What the Dog Saw (and other adventures) is the latest from Malcolm Gladwell, the best-selling author of The Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers. The book is not one cohesive story or thesis, but rather a series of 19 Gladwell essays that were previously published in The New Yorker magazine. So if you’ve been a devout [...]
Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool’s Guide to Surviving with Grace was recommended in The 100 Best Business Books of All Time. Author Gordon MacKenzie was a 30-year veteran of Hallmark, and offers up a unique perspective on navigating the corporate landscape and climbing the proverbial ladder.
It’s clear from the very beginning this is [...]
Google, the benevolent dictator of the interwebs, has undertaken a massive project to digitize and index all the world’s printed material under the Google Books platform. So far they’ve scanned over 10 million books, including those in the public domain and those still protected by copyright.
The cost of the scanning, an estimated $50 million so [...]
Last week I finished The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius, and Betrayal by Ben Mezrich. It sounded interesting, and I really liked his other book, Bringing Down the House.
Mezrich tells the story of how Facebook got its start, from a Harvard dorm-room operation in early 2004, to the [...]
Naked Economics is an easy to read overview of micro and macroeconomics. I was expecting more of a Freakonomics-style book with a series of short chapters examining particular happenings, but this is more of a textbook. That said, it was really good and was filled with very interesting insights.
Author Charles Wheelan guided me through the [...]
According to some economists, the annual tradition of holiday gift-giving creates a massive “deadweight loss” in our overall utility. The reason? Gift recipients don’t value the gifts as much as they cost.
In Scroogenomics, author and University of Pennsylvania economics professor Joel Waldfogel explains that, on average, people value items they receive as gifts 20% less [...]
Just like the original, Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner’s follow-up “sequel” is pretty much brain candy. Superfreakonomics reads quickly and always takes the unexpected turn.
Some people have criticized this book for spotty analysis, dubious morals, and even rushing to print without enough substantial content. For me, I think the larger point is the “economic [...]
I really liked The Geography of Bliss. It probably helped that I read it in my personal version of paradise, poolside at the Hilton Los Cabos.
In the book, the narrator travels the globe in search of the secrets to happiness. (Strangely absent: the “happiest place on earth.”) The journey is both serious and funny, genuine [...]
I had a hard time getting into Peak: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo From Maslow. It started slow but picked up steam about half way in. Peak is written by San Francisco boutique hotelier Chip Conley, and was one of the books gifted to me during my Zappos tour. The premise of the book [...]
This is possibly the greatest example of an author who doesn’t believe his own hypothesis. Free is a book about how creative businesses can still make money even after they give away their main product for free. To that I say, practice what you preach. Giving the book away free really would be a radical [...]
