Quick Reviews

Books I have read, starting with the most recently read ones:

• The Days of Abandonment (Elena Ferrante)

• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain)

• Captains of the Sand (Jorge Amado) - Written in the 1930s this is a brutally raw depiction of life “on the streets” (or sand) in Bahia, following a gang of kids. Lots of depth to the story that weaves in class struggle and racism. With its depictions of sex as well it’s a book that never would have been published in the US at that time. Written when Amado was quite young as part of a trilogy to depict the realities of life in Bahia.

• When We Cease to Understand the World (Benjamin Labatut) - A pretty interesting approach to telling the story of the emergence of quantum mechanics, through both scientific fact and factual/fictional accounts about the main players in developing it. Very imaginative writing that makes it a good read, especially given all the drama of different competing theories and the people who were fighting to get the glory of defining the correct truth.

• James (Percival Everett) - A wonderful premise for a great novel that provides a whole other dimension to the Huck Finn story. Jim from that novel becomes the protagonist James, reclaiming his identity and becoming a three dimensional character dealing with being a slave. Everett imagines a different world of who Jim/James is but also a different world within slavery.

• You Dreamed of Empires (Alvaro Enrigue) - Very interesting read, fiction based on the facts of Cortez coming from Cuba to the the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan to meet with (and conquer) Moctezuma. There is a fabulous ending to this, after taking you through a very interesting account of the dealings between the Spaniards and the Aztecs. Unique and effective storytelling.

• Never Let Me Go (Kazuo Ishiguro)

• Every Day is for the Thief (Teju Cole)

• Open City (Teju Cole)

• The Sellout (Paul Beatty)

• The Gambler (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)

• The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic (Manisha Sinha)

• Frederick Douglass (David W. Blight)

• Brooklyn (Colm Tóibín)

• A Hero with a Thousand Faces (Joseph Campbell)

• An Emancipation of the Mind (Matthew Stewart)

• Reading Genesis (Marilynne Robinson)

• Age of Revolutions (Fareed Zakaria)

• Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto (Saito Kohei)

• The Wager (David Grann)

• The Revolutionary (Stacy Schiff)

• Yellowface (R.F. Kuang)

• Emperor of Rome (Mary Beard)

• Dapper Dan: Made in Harlem: A Memoir (Daniel R. Day)

• Into the Amazon (Larry Rohter)

• On Juneteenth (Annette Gordon-Reed)

• A Place to Hang the Moon (Kate Albus)

• The Comfort of Strangers (Ian McEwan)

• Gorgias (Plato)

• Enter Ghost (Isabella Hammad)

• Hyperion (Dan Simmons)

• Kindred (Octavia Butler)

• 99 Nights in Logar (Jamil Jan Kochai)

• The Sympathizer (Viet Thanh Nguyen)

• The Committed (Viet Thanh Nguyen)

• A Gentleman in Moscow (Amor Towles)

• Flawless (Lessons in Looks and Culture from the K-Beauty Capital) (Elise Hu)

• Das Kapital (Karl Marx)

• Hamnet (A Novel of the Plague) (Maggie O’Farrell)

• The Prince (Niccolo Machiavelli)

• The Idiot (Fyodor Dostoevsky)

• Buddenbrooks (Thomas Mann)

• Anansi Boys (Neil Gaiman)

• Death in Venice (Thomas Mann)

• Rodham (Curtis Sittenfel)

• The Buddha and His Dhamma (Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Adbedkar)

New People (Dazzy Senna) - Looking up Percival Everett led me to the fact that his wife is an author, so I read this book. While she has some very sharp and well articulated observations, but Senna lost me with the out of control character. It was like the thing with a bad horror movie where the would-be victim makes incredibly horrible choices, and you go “oh, come on.” Also instead of third person, I think it would have been better as a first person, unreliable narrator book. Senna mostly was in the head of the main character but slipped into others briefly, which was unnecessarily jarring. But on the positive side, the plot device of doing research on Jim Jones was engaging and interesting.

I Am Not Sidney Poitier (Percival Everett) - Note that initial caps in the title is fully intentional and key to the story. Some very funny stuff and good social comment. It’s engaging to read, with interesting choices of real-life, fictionalized characters, including the author himself. I got lost with the ending, but maybe a second reading I might like it more.

Freedom’s Dominion (Jefferson Cowie) - Cool idea to focus on Barbour County from the early 1800s up to the late 1900s, including native removal and extermination, rolling back Reconstruction, and continuing virulent racism via native son George Wallace. A key statement by Cowie is that freedom especially as defined by Americans has the opposite side of the coin of oppression, be that via slavery, general white supremacy, or what we see today with people declaring their personal freedom that’s in conflict with the freedom of others. Another key statement is that it’s only thanks to federal oversight and intervention that we have made progress on things like civil rights and enforcement of equal protection for all. It’s a dense book but it does a good job of laying out the history of American oppression of natives and Blacks.

The Noble Eightfold Path (Way to the End of Suffering) (Bhikkhu Bodhi) - If you buy the premise that the ultimate goal of launching on a spiritual path is to end suffering for yourself and all others, and if you are not already immersed in Buddhism, this is a book for you. The dhamma-vinaya (or just Dhamma) includes the Four Noble Paths and the Noble Eightfold Path. The former is doctrine, the latter is practice. As explained in the preface, these are intertwined but a focus first on the Noble Eightfold Path can make sense because it brings it all more concretely to life. It can be a little hard to get everything that Bodhi explains into your head as he dives into branches of subsets and tangents; there’s a bit of “there are these 4 things, and the first one breaks down into these 7 things…” But I found it engaging and (dare I say?) enlightening. I’ll be reading this one again.

Eartha and Kitt (Kitt Shipiro) - A far lighter, fluffier book than I had hoped for, but it has a few interesting nuggets. The story of Eartha Kitt making her voice heard in the midst of apartheid in South Africa, and really tweaking authority there is my strongest memory from the book. The case is clearly made for Eartha Kitt being an impressive person, but unfortunately the case for her daughter being a good writer and storyteller…not so much.

The House of Broken Angels (Luis Alberto Urrea) - Although this book was slow to grab me, in the end it did a really great job. This brings you into the Mexican-American community in Los Angeles, though perhaps more memorably into the Mexican roots of the main protagonist. Miguel Angel de la Cruz is quite the compelling character, and harsh realities through the course of his life make the “happy ending” taste sweet.

The Overstory (Richard Powers) - This book impacted me greatly, giving me a who new perspective and appreciation of trees; I really look at them in a whole new way after reading Powers’ sweeping narrative. Some of the threads of the narrative are stronger than others, but the book all up is a tour de force. Two thumbs up.

There There (Tommy Orange) - Pretty good storytelling, though for me there was a little too much leaning on “and it all comes together at the end” kind of storytelling. Orange does have things to say about the modern experience for Native Americans. I liked in particular how he brought the American Indian Movement and their occupation of Alcatraz Island. All up, a pretty good read.

Siddhartha (Hermann Hesse) - I would call this a good way to ease into learning a bit about Buddhist teachings of the Four Noble Truths and the Eight-fold Path. That is, this book lays out Buddhist teachings in story form. I felt it was a bit arcane while also being a pretty easy read, and in the end for me it was enjoyable following Siddhartha’s journey through life and the summary of his lessons learned. I especially felt it came together at the end with Vasudeva the ferryman and the symbolic river. This book isn’t for everyone, and modern eyes and ears may bristle at the treatment of Kamala and the presented role of women in general.

