Rebecca Costa

Are you sick and tired of radio jocks and politicians who act more and more like Pro-Wrestling promoters whose only objective is to amplify the theatre of conflict for personal gain, and the resulting mess they leave us with is a society that is now reduced to farcical screaming matches instead of rational dialogue about the challenges we face?  Are you disheartened every time you witness the personal demonization of any individual foolish enough to advance a bold idea that addresses one of our many crisis issues, such as ending our dependency on imported oil,  to the point that their idea is never discussed and they, and all other entrepreneurs and risk takers, are marginalized?  Are you flummoxed that bizarre theories and beliefs are gaining greater currency than knowledge and scientific fact, and they are increasingly infecting our discussions of milestone issues? Are you frustrated that our society seems to be compiling new crises at a rate that is far greater than the progress being made on the resolution of existing crises.

These are the theme's that The Watchman's Rattle confronts us with in the opening chapters. These are the themes that frankly led me, an incurable optimist, to initially put down the book, not because I disagreed with these observations but because their cognitive resonance scared the crap out of me. But knowing Rebecca for over twenty years, and knowing her to be both an optimist and a consummate problem solver, I marshaled forward, and one Trans-Pacific flight later I arrived, sleep deprived but energized; red-eyed but not disappointed. After my initial hesitations, I could not put the book down for fourteen hours. And the reason I was so engaged is that The Watchman's Rattledoes more than sit on the sidelines, criticize and predict doom. Rebecca dives in with both feet (I would expect nothing less of her) and gives us strategies and tactics to confront these issues. She gives us personal examples of what she has done to make a difference, she gives us examples of what innovative leaders are doing today,  and she gives us exhaustingly well researched historical and scientific examples. To say it is 'thought provoking' is akin to observing that Miles Davis was 'kind of original'.

The Watchman's Rattle is a broad and deep book that stands in contrast to the current genre of non-fiction efforts whose content cannot support more than a chapter or three, and yet compel the reader to march through hundreds of pages of redundancies. Rebecca has written a serious book that could have been three or four books. There is so much content in fact that this is a book that you can easily read  twice, even if you are not stuck on a plane next to someone with whom you really don't want to share business cards. For what truly fascinated me was that, in spite of the weight of all this content, Rebecca maintains her voice with her characteristic sardonic, whimsical sense of humor, making it above all an enjoyable read. The Watchman's Rattle is like one of those rare dinner parties with a bright and worldly friend that commence at eight o'clock and whose conversations carry it through to two in the morning and with more than several empty bottles of wine littering the table, you still find topics to dissect, debate and digest.