June « 2010 « 800 CEO Read

June 16, 2010

Jack Covert Selects: The Upside of Irrationality

Filed under: Jack Covert Selects — 800-CEO-READ @ 9:11 am

The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Home and at Work by Dan Ariely, Harper, 330 Pages, $27.99 Hardcover, June 2010, ISBN 9780061995033

One of the hardest things to do is to follow up a great success with another one. The expectations are high; the pressure daunting. Dan Ariely had a smash success with his first book, Predictably Irrational, but he clearly overcame any sophomore slump because his new book, The Upside of Irrationality, is brilliant. As in his previous book, Ariely uses academic research and medical experiments to ask and answer some intriguing questions, like whether performance based incentives actually increase performance and why (and when) we get used to things.

You may question how the book different from the previous. Ariely explains: “The Upside of Irrationality is … highly personal. Though my colleagues and I try to do our best to be as objective as possible in running and analyzing our experiments, much of this book (particularly the second part) draws on some of my difficult experiences as a burn patient. [...] My journey provided me with some unique perspectives on human behavior.” That is not to say that this book skimps on the research, but the increase of personal reflections makes for a well-balanced and accessible read.

Ariely is clearly an extremely intelligent and educated person, and still, his writing reads like he is just a buddy you bowl with every Wednesday night. His many fascinating antidotes can change your way of thinking about many everyday things, like money, work, friendship and happiness. For example, regarding the aforementioned performance-based incentives: “using money to motivate people can be a double-edged sword. For tasks that require cognitive ability, low to moderate performance-based incentives can help. But when the incentive level is very high, it can command too much attention and thereby distract the person’s mind with thoughts about the reward. This can create stress and ultimately reduce the level of performance.” One of the experiments they conducted involves six simple games and measures the pressure the participant puts on himself trying for the big dollars.

It is not often that I would suggest that you pick up a business book as a “beach read.” The Upside of Irrationality book is an exception. Take it to the cottage and enjoy… and learn.

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Jack Covert Selects: Click

Filed under: Jack Covert Selects — 800-CEO-READ @ 8:54 am

Click: The Magic of Instant Connections by Ori Brafman and Rom Brafman, Broadway Books, $23.00 Hardcover, 200 Pages, June 2010, ISBN 9780385529051

Ori and Rom Brafman are the authors of one of favorite books, Sway, which discussed the psychological influences that affect decision-making. Their latest book, Click, looks at how we make “an immediate, deep, and meaningful connection with another person or with the world around us.”

Click is a book that reveals just what brings people together. In a chapter about similarity, even a point of connection as random and unintentional as an identical name, shows that “similarity, no matter what form it takes, leads to greater likability. When we discover a shared similarity with someone we’ve just met—and…it doesn’t matter in which areas the similarity occurs—we’re more likely to perceive the person as part of what psychologists call an in-group.” Proximity, vulnerability, and an adaptable personality all contribute to one’s ability to click.

The Brafmans’ findings are based on research scattered across psychology, sociology and neuroscience, but the data is presented via stories, not dry statistics. We meet a police hostage negotiator who uses many of the principles of clicking to connect with criminals. They show how Bill Clinton, during the run for his first term, used vulnerability during the Gennifer Flowers scandal to redeem himself. Plus, the authors show how the four stars of the University of Florida Gators national champion basketball team clicked early on in their college careers and were better as a group in college than they were after they split up and became pros.

The authors certainly believe that clicking is a magical thing, but their research unveils “click accelerators” that can help us take more control over forming quick set connections. This is just the kind of book that I like: serious research explained with interesting real life stories and presented in a short concise format. I think you’ll click with it too.

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June 15, 2010

Why do you work?

Filed under: Blog — Jon @ 9:56 am

I’m sad to admit that I’ve had jobs in the past that were difficult to get out of bed to go to. Once at the job, I would try my best to find something interesting about the things going on to occupy some mental space; imagination playing a big role. I would create stories, I would plan projects, and I would accomplish all sorts of things in my head while my body went around completing totally mundane (and sometimes downright unpleasant) tasks. That’s a lot of mental space being used up for things that have nothing to do with the work at hand.

Last night, I met a bunch of people at a Seth Godin inspired Linchpin Meetup who each left great companies to focus on their own endeavors. Inspiring stuff, as I pictured each of them likely sitting in these great companies imagining their own stories, their own projects, etc.

Then I sat down at my desk today and picked up a book called The Why of Work by Dave and Wendy Ulrich, and it all came full circle. As the book poses: “Before you ask, ‘Why aren’t my employees working harder?” …ask yourself, ‘Why are my employees working?’” An interesting statement, and likely a question many leaders and managers have a lot of assumptions about. As the book points out, it’s not all about the money.

From there, the authors explain what it is about, and how leaders can address the needs of employees (and customers), make work personal to motivate, and create a team of passionate people that make the work (and the results) the type of situation anyone would want to be involved in.

All those imaginary stories, projects, and other day dreams might actually be useful to a company. The Why of Work discusses how to first understand why we do what we do, and then develop the situation to make it as fulfilling and successful as possible.

I wish I could have passed this book to some of my old bosses!

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June 14, 2010

Service chat with Micah Solomon

Filed under: Blog — Jon @ 12:57 pm

Last week, author Micah Solomon stopped by the 800-CEO-READ offices to talk about his book Exceptional Service, Exceptional Profits: The Secrets to Building a Five Star Customer Service Organization.

I was excited to meet Micah after reading his book, and being familiar with his company for so many years. Service is something that’s great to discuss, and his book hits many valuable points. Check out the videos to learn some great service truths:

Why is providing great service something that everyone understands, but is continuously challenged with?

Is customer service just a department?

How do you build “anticipation” into service providing?

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Do You TED?

Filed under: Uncategorized — Sally @ 10:24 am

Cruising Twitter this morning, I read a quick mention of a talk on TED (“TED is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. On TED.com, we make the best talks and performances from TED and partners available to the world, for free.”) The Tweet recommended Dan Pink’s talk on motivation–needing a little motivation myself these days, I clicked. And spent an enjoyable 18 minutes listening to Dan Pink’s entertaining and convincing argument that “there is a mismatch between what science knows and business does.” In this case, Pink is talking about motivation, about how money as motivator only works for the simplest tasks, and autonomy works better as a motivator than money for many other more creative or fluid tasks which predominate our work culture in the 21st century.

Listening to his argument about science v. business brought to mind how many “business” books I’ve been reviewing lately that use science to illuminate the behaviors and motivators of people. It’s what has, all these years, intrigued me most about business books: business books are about work, and work is about the people who do it. Business books help improve the working conditions of the people who make up business. I’m not terribly interested in profit margins and day trading, or whatnot, but I am interested in people.

Recently, we’ve recommended a handful of books that are more about the why than the what.

Switch by Chip and Dan Heath combines “psychology, sociology, management, and case studies [to] tell stories of people and organizations who have successfully implemented significant changes–even when change is hard.”

Click by Ori and Rom Brafman is described as “a fascinating psychological investigation of the forces behind what makes us click with certain people or become fully immersed in whatever activity or situation we’re involved in.”

The Upside of Irrationality by social scientist, Dan Ariely (watch his TED talk here) “exposes the surprising negative and positive effects irrationality can have on our lives. Focusing on our behaviors at work and in relationships, he offers new insights and eye-opening truths about what really motivates us on the job, how one unwise action can become a long-term habit, how we learn to love the ones we’re with.”

Happiness at Work by Dr. Srikumar Rao (watch his TED talk here) isn’t so much a research-based book as a guidebook subtly influenced by Eastern philosophy meant to “show you that it isn’t the negative thing that happens to you that causes your unhappiness, it’s how you see it.”

New June books like Being Wrong by Kathryn Schulz, which “explores why we find it so gratifying to be right and so maddening to be mistaken, and how this attitude towards error corrodes relationships–whether between family members, colleagues, neighbors, or nations,” and The Why of Work by Dave and Wendy Ulrich, which is an excellent extension from Dan Pink’s talk because it explains that “according to studies, we all work for the same thing–and it’s not just money. It’s meaning.” Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains looks at “technology’s effect on the mind,” asking, “Is Google making us stupid?”

It is easy to lose track of time surfing TED and watching the oodles of video talks (a little like spending some time reading thought-provoking manifestos on our ChangeThis.com) site), but it is time well-spent, particularly if you have a company that allows for autonomous learning and development time, like Dan Pink argues for. Business books (and their surrounding media) are no longer strictly about doing business, but are instead include explorations in learning about what motivates and engages us as workers which is key to improving our performance and our satisfaction in our work.

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June 9, 2010

Finding True Wealth

Filed under: Blog — Jon @ 2:11 pm

There are a lot of great books coming out lately, and more to follow throughout the year. It seems the current business climate is an opportunity to present new ideas, a tabula rasa, so to speak, and we’re discovering some real gems of thought being introduced to the world.

One perfect example of this is the book Plenitude: The Economics of True Wealth by Juliet Schor. This is not a book on how to capitalize on new business and make lots of money. It’s about how to build better business, live more fulfilled lives, and survive well in the process. Simple, and it almost sounds trivial, but when you read a book like Plenitude, you realize that there are many things we’re missing. Not new ideas, not technological gadgetry, but fundamental issues and practices that have gone neglected in our quest to, well, end up where we are. We can do better, and books like this talk about how.

The following is a brief Q&A I conducted with Ms. Shor after being pleasantly blown away by the book. If what you read here is at all curious, do pick up the book.

How can the economy survive based upon an emerging model of spending and using less?

The idea that the economy needs to grow in order to thrive is a widespread but increasingly outmoded one. In large part this is due to the planetary ecology. Because we are bumping up against what some scientists have called “safe planetary boundaries” economies that do not respect those boundaries will incur more costs, and be less profitable. At the moment, we have not learned how to “grow” without destroying nature and de-stabilizing the planet. Our challenge is to create a new type of economy in which profit or economic benefit does not require depleting resources. From the business side, companies who learn how to sell on-going services, rather than maximizing the number of “units” of a product will be ahead of the game as we transition to a different business model. Software and information services are a good paradigm to look at in this respect.

Time is an important asset to both companies and individuals. How does ‘working less’ benefit both groups?

One solution is to take more leisure time from our growing productivity. In the last 40 years, the average American has seen a substantial in the number of annual hours worked. This is paradoxical, given that our economy has become so much more productive in this period, and information technology has raised labor productivity. The successful companies of the future will reverse this trend, and enable employees to take more of their higher productivity in the form of free time. This makes employment more available to everyone and frees up employees to have healthier, less stressful and more socially connected lives. Companies can benefit as well because their employees are healthier, happier and more productive.

How can companies ‘slow down’ and still be profitable?

When we do things too fast we make mistakes, miss opportunities and fail to reach our maximum creativity. I think this is true for companies too, because after all, they are just groups of people. When management or labor is operating at hyper-speed, they will not live up to their potential. Creativity, which is increasingly key to success in the business world, requires time to dream, imagine, work out ideas, and think through problems.

What role does design play in economics?

Unfortunately, almost none. But it should. As a discipline, economics is surprisingly divorced from production. It came out of an exchange model, and has an under-theorized and simple theory of production. Design tends to be isolated. But in order to get an ecologically sustainable economy we’re going to need to integrate design with economic ideas. This will be one of the challenges of coming decades.

Many of the ideas you discuss address change on a personal level, but for those changes to take root, they seemingly need to be driven by companies/media. Describe how you think this process will occur, and how long will it take?

We live in a dynamic culture in which business and media respond quickly to changes that start at the individual level. I do believe that the Plenitude lifestyle, which I describe in my book, will be increasingly adopted by companies too. Not the biggest ones at first, but smaller companies and enterprises are attuned to culture change. In part it happens because the people who start those companies are mavericks, often living different kinds of lifestyles. Many are refugees from bureaucratic corporations that stifled their creativity and initiative. The sustainability revolution, which plentiude is a part of is being embraced by many small companies. There’s a
rapidly growth sector of small, green businesses, and they’re where these ideas have taken hold first. But as they grow, and this sector expands, which it will, they will influence their competitors. A great example is the organic and local food now being sold by supermarkets, including Wal-Mart, as a result of the pressure from Whole Foods Market, farmers markets and other small providers.

From Wikipedia:
Juliet Schor is a Professor of sociology at Boston College. She studies trends in working time and leisure, consumerism, the relationship between work and family, women’s issues and economic justice. She received her undergraduate degree from Wesleyan University and her Ph.D in economics from the University of Massachusetts. Before joining Boston College, she taught at Harvard University for 17 years, in the Department of Economics and the Committee on Degrees in Women’s Studies. In 2006 she was awarded the Leontief Prize by the Global Development and Environment Institute.

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An Excerpt from Conquer the Chaos

Filed under: Excerpts and Essays — dylan @ 1:06 pm

You hear people (especially politicians and television’s talking heads) talk about America’s “entrepreneurial spirit” all of the time. But, no matter how often we hear it, it never sounds like a cliché; it always rings true… makes us proud. And that’s because it is true. The desire to strike out our own and build something new is a large part of what defines us. The problem is that the vision we have of working for ourselves and the freedom it will allow us doesn’t become a reality for most. The reality tends to be a lot of hard work, stress and sleepless nights. Clate Mask and Scott Martineau would like to help you realize the vision that lead you into business for yourself. Their new book, Conquer the Chaos: How to Grow a Successful Small Business Without Going Crazy, was released by John Wiley & Sons yesterday, and lays out six strategies to help small business owners achieve the freedom that prompted them to “go west” in the first place. So if you’re business is often more of a burden than boon to you, then read on, dear entrepreneur. Below is an excerpt the book that could turn things around. It is from the book’s preface, and explains what prompted them to write the book in the first place.

◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊

Conquer the Chaos BY CLATE MASK & SCOTT MARTINEAU

Seven years ago we found ourselves surrounded by chaos, worried that we would ever get our new business off the ground. Sure, we had dreams of finding our entrepreneurial freedom, but at the time we were just trying to keep the lights on.

It was August of 2002. Our custom software company received an interesting phone call. It was Friday at 5:00 p.m. and the four of us were getting ready to wrap up the week. We’d ordered pizza, and it had just arrived when the phone rang. Well, the last thing we wanted to do was talk to anyone. But we needed sales, so Clate decided to pick up the phone.

No sooner had he rattled off his greeting than the man on the other end shouted, “I have pain! Can you help me?” Then the man paused.
Clate’s mind was reeling with concerns. Was this a prank? Did this guy even know what number he had dialed? Was this a customer? What was Clate supposed to do about someone’s pain? Shouldn’t he call a doctor?

Eventually, Clate got to the root of this man’s problem. The caller, Reed Hoisington, was searching for a software program that would more effectively manage his contacts. He was trying to follow up with his prospects and customers, but he was making a lot of mistakes.
On this particular day, Reed had mistakenly sent a special, reduced-price offer to a group of people, including many folks who had already bought that product at full price. Customers were angry, demanding refunds and Reed was in pain!

The irony is, at the time of Reed’s phone call, we too had pain! We were struggling to acquire new customers and our struggles were seriously impacting our home lives to the extent that we faced the very real possibility of going out of business.

But, despite the challenges we were personally experiencing, we were learning some very important lessons; lessons so powerful, that following their teachings will free any small business owner from the chaos we nearly all find ourselves immersed in. This is the very purpose of this book.

Now, at this point, you might be thinking, “Well, how do you know I’m experiencing chaos? What makes you think I’m not completely satisfied with the way things are going in my business?”

If that’s the case…if you are contentedly growing your business and you enjoy your lifestyle, then great! You can stop reading right now. If you feel you are getting all the benefits from your business that you could possibly hope for, this book is not for you.

This book is for the entrepreneur who went into business looking for freedom but found chaos rather than finding:

Time

Money

Control

Purpose

This book is for entrepreneurs who feel trapped, controlled, and consumed by their business.

If you’re emphatically or even reluctantly agreeing that yes, this describes your situation, then we’ve got news for you: you’re not alone. The vast majority of small business owners are struggling just to keep their heads above water. In fact, most of us tend to clump together in a boat of survival, hanging on for dear life, putting on a happy face as we get more and more bogged down by our businesses.

Let us show you what we mean. A couple of years ago, we headed out on the road speaking to large groups of entrepreneurs in L.A., Chicago, New York, and Orlando.

At each stop, we asked the audience the same question: “How many of you are satisfied with your small business?”
Of 1,574 small business owners, three raised their hands. Three. three! Some of these individuals had been in business for more than 20 years!

What was going on? And why were so many people in business for themselves if they weren’t getting satisfaction out of it?

After some reflection, we realized we already knew the answer to the question. Because, in addition to working with tens of thousands of small business owners, we too have felt the fears, pains, worry and stress of small business ownership. We’ve been in the trenches. And together we’ve experienced things that only other entrepreneurs will ever understand.

The results of the “Are you satisfied?” poll stuck with us. So we made it a habit to ask the question whenever we could. The more we asked the question, the more we heard of business owners’ dissatisfaction, and the more we knew we had to write this book to help small business owners all over the world.

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June 8, 2010

Linchpins are everywhere!