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking (Susan Cain) - This book addresses the topic of introversion, so it truly speaks to me, about me. Cain makes the assertion that American culture overly values extroverts while simultaneously undervaluing (and not understanding) introverts. It reads a bit like a Malcolm Gladwell tome, which from me isn’t a compliment. But in the end I found it engaging and insightful. Regardless of where you are (or believe you are) on the extrovert-introvert spectrum it’s a useful read, as it also provides practical advice for being an introvert or for dealing with the introverts in your life. In my younger son’s terms of rating things, I’d say it’s a 6.9 on IMDB.

America (Jean Baudrillard) - A Frenchman’s view of America in the early Reagan years. Baudrillard took the measure of America and - skidding across the whole country, from New York to LA and places in between - he wrote a book of poetry posing as prose. If you take this book on, I recommend reading it and letting it just flow over you. Baudrillard is like a thoroughly European court jester who speaks nonsense that has some deep truths. When you get to the chapter “The end of US power?”, think of the meaning behind and the consequences of electing Trump. And thanks to Amanda for this recommendation on the heels of learning about post Marxist philosophers coming out of Germany. This book is another diatribe on capitalism, and reading it was a unique experience.

Grand Hotel Abyss: The Lives of the Frankfurt School (Stuart Jeffries) - This is about a set of intellectuals who were basically radical Jewish thinkers (and basically just that; thinkers, not doers). The main characters - Walter Benjamin, Theodor (Teddy) Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Herbert Marcuse - were all basically the products of early 20th century bourgeoise society who rebelled against everything bourgeoise, inclusive of being highly scornful of pop culture and consumerism. In some ways, their critical theory assessments were dead on as to how soul killing our hyper consumerism would become. But in other ways they were just a bunch of nerds arguing about things in highly arcane ways. Starting from a Marxist point of view and hoping for an end to capitalism, Marcuse in particular became a darling of counter culture in the 60s and 70s, to the point of being seen as helping to inform the perspective of people such as Angela Davis. And their school of thought evolved in the end to be less stridently anti capitalist to a softer stance of seeing the need to mitigate the evils of pure capitalism. Jeffries is a very good writer who can take the reader through all this (sometimes ludicrously arcane) journey from the early to the late 20th century. Thanks to my colleague Amanda for recommending this very interesting book.

On Liberty (John Stuart Mill) - Mill has a modern, progressive perspective. He is for total individual freedom, constrained only by how one individual might harm another. That is, someone can have the most extreme thoughts and beliefs - and even actions - as long as there isn’t harm to others. Interesting too is his perspective about societal pressure to be “normal” and how that is a very bad thing. In other words, he also has a very modern perspective related to the notion of diversity. Mill was also ahead of his time related to gender equality, and even as a parliamentarian fought for equality for women.

The Communist Manifesto (Karl Marx; Friedrich Engels) - A relevant read within the context of a Trump presidency. Speaking to the proletariat as a downtrodden class that needs to rise up, this mid 19th century perspective continues to have relevance today. Marx and Engels are against capitalism and “wage-labor” oppression, and I think that the related disaffection today is what Trump and other populist leaders are taking advantage of. I’ve always been puzzled by the fact that the concept of Communism was co-opted by the Soviet Union even though that totalitarianism regime had little to do with what Marx and Engels were proposing. But it does make sense that the capitalistic western world would be diametrically opposed to both, and therefore conveniently continue to conflate the evil of totalitarianism with communism. As an historical document, this is well worth reading.

Hillbilly Elegy - A memoir of a family and culture in crisis (J.D. Vance) - Vance tells a compelling story of his Appalachian heritage and upbringing, and escaping that via the marines and an Ivy League education. Written before the 2016 election of Donald Trump, this book kind of presciently brought you the prediction and reasons why that was possible. It’s interesting to read this book and Tara Westover’s Educated as two stories of escape from one reality to another.

Educated (Tara Westover) - The story of a girl coming from a family dominated by a bi-polar father who combines fundamentalist Mormonism with paranoid, end-times-are-coming behavior. Isolated from society and physically abused and terrorized by an older brother, she ends up saving herself via education, getting into college and beyond without any schooling before that. My issue with the book is that perhaps there was some rushing to finish the book, along with turning up the volume a bit on sensationalizing it, which made especially the latter part of the book feel like it was written by a romance novelist. But I still highly recommend it.

Leonardo da Vinci (Walter Isaacson) - This book gives you the understanding that in many senses the polymath Leonardo was really a renaissance man. Unbounded curiosity, superhuman powers of observation, meticulousness in getting details right. Isaacson’s research seems top notch and brings Leonardo’s life and times to you in 3D. He also makes a good argument about the upside that Leonardo left so many things unfinished and spent a lot of efforts in more “frivolous” pursuits, like producing entertainment events for nobles. And there is some myth busting, such as why the left handed Leonardo so often wrote in mirror script; not to make it difficult to read but…because he was left handed.

Tell Them of Battles, Kings & Elephants (Mathias Enard) - Historical fiction wherein Michelangelo escapes from Italy amid a row with the Pope Julius II and goes to Constantinople in 1506 to work on a commission from the Sultan of Constantinople to build a bridge from Constantinople to Pera. This would be to try to do something where Leonardo da Vinci had failed. There is historical truth in da Vinci having had this project, but not in Michelangelo taking it on. The book then has you follow Michelangelo on this quest, putting you in this time period and in the midst of seeing East vs West. I’d call this an interesting but not wholly absorbing read.

The Origins of Totalitarianism (Hannah Arendt) - This book is not an easy read, but it is amazingly insightful about how to define totalitarianism and separate that from despotism, tyranny, imperialism, and other forms of governing and controlling people and territories. Arendt is just going on Hitler and Stalin as models for how totalitarianism can arise and sustain itself, but provides excellent historical context of the “why” and “how” of those two leaders. She places the Nazi and Soviet 20th century horror shows in the context of the rise of humanism at the end of the 18th century and the subsequent rise of post feudal European nation states. She sees 19th century imperialism as a stepping stone, as well as the concurrent with the rise of humanism in the 19th century there is the weakening of the religion-plus-nationhood duo, such that people also lost the direction and community of a seemingly unquestionable order of things from on high. Then with what Arendt terms “atomized” individuals with an appetite for order from chaos - be that a revolution against the czar or post World War I depression and foreign suppression in Germany - a movement with a charismatic and/or brutal front man can arise and take over. Arendt says that totalitarianism can’t limit itself to national boundaries, as it must seek world domination. Hitler was obviously trying that via warfare, and Stalin via the international communist movement. Common across Hitler and Stalin were ways to dehumanize and then work to liquidate entire classes of people, with Arendt also providing historical context for antisemitism. And Arendt speaks to how leaders such as Hitler and Stalin can motivate “mob” instincts to do their bidding for such liquidations.

“Racism may indeed carry out the doom of the Western world and, for that matter, of the whole of human civilization. When Russians have become Slavs, when Frenchmen have assumed the role of commanders of a force noir, when Englishmen have turned into “white men,” as already for a disastrous spell all Germans became Aryans, then this change will itself signify the end of Western man. For no matter what learned scientists may say, race is, politically speaking, not the beginning of humanity but it end, not the origin of peoples but their decay, not the natural birth of many but his unnatural death.”

