This is an adapted excerpt from “Go Woke, Go Broke: The Inside Story of the Radicalization of Corporate America,” set for publication Tuesday.

Corporate wokeness is infuriating, sometimes exhausting to try to comprehend, but it was also inevitable if you study the zeitgeist of corporate America over the last 50 years. Like all revolutions, the woke one at the workplace started small: Woke academics writing papers on the economic benefits, seminars airing those beliefs at places such as the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Companies increasingly began holding in-house symposiums that discussed soft subjects, including “social responsibility,” or the need for businesses to put aside shareholder concerns to address things such as the environment and to make sure their workforce reflected society. Environmental, social, and governance increasingly became ingrained in the corporate balance sheet.