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Business & Finance

Learning from their mistakes

Review by bookpagedev

AOL Time Warner turned into a debacle for employees and investors, so how can others avoid their mistakes? Start with Why Smart Executives Fail (Portfolio, $26.95, 318 pages, ISBN 1591840104), an insightful book that looks not only at the causes of business failure but also at the people behind the bad decisions. Sydney Finkelstein, a professor at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business, moves beyond the easy answers (the executives were a stupid bunch of crooks!) to find the real causes of failure in every industry, from fashion and food (Mossimo, L.A. Gear, Coca-Cola) to phones and finance (Motorola, Bankers Trust). A surprising number of failed CEOs were willing to tell all, and Finkelstein found that a skewed sense of reality and a breakdown in communication often pull businesses under. Execs need to be on guard against the “zombie business” where cockiness (both employee and organizational) crowds out the voices of customers and competitors. The “seven habits of spectacularly unsuccessful people” are funny and insightful, and the warning signs of the next big disaster are useful for CEOs and investors.

On the flip side, you can learn from the biggest and brightest in What the Best CEOs Know. Author Jeffrey Krames examines seven of the top CEOs, including Michael Dell, Lou Gerstner and Sam Walton, and distills their success into an easy-to-understand signature strategy or tactic that anyone can imitate or borrow. Learn how Jack Welch created a learning organization at GE and how Bill Gates harnessed the power of every employee at Microsoft.

AOL Time Warner turned into a debacle for employees and investors, so how can others avoid their mistakes? Start with Why Smart Executives Fail (Portfolio, $26.95, 318 pages, ISBN 1591840104), an insightful book that looks not only at the causes of business failure but also at the people behind the bad decisions. Sydney Finkelstein, a […]
NonfictionPop CultureHumorArts & Culture

The awesomeness of awkward

Review by Abby Plesser

Picture this: a family, dressed in matching denim, lying on top of one another by the ocean. Or think of two parents sweetly kissing their newborn—except the baby is screaming out in terror. Or imagine a mother and father posed casually for a snapshot with their kids . . . with their pet snake wrapped around all of them. These photographic gems—and many, many more—are chronicled in the hilarious, uncomfortable and yes—awkward—book, Awkward Family Photos. 

Mike Bender and Doug Chernack had no idea what a goldmine they’d struck when they started their website, awkwardfamilyphotos.com, in 2009. They figured they would post some funny pictures from their families and friends’ families, and pass the website around as a joke. Then people started checking out the site by the hundreds, then thousands, then millions—and a phenomenon was born. Lucky for us, Bender and Chernack have created a greatest hits album from their collection of awkward and awesome family photos in Awkward Family Photos. You’ll see some of your favorites from the website, but also dozens of new, ridiculous family snapshots. It’s all here, from holiday cards gone awry to wacky wedding portraits to awful graduation photos and beyond. To make it even funnier, Bender and Chernack have included photo captions, as well as stories from the people in the photos. If you think your family is awkward, you’re probably right, but Awkward Family Photos proves that it could be much, much worse.

Picture this: a family, dressed in matching denim, lying on top of one another by the ocean. Or think of two parents sweetly kissing their newborn—except the baby is screaming out in terror. Or imagine a mother and father posed casually for a snapshot with their kids . . . with their pet snake wrapped […]
NonfictionHistory

Setting sail for Paris

Review by Martin Brady

A populist writer with a gift for readable biography and a reverence for America’s past, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner David McCullough delivers another compelling work of narrative history in his latest work, The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris.

In early America, pioneers were the people who headed west. Deftly re-conceptualizing that notion, McCullough focuses on those Americans who, with the U.S. established and thriving in the first part of the 19th century, set sail eastward, bound for Paris, to experience Euro-pean culture and fill in the blanks that a callow U.S. could not.

With coverage beginning around 1830, McCullough compiles a scrapbook of adventures starring notable Americans from James Fenimore Cooper to Samuel F.B. Morse, each of whom had to endure a wretched voyage, sometimes six weeks in duration. “All who set sail for France,” he writes, “were taking their lives in their hands, and to this could be added the prospect of being unimaginably far from friends, family and home, entirely out of touch with familiar surroundings.”

In lively prose, McCullough introduces his reader to a Paris that, while still “a medieval city,” was nevertheless a thriving mecca of opera, theater, art, books, music, fashion, architecture, science and medicine. It was also a place of freer societal attitudes, yet one that remained a haven for tradition.

Unlike the more recent, disputatious era of U.S.-Franco relations (remember “freedom fries”?), McCullough’s France is where the American flag was flown as a symbol of proud friendship and portraits of Abe Lincoln became common in shop windows—and where the rich heritage of America’s revolutionary debt to Lafayette was continuously honored.