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (Muriel Spark) - I read this during the centenary of Spark’s birth. Set in the 1930s in Edinburgh, a girl’s school teacher is the charismatic and iconoclastic leader of a brood of children. A fan of Mussolini and Hitler who regales the girls with tales of her romantic adventures, she soon complicates things by bringing the reality of her romances close to home, specifically with the two male teachers at the school. The story develops over years, as the girls stay as a group as they become older and more mature, before everything of course goes awry.

Mrs. Bridge (Evan Connell) - An intriguing novel, set apart by a writing style where the chapters are tiny vignettes, almost all quite brief, often even less than a page. The Bridge family lives in repressed white somewhat upper society in 1930s Kansas City. Although the fits and starts of the brief chapters takes getting used to, you can get into the flow if you stick with it. Great character development that shows a rumble of humanity underneath what can feel like a suffocating vapidity. India Bridge in particular can come to surprise you with depth that you didn’t think was there.

On the Other Side of Freedom: The Case for Hope (DeRay McKesson) - I saw McKesson speak on the book tour for this book and found him insightful and compelling. This book was good, with some

Putin Country - A journey into the real Russia (Ann Garrels) - Depressing and scary.  Garrels digs in to the area in and around Chelyabinsk to chronicle what Russia is under Putin's strongarm populism and rampant corruption. The strength of her reporting is giving voice to many people. The weakness is that she isn't great at overall storytelling; it's more like a bunch of episodes and the reader needs to figure out the big picture.  But worth reading to get a POV about life in Putin’s Russia.

Swiss Watching - Inside Europe's Landlocked Island (Diccon Bewes) - British writer-turned-Swiss-resident has written an engaging and informative book about Switzerland.  He provides a history of the country from its origins, a comprehensive tour of the contemporary landscape, and tons of insights into the people and their culture.  This includes giving a sense of how this capitalist society is also all about consensus, and how the Swiss as "coconuts" have a hard outer shell but can be personable deep down.  He also provides insights into how it's a nation made up of 26 cantons (and half cantons) that is multilingual and - like the rest of the world - is dealing with the encroachment of English.  You feel like you have a good, general handle on the country and its people after reading this book; it seems to be great preparation for a visit to Switzerland.

Italy - A Short History (Harry Hearder) - A good read for a sweeping history of Italy, starting from the ice age and up to - unfortunately in the second edition - just to the year 2000.  The book takes you through the Roman times, all the history of the city states, foreign invasions, how much was ruled directly and indirectly by the Catholic church, etc.  It gets particularly interesting as it goes through the 18th and 19th centuries and finally starts to come together as a nation.  I also learned a lot from the 20th century coverage, including the rise of Mussolini, how he interacted with Hitler (starting as a mentor and ending as Hitler's stooge), the role in the Spanish civil war, and then the cacophony that was post WW II Italian politics.  Well written, easy to read.

To Fight Against This Age:  On Fascism and Humanism (Rob Riemen) - If you can say that reading something that has a very sobering take on the state of modern culture and democracy is "enjoyable," then this is a very enjoyable book.  Although Riemen is Dutch and a dominant theme is about culture and democracy in Europe, this is also extremely timely and applicable to the current state of affairs in the US.  In fact, given what he says about the "mass man" and where and how fascism will arise, it's easy to argue that it's even more applicable to the US.  Riemen sees the end of Humanism as happening concurrent with WW I, with a great recovery happening post WW II (thanks in large part to great leaders like Churchill and Roosevelt), but then backsliding since then into hyper consumerism, out of touch elite classes who don't "get it," the rise of nationalism, and more.  He has great disdain for a unified Europe that's really all about economics and commerce, and he also trashes those with Panglossian views of how technology will be the savior of humankind.  He wants a recovery of philosophy and critical thinking, and people feeling that they are part of the human journey and life isn't just about their personal journey.  A return to shared morality (though he makes clear that he doesn't believe that should be through organized religion).  There are references throughout to philosophical giants, from Socrates and Plato up to an unknown modern Czech philosopher that he discovered as part of his research to write this book.  As a bonus, Riemen is a very good storyteller.  I give this book top marks, and hope to do some additional reading based on Riemen suggestions therein.

Relativity:  The Special and General Theory (Albert Einstein) - Written in 1916 (first published in English in 1920), Einstein makes much of his thinking clear, though this book also includes plenty of math that's easy to skip over.  He talks moving trains versus the embankment, measuring rods and clocks, the spheres and mollusks.  The universe is four dimensional, with the fourth being time.  Space is curved, light is impacted by gravity.  The special theory tells us that the speed of light is constant, regardless of your velocity.  General relativity explores what happens when you add in acceleration effects due to say, gravity.  That's when space becomes "warped," so that instead of motion along a straight line, you have to consider motion along curved paths.  Very cool to read how Einstein spelled this out more than 100 years ago.

Why Liberalism Failed (Patrick J. Deneen) - Thought provoking view of how a notion of liberty that's more personal and less about community is what dooms liberal democracy America and liberal democracies in general.  I am sympathetic to the arguments about splintering of society, but think Deneen has too much faith (ha ha) in organized religion; a repeated undercurrent of his is that if everyone became a practicing Christian we'd start heading in the right direction.  I also think he blames far too much on what he defines as liberalism, and is totally overlooking the damage of unfettered capitalism.  I'd twin this with reading Ta-Nahisi Coates and other US history that gives the non-white, non-European perspective.  The good old days of Christianity weren't good old days (which I don't think Deneen and fellow conservatives recognize), but the new dawn of throwing off oppression with extreme identity politics isn't leading us in a good direction (which I don't think progressives realize).  There is much to agree with and think about in this book, in addition to much to disagree with, but all in all this is well worth reading. 

The Origins of Creativity (Edward O. Wilson) - I didn't find this as engaging as some of his other writing.  It's at its best when he's bringing in evolutionary facts and thinking, esp when tying that to culture.  He's making an argument that pure science needs to be complemented with more humanities thinking and doing.  Makes a compelling case.  He's also saying we should understand and question who we are as humans, and again looking at it from a cultural angle as well as pure biology.  Pretty easy read, and especially if you've never read any of his work i'd recommend checking this out.

We Were Eight Years in Power; An American Tragedy (Ta-Nahisi Coates) - Well written, superbly researched.  Coates is an impressive scholar, intellectual.  He makes a convincing case for reparations and has insights that backs with citation after citation.  Sometimes the sweeping generalizations about white power feel simplistic, but as a whole you get well reasoned albeit sometimes highly emotional arguments.  Very interesting are his views on Obama, and how he has an innate optimism about America (or at least he did prior to Trump being elected).  All up, I have to agree with Coates' thesis about racism in America, which I would not have agreed with so much before the Trump era.  So, I found this book to be enlightening and very depressing.

