Thanks to everyone who helped make 2007 a great year for 800-CEO-READ.
To all the customers, authors, readers, agents, publicists, editors, and marketers, thank you.
-The gang
December 31, 2007
December 28, 2007
More Kudos For Michael Gates Gill
In the Wall Street Journal’s Best Books of 2007, deputy books editor Mark Lasswell calls out Michael Gates Gill’s How Starbucks Saved My Life saying:
At 63, Michael Gates Gill, father of five, found himself out of work, divorced, and nearly broke–not quite what he expected when he was growing up on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, the son of New Yorker writer Brendan Gill. But then Mr. Gill found a life raft in the form of an unlikely job, as he relates in the memoir How Starbucks Saved My Life.
Lasswell also mentions My Secret Life on the McJob: Lessons from Behind the Counter Guaranteed to Supersize Any Management Style by college professor Jerry Newman. I missed this one initially and am going to go back to check it out. The premise reminds me of Alex Frankel’s Punching Out, which came out last month.
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Book Excerpt – Bull in China
From: A Bull in China by Jim Rogers
This is from Rogers’ current book in which he examines the growth and future of the Chinese economy. He just didn’t stumble upon this, he first came upon China’s importance in the world back in 1984 on his motorcycle tour around the world. Rogers has been following this certain country’s growth and development for some time. Take a look at just one of the many things he has noticed:
With a growth rate averaging 9 percent since the start of the 1980s, the value of the Chinese economy has pretty much doubled each decade, and shows few signs of stopping.
If projections hold, China will surpass the United States as the world’s largest economy within twenty years. On top of that, China attracted nearly US$70 billion in direct foreign investment during 2006, which, combined with its trade surplus, has brought Beijing’s foreign-currency reserves above US$1.3 trillion (now the larget in the world). In one astounding decade, China’s manufacturing base for durable goods increased one hundredfold.
But all those heavy numbers are just a starting point. Sleek office towers and assembly lines rising from rice paddies don’t mean as much as China’s immeasurable advances in civil conduct, internationalized awareness, and opportunities for achievement. In urban areas, the traditional greeting “Have you eaten today?” has been replaced by “Have you surfed the Net today?” Chinese executives, engineers, artists, athletes, and designers are already leading the world into “the Chinese century”.
FYI: Rogers’ book Hot Commodities has just been published in paperback!
Other Jim Rogers books include:
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December 27, 2007
Dip into Seth's Meatball Sundae: it's available.
With all the hype and Meatball Mondae blog posts, we’ve been waiting for this book. Seth’s latest is now available!
Check out Squidoo to find excerpts and riffs from the book. And MarketingProfs is hosting Seth for a 60 minute, live web broadcast on January 3rd. You can sign up here [details fixed; thanks Shelley!].
And, meet Seth, the action figure with different colored socks:
[Psst...a little bird told me a ChangeThis manifesto is in the works. Stay tuned; the next issue to be published on the 16th.]
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MIT Author's New Job
Author, artist, and technologist John Maeda has been named president of Rhode Island School of Design.
His video announcement is worth a look.
His latest book The Laws of Simplicity provides 10 Laws and 3 Keys described in his self-imposed limit of 100 pages.
I pulled it back out for another look as we head into the new year.
[hat tip: TP Blog]
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Jack speaks with The Cranky Middle Manager Show on notable books in 2007.
For the second year in a row, Wayne Turmel over at the Cranky Middle Manager Show spoke with Jack on some of the books nominated for our awards. A number of our award nominees were interviewed by Wayne at various points throughout the year. You can find the interviews here.
Thanks Wayne and best of luck with the new venture!
