One beauty of a concise book is that you can get smarter in one sitting. That’s definitely the case with The Conclusion Trap: Four Steps to Better Decisions by Dan Markovitz. It comes in at just shy of 60 pages, but it packs a heckuva punch in one thin volume. His whole point is that […]

I’m pleased as can be to present my review of one of the finest WWII history books I’ve ever read. Sand & Steel: The D-Day Invasion and the Liberation of France by Professor Peter Caddick-Adams is a triumph. It’s a dense book, and perhaps will seem a daunting one to many people, at nearly 900 […]

The last decade or so has seen an accelerating decay in the popular notion of our national media as principled and dispassionate reporters of fact. That hasn’t happened because of any significant change within the news outlets themselves. Rather, it’s been the result of the Internet-fueled rise of media watchdogs and alternative news sources, which […]

According to Jim Craig, goalie for the 1980 US Olympic hockey team, he and his teammates had no doubt they would win the gold medal. They did, of course, almost exactly 40 years ago, in a story that has now become legend. February’s milestone anniversary prompted Craig to write his new book, We Win! Lessons […]

The always-intriguing Don Peppers published an excellent piece on LinkedIn today about the new focus on customer experience, and why it took so long to get where we are. His thesis is that it all came from the marketing approach of Jerome McCarthy dating to 1958, which put the emphasis on “product, price, place, and promotion.” Do […]

In the preface of The Prosperity Paradox: How Innovation Can Lift Nations Out of Poverty, by Clayton Christensen, Efosa Ejomo and Karen Dillon, Professor Christensen writes of Ojomo’s failed efforts to provide fresh water for impoverished African communities: “His failure raised some difficult questions for him. If these vexing problems couldn’t be solved by an […]

I’m terribly delinquent for a book review I promised months ago, that of Sharyl Attkisson’s recent The Smear: How Shady Political Operatives and Fake News Control What You See, What You Think, and How You Vote. So here’s my take on the book: everybody ought to read it. Attkisson details the staggering machinery of how […]

One of my most respected LinkedIn contacts is Phil Rink, a fellow engineer who writes the Jimi & Isaac series of children’s books, and is generally well-informed about anything he chooses to comment on. I just recently finished the second book of his series, Jimi & Isaac 1b: Curve Ball. (I love reading good kids’ books – […]

Today, at the urging of my younger son AJ, I read the very interesting young people’s book about the American Revolution, King George: What Was His Problem? It’s a hugely informative book and very interesting read – I recommend it highly. Along the way I read the story of Benedict Arnold, who was influenced in part in […]

I saw a question posted on LinkedIn recently about reading habits, and it got me thinking about how my purchase of a Kindle years ago unexpectedly increased the amount of reading I do. Mind you, that wasn’t at all the reason for the purchase. My wife and I got Kindles at the same time, and […]