Grant (Ron Chernow) - A massive book (950+ pages) that takes on massive tasks:  resuscitating Ulysses S. Grant's historical reputation, reviving us from our national amnesia how things rolled before, during, and after the Civil War, among other things. It gives a picture of Grant as one of history's greatest wartime generals who was much more than a tactician; he was also a statesman in action.  During the war, he "evolved" rapidly and completely on slavery and emancipation, deciding pretty much on his own to incorporate black soldiers but also doing what he could to take care of freed slaves in general even at the height of fighting the war.  He also had a great relationship with Lincoln (and was supposed to be with him the night he was assassinated but had begged off from joining).  As president, he had many screw ups, but none attributable to his drinking problem nor to moral turpitude.  He was a very good and (in most ways) a very smart person; he was just easily fooled by others, which hurt his presidency as well as continued to kill him financially.  A "lifetime learner," he learned to be a great diplomat and public speaker (tho unfortunately only after his presidency ended) and then ultimately a very gifted writer.  His death and funeral were very touching, and at that time he was seen as a truly great American hero, standing pretty much side-by-side with George Washington.  Great read.  The parts on Reconstruction are an excellent companion reading for Ta-Nahisi Coates' We Were Eight Years in Power.

All the Light We Cannot See (Anthony Doerr) - A very moving, well crafted novel.  Doerr writes a story about a blind girl and her father and their family in Nazi occupied France, starting in Paris but then more in Saint-Malo.  The father, a locksmith at the museum of Natural History in Paris, trains the daughter how to navigate the world, and presents her with physical puzzles.  And there is a rumor of a priceless diamond at the museum that of course the Nazis will eventually want and - remember - he's the locksmith.  Another thread is a German boy in a children's home in a coal mining town.  Must read.  One of the many things I love about this book is showing the humanity on both sides before, during, and after all are embroiled in nation-state conflict.

Memoirs from Beyond the Tomb - Francois-Rene de Chateaubriand led a fascinating life. He was a liberal and a royalist (an unusual combination) who lived through the French Revolution and all of Napoleon's ups and downs. In fact, Napoleon plays a huge role in this book, and Chateaubriand's reflections on Napoleon's life make this book a worthwhile read. He sees Napoleon as a great man, but also sees him as a terrible despot; the overall assessment by a brilliant contemporary is truly insightful. Plus this book recounts Chateaubriand's trip to the United States, meeting George Washington, hanging with both white settlers and various native tribes across the eastern seaboard, and then his later life as a diplomat.

Sustaining Capitalism - Contains a pretty good catalog of the ills of US society along with recommended fixes, but on the heels of the 2016 election and what's rolled from that, this is just utterly depressing. That is, common sense as spelled out here feels like a fairy tale land that we're speeding away from.  Read "On Tyranny" instead of this for now.

The Black House (Peter May) - Very decent mystery read, set in bleak Outer Hebrides from which the protagonist has tried to escape.  But a murder case hauls him back, physically, emotionally, and virtually back in time.  Well researched by the author, tho despite the mystery solution being brought to an end well, the book felt to me to end too abruptly.  But I'd still recommend.

On Tyranny (Timothy Snyder) - As we try to navigate our lives in an era of Trump and endangered basics like Truth and actual democracy, this is truly a must read.  This book spells things out plain and simple, providing historical perspectives of the rise of dangerous regimes and how passivity can enable them.  A must read.

Hitler and Stalin, Parallel Lives (Alan Bullock) - Massive book that goes deeply into all things Hitler and Stalin. You get the "how and why" of Nazi Germany arising around Hitler while Stalin appropriated Leninism to create the horrific cult of Stalin. Lessons for today of where strongman nationalism can lead to.

The Art of War (Sun Tzu) - Fascinating that this was written 2,000 years ago and provides such as complete, well-thought-out framework for war and statesmanship, and how war isn't just about fighting.  "For to win 100 victories in 100 battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill...Thus a victorious army wins its victories before seeking battle."

Underground Railroad (Colson Whitehead) - This is a very good book. It gives a real feel of the personal impact of slavery, along with a wide view of that institution in the overall context of American history. Read this in tandem with Between the World and Me.  Big thanks to Susan Dittig for the recommendation/load.

The Devotion of Suspect X (Keigo Higoshino) - If you like a well crafted mystery, this is a must read. From my extensive Wikipedia search, I see that Higashino has been publishing since the mid 1980s and has a massive bibliography. What he's created here is certainly an enigma inside a riddle wrapped in mystery, presented with great nuance.  Thanks to my sister for recommending.

The Bat (Jo Nesbo) - Nesbo is a very good crime writer.  Tho he's got a lot of books and awards under his belt now, it looks like this was his first novel, and that's damn impressive.  Great intro to his Harry Hole character.  Setting this in Sydney, Nesbo also brings depth to the story with local color but, more interestingly, social commentary on the treatment of Aborigines.

The Keeper of Lost Causes - (Jussi Adler-Olsen) - I was a bit skeptical of this Danish police procedural at first, but it got to be a page turner.  Good character development of a cynical detective character dealing with bureaucracy and his own laziness, but getting involved in a case against his wishes. And some real WTF happenings with the victim, elaborate evil, a "Ah, Mr. Bond" kind of deal.  I liked the ending (AFTER we got past the end of the Mr. Bond elaborate crime stuff).  Good read, don't think too hard and enjoy.

The Grid (Gretchen Bakke) - Bill Gates recommended and you can see why. How our electrical grid evolved to its massive complexity and frailty. How an Edison assistant helped define monopolies that deregulation and the free market are now undoing, and why adding green energy isn't easy or necessarily good given the grid we have. Fascinating how large fleets of electric vehicles could help the grid's health. as well as the story of German industry opting out of their grid. Good, informative read.

It Can't Happen Here (Sinclair Lewis) - A tale of fictional rise of fascism in the mid 1930s USA, with a writing style and references that are very much of that time. Kernels of ideas and truths have relevance today. E.g., the dangers of both unfettered capitalism and power joined with human greed and arrogance.  Key lesson:  complacency is very dangerous amid perilous times.

My Name is Asher Lev (Chaim Potok) - A story of a son pitted against his father as he struggles to live within tribal norms while pursuing a personal destiny. Also tells about the development of an artist, and the Jewish diaspora story of the 50s and 60s. Great build up to the climax of the story. (Thanks to Dr Zendal for the recommendation)

When Breath Becomes Air (Paul Kalanithi) - A smart, thoughtful, empathetic, funny, loving neurosurgeon who is truly a renaissance man ends up having his life cut tragically short (this isn't a spoiler, you know at the beginning).  He thoughtfully faces his death, writing a moving autobiography.  Great read.

The Girl on the Train (Paula Hawkins) - Clever mystery, fun to read.  Interesting technique of multiple narrators shifting back and forth in time, with diary-like entries that are a mix of past and present tense.  So you're coming at events from various points of view and timeframes.  Lots of oversexed characters.  Delightful little "twist" at the end.  A page turner.

The Big Short (Michael Lewis) - Think there might be general fairness for average people investing in Wall Street, or that things have gotten corrected from the various financial scandals since the 1980s?  All you gotta do is read the epilogue and afterword in this book.  Otherwise, this book shows off how great a non fiction writer Michael Lewis is as he makes understandable the whole stinking system of artificial securities and what and who is rotten on Wall Street.  (Spoiler alert:  lots of bad apples)

The Revenant (Michael Punke) - Boy does Hugh Glass ever have some tough luck! Pirates, a bear, unfriendly native tribes, and fellow frontiersmen constantly have him at death's door. Compelling story line within the context of lots of interesting historical details of frontier life in the early 1800s.

