Being Strong in a World Where Things Go Wrong
October 6, 2014
Rockefeller Foundation president Rodin writes in an expert and straightforward manner about the character trait of resilience, addressed here in socioeconomic terms and on nothing less than a global scale. Resilience, Rodin explains, is the ability to “prepare for disruptions... recover from shocks and stresses, and... adapt and grow from a disruptive experience.” The three primary such disruptions she identifies in today’s world are “urbanization, climate change, and globalization.” Rodin goes on to break down resilience into five characteristics, solidifying her argument with solid examples. The characteristics of resilience include “Aware,” as seen in the aftermath of flash flooding in San Francisco in January 2004; “Integrated,” exemplified by the success of M&M’s in markets throughout the world; and “Adaptive,” as embodied by many of New Orleans’s African-American and Vietnamese-American residents following Hurricane Katrina. She also illustrates “Diverse” and “Self-Regulating” through the illuminating, respective counterexamples of fitness retailer Lululemon’s over-reliance on a single fabric source and the mistakes that led to the Chernobyl disaster. While every author may hope to end a book with an indelible sentence, Rodin proves herself one of the select few who can pull this off. Agent: Todd Shuster, Zachary Shuster Harmsworth Literary.