Books by Glenn Martin

FUTURE is the spiritual story of humanity. There are many books which are histories of humanity; they are different depending on the point of view of the author. Many are excited about the human adventure, and are enthused by exploration, empires and progress. Others anticipate catastrophe because of population, capitalism and technology, and their effect on the Earth's ecology.This book approaches the question from a spiritual perspective, looking at human behaviour and what we can learn from past civilisations and from religions. It explores the question of ancient knowledge, and looks at contemporary humanity with more than the empty lens of materialism. It suggests a way to live that offers peace and bliss, without imposing a solution on the world.

What happens when you go back to a place you visited forty-six years ago? Tasmania. Do the ghosts rise up, or has the past all been erased? What if you now knew that some of your ancestors had lived there? Convicts. And another branch of your family settled there and came to prominence? Colonialists. It might start to look like a patchwork instead of a simple story. And then the patches might be stitched together and make a quilt. Thirty-two stories stitched together with meaning. The quilt approach.

"A Modest Quest" describes the author's quest to find out about his family's past. It was intended just to find out the basic facts about his parents' brothers and sisters, and his grandparents. Growing up, he had thought that all his grandparents had died before he was born. This was not the case, but it took some serious research and more than two years to bring the facts to light, and by then the lives of the ancestors had pulled him in. The quest was extending far beyond its initially modest aims. "You don't understand a person until you know something about their parents", and so the quest has to continue. This is probably the first of several books. The book explores the ancestors of Glenn Martin, looking back from the present to about the late 1800s. Most of this book takes place in New South Wales, with some excursions into Victoria and South Australia.

This is one of two collections of poems and stories from the period around 1970 to 1988. The latter date denotes when the collection was chosen, the theme intending to evoke the paradox of fire, that it is both vulnerable and powerful. Some of the poems are accompanied by a story about the context in which the poem was written, personal life with wounds and wonder. Occasionally we stand defenceless, tempting the light to shine upon us.There are 28 poems in the collection.

This book is a collection of poems, intended as the fourth volume from the author. It includes short poems and long poems. There are poems about writing poetry, poems about living, and poems about observing life. The poet may look with a hard eye at times, but his intention is always to encourage the heart.

This book is a reflective journey through the disintegration of the "big story". The big story is the one we live inside of, the one that gives us the certainties and continuities of our lives. The disintegration occurred in Sydney in the late 1960s, amid social and personal turmoil, and led to the narrator's flight to the country. He finds a place to settle, gives up books, begins to garden. Gradually he reclaims the centre, and gradually he re-engages with society, although there is tumult in that too. But there is love, there is music, and there are visions of life with spirit and with ethics. The narrator talks his way through, remembering, recounting, rejecting, resolving. There are four parts to the story - Disintegration, Renewing, Onward and Reframing. The book is the fourth book the author has written as part of National Novel Writing Month, where the project is to write a book of at least 50,000 words in one month.

A young man who should have found a corporate ladder somewhere and climbed up it, turns his back instead and goes off into the bush. Years later he comes back to the city that he left. In this book he rakes over the ground: the search for a viable livelihood living close to the earth, the search for an alternative community. He asks himself, was the questing anything more than loss and failure? What do those young-man dreams look like now? And what does business look like? This is personal archaeology, not a work of tidy history. The only records he has to call upon are a stack of papers, folders and exercise books in a box. We have to glean the history from what comes out of the box - poems, short stories and notes on scraps of paper that ignite memories. This is archaeology that brings us face to face with ideals and desire, loss and hard circumstance, and passions that endure.

Patrick begins under a cloud of gloom, rejected by his girlfriend and unsure of his occupation. But an encounter with an old Chinese man gives him a message of hope - his fate is his to create if he is willing to let go of things as they are. So he begins again elsewhere, finding a job working with unemployed youth. But the simple search for sustenance can lead into vexing terrain. How will he relate to the sadness, anger and disillusionment of the young people? How will he respond to the sexuality of a co-worker? And how will he deal with the people on the management committee - the self-serving, the brutal, the scheming and the inept? The gift the old man gave him, the I Ching, stands by him as he strives to establish peace and purpose in his work, and find a woman who will love him. Amid the chaos, he learns: I am not the master of the universe but I come from bliss and that way I serve all-that-is.

Ethics is a central part of our lives. It is as basic and pervasive as thinking and feeling. And it is not just what keeps us compliant with the law, it is the gateway to the quality of our relationships and the spiritual fulfilment of our lives. The Little Book of Ethics introduces us to ethics through the lens of values, and offers us five core human values - honesty, peace, right action, love and insight. It shows how these values are applied in different domains of our lives, and relates them to six aims of human life, where ethics is united with meaning and purpose.

This book presents a framework for understanding human values and their role in life, work, business and leadership. It offers an explanation for the spectrum of human behaviour, from a self-focused, survivalist mindset that has scant regard for ethics, through to compliance with laws and conventions, and then to the aspiration to live a higher ethical and spiritual life. The book offers a practical guide on how to develop a more ethical way of working and being, both personally and in organisations. Rather than being an additional burden on people or organisations, ethics and values are a liberating force, enabling higher performance, better quality relationships and an expanded sense of purpose and identity.

Offers 7 strategies with historic annual returns of up to 37 per cent. This book shows you how to construct a spreadsheet to produce a valuation of the FTSE 100 and the expected returns from a five-year investment in the index. It provides 30-year track records for all the investment strategies.