Blessed Unrest - How the largest Movement in the World came into Being and why no one saw it coming (hardcover)

Hawken was born in San Mateo, California, and grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, where his father worked at UC Berkeley in library sciences. He attended UC Berkeley and San Francisco State University. Hawken's work includes founding ecological businesses, writing about impacts of commerce on living systems, and consulting with corporations and governments on economic development, industrial ecology, and environmental policy.

Hawken was the co-founder and executive director of Project Drawdown, a non-profit that describes how global warming can be reversed. He was active in the civil rights movement and currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Hawken has authored articles, op-eds, and peer-reviewed papers, and seven books, including: The Next Economy (Ballantine 1983), Growing a Business (Simon and Schuster 1987), The Ecology of Commerce (HarperCollins 1993), and Blessed Unrest (Viking 2007).

Blessed Unrest, How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming, published in 2007, argues that a vast "movement with no name" is forming involving environmental, social justice, and indigenous rights organizations. Hawken conceives of this "movement" as developing not by ideology but rather through the identification of what is and is not humane, and has compared it to humanity's collective immune system.