Interspersing biographical details within the historical narrative, McCullough covers the flow of American travelers to Paris through about 1900. His subjects are artists like Mary Cassatt and John Singer Sargent; politicians like the abolitionist Charles Sumner and ambassador Elihu Washburne; persons of letters such as Henry Wadsworth Long-fellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson  and Harriet Beecher Stowe; the great showman P.T. Barnum; and youthful composer/pianist Louis Moreau Gottschalk, his genius embraced by none other than Chopin himself.

The City of Light’s obvious charms—and its identity as the center of just about everything—ripple through McCullough’s text. Readers will savor this portrait of a vibrant city whose connection to America’s founding and cultural sustenance forms a permanent bond.

 

A populist writer with a gift for readable biography and a reverence for America’s past, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner David McCullough delivers another compelling work of narrative history in his latest work, The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris. In early America, pioneers were the people who headed west. Deftly re-conceptualizing that notion, McCullough focuses on […]
NonfictionHistoryAmerican History

The colliding fates of two very different men

Review by Roger Bishop

William McKinley and Leon Czolgosz lived in the same country but had virtually nothing else in common. As a member of the House of Representatives, McKinley had been a prime mover of tariff and other pro-business legislation; as president, he would push to transform the United States into a major economic, diplomatic and, reluctantly, military power. What to McKinley was the country’s expansion and progress, however, depended on the toil of masses of low-skilled and poorly paid workers like Czolgosz, who saw a few men making great fortunes at the expense of people like himself. For some of them, violence appeared to be the only way out of their misery. Scott Miller vividly recreates the history of circumstances that brought these two men together in The President and the Assassin.

Miller deftly weaves a complex tale, moving back and forth between the lives of the president and of the disillusioned man who sought to do harm to the person who seemed to him to symbolize the nation’s many injustices. Among others who figure prominently in events are Theodore Roosevelt, the anarchist leader Emma Goldman and Commodore George Dewey, the hero of the U.S. victory at Manila Bay. Miller covers much ground with skill and nuance, demonstrating that events could have turned out differently with only one or two changes. He shows the pressure that the affable and pragmatic McKinley was under to declare war with Spain, reflecting the country’s ambiguity about becoming an imperial power. He was keenly aware of the great economic potential for the country, and yet, as a veteran of the Civil War, he made it clear that he did not want the country to engage in wars of conquest or territorial aggression. “Peace is preferable to war in almost every contingency,” he said.

Although Czolgosz had been interested in social revolution for years, he said he was especially inspired to pursue the life of a radical revolutionary by a certain speech of Emma Goldman’s, who said it was understandable that some people might feel so strongly that they would resort to violence. But she also said that anarchists were opposed to bloodshed in order to realize their goals, and Miller points out that the majority of the anarchists in the United States opposed bombings and assassinations.

Miller, a former correspondent for The Wall Street Journal and Reuters, spent nearly two decades in Asia and Europe and has reported from more than 25 countries. This is his first book, and its broad sweep—foreign policy, social conditions, McKinley’s concern for his frequently ill wife, the true story of Teddy Roosevelt and San Juan Hill and much more—is presented in a wonderfully readable way. The President and the Assassin is a real triumph.

William McKinley and Leon Czolgosz lived in the same country but had virtually nothing else in common. As a member of the House of Representatives, McKinley had been a prime mover of tariff and other pro-business legislation; as president, he would push to transform the United States into a major economic, diplomatic and, reluctantly, military […]
Business & Finance

Summer reading for the ambitious

Review by bookpagedev

I’m planning a trip to Miami, and one of the most important packing decisions involves which books to bring. A gripping story with interesting, unique characters is a must, but I’m not filling my suitcase with fictional thrillers. Instead, I’ve found three new business books that deliver suspense and adventure with real-life stories about a cocky inventor, a fearless road-tripper and a witty mathematician. So put down the Danielle Steel this summer and get the goods without the guilt.

Reinventing the wheel Code Name Ginger (Harvard Business School Press, $27.95, 336 pages, ISBN 1578516730) delivers the exciting behind-the-scenes story of bringing a dream to the marketplace. At the heart of the book is Dean Kamen, a cocky young inventor and entrepreneur with an ego big enough to match his lofty ideas. Often compared to a modern-day Thomas Edison, Kamen had a passion for the Ginger project, which he believed would revolutionize transportation by developing a self-balancing, electronic "people mover." He bet his fortune on the top-secret project that took more than nine years to develop and cost more than $100 million in R&andD.

Author Steve Kemper was granted exclusive access to the Ginger project during the 18 months of testing and design, but when his book proposal found its way to the Internet in January 2001, it exposed the heavily guarded project. The press started a firestorm of speculation about the machine that would eventually be dubbed the Segway Human Transporter.

