This Week in GOOD

Three cheers for the release of the first annual GOOD 100, our collection of the most important, exciting, and innovative people, ideas, and projects improving our world. Congratulations to everyone and everything on the list—you’re a pretty remarkable group.

We’d also like to applaud President Barack Obama, on his gracious reception of the Nobel Peace Prize today. It’s should make us proud, as American’s to see a sitting president bestowed with such an honor. It clearly is, as Obama himself said, “a call to action,” though perhaps also a symbol of our nation’s improved standing in the world.

This week we learned about the practice of speed writing, a fanciful path toward blind love, the truth underneath the numbers in the nonprofit world, the nation’s increasingly faithless religious landscape, France’s recycled gas stations, and some beautiful art between the cracks (courtesy of our friends at Wooster). We also learned that if we want to see action at COP15, we need to urge legislation at home; and if you want James Wood to like your novel, make sure you don’t dictate it.

Be sure to check out our Islands for Islands project, as well as Peter Smith’s impressive Food 10 (a delicious rejoinder to the GOOD 100).

Photo: a behind the scenes look at the hand-cut paper art on the cover and throughout the pages of The GOOD 100.