Man's Search for Meaning (Viktor Frankl) - Incredible autobiographical view of the holocaust by a man who did more than survive years of abuse and starvation; he learned, grew, and ended up with faith in humankind, with lessons for how to deal with the most extreme adversities.

The Way of Zen (Alan Watts) - Understanding Zen is simple...and complicated. If you can engage with this book, you can gain deep and interesting insights. Examples:  If you try not to try, you're missing the point of not trying. And what someone tells you is not your own knowledge. Interesting too that Zen is basically amoral, but pairs well with the moral context of Confuscianism. Who knew?

The Case for Christ (Lee Strobel) - Strobel builds a (one-sided) case to verify that Jesus was both an historical figure and that everything in the Bible is true. The book is heavy handed, and in the end I have to agree with an Amazon review that I read stating that he doesn't build a convincing case unless you buy into key premises that would have you already starting as a believing Christian. His love of academic credentials of his "expert witnesses" but his disdain of academia in general is kind of amusing.

War and Peace (Leo Tolstoy) - The first thing to know is...this is quite readable. Yeah, long, but also engaging and informative. Tolstoy brings strong passions to his tales wrapped around France and Russia fighting for dominance of Europe and beyond. He weaves in philosophical musing with interesting characters. Definitely stands up as a classic.

The Story of a New Name (Elena Ferrante) - The second of Ferrante's Neopolitan novels.  While I remain convinced that she's a great storyteller who really has things to say, this one did drag a bit more than the prior one, especially with the main character's continued inner drama and her over dramatized vacillations.  My other nit is the writing technique of first person but lots of 3rd person omniscience.  But I'll likely read the next one...

My Brilliant Friend (Elena Ferrante) - Great read, interesting first person narrative set in an impoverished part of Naples starting in the late 1959s. Almost a magical realist feel of starting by seeing the world through young eyes. A large cast of interesting characters centered on the two most interesting, two best friends navigating a culture of boundaries, hierarchies and rules of honor, full of clannish envy, but also friendships and love.

It's like this, cat (Emily Neville) - We have a collection of Newbery Medal books, and I had once been told to read this one and never had. On the heels of books like "Guns, Germs, and Steel" and "Between the World and Me" it kind of cause cognitive dissonance to read of an age of "innocence" in early 60's New York. Sort of about another planet that never did or shouldn't have existed. And frankly the writing isn't that good. Perhaps interesting as a period piece of adolescent fiction, but can't recommend it.

1421, The Year China Discovered America (Gavin Menzies) - Sleuthing done by an ex UK submarine officer, based on historical cartography and then other follow up research.  Menzies makes a compelling case that the Chinese in the early 15th century were able to basically "discover" the new world and other down under destinations decades prior to the European discoveries.  The story is well written but drags on a bit.

Between the World and Me (Ta-Nehisi Coates) - This is slam poetry to America, this is slam poetry about America. Tho I felt it lucky that I read this just after 'An Indigenous People's History of the United States' and 'Guns, Germs, and Steel,' I show a picture here of a better companion book. As from Rilke, these are wise words of wisdom spoken personally to a young man. Coates could have called this 'Letters to my son, who lives among the Dreamers.' His title is better. Yes, a must read.

The Meaning of Human Existence (Edward O. Wilson) - 5 stars with a bullet! Incredibly, the book lives up to its title, providing a compelling view of why and who we are. Wilson has an interesting thesis about the importance of complementing science with humanities. And although he tackles head on the challenges that we humans face as we endanger ourselves and all other species with our behaviors, it's much more 'here are the facts' than simply alarmist in tone. Bio-based explanations for religion is fascinating. Very well written by a genius.

An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States (Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz) - Dunbar-Ortiz has fundamental, important myth busting to do. The US is a beacon of democracy and freedom?  Yeah, built on genocide. Reading this on the heels of Guns, Germs, and Steel was a fortuitous thing for me, and I'd say that could be a great sequence. Unfortunately, Dunbar-Ortiz oozes with righteous anger, so I can't recommend this book in general as its polemic tone will turn off many readers. But its message is something I'll pick up in my next book, 'Between the World and Me.'

A Game of Thrones (George R. R. Martin) - Swords! Castles! Lords and Ladies! Sex! Dragons! One thing you'll learn by reading this is that the HBO series does a great job of bringing it all to the screen.  In fact, it does such a great job that I'd just recommend sticking to HBO.  It's a bit of a slog to get through these books.

The World; The Discovery of Modern Science (Steven Weinberg) - As a sweeping history of science from a physicists point of view, this book has interesting parts but overall is uneven, gets into nerdy details that make it a bit boring.  But it has a strong and interesting narrative that builds up to how Newton helped change the world, how science needed to be freed from the bounds of religion, and how far we’ve come but still there is much to discover.  I’d recommend reading his epilogue which is a strong finish and good summary.

Guns, Germs, and Steel; The Fates of Human Societies (Jared Diamond) - Diamond makes the point that humans domesticating plants and animals leads to more ability to create a complex and larger society. Having plants and animals that can be domesticated is luck of the environmental draw, and living with animals makes for having more virulent diseases. Interesting other insights, like how agricultural innovations spread within latitudes.

Cities of the Plain (Cormac McCarthy) - Cormac McCarthy is nothing short of amazing when it comes to cowboy dialog that speaks volumes on multiple levels, including how guys'll poke fun at each other. This is ready-made movie script material (which apparently James Franco has figured out). I highly ANY of his books, including this one. A bit put off by the end/denoument, but otherwise loved it.

Homage to Catalonia (George Orwell) - A good book I’d never heard of, a tale told just after Orwell escaped front-line war misery and left wing political infighting during the Spanish Civil War. It’s from the POV of a man with early twentieth century, British upper class sensibilities dealing with infuriating/amusing Spanish culture. Straightforward prose feels honest and true (like Grant’s civil war memoir), from a man with romantic, revolutionary ideals who willingly takes a bullet for his beliefs.

All Quiet on the Western Front (Erich Maria Remarque) - First person account from the trench warfare and surrounding horrors by a German soldier.  It's a blunt, straightforward recounting of the absurdity and cruel terror of war from the point of view of those on the front lines.  Woven in with masterly writing is an often lyrical account of the inner journey of the narrator as his feeling of being alive and human comes and goes.  Honest, superb book well worth its fame.

Crossing the Chasm; Marketing and Selling Disruptive Products to Mainstream Customers (Geoffrey A. Moore) - Insightful advice on growing and maturing a high tech business.  Applies to startups, obviously, but established and even (esp?) long-in-the-tooth companies like Microsoft can and are benefitting from the advice.  More aimed at execs and marketers, but very approachable for anyone in tech.

*A Short History of Nearly Everything (Bill Bryson) - Well worth the time for a quick spin through the history of the universe, our planet, and life in general.  Easy to read, enough hard and interesting facts to be consistently entertaining and enlightening.

Barchester Towers (Anthony Trollope) - Trollope has recently become more popular, and this book gives good evidence for why.  Even with many archaic references, the writing is witty and feels fresh.  The bad guy Slope and the goods guy Arapin and Mr Harding are all clergymen, as are many of the other characters, with plenty of high mannered intrigue. The Oxford University Press edition gives plenty of interesting background on church and English politics.  A bit dense but fun read.   5/22/15

Band of Brothers; E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne, From Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest (Stephen E. Ambrose) - Follow Dick Winters and E company fro (not basic) training though D day through Operation Market Garden through the Battle of the Bulge and on to capturing Hitler's h mountaintop headquarter's.  Amazing true story of men who loved and hated and fought for each other, going to hell and (some of them) surviving it.  The book is great, the miniseries is awesome.

Nemesis (Jo Nesbo) - Norwegian police procedural.  Great Harry Hole story, with Harry at his best dealing with murder, gypsy revenge, a criminal colony in Brazil, and just being a sad sack, alcoholic but first class detective.  Beate is a well developed (and developing) character, as is Raskol.

The Sound and the Fury (William Faulkner) - Very difficult to follow/understand with stream of consciousness and jumbled chronology of multiple narrators. But highly lyrical and you can get it (mostly) if you just go with the flow.  Personal family tragedy within a decaying racist society.  Strange and compelling. 3/15

Thinking, Fast and Slow (Daniel Kahneman) - Fascinating look at how our brains work, easy to read due both to the material and the writing style.

In the Company of Crows and Ravens (John M. Marzluff and Tony Angell) - An approachable introduction to corvids, speaking to cultural co-evolution of these birds with humans, and how we have a long and interesting history of coexistence. American Crows thrive because of humans, but many crow and raven species are extinct or endangered because of us.

The Boys in the Boat; Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Olympics (Daniel James Brown) - An intersection of hard work, hard times (early 30s), teamwork, craftsmanship.  A team of rowers at the university of Washington who won Olympic gold at Hitler's 1936 Olympics. Pocock the boat craftsman and the coaches are likely all worth books themselves.

Einstein:  His Life & Universe (Walter Isaacson) - A three dimensional view of a fascinating genius who brilliant thought experiments, such as equating the effects of a moving elevator with the effects of gravity, leading to how to explain in simple terms how gravity would bend light.  A strict pacifist who then got his mind changed by Hitler's Germany.  Didn't believe in a 'personal,' interventionist God but did believe in some higher power.  A humanist who had trouble being close to individual humans.

Statistics in Plain English (Timothy C. Urdan) - Want to brush up on or learn the basics of statistics?  I don't think there is such a thing as "easy reading" to really learn stats, but this book definitely makes the overall concepts plus the mechanics very approachable.

Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (Hannah Arendt) - Provides details of the inner workings of Hitler's 'Final Solution.' Provides insights into the shared insanity of the time, with startling details of Jewish leadership's role.  Arendt also takes Israel to task for how it did the kidnapping and show trial, and makes comments on laws and morality.

Abraham Lincoln:  The Prairie Years & The War Years (Carl Sandburg) - Shows what an amazing man he was. How he worked people, how he took the long view, and as president in a time of great strife he could still maintain his humor.

Unbroken:  A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption (Laura Hillenbrand) - True story of an Olympic runner who went to Hitler's Olympics, fought in the Pacific, and as a prisoner went through unbelievable pain and suffering. Even more fascinating given that the author of this book is basically housebound.

The Passion of the Western Mind (Richard Tarnas)

For Whom the Bell Tolls (Ernest Hemingway) - Masterly writing with superb, spare dialog and compelling characters, worth its place as a classic of American writing. 

Telegraph Avenue (Michael Chabon)

Letters to a Young Poet (Rainer Maria Rilke)

The Yiddish Policemen's Union (Michael Chabon)

The Arab Invasion of Egypt (Alfred Butler) - A story of religious battles, both intra Christian (e.g., Coptic v Melkite) and Christian v Islam. I picked this book up due to a conversation with an Islamic taxi driver who told me that this story showed that true Islam is tolerant. Turns out to be more complicated than that, but with some truth to it. 'Amr, sent by Caliphate Omar to conquer Egypt and take it away from the Romans was a just and fair leader, but he was also a religious conqueror. Hard read, interesting history.

Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush (Jon Meacham) - Interesting, but in the end both depressing and annoying.  Meacham's respect for his subject makes this book deferential, but what is particularly annoying is the respect that extends to George W. Bush, both by his father and by Meacham. Bush the elder isn't held accountable enough for shifting positions on key issues nor for dirty politics such as Willie Horton. And W is treated like a great president, with both father and son blaming Cheney for the horrible legacies of his presidency.

Here's the fundamental model that Eyal walks readers through:

Trigger – The actuator of behavior.  Can be external (e.g., e-mail notification or an icon on a canvas that the user is looking at) or internal (e.g., self motivated desire to do something despite a lack of an external trigger, like thinking of going to a coffee shop).

Action – A behavior done in anticipation of a reward, which can be just a sense of accomplishment.  A combination of an action being easy to accomplish and being tied in some way to a reward is what’s key here.

Variable Reward – After you are triggered to do something and take action, what will help to make this path habitual for you is that it’s not groundhog day all over again.  You get some good surprise via variability.  Think how in Facebook or in Pinterest you don’t know exactly what you’ll see when you boot the app; it depends on what friends and strangers have been up to.

Investment – This is the final lock in to getting you really hooked, when you yourself put some investment into the system.  In Pinterest you make your own collections, in Facebook and in LinkedIn you gather contacts, accept invites, send out invites, and place other collateral into the system.

Some highlights from this book:

• To some degree, this is just another spin on the heart of Geoffrey Moore’s 4 gears.  Moore has Acquire, Engage, and Enlist as three of his gears.  Think of this book as providing a recipe that especially speaks to Engage and Enlist, and in particular how to get users to keep coming back.

• The Evernote example.  Evernote is cited as an example of how to leverage habit-forming experiences that can increase usage over time, which then increases the willingness of customers to pay.  It’s free to use, but you have to pay for features such as offline viewing and collaboration tools, “which many devoted users are happy to pay.”  CEO Phil Libin is quoted as saying that only .05 percent of users pay after one month of using Evernote, but if you can keep them around until month 33, you can get 11 percent to pay, and at month 42 you can get 26 percent to pay.

• Speed is an important attribute of virality.  David Skok is cited as talking about Viral Cycle Time.  (see info on Viral Cycle Time and on the Viral Coefficient here.) Viral Cycle Time is the amount of time it takes a user to invite another user, and adjusting the cycle time has exponential impact.  “For example, after 20 days with a cycle time of two days, you will have 20,470 users…But if you halved that cycle time to one day, you would have over 20 million users!”  (the math for the previous statement is based on starting with 10 customers, they each send out 10 invites, having a 20% conversion rate of those invites, and having a viral coefficient of 2)

• Driving users to change behavior.  We know that users/humans typically resist change, but there is an interesting citation of John Gourville that “many innovations fail because consumers irrationally overvalue the old while companies irrationally overvalue the new.”  And he makes the statement that to get users to adopt something new, it doesn’t have to be twice or even three times as good…it has to be at least nine times better. 

• Habits form at the intersection of high frequency and high perceived utility.  Get someone to get value out of something and to get that value frequently, and you’ll form habits.  Google for search and Amazon for shopping.  At Microsoft, our aspiration needs to be that when users think of getting some digital work done, they think Office (of course!)

• “Are you building a vitamin or a painkiller.”  Painkillers solve a rather urgent need, to kill pain.  Vitamins don’t have such an obvious, short path to utility.  It’s more obvious who’s in need of painkillers (people in pain!) and not so obvious who’ll ‘need’ vitamins.  As such, vitamins are more of an impulse, emotional purchase rather than a needed, functional purchase.  The interesting part of this insight, though, is shifting the perception of a vitamin so that it’s seen as a painkiller.  Huh?  Before Facebook existed, people didn’t need it.  But once they started using it, those who became hooked did feel they needed it.  Hardcore NFL fans 20 years ago didn’t need to see the draft realtime, but today they do.  It’s an easier road to get Outlook to be a needed addiction than Word or PowerPoint, but perhaps if the Office service can become more ubiquitous and more social, that can drive Office more into the realm of painkiller.

• Getting at the root of problems or motivations - 5 Why’s. Made famous by Toyota in their drive for quality production is the technique of delving into root causes by asking ‘Why?’ repeatedly.   Eyal in this book provides an example of getting at human motivation for a potential target user:
  
  Why #1:  Why would Julie want to use e-mail?
  Answer #1:  So she can send and receive messages.
  Why #2:  Why would she want to do that?
  Answer #2:  Because she wants to share and receive information quickly
  Why #3:  Why does she want to do that?
  Answer #3:  To know what’s going on in the lives of her coworkers, friends, and family.
  Why #4:  Why does she need to know that?
  Answer #4:  To know if someone needs her.
  Why #5:  Why would she care about that?
  Answer #5:  She fears being out of the loop.
  
  You can see that continuous digging in the same vein provides much richer information that can help with design and marketing decisions around a product or service.

• B=MAT.  Fogg Behavior Model states that behavior (B) requires the entirety of motivation (M), ability (A), and trigger (T).  If someone is trying to call you on the phone, any one of these breakdowns from dial time to pickup time mean there won’t be a phone call:
  
  Ability breakdown:  you hear the ring but you’re busy and can’t answer
  Trigger breakdown:  you don’t hear the ring cuz you left your phone at work
  Motivation breakdown:  caller ID shows it’s your crazy ex spouse
  
  Related to the Ability part of the equation, Evan Williams, co-founder of Twitter, has a quote that is very relevant to anyone designing a software solution for humans:  “Take a human desire, preferably one that has been around for a really long time…Identify that desire and use modern technology to take out the steps.”

• Endowed Progress Effect.  The heuristics and perceptions part of the book has a lot of really interesting things about how humans perceive things.  The Endowed Progress Effect is very relevant to Office functionality.  Basically, if people get a jumpstart on a task, they are more likely to keep going.  We can do that with templates, for example, and LinkedIn does it with profile, with a key being to provide even just a perception of progress at the start.
  
  As an example, I just went into a LinkedIn discussion that I have no idea why I’m on it, but the prompt from LinkedIn shows me I’ve already made progress in contributing and all I have to do is start commenting.
   

• “But you are free…”  There is research relating to providing offers where the user isn’t feeling forced or coerced.  Just use the words “but you are free to…” as a message that they can decline an offer, and people are much more willing to actually accept it.  For us, this is why it’s important for reduced friction in getting into our service but also keeping a promise that people can easily cancel at any time.

A chronicle of Tony Hsieh’s life that leads up to him investing in, then building and running the Zappos “cult,” helping to growth hack from a startup idea to a $1B business acquired by Amazon.  He out-Amazons Amazon when it comes to providing a customer-centric online retail business, which is likely why Amazon not only acquired the company but also have let it continue to operate as a standalone entity.

Hsieh has the right mixture of drive, smarts, laziness, moxie, and openness to learning and new ideas to be a charismatic and dynamic leader.  Out-of-the-box thinking was demonstrated in a high school Shakespeare class where he used Morse code to follow the rhyming and syllabic stress rules in doing an assignment to write a poem in iambic pentameter.  Lazy, clever…brilliant.

Out of college he went to work at Oracle, hated it, and quit.  He created LinkExchange, an ad platform company that had a viral aspect to it, built that into a company which he sold to Microsoft for $265M, but more importantly he learned a lot of lessons about how not to build a business.  Hanging around Microsoft to “vest in peace” and get paid millions basically to do nothing was also something he hated, and quit.  He went into investing in startups, plus learning to play (and win) at poker, before pouring all his life’s learnings into running Zappos.

Why is it worth reading this book?

• The importance of a company culture.  Zappos success can be traced to how it hires and how it runs a people-centric business.  His belief is that company culture=brand:  “…we ultimately came to the realization that a company’s culture and a company’s brands are really just two sides of the same coin.  The brand is just a lagging indicator of a company’s culture.”

• You can only deliver great experiences to customers if you have happy employees.  He strives to have happy employees and happy partners and happy vendors, and only then feels he can really deliver happiness to customers.

• Inclusiveness, transparency, crowd sourcing.  The Zappos Culture Book is an example of these attributes combining for a concrete deliverable.  “’You know what?’ I said.  ‘We should just ask all of our employees to write a few paragraphs about what the Zappos culture means to them, and compile it into a book.’…We wanted to be as transparent as possible, so we decided that none of the entries would be censored or edited, except for typos…While the vast majority of the entries in our first culture book were positive, we also learned that not every employee was thrilled…”  And they built on this idea to crowdsourcing/feedback loop even further, having vendors, partners, and customers also contribute to the effort over time.

• A key lesson from poker:  First, choose your table.  “In a poker room at a casino, there are usually many different choices of tables.  Each table has different stakes, different players, and different dynamics that change as the players come and go, and as players get excited, upset, or tired.  I learned that the most important decision I could make was which table to site at.  This included knowing when to change tables.”  He makes the point that in business you can not only choose to play at an existing table with other players, you can also think about how to create a new table, e.g., Southwest airlines creating a new market by going after people who weren’t yet airline users.

• A key Zappos breakthrough came from being in dire financial straits, and using that as an opportunity to focus on customer service.  “Nick, Fred, and I looked at other areas in the business where we could try to cut expenses.  Even though it would hurt our growth, we decided to cut most of our marketing expenses, and refocused our efforts on trying to get the customer who had already bought from us to purchase again and more frequently.  Little did we know that this was actually a blessing in disguise, as it forced us to focus more on delivering better customer service.  In 2003, we would decide to make customer service the focus of the company.”

• Don’t outsource core competency.  Zappos found out the hard way, when they hired a company called eLogistics to take care of inventory and shipping, and then spent lots of time and money backing out of that deal.  Control your destiny by controlling all the parts of the business that are key to your success.

• Any customer touch is an opportunity to build a relationship.  “Too many companies think of their call centers as an expense to minimize.  We believe that it’s a huge untapped opportunity for most companies, not only because it can result in word-of-mouth marketing, but because of its potential to increase the lifetime value of the customer…We view the lifetime value of a customer to be a moving target that can increase if we can create more and more positive emotional associations with our brand through every interaction that a person has with us.”

• Little everyday things matter when it comes to building human connections.  For example, we have all of our employees walk through a central reception area to get in and out of the building even though there are more convenient doors located closer to the parking lot…We made this decision when we moved into our building as part of our goal to build more of a community by increasing the chances of serendipitous employee interactions.”  You’ll also see this importance of workspace design at other forward-thinking companies, such as Pixar.