Filed under: Blog — Jon @ 8:20 am

At least they are certainly in Milwaukee. If you’re in the area, join us next Monday, June 14, for the Seth Godin inspired Linchpin Meetup event. 800-CEO-READ’s ChangeThis is one of the co-sponsors, and we’re offering a Seth Godin boxed set as a prize to be given away at the event. You have to attend to win!

That’s not all. There will be plenty of stuff going (I mean, we’re talking about a room full of Linchpins, after all). Hope to see you there. More info and the registration link can be found here.

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June 7, 2010

8CR’s Top 5 International Best Selling Books for May 2010

Filed under: International Bestsellers — Roy @ 12:21 pm

May sure was a busy month! It started out quiet and and then picked up some speed somewhere in the middle. About 2 weeks before the end of the month, central and Northern Wisconsin had a huge blizzard – it was almost a white-out (I know this because I had to travel that weekend to visit my mom for Mothers’ Day). At least May ended with a nice long weekend for most…. which, probably explains most of the books shipping across borders were ordered toward the end of the month.

Here’s what was on demand!:

Emotional Intelligence 2.0 by T. Bradberry, J. Greaves, P. Lencioni – CHINA

Trusted Advisor by D.H. Maister, C.H. Green, R.M. Galford – The NETHERLANDS

Profiting from Uncertainty by P.J.H. Shoemaker, R.E. Gunther - FRANCE

How to Be a Fierce Competitor by Jeffrey J. Fox – U.A.E.

Innovation to the Core by P. Skarzynski, R. Gibson – NICARAGUA

And… what are you reading this month?

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June 4, 2010

Friday Links

Filed under: Friday Links — dylan @ 3:06 pm

We have two weeks of links to catch up on, folks. So tighten up your broadband and lets get down to it.

➻ Bestselling author and current president of the author’s guild, Scott Turow, Tattered Cover Lead Buyer and board member of the ABA, Cathy Langer, and President of Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, Jonathan Galassi, all appeared on The PBS NEWSHOUR last Thursday with Jeffrey Brown to discuss “new gadgets, new habits, and the ancient craft of storytelling.” (You can watch the video, listen to the audio, or read the transcript here: Publishers, Writers Assess the Digital Frontier of the Written Word.) Speaking of eBooks, Cathy Langer offered this:

I think it’s hard to say yet. It’s really hard to measure what impact it’s had on—on the overall sales of physical books.

I am, again, an eternal optimist. And I think it might even expand the market. We know that people are buying the physical book and the e-book. There’s talk about bundling, which means you can buy both at the same time.

The fact that any record album or hardcover book is sold in this country anymore without a free (unique) download code accompanying it just baffles me. I know that the buyer of the analogue material might just give that digital version to a friend, but if so, I think the chances are pretty good that they would have shared the physical book with that friend anyway, so I don’t think they’re losing a sale by doing so. I think it may also draw some book lovers back into actual bookstores to pick up the physical copy of the book they want to download. Any thoughts? There are a lot of people in publishing that are much, much smarter than I am, so there has to be a good reason (or many) that they’re not doing this? No?

(Another recent NEWSHOUR conversation you may enjoy is Jeffrey Brown’s interview of Derek and Sissela Bok. They are intellectual giants that have been married for 55 years and will both be releasing books on the topic of happiness this year—The Politics of Happiness and Exploring Happiness: From Aristotle to Brain Science, respectively.)

➻ As Sue Halpern writes in The iPad Revolution, her New York Review of Books article:

You don’t have to be a technophobe or a Luddite to dismiss out of hand the idea of reading on a machine. Maybe it is muscle memory, but there is something deeply satisfying about a “real” book, a book made of pages bound between hard or soft covers, into which you can slip a bookmark, whose pages you can fan, whose binding you can crack and fold as you move from beginning to end. E-books, by contrast, whatever platform delivers them, are ephemeral. Yes, you can carry thousands of them in your pocket, but what will you have to show for it? What will fill your bookshelves? Then, one day, you find yourself housebound, and Wolf Hall has just won the Booker Prize, and you download a sample onto your iPhone, and just like with a book printed on paper you are pulled into the story and are grateful to be able to keep reading, and your resistance disappears, and you press the “buy” button—it’s so easy!—and that is how it starts.

➻ Still, one just doesn’t collect codes and electronic files in the same way one does physical books. And if collecting is your thing, or you’re looking for a guide to beginning a collection, Flashlight Worthy has compiled a list of The Best Books about Book Collecting, books which themselves may or may not be collectible. I highly suggest A Gentle Madness by Nicholas Brasbanes, which made the list, and would add one more recommendation:This Book Collecting Racket by Harry W. Schwartz (the man who founded the bookshop that 800-CEO-READ grew up in).