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strategy + business Best Books of 2007
The folks over at strategy + business have chosen what they consider the best business books of the year. There were eight categories, and each one was assigned to an expert in that field for review. Each reviewer also delivered an essay on the books chosen, and they are all good reads. The categories were Behavioral Theory, Biography, Biotech, Capitalism, The Entrepreneurs, Human Capital, Innovation, and Strategy. If you’d like to learn more about the the reviewers, or would like to read their essays, you can find all of that on their website (membership is free). Here I will just list the books chosen, putting “s+p’s Top Shelf” in bold and starring the books that made our shortlist as well.
Behavioral Theory: reviewed by Howard Rheingold
Crowd of One: The Future of Individual Identity by John Henry Clippinger, PublicAffairs
*Everything Is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder by David Weinberger, Times Books
The Social Atom: Why the Rich Get Richer, Cheaters Get Caught, and Your Neighbor Usually Looks Like You by Mark Buchanan, Bloomsbury USA
Biography: reviewed by James O’Toole
Andrew Carnegie by David Nasaw, Penguin Press
Andy Grove: The Life and Times of an American by Richard S. Tedlow, Portfolio
The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World by Randall Stross, Crown
Biotech: reviewed by by Joe Flower
Intervention: Confronting the Real Risks of Genetic Engineering and Life on a Biotech Planet by Denise Caruso, Hybrid Vigor Press
Science Business: The Promise, the Reality, and the Future of Biotech by Gary P. Pisano, Harvard Business School Press
Capitalism: reviewed by Diane Coyle
Good Capitalism, Bad Capitalism, and the Economics of Growth and Prosperity by William J. Baumol, Robert E. Litan, & Carl J. Schramm, Yale University Press
*Grande Expectations: A Year in the Life of Starbucks’ Stock by Karen Blumenthal, Crown Business
The Most Important Fish in the Sea by Bruce Franklin, Island Press
The New Capitalists:How Citizen Investors Are Reshaping the Corporate Agenda by Stephen Davis, Jon Lukomnik, & David Pitt-Watson, Harvard Business School Press
Prophet of Innovation: Joseph Schumpeter and Creative Destruction by Thomas K. McCraw, Belknap Press
The Entrepreneurs: reviewed by Tom Ehrenfeld
Founders at Work: Stories of Startups’ Early Days by Jessica Livingston, Apress
Mommy Millionaire: How I Turned My Kitchen Table Idea into a Million Dollars, and How You Can, Too! by Kim Lavine, St. Martin’s Press
*No Man’s Land: What to Do When Your Company Is Too Big to Be Small but Too Small to Be Big by Doug Tatum, Portfolio
*Typo: The Last American Typesetter, or How I Made and Lost 4 Million Dollars by David Silverman, Soft Skull Press
Human Capital: reviewed by R. Gopalakrishnan
30 Reasons Employees Hate Their Managers: What Your People May Be Thinking and What You Can Do about It by Bruce L. Katcher with Adam Snyder, AMACOM
Ego Check: Why Executive Hubris Is Wrecking Companies and Careers and How to Avoid the Trap by Mathew Hayward, Kaplan Business
Five Minds for the Future by Howard Gardner, Harvard Business School Press
Hot Spots: Why Some Teams, Workplaces, and Organizations Buzz with Energy — and Others Don’t by Lynda Gratton, Berrett-Koehler
The Truth about Being a Leader… and Nothing But the Truth by Karen Otazo, FT Press
Innovation: reviewed by Michael Schrage
Brilliant! Shuji Nakamura and the Revolution in Lighting Technology by Bob Johnstone, Prometheus Books
Dreaming in Code: Two Dozen Pro-grammers, Three Years, 4,732 Bugs, and One Quest for Transcendent Software by Scott Rosenberg, Crown Books
The Myths of Innovation by Scott Berkun, O’Reilly Media
Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design by Bill Buxton, Morgan Kaufmann
Strategy: reviewed by David Newkirk
Dragons at Your Door: How Chinese Cost Innovation Is Disrupting Global Competition by Ming Zeng & Peter J. Williamson, Harvard Business School Press
Strategic Intuition: The Creative Spark in Human Achievement by William Duggan, Columbia University Press
The Strategy Paradox: Why Committing to Success Leads to Failure (and What to Do about It) by Michael E. Raynor, Doubleday
Unstoppable: Finding Hidden Assets to Renew the Core and Fuel Profitable Growth by Chris Zook, Harvard Business School Press
Wal-Smart: What It Really Takes to Profit in a Wal-Mart World by William H. Marquard, McGraw-Hill
We’re big fans of the strategy + business list and the essays they include each year. Todd has written a post on the list each year dating back to 2003. If you’re interested in what titles they’ve chosen in the past, I’ve linked to those posts below.