How does Zappos hire and train?

• Hire people you’d want to hang out with.  “To keep our culture strong, we wanted to make sure that we only hired people who we would also enjoy hanging out with outside the office.  As it turned out, many of the best ideas came about while having drinks at a local bar.”

• Start with weeks of training to immerse employees in the same experience getting started, learning the company, and actively participating in working with customers.  “After hiring, the next step to building the culture is training.  Everyone that is hired into our headquarters goes through the same training that our Customer Loyalty Team (call center) reps go through, regardless of department or title.  You might be an accountant, or a lawyer, or a software developer – you go through the exact same training program.  It’s a 4-week training program, in which we go over company history, the importance of customer service, the long-term vision of the company, our philosophy about company culture – and then you’re actually on the phone for 2 weeks, taking calls from customers.”  Then they offer anyone who wants to quit at that point a multi thousand dollar bonus to do so; almost nobody takes that offer.

• Required reading from a company library.  Hsieh and a colleague traded e-mail about good business books to read, which led to the idea of creating a small library to share among employees.  “Five years later, there would be a hundred titles in our lobby available for free to all of our employees and visitors.  Many of the books would eventually become required reading for our employees to help them pursue growth and learning, and Zappos would even offer classes to go over some of the more popular books.”

What he learned from his experience building a company (too) quickly

LinkExchange was a web advertising business that had freemium and viral attributes.  To build the company from scratch, he started enlisting his network of friends, but then started to hire “almost any warm body who was willing to work for us and hadn’t done more than six months of jail time…It was a strange feeling to be walking around the office and seeing people I didn’t recognize…At the time, I didn’t think it was necessarily a bad thing…But looking back, it should have been a huge warning sign for what was to come.  The short story is that we simply didn’t know we should have paid more attention to our company culture.”

What they lost by only thinking of hiring smart and capable people was the importance of cultural and the right shared reasons for joining the company. 

Hsieh lost passion himself, to the tune of being willing to walk away from millions of dollars by not being willing to stick around and work on LinkExchange after it was acquired by Microsoft.  Although he definitely thinks about how to make money from ventures, he also has shown that that alone isn’t enough for him; he’s got to believe in what he’s doing.

What does a rave have to do with running a business?

Going to raves when they were really community gatherings about PLUR (peace, love, unity, respect) taught Hsieh about creating happiness from having a shared purpose as a community.  He applies this to how he runs Zappos.

What does poker have to do with running a business?

In the book, Hsieh has 2+ pages devoted to points of how you can take lessons from playing poker and apply them to business, including:

• Evaluating Market Opportunities (e.g., choosing which table to play at)

• Marketing and Branding (e.g., acting weak when strong, and vice versa)

• Financials (e.g., measure the right things; if you just measure by how many hands you lose or win you’re unlikely to maximize your financial opportunity)

• Strategy (e.g., don’t play games you don’t understand, don’t cheat, stick to your principles, hope is not a good plan)

• Continual Learning (e.g., read books, learn by doing, don’t be afraid to ask for advice)

• Culture (e.g., don’t be cocky, share what you’ve learned with others, have fun)

How he was lazy…and learned about the power of crowdsourcing

In college, he enrolled in a Bible class to fulfill a core requirement.  He had no interest in the subject, to the point where he didn’t even want to go to class.  The course was graded on a single final exam, and the professor passed out a list of 100 possible topics for the exam two weeks prior, stating that only 5 of them would be chosen for the final exam.  There was no time to do all the reading, so Hsieh used an electronic newsgroup to recruit fellow students to participate in his scheme, which was that each student would be assigned three topics to research and summarize, Hsieh would compile them all and sell the compiled binder back to all participants for a $20 fee, and therefore they’d all have the ammo to answer any possible question but each only had to research 3.  And Hsieh made a profit.  He calls it “the most comprehensive study guide that had ever been created, and that everyone found useful.”

Great quotes in the book

• When he knew he was wrongly accused of stealing in high school and trusted that just telling the truth was enough but ended up wrongly accused:  “…sometimes the truth alone isn’t enough, and that presentation of the truth was just as important as the truth.”

• He was doing growth hacking before there was such a term.  “Looking back [on the early days at Zappos], a lot of our growth happened that way.  We’d just throw ideas against the wall to see if they’d stick, improvise, and make it happen.”

• “Envision, create, and believe in your own universe, and the universe will form around you.”  Said to him by an anonymous party-goer after he had created an awesome party.

• “You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.”  Jon Kabat-Zinn

• “Realize that it’s okay to fire customers who are insatiable or abuse your employees.”

The John Stuart Mill quote above contains great words to live by personally, and it’s also insightful when it comes to us trying to deliver happiness (or some reasonable facsimile) to our customers.  That is, choose a focus of creating the right, great productivity experiences and let the satisfaction indicators derive from that.

Some insights from this book:

• How to think about self-rports of happiness and similar emotions/attitudes (which is generally how companies track customer satisfaction)

• How the human brain works relating to happiness

• The fact that desiring something and liking something aren’t the same.  In fact, people often desire (and therefore choose) to do things that ultimately won’t maximize what they’d like to do and that therefore could drive more happiness

• Immediate, short-term pleasure may derive less long term happiness than, say, taking on a big hard challenge and ending up with a sense of accomplishment.

• For anyone running a service for customers:  With support calls (and other ways to help disgruntled customers), we have an opportunity to turn around negative perceptions.  Following up bad experiences with friendly help could result in an overall positive experience, as perceived by our customers

Late in the book, Nettle summarizes his points thusly:

• People generally report being more happy than unhappy overall, even in poor countries and even within contexts such as being unemployed or bereaved.  But…

• People generally aren’t completely happy, and generally think they will attain more happiness in the future

• A lot of the assessment of current happiness is about how people compare themselves to those around them.  E.g., once you earn enough to be above poverty, the amount of money you make has little or no absolute correlation to happiness.  Rather, it’s whether you make more or less relative to those around you that will drive whether you’re happy with your salary.

There’s a significant difference between the afterglow of big positive events and the shadow of big negative events.  It takes longer to get over the negative than what benefit you derive from positive events, and people tend to fixate longer on negative than positive events in their lives.

Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope. 1857

Anthony Trollope has recently become more popular, and this book is good evidence why this should be so.  Part of a series focused on people within the Church of England and their lives in and out of the church, the writing feels fresh and full of humor, while also being very much of its time.  In an age of manners within a rigorous class system, Trollope pokes fun at various levels and has all sorts of allusions to politics and current evens of the day (mid 19th century England).

A new bishop shows up to replace one who just died, he brings with him an ambitious and somewhat slimey chaplain, plus his ambitious wife.  Because she is both attractive and wealthy, the widow Mrs. Eleanor Bold becomes a target of the chaplain, Mr. Slope, as well as of a ne'er do well slacker.  Mrs. Bold's father gets caught up in one of Slope's schemes, the bishop's wife and Slope are at war with each other, and then we meet Mr. Arabin who ends up as yet another suitor for Mrs. Bold's affections.  Not to mention another character who enjoys manipulating all those around here, the beautiful but crippled La Signora Madeline Vesey Neroni.

With all these and many other characters, Trollope masterfully moves the story along.