and make it happen
  • Save a life. Now only $4,999!
  • Expand your moral circle
  • Make future historians proud
  • Epilogue: How fo you know when you're doing enough?
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Historian Bregman (Humankind) presents a passionate ode to a life of activism. Arguing that most people waste their lives toiling away at "mind-numbing, pointless, or just plain harmful jobs," he calls on readers to harness their skills to make "the world a wildly better place." His advice for doing so includes forging smart alliances that further one's cause (animal rights activist Leah Garcés teamed up with a chicken farmer to bring the harms of factory farming to light) and taking strategic steps to meet objectives (activist Rosa Parks consciously adopted the image of the "demure heroine" during the Montgomery bus boycott, giving the movement broader reach and appeal). Elsewhere, he sheds light on how to recognize social ills--like the animal abuses of today's industrial farming practices--that are currently accepted but "will seem clearly wrong down the road." Signs include struggling to defend them to one's children and avoiding uncomfortable details about the issue. While it's not always clear how the average person can overhaul their life to the degree Bregman suggests, idealists will be galvanized by his relentlessly energetic tone and inspiring profiles of well- and lesser-known activists, from Malcolm X to 18th-century English abolitionist Thomas Clarkson. The result is an inspiring jolt to the system. (May)

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved