NEW YORK—PublicAffairs announced today that it has acquired a major new book by Dr. Judith Rodin, president of The Rockefeller Foundation and formerly president of the University of Pennsylvania and provost of Yale University. Publication is currently scheduled for fall 2014.
Provisionally titled PLAN R: Being Strong in a World Where Things Go Wrong, the book will address one of the most urgent unmet issues of our time: resilience, or how to bounce back more quickly and emerge stronger from shocks and stresses. It is aimed at helping organizations, communities, and business leaders maximize their robustness in the face of the world’s ever more severe and constant disruptions. People everywhere are facing increasingly worrisome weather and climate-related catastrophes, health-related pandemics, food and water shortages, social unrest, geopolitical conflicts, and terrorist attacks. How are we to ready ourselves for these and other unfortunate risks and realities? How are we to deal with them effectively in the heat of the moment? How can we press forward together after they occur? How can we build back better?
Dr. Rodin has spent much of her distinguished career exploring the phenomenon of resilience—first as a research psychologist, then as a pioneer of the behavioral medicine and health psychology movements, then as an academic leader, and, since 2005, as president of The Rockefeller Foundation. In November 2012, following Superstorm Sandy, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo named Dr. Rodin co-chair of the NYS 2100 Commission on long-term resilience.
In May of this year, The Rockefeller Foundation announced a $100 million multi-year commitment to build urban resilience in cities around the world. Through the 100 Resilient Cities Centennial Challenge one hundred cities across the globe will be selected and receive support to hire a Chief Resilience Officer, along with technical resources to develop and implement a resilience plan.
“Dr. Rodin’s reputation for her work at Yale, Penn, and now The Rockefeller Foundation precedes her, and we are all thrilled to be working with her on this book,” said Clive Priddle, publisher of PublicAffairs. “I think her message about the importance of resilience will be incredibly valuable in these tumultuous times.”
“We live in a hyper-connected and disruptive world where vulnerability in one area often shakes the stability of another and ripples across borders and continents. There is an urgent need to focus on resilience, not only to better prepare for future disasters, but for the well-being of poor or vulnerable people who are hit hardest by catastrophic events,” said Dr. Rodin. “We cannot prevent all future disasters from occurring, but we can prevent failing catastrophically by embracing, practicing, and improving comprehensive resilience strategies.”
Dr. Rodin was represented in her negotiations with PublicAffairs by Todd Shuster of Zachary Shuster Harmsworth.
About PublicAffairs
PublicAffairs (www.publicaffairsbooks.com) is an independent publishing house, founded by Peter Osnos in 1997, to publish good books about things that matter. From the start, PublicAffairs authors have been at the heart of the national conversation. PublicAffairs is the publisher of books by Muhammad Yunus, George Soros, Wendy Kopp, Paul Farmer, John Kerry, Letty Cottin Pogrebin and the recent New York Times bestseller, The Great Deformation by David Stockman.
About The Rockefeller Foundation
The Rockefeller Foundation aims to achieve equitable growth by expanding opportunity for more people in more places worldwide, and to build resilience by helping them prepare for, withstand, and emerge stronger from acute shocks and chronic stresses. Throughout its 100 year history, The Rockefeller Foundation has enhanced the impact of innovative thinkers and actors working to change the world by providing the resources, networks, convening power, and technologies to move them from idea to impact. In today’s dynamic and interconnected world, The Rockefeller Foundation has a unique ability to address the emerging challenges facing humankind through innovation, intervention and influence in order to shape agendas and inform decision making.
Contact:
Jaime Leifer, PublicAffairs, 212-340-8183, jaime.leifer@publicaffairsbooks.com
Neill Coleman, The Rockefeller Foundation, 212 852-8340, ncoleman@rockfound.org