Unfortunately, Kemper’s access to the project was cut just before the Segway went on sale, but consumer reaction thus far has been underwhelming. Not having Kamen’s reaction to the disappointing launch is a sorely missed element of the book. But the glimpse inside the mind of a brilliant inventor, someone always testing new ideas and willing to risk "spectacular failures" to create something great, makes this bumpy journey one well worth taking.

The ultimate road trip Jim Rogers knows how to take a vacation. The man Time calls "the Indiana Jones of Finance" has a passion for exploration, and he’s once again taking readers along for the ride in Adventure Capitalist (Random House, $27.50, 368 pages, ISBN 0375509127). On January 1, 1999, Rogers and his fiancŽe began a three-year road trip around the world that took the couple through 116 countries. Ready for anything (like the raging blizzard on Day 3), Rogers chronicles their stories with wit and offers insight on the state of the global economy at the turn of the century.

A former offshore hedge fund manager, Rogers is no ordinary tourist. He has a unique understanding of international politics and economics and describes successful investing as "getting in early, when things are cheap, when everything is distressed, when everyone is demoralized." Rogers successfully mixes business with pleasure by measuring the economic climate of each country on the itinerary. For example, Turkey in 1999 looked like a great emerging market based on location and population, but a harrowing airport ordeal convinced Rogers that the country hadn’t conquered its Byzantine ways, so he decided not to invest there. Rogers’ contagious enthusiasm for off-the-beaten-path discoveries turned his previous book, Investment Biker, into a bestseller. It chronicled his record-setting 700,000-mile motorcycle journey across six continents. Both are great reading for business lovers and armchair travelers.

Falling in love with WorldCom It’s nice to know that we’re all human and that sometimes even mathematicians get a little irrational. Best-selling author and math master John Allen Paulos begins his new book, A Mathematician Plays the Stock Market, by recounting how this "hardheaded fellow" began "falling disastrously in love" with one well-known scandal-ridden company. He lost his shirt, but couldn’t quit buying the stock or force himself to sell. Motivated by his own fear and greed, Paulos learned the painful lesson that emotions and psychology play a big part in stock market volatility.

Paulos uses personal stories and funny, bizarre anecdotes rather than formulas and equations to delve into the market’s "problems, paradoxes, and puzzles." It’s a rational approach that’s both simple and entertaining.

 

I’m planning a trip to Miami, and one of the most important packing decisions involves which books to bring. A gripping story with interesting, unique characters is a must, but I’m not filling my suitcase with fictional thrillers. Instead, I’ve found three new business books that deliver suspense and adventure with real-life stories about a […]
Social Science

The challenges and rewards of being an outsider

Review by Heather Seggel

The high school lunch bell has just sounded; where are you going to sit? Do you have a spot reserved at the popular table? Or are you a band geek, trying to find your friends and avoid being tripped by the preps? Maybe you’re a floater, able to mingle with the different cliques and groups. Forget that pop quiz in biology; lunch hour is often the most stressful period in the school day, pointing out as it does the layers of division among school kids.

Into this world comes author Alexandra Robbins (Pledged, The Overachievers). The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth wears its bias right in the title. While observing seven distinct types at different schools across the U.S., Robbins repeatedly unearths evidence of the value brought to the setting by so-called “nerds,” “geeks,” “emos” and others often singled out for exclusion or abuse. Her “quirk theory” posits that the very qualities that make these kids outsiders in school are the ones that will have positive real-world applications later. But for those talents to be realized they must be nurtured, not squelched. This book takes an interesting approach to righting that wrong.

Where in the past Robbins merely reported on what she saw, now she gets into the trenches, creating challenges designed to expand the social circles and safe points of contact for the people she profiles. It’s a relief to see band geek Noah come out of his shell and develop new leadership skills, and “popular bitch” Whitney thrives when she’s allowed to ditch her high-maintenance power clique and talk to whomever she likes.

The revenge of the nerds prophesied here should please anyone who was ever left out of a group for being too much themselves. Students, parents and teachers working to facilitate more social cross-pollination will appreciate the tips on how to create a safe space for creativity to thrive. Robbins makes the case that it’s necessary work, because the harshest consequence of enforced conformity “is that so many . . . students . . . think that they have done or felt something wrong.” The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth is fascinating; here’s hoping it finds a place in the curriculum for teachers and students alike.

The high school lunch bell has just sounded; where are you going to sit? Do you have a spot reserved at the popular table? Or are you a band geek, trying to find your friends and avoid being tripped by the preps? Maybe you’re a floater, able to mingle with the different cliques and groups. […]

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