An important new book hits shelves (and Amazon wish lists) today.  The Power of Unreasonable People: How Social Entrepreneurs Create Markets That Change the World is co-authored by John Elkington (of SustainAbility) and Pamela Hartigan (of the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship).

I received an advance copy of the book, and am working on a comprehensive review for NextBillion.net to be posted later today.  My first impression: the authors have done a good job blending the stories of social entrepreneurs into a robust analytical framework that helps take the reader beyond the specifics of a particular enterprise.  In that sense, The Power of Unreasonable People feels a bit like a sequel to David Bornstein's groundbreaking book, How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas.  First published in 2004, Bornstein's book created the same sort of momentum among the social entrepreneurship set as C.K. Prahalad's The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid did for the BoP community around the same time.

The Power of Unreasonable People deserves much more than a simple comparison, however.  My full review will be up later; in the mean time, check out what others have to say:

Press Release
The Financial Times
The Economist