Strictly Business:
The Monk and The Riddle, The Education of a Silicon Valley Entrepreneur, by Randy Komisar. If you want someone to help fund your business, this is a must read. It’s about a angel in the valley who helps entrepreneurs. Its a quick fictional read. Can Funerals.com succeed?
Working Stiff’s Manifesto by Ian Levison
Levison is a “modern-day Tom Joad” who, over the last decade, has worked 42 jobs in six different states, including mover, fish cutter, cook, caterer and cable TV thief. By in America. Levison imagines himself a new breed of itinerant laborer a college graduate with a $40,000 English degree. His America is a desperate and brutal country, a place where you’re hired with a promise of insurance after 90 days, then fired on the 89th; where criminals beat each other to a pulp in Alaska fisheries, and truckers make fraudulent entries in their logbooks in order to keep up with impossible schedules
Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By, by Barbara Ehrenreich
Essayist and cultural critic Barbara Ehrenreich has always specialized in turning received wisdom on its head with intelligence, clarity, and verve. With some 12 million women being pushed into the labor market by welfare reform, she decided to do some good old-fashioned journalism and find out just how they were going to survive on the wages of the unskilled–at $6 to $7 an hour, only half of what is considered a living wage. So she did what millions of Americans do, she looked for a job and a place to live, worked that job, and tried to make ends meet.
The Victorian Internet, by Tom Standage
Imagine an almost instantaneous communication system that would allow people and governments all over the world to send and receive messages about politics, war, illness, and family events. The government has tried and failed to control it, and its revolutionary nature is trumpeted loudly by its backers. The Internet? Nope, the humble telegraph fit this bill way back in the 1800s. The parallels between the now-ubiquitous Internet and the telegraph are amazing, offering insight into the ways new technologies can change the very fabric of society within a single generation.
Devil Takes the Hindmost, by Ed Chancellor
“The longest bull market in history” is a term that gets used a lot these days. Since 1990, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has risen some 8,000 points, from around 2,700 in January 1990 to nearly 11,000 today–a boom by anyone’s standards, including Edward Chancellor’s. In Devil Take the Hindmost, Chancellor takes an entertaining, albeit sobering, look at the history of speculative manias and the mass delusion that surrounds them. Beginning with the “tulipomania” that gripped Holland in the 1630s, Chancellor chronicles the formations and irrational euphoria that can inflate markets, from shares of South Sea stock in England in the 1720s to real estate in Japan in the late 1980s
Searching for direction in your business or personal life?
“Stumbling Towards Enlightment”, by Geri Larkin. She is a Zen Buddhist monk that used to work for Deloitte and Touche. It’s Zen through a business person’s brain so even I got it.
Sacred Hoops, by Phil Jackson. One of the best NBA coaches ever. This book is suppose to be about basketball. Its really how to get the most out of any team of people.
Leading with Soul, by Bolman and Deal. Great book if you feel that you are a leader that has lost their way. Join the crowd.
Tuesdays with Morrie, by Mitch Albom. I went to school at Brandeis with both this student and teacher. Forget the movie, read the book. It will make you appreciate what you have.
When Things Fall Apart, by Pema Chodren. Being an entrepreneur is about ups and downs. For all those times, this is the book.
The Year 1000, By Robert Lacey. What was life like before the Internet? and cars, electricity, e-mail, Palms, Cell phones?. A fascinating perspective at our lives at the Year 2000.
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