Dr. David C. Korten is a co-founder and board chair of the Positive Futures Network, which publishes YES! A Journal of Positive Futures; founder and president of the People-Centered Development Forum; an associate of the International Forum on Globalization; a member of the Club of Rome; and serves on the boards of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economics and the Bainbridge Graduate Institute. He has authored or edited numerous books, including When Corporations Rule the World, The Post-Corporate World, and Globalizing Civil Society.

Acknowledgments
The Great Turning
Prologue: In Search of the Possible
PART I: CHOOSING OUR FUTURE
1: The Choice
2: The Possibility
3: The Imperative
4: The Opportunity
PART II: SORROWS OF EMPIRE
5: When God Was a Woman
6: Ancient Empire
7: Modern Empire
8: Athenian Experiment
PART III: AMERICA, THE UNFINISHED PROJECT
9: Inauspicious Beginning
10: People Power Rebellion
11: Empire s Victory
12: Struggle for Justice
13: Wake-Up Call
14: Prisons of the Mind
PART IV: THE GREAT TURNING
15: Beyond Strict Father versus Aging Clock
16: Creation s Epic Journey
17: Joys of Earth Community
18: Stories for a New Era
PART V: BIRTHING EARTH COMMUNITY
19: Leading from Below
20: Building a Political Majority
21: Liberating Creative Potential
22: Change the Story, Change the Future
Notes
Index
About the Author

In his classic international bestseller, When Corporations Rule the World, David Korten exposed the destructive and oppressive nature of the global corporate economy and helped spark a global resistance movement. Now, he shows that the problem runs deeper than corporate domination with far greater consequences.

Here, Korten argues that corporate consolidation of power is merely one manifestation of what he calls Empire : the organization of society through hierarchy and violence that has largely held sway for the past 5,000 years. Empire has always resulted in misery for the many and fortune for the few, but now it threatens the very future of humanity. Korten points to global terrorism, climate change, and rising poverty as just a few of the signs that the burdens of Empire now exceed what people and planet will bear.

The Great Turning traces the roots of Empire to ancient times and charts the long evolution of its favored instruments of control, from monarchies and bureaucracies to the transnational institutions of the global economy. Korten also tells the parallel story of the attempt to develop a democratic alternative to Empire, beginning in Athens and continuing with the founding of the United States of America. But this remains an unfinished project Korten documents how elitists with an imperial agenda have consistently sought to undermine the bold and inspiring American experiment, beginning in the earliest days of the republic and continuing to the present day.

Empire is not inevitable, not the natural order of things we can turn away from it. Korten draws on evidence from sources as varied as evolutionary theory, developmental psychology, and religious teachings to make the case that Earth Community a life-centered, egalitarian, sustainable way of ordering human society based on democratic principles of partnership is indeed possible. And he details a grassroots strategy for beginning the momentous turning toward a future of as-yet-unrealized human potential. The Great Turning illuminates our current predicament, provides a framework for grasping the potential of this historic moment, and shows us how to take action for the future of our planet, our communities, and ourselves.