2006
2005
2004
2003
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December 26, 2007
Five Books from 2007: Wikinomics, Halo Effect, Firing Back, one on Starbucks and a Fable.
Carol Hymowitz over at the WSJ shared her list of business books for holiday reading (you may need to log in). On it, were these books:
Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything by Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams.
This is what we’ve all been talking about in the past few years and even more so since the rise of Wikipedia. What’s the future of mass collaboration and how is it changing what we do? Here’s an introduction to our new wiki-ed world. For more, join Don, Anthony and friends over at their blog.
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The Halo Effect … and the Eight Other Business Delusions That Deceive Managers by Phil Rosenzweig.
One controversial title of the year as Phil debates the merits of many well-known business titles: Good to Great and In Search of Excellence. As Carol explains, “The Halo Effect is for executives who aren’t looking for a quick-fix prescription and who understand that winning depends on knowing one’s own company and on executing smart decisions well — with a little
luck mixed in.” For the record, Tom Ehrenfeld highly recommends checking it out. And, a link to Phil’s blog plus a ChangeThis manifesto Phil wrote.
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The Three Signs of a Miserable Job by Patrick Lencioni.
Here’s a good airplane read and another of the Lencioni fables. The three signs of a miserable job: irrelevance, immeasurability, and anonymity. Even if you’re not a friend of fables, check out the back portion for the guts of the book.
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Firing Back — How Great Leaders Rebound After Career Disasters by Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and Andrew Ward.
The title is self-explanatory. How do you get back up and revamp your career? By the way, Jeffrey was recently in a Fortune article.
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How Starbucks Saved My Life by Michael Gates Gill
This past fall, Michael visited us in Milwaukee. Jon had a chance to interview him. This is Michael’s story of how he went from having everything to working at Starbucks — quite a humbling experience.
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Yes, Reading is Sexy.
Last week we gave Jack a Christmas present. You see, long before our beloved Jack founded this crazy entity now known as 800-CEO-READ and became an author, he ran a record store with his wife Ann. [Local Milwaukeeans out there can probably recall his nickname.] And so, we gave him 45 RPM: A Visual History of the Seven-Inch Record.
The book was accompanied by this pencil (a testament to the hipness of booksellers and readers).
Yes, reading is sexy. Thanks for reminding us BuyOlympia.com.
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December 21, 2007
Friday Links
Tis the last Friday before the holidays and all through the office
Here’s what we found while surfing the web this week:
Enjoy!
Independent Booksellers’ Picks: The best in fiction!
Ever wonder if you should be drinking that much water or reading in bright light? Here’s 7 Medical Myths that even doctors believe.
What would the holidays be like without Dolly Parton?? The little songstress is going on a European tour and promoting literacy through her Imagination Library program. Read more about her UK invansion here.
Pat Evans, author of SalesBurst, is giving 50% of his book’s net profits to something dear to his heart.
For all you travel bugs out there – check into this: Travel Game! It’s quite addictive, so settle in and see how much you know about our small world, after all…
Hey! What’s going on with pals Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart?
NFL Players help out retired NFL brothers in dire need during this Sunday’s game.
Feeling blue during the winter season? Try This
– - – That
Ever wonder about one of the most beloved games in American culture?
Have a fun and safe holiday season!
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