Coming Even Cleaner About Organizational Change.

Jerry Patterson always has been a practitioner's practitioner. In his latest book, Coming Even Cleaner About Organizational Change, he has brought his 30 years as a high school teacher, elementary school principal and superintendent to bear on the research about organizational change and has given us some very fresh insights.

The book is an expanded and updated version of his 1997 title, Coming Clean About Organizational Change, published by AASA. The latest effort gives readers a chance to reflect upon their own practices as educational leaders who are responsible for initiating change or managing change initiated by others.

Most importantly, the book deals extensively with what Patterson calls "harsh realities." He devotes one chapter to the realities about people in education and another to the realities about organizations. A professor of leadership studies at the University of Alabama, he places a good deal of emphasis on the importance of focusing on the organization's culture and the development of resilience in oneself and in others. He views these as the keys to finding the strength and resources to move the enterprise in times of high stress and adversity.

Patterson draws examples from his years of experience in four states and from the writings of some of the best-known theorists in organizational development and change. He writes the way a practitioner ought to--to the point, focused on realities and aligned with solid research.

The book delivered exactly what it claimed. I enjoyed the book enough to read it twice.

(Coming Even Cleaner About Organizational Change by Jerry L. Patterson, Scarecrow Education, Lanham, Md., 2003, 133 pp. with index, $23.95 softcover)

Perry Berkowitz

Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership and Administration,

College of Saint Rose, Albany, N.Y.