Sunday, November 22, 2009
Dane Kennedy’s quick-sketch biography of Richard Burton takes an unusual, but ultimately very fruitful, approach. Instead of concentrating like so many of Burton’s biographers on the man and his many accomplishments, Kennedy locates Burton firmly within the Victorian world, using Burton’s multi-faceted life to illustrate and probe into that world. While Kennedy is first and [...]
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Every American citizen, as well as anyone who is financially invested in America, should read this book. I think that people generally know that America’s time at the top is coming to an end, the usual cheerleading notwithstanding. The collapse of the housing bubble is just the latest manifestation of America’s mania for spending more [...]
I think I like Richard Preston’s stuff even better than I like his brother Douglas’. Richard tends to write more in the way of dramatized real-life stories than novels, and he’s very good at it. The Hot Zone, for example, will make your blood freeze a bit if you take the time to understand what [...]
First, let’s be clear about what this book is: a guide for entrepreneurs (which is what the “E” in the title stands for, not anything to do with the Internet) on how to make their small businesses function better. And there is some good advice in here. Michael C. Gerber’s insights into treating your business [...]
This is a very interesting book. Sub-titled “The Impact of the Highly Improbable”, it deals with our (in)ability to predict events, and the meaning that this has for people in their non-everyday lives. Taleb is an elegant and wide-ranging writer, and the book is full of pithy quotes (“Doubting the consequences of an outcome will [...]
This is a quick but well-researched read into the life and times of one Nick Zappetti, ex-pat New Yorker and would be yakuza/mafioso. The book deals with the half-century after the war in Japan, and Zappetti’s activities along the way to becoming one of the most successful (and heavily investigated) foreigners in Japan. Along the [...]
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Michael Lewis has written a well-crafted and entertaining book. It’s laugh-out-loud funny in places, with that special sort of humor that seems only to be found in sports. But make no mistake, this is a book that raises some very serious questions for anyone interested in baseball. The author’s thesis is this: traditional “wisdom” about [...]
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Tim Ferriss is a smart guy, he’s done a lot in a relatively short time, and he seems like he’s got a sense of humor. The 4-Hour Workweek is well-written, has a lot of good information, and addresses a real problem in today’s society. But for all that, something about the book seems a little [...]
Thursday, November 22, 2007
It’s been a long time since I just purely enjoyed a book as much as this one. First, HarperCollins did a great job with the overall look and feel of the book. It’s bound in a sort of black faux-leather, has a bright red bookmark ribbon attached, and the pages are edged in gold. If [...]
Sunday, September 9, 2007
I had two very different reactions to this book. One was good, the other not so good. The good reaction was about some of the comments that author Robert Kiyosaki made concerning the lack of financial education in America. His point, which I absolutely agree with, is that there isn’t any. Nowhere in school do [...]
Thursday, August 30, 2007
This is the fourth or fifth time I’ve read Mark Salzman’s charming debut novel, and it’s still just as delightful as I remember it. The book recounts Salzman’s two years of teaching English in China in 1982-84, and it is one of the best and most honest of the “English teacher in Asia” type books [...]
The Tipping Point has generated enough publicity and buzz that there really isn’t much I can add to what’s already been said. I found it to be a very interesting book, especially the chapter on fighting subway crime in New York City via the elimination of graffiti. Apparently there are lots of people out there [...]
Subtitled “The World in the Age of Terrorism”, this book is a collection of essays and diary entries by New York Times Foreign Correspondent Thomas L. Friedman. When you’ve won the Pulitzer Prize three times, you deserve to have people listen to what you have to say. But I wonder about that subtitle. If it [...]
Ah, Trevanian. It’s such an unalloyed pleasure to read him. I think that Trevanian may be my favorite author of all time. The words flow smoothly across the page, the story unfolds with an elegance that reminds one of the great fin-de-siecle writers, he evokes humor and pathos with equal élan, he can write in [...]
It only takes one book like Practical Programming to expose what you see in the mainstream “fitness” magazines for the ridiculous crap that it is. This book sets out what you need to know in order to get strong. And it’s laid out in a pleasingly straightforward fashion, with none of the “Get hyoooge!!!!” hype [...]