Hospitality leadership: The Cornell Hotel School

Travel

Edmondson, Brad

Marcham, John

Cornell Society of Hotelmen

Food, Lodging & Transportation

For more than three decades, Ben & Jerry's has been committed to an insanely ambitious three - part mission: not just making the world's best ice cream but also supporting progressive causes and sharing its success with all stakeholders - employees, suppliers, distributors, customers, cows, everybody. Living up to these beliefs is fun when you're doing it right, and it creates amazingly loyal customers, but it isn't easy. This is the first book to tell the full, inside story of the inspiring rise, tragic mistakes, devastating fall, determined recovery, and ongoing renewal of one of the most iconic mission - driven companies in the world. No previous book has focused so intently on the challenges presented by staying true to the mission as the business grew. No other book has explained how the company came to be sold to Unilever, one of the world's biggest corporations. And none has described the unprecedented contract Ben & Jerry's negotiated with Unilever to preserve the three - part mission or the complex working relationship that has allowed the company to pursue that mission on a much larger stage. Brad Edmondson tells the story with a journalist's eye for details, dramatic moments, and memorable characters. Among the dozens of key figures Edmondson interviewed, his most important source was Jeff Furman, who helped Ben and Jerry write their first business plan in 1978 and has stayed involved ever since, serving as chairman of the board since 2010. It's a funny, sad, surprising, and ultimately hopeful story. ''Just as Ben & Jerry's is no ordinary business, this is no ordinary business book. It's fast paced; it has compelling, fully realized characters; and the narrative is gripping. I couldn't put the book down. That made it difficult to eat my Cherry Garcia at the same time.'' - from the foreword by Annie Leonard, author of The Story of Stuff

Ice Cream Social: The Struggle for the Soul of Ben & Jerry's

Business & Money

Management & Leadership

ReadHowYouWant

Cornell University has 21,600 students in 2015, about twice as many as it did in 1950.  Half of them are women, compared with one-fifth back then.  And more than one-third of today's Cornellians are black, Hispanic, or Asian.  In 1950, all of the university's minority students probably could have fit into a single lecture hall.  Cornell is also a lot richer now.  In the late 1940s, it was struggling to balance the budget and recovering from a severe case of growing pains.  Enrollment increased 40 percent between June and October 1946.  Many freshmen lived in poorly insulated temporary dorms, ate in shifts, and attended classes in Quonset huts. Postwar Cornell brings that vanishing world back to life, in the words of the people who lived through it. The book is made from the voices of over 100 Cornell alumni and friends, who describe how the University was transformed during and just after World War II. Other differences are just as striking.  In 1946, 64 percent of Cornell undergrads were veterans of World War II, attending on federal scholarships that paid most of their tuition and expenses.  Today, veterans are less than one half of one percent of the student body.  Cornell today offers "gender-inclusive housing," but in 1950, it locked women into their dorms at night.  Co-eds who violated the curfew faced disciplinary measures that escalated all the way to expulsion. Yet some of the same books that were taught in 1950 are still taught today.  Students still work too hard. They still fall in and out of love.  Some of them still party too much, although student alcohol consumption today is probably much lower than it was then.  In 1950, any 18-year-old could go into the student union and get a beer. The biggest similarity might be one in attitude.  Back in the late 1940s, some Cornell students were intently focused on addressing social problems that threatened to bring on planetary catastrophes.  Students do that today, too.  But in the 1940s, those kinds of worries were new. The students of Postwar Cornell have a unique story to tell.  They were the junior members of a campus community that went through years of unprecedented change.  They helped to create the standards of higher education we take for granted today. Shortly after the United States entered World War II in 1941, the military suddenly occupied Cornell and other campuses across the country.  In just a few months, academic buildings became training facilities for soldiers, sailors, and aviators. As the war was ending, President Franklin Roosevelt asked Congress to fund a massive expansion of university research and scholarships. Postwar Cornellians were the first to benefit from a big new idea: that people who deserve higher education should be granted it, with substantial public support. In 1944, Title II of the GI Bill paid most of the tuition, fees, room, and board expenses for any veteran who had not received a dishonorable discharge. The bill was a spectacular success, educating fourteen future Nobel Prize winners, three Supreme Court justices, three US Presidents, a dozen senators, two dozen Pulitzer Prize winners, and countless teachers, scientists, doctors, engineers, lawyers, business leaders, artists, and others.  Postwar Cornellians went on to change the world. Most of this book is excerpted from oral history interviews. The book also includes contemporary articles, letters, and diary entries, and is richly illustrated with photographs and memorabilia.  Its goal is to give readers a vivid portrait of Cornell from 1944 to 1952, drawn from eyewitness reports.  

Postwar Cornell: How The Greatest Generation Transformed A University, 1944-1952

History

Americas

Cayuga Lake Books

A Wild Idea shares the complete story of the difficult birth of the Adirondack Park Agency (APA). The Adirondack region of New York's rural North Country forms the nation's largest State Park, with a territory as large as Vermont. Planning experts view the APA as a triumph of sustainability that balances human activity with the preservation of wild ecosystems. The truth isn't as pretty. The story of the APA, told here for the first time, is a complex, troubled tale of political dueling and communities pushed to the brink of violence. The North Country's environmental movement started among a small group of hunters and hikers, rose on a huge wave of public concern about pollution that crested in the early 1970s, and overcame multiple obstacles to "save" the Adirondacks. Edmondson shows how the movement's leaders persuaded a powerful Governor to recruit planners, naturalists, and advisors and assign a task that had never been attempted before. The team and the politicians who supported them worked around the clock to draft two visionary land-use plans and turn them into law. But they also made mistakes, and their strict regulations were met with determined opposition from local landowners who insisted that private property is private. A Wild Idea is based on in-depth interviews with five dozen insiders who are central to the story. Their observations contain many surprising and shocking revelations. This is a rich, exciting narrative about state power and how it was imposed on rural residents. It shows how the Adirondacks were "saved," and also why that campaign sparked a passionate rebellion.

A Wild Idea: How the Environmental Movement Tamed the Adirondacks

Three Hills

The Riveting True Story of One Of the World’s Most Iconic Mission-Driven Companies Ben &amp; Jerry’s has always been committed to an insanely ambitious three-part mission: making the world’s best ice cream, supporting progressive causes, and sharing the company’s success with all stakeholders: employees, suppliers, distributors, customers, cows, everybody. But it hasn’t been easy. This is the first book to tell the full, inside story of the inspiring rise, tragic mistakes, devastating fall, determined recovery, and ongoing renewal of one of the most iconic mission-driven companies in the world. No previous book has focused so intently on the challenges presented by staying true to that mission. No other book has explained how the company came to be sold to corporate giant Unilever or how that relationship evolved to allow Ben &amp; Jerry’s to pursue its mission on a much larger stage. Journalist Brad Edmondson tells the story with an eye for details, dramatic moments, and memorable characters. He interviewed dozens of key figures, particularly Jeff Furman, who helped Ben and Jerry write their first business plan in 1978 and became chairman of the board in 2010. It’s a funny, sad, surprising, and ultimately hopeful story.

Biography & History

Berrett-Koehler Publishers

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