Category: books
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Stretching the Noodle
In Japan I learned a wonderful word that created an unexpected and painful self-awareness. “Tsundoku” is made up of two characters that mean “pile” and “read” and basically means to “buy books to make piles”, with the implication that those books don’t get read. The nightstand books tend to reveal who we want to be, […]
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The Closing of the American Mind
My sophomore year philosophy class took a sharp turn and redefined itself around the newly released “Closing of the American Mind” by Allan Bloom. At its simplest, “Closing” says that modern American universities have become sterilized to the point where they only push students toward pretty standard measures of life success, and do little to […]
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What Unites Us
What Unites Us: Reflections on Patriotism by Dan Rather Part of my holiday reading pile. Quick Summary: this book thrives as a contrast to some of the societal themes being accelerated by D Trump and it makes you feel good to read it. It touches on a handful of ‘mom and apple pie’ topics ranging […]
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Extreme Ownership
Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin. Summary: captivating battle stories to illustrate some important core management skills ranging from accountability to humility to sharing the credit. If you haven’t read a book like this before, it’s a fun romp through some important leadership traits. I think I’ve […]
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Homo Deus
Home Deus by Yuval Noah Harari. One liner: pushes on a great series of societal evolutionary tracts and influences to frame a cool discussion on how human/tech upgrades (leading to Homo Deus) might change human “purpose” and societal structure. This book was great. The trails it explored were powerful (I ignored a few side bars […]
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Life 3.0
Life 3.0 by Max Tegmark is part of a pairing with “Homo Deus” to force some noodling on some threads on the evolution of man. One line summary: great book for placing the advent of Artificial Intelligence into the context of human evolution and for putting some visible milestones to look for before we start […]
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The Center Will Not Hold
Sometimes there is something wonderful in my ‘New to Netflix’ inbox. Today it was “The Center Will Not Hold”, a light biography of Joan Didion by her nephew Griffin Dunne. I came to Joan through Griffin’s father, Dominick, and his striking prose in the pages of Vanity Fair, culminating in his coverage of the OJ […]
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The Most Loving Place on Earth
I’ve had the great fortune to be part of some magnificent congregations in my day. The Fifth Avenue Presbyterian under Tom Tewell in the late 90s, early 00s, and more recently with Paul Watermulder at First Presbyterian in Burlingame. The most moving series of sermons Paul delivered was part of our church’s evolution to become […]
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The Hard Thing About Hard Things
One Liner: the best teacher for the ass-whuppin’ of leading a startup is experience, and the second-best is this series of shared raw experiences with actionable guidance frameworks and few inspirational/insipid platitudes. Rockin’ book. This book is probably not interesting enough as a window into startup culture (read “The Social Network” for that), but along with […]
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On Love
On Love by Alain de Botton. I’m not totally sure how I came into possession of this book. It doesn’t seem the kind of book I would pick up, or be in a section of the book store I would frequent. Maybe my sister left it here on her last visit — was it hers […]