Archive | Book Reviews

And now for something completely different. This is a book I purchased probably 20 or 30 years ago, intended to read, and now finally have. It was first published in 1966, while the edition I’ve got, with wonderful illustrations, was published in 1987. When I was in high school, I was really into cars. In […]

Within the last ten years, there has been a lot of focus on companies with recurring revenue or using a subscription model. In tech, early in the conversation about a company’s financials, someone is going to ask what the MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue) or the ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue) is. The subscription model has always […]

This is not a new book, having been published in 2008. Sometimes I like to go back and read a book that has been around for a while, partially because I just want to, and partially I want to see whether the author’s premise has withstood the test of time. That’s why I usually wait […]

Daniel Pink is one of America’s most successful writers, rivaling Malcolm Gladwell and Michael Lewis. I haven’t read all his books, but I have read Free Agent Nation, Drive, To Sell is Human and When. Every one of those I’ve read has been excellent and he continues his string of hits with his latest offering, […]

This new book by Tristram Hunt, is a biography of Josiah Wedgwood, the Founder of the famous Wedgwood Pottery works, the maker of fine china for over 250 years. The book was published in fall of 2021. Even before the current Wedgwood company was founded, the Wedgwood family had been potters for over 200 years. […]

Seven million is the number that has been put on the labor shortage currently in America. Every business I know is having difficulty finding skilled labor. Why? And why is this true for every industry and in every geography? Why are there so many unemployed while there are so many job openings? This is an […]

Once at a mixer, the host asked us to pick the one person we would like to meet from history. It was an interesting way to break the ice. I would pick Leonardo da Vinci, who I’ve long considered the ultimate Renaissance Man. But I really didn’t know much about Leonardo until I read this […]

This is the latest book by Bob Woodward, who first entered the American consciousness with All the President’s Men, the story of the Watergate scandal, in 1974. Peril is his 20th book, four with co-authors, including Robert Costa on this book. Both authors are journalists with the Washington Post. I preordered this book prior to […]

Bad Blood is subtitled, Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup. This is the story of Theranos, the blood testing company started by a 19-year-old Stanford dropout, Elizabeth Holmes, and now called the biggest fraud since Enron. I started reading this book, by Wall Street Journal writer John Carreyrou, in August, not knowing that […]

I read every book that Malcolm Gladwell writes. This is his latest. It is a diversion from his usual topics, most of which are based on social science. This one is about something he has touched on in his podcast, Revisionist History, and is a topic he is particularly fascinated with. That topic being war […]