➻ Juliet Schor, author of the recently released Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth, was interviewed by Kai Ryssdal on NPR’s Marketplace. She discussed some of the larger ideas in the book, including the amount of time we put into the formal economy and the beauty and economic efficiency of the many small actions occurring outside of it.

One of the things we see is that the people who have begun to live like this have more time affluence in their lives and are able to do a wide range of things that are really creative, productive kinds of things that you can do if you don’t have to spend every waking hour at your formal job.

[...]

The advantages of the large scale are disappearing. [...] It used to be that you needed a giant warehouse to put a computer in, now you need a lap. A huge message of my book is small is beautiful, let’s try and shift this economy in the direction of the small scale. That’s going to be a more resilient economy.

I highly suggest you pick up her book. If you’d like a preview, download her ChangeThis manifesto: Plenitude: A Statement On Economics, Ecology & True Wealth.

➻ Let’s now move back to the latest New York Review of Books. In At the Heart of the Crash, Jeff Madwick reviews Michael Lewis’s The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, writing that “Lewis’s deep burrowing gets to the essence of Wall Street companies blinded by easy, short-term profit and uninhibited by any moral scruples or external government watchdogs.” Madwick also gives a paragraph to Crisis Economics and the remedies the authors propose therein:

Nouriel Roubini and Stephen Mihm would require that all derivatives, such as credit default swaps, be traded openly. They would consider prohibiting CDOs altogether on grounds that these derivatives are far too risky and complex. They would demand that investors pool funds to finance credit-rating agencies, removing the major conflicts of interest that derive from issuers paying for their ratings. They would also break up Goldman Sachs and the other big banks into relatively small pieces.

And in The Food Movement, Rising, Michael Pollan covers five books:

Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal: War Stories from the Local Food Front by Joel Salatin, Polyface
All You Can Eat: How Hungry Is America? by Joel Berg, Seven Stories
Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer, Little Brown
Terra Madre: Forging a New Global Network of Sustainable Food Communities by Carlo Petrini, Chelsea Green
 The Taste for Civilization: Food, Politics, and Civil Society by Janet A. Flammang, University of Illinois Press

Pollan writes:

Cheap food has become an indispensable pillar of the modern economy. But it is no longer an invisible or uncontested one. One of the most interesting social movements to emerge in the last few years is the “food movement,” or perhaps I should say “movements,” since it is unified as yet by little more than the recognition that industrial food production is in need of reform because its social/environmental/public health/animal welfare/gastronomic costs are too high.

As Pollan states, “It’s a big lumpy tent,” which sounds delicious.

➻ The American Management Association has a podcast online with Scott Singer, author of How to Hit a Curveball: Confront and Overcome the Unexpected in Business. Scott says “It’s not so much how hard you get hit or how hard you can hit back, it’s how resilient you can be … ”

➻ Moving from the beloved baseball metaphor to the trusty train, we head over to The Rumpus. In his review of Book Expo America, Nobody Knows the Way to BEA, Ari Messer writes:

One reason many of us stick with this business, if you can even call it a business (it’s more like a practice, really), is a perhaps pathological obsession with voice, with helping authors find their voices and with encouraging others to listen. But books aren’t an announcement, books are the train itself, the place where mind meets body, the moment when it doesn’t seem to matter that both will come to pass. If the train ahead of us is delayed, can we outrun it and reach the next one? Or is that a death wish?

➻ Because I love Umair Haque’s writing, I want to share the concluding line of his recent article on Rebooting Prosperity in an Age of Austerity:

Seen through the Cyclopean eye of economic evolution, a great meteor crashed in 2007 — and those who can’t reboot prosperity are a bit like the poor, straggling dinosaurs who survived yesterday’s great meteor crash (hello, BP): they’re living on borrowed time in this Age of Austerity, in a world being furiously reshaped.

His reasoning skills are as solid as his writing, and I would highly suggest you read the full article to see what he’s talking about.

➻ Any Metropolis fans out there? If so, today marks the global release of the restored version of that classic film, which contains lost footage discovered in 2008 in Buenos Aires. As Roger Ebert writes:

The opening shots of the restored “Metropolis” are so crisp and clear they come as a jolt. This mistreated masterpiece has been seen until now mostly in battered prints missing footage that was, we now learn, essential.

➻ “What a life I lead in the summer.”

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