Books

I have been a avid reader my whole life. In high school, I enjoyed re-reading Shakespeare over the summer. Geeky, I know. Lately I have been reading a lot of non-fiction books and blogs in particular those that deal with global warming, peak oil and resource wars and Christian history.

Here is what I have been reading lately. (The links on the left are books I have read in the past that I have particularly enjoyed.)

Book: Nurture Shock

Posted by: Max Dunn on March 10, 2010 09:03:29

NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children
by Po Bronson, Ashley Merryman 

We all intuitively know the best way to raise our kids, right? Well, many of the things we think we know are completely wrong.

Take for instance praise. We all know that it is good to praise our kids, telling them how smart they are, right? Not always! Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman and done extensive research looking at many studies around this issue and discovered that praise is only a positive, motivating force when done correctly. When we praise our children for their intelligence, it actually causes them to underperform because they learn that it is important to look smart and avoid taking any risks that might damage this image. However, if we praise our children for their effort, they are more likely to attempt new and difficult things, put in more effort and perform better.

NurtureShock contains other parenting nuggets like:

• Getting enough sleep is vitally important to all aspects of our kids development and health
• Teenagers that argue are actually showing respect since the ones that don't argue are just probably just lying and doing whatever they want anyways
• Parents arguing in front of their kids is actually good for their social development, as long as it doesn't get out of hand and as long as our kids see them resolve the argument 

There is lots of other good stuff in this book and I would highly recommend it to anyone with kids.

 

 

 

Book: In Defense of Food

Posted by: Max Dunn on March 6, 2010 15:05:37

The message is simple: Eat food. Not to much. Mostly plants.

"In Defense of Food" elaborates a bit on this starting off with some background on why the amount of saturated fat may have little if any bearing on the risk of heart disease and that 30 years of nutritional advice from our government has left us fatter, sicker and more poorly nourished.

The information about health and eating was also insightful:

• 80 percent of cases of type 2 diabetes could be prevented by a change of diet
• Diabetes subtracts roughly 12 years from one's life and incurs medical costs of $13,000 per year compared to $2,500 per year for someone without diabetes
• Health care costs related to diet is estimated to be $250 billion per year

So what can we do? First, don't concentrate on nutrients and vitamins but instead look at eating a healthy, whole diet. And a healthy diet is generally any but a Western diet! Here are some other good rules Pollan encourages us to adopt:

• Avoid food products that contain ingredients that are:
  • Hard to pronounce
  • Unfamiliar
  • More than five in number
  • Include high-fructose corn syrup
• Avoid food products that make health claims: Apples don't have health claims, sugary cereal does 
• Get out of the supermarket where possible: farmer's markets almost guarantee healthy food
• Eat mostly plants, especially leaves
• Eat well grown foods from healthy soils: it doesn't have to be organic to be healthy
• Eat more like the French, or the Italians, or the  Japanese, or the Indians, or the Greeks
• Have a glass of wine with dinner (This is the one that I like!)
• Pay more, eat less
• Eat meals: sitting down with others, taking our time (This is the one I will have the hardest time with)
• Eat slowly

 

Book: Business, Government and Society

Posted by: Max Dunn on September 7, 2009 16:01:50

 

Book: Managing for Stakeholders

Posted by: Max Dunn on September 2, 2009 17:41:13

 

I started my second semester at Presidio Graduate School and read this book for my Business, Government and Civil Society class. This theory of managing a business to create value for all stakeholders is in many ways the successor to the triple bottom line theory - profit, people and planet.

Note that "stakeholder" is not the same as "shareholder". Stakeholders include all the groups of people that businesses should be responsible to including customers, employees, suppliers, financiers, communities and more. This book also discusses ethics in depth and how ethics should be inseparable from leadership and all aspects of the business.

 

Book: $20 Per Gallon

Posted by: Max Dunn on August 9, 2009 16:11:38

$20 Per Gallon: How the Inevitable Rise in the Price of Gasoline Will Change Our Lives for the Better
by Christopher Steiner

What would the world be like if gasoline was $20 per gallon? When that little car trip from San Jose to SF and back costs $80 in gas? When the cheapest roundtrip flight to the East Coast costs over $4,000? That will be a different world than the cheap-energy world we live in today!

And that world is closer than many may think. My own prediction is that before the end of 2012 we are going to see $200 oil and occasions when gas stations won't have any gas to sell. But regardless of whether peak oil is in 3 years or 30 years, there is no doubt that most of us will see it, and our kids won't enjoy the benefits we enjoyed of cheap oil.

So the book $20 Per Gallon which speculates about what changes will occur in our world with increasing oil prices is a great exercises we should spend more time on. And the ultimate message of this book is a hopeful one; that while increasing oil prices will cause many short-term problems, in the long-term reducing our dependence on oil will change our lives for the better.

Read more...

 

Book: Blueprint for a Sustainable Economy

Posted by: Max Dunn on August 9, 2009 15:41:37

Blueprint for a Sustainable Economy
by David Pearceand Edward B Barbier

When some books are finished, we have a clear idea exactly what they are about. Others discuss so many different things that it is harder to pinpoint their message. BluePrint for a Sustainable Economy falls into the later category.

Maybe some excerpts from the conclusion of this book can best summarize it:

"Everything we do has an environmental impact, and economic decisions pervade all that we do. Ultimately, the prospects for the natural environments some 100 years hence are not good. We can do the best we can, and that means addressing all those issues that are the subject of policy decisions by households, corporations and governments. That means getting rid of perverse subsidies, establishing property rights to the environment, creating markets, taxing polluters (and that is all of us), and changing our accounting systems. We know what we need to do. We need to get on and do it."

This book was rather academic, and at times a little slow. But overall, it was a pretty interesting read and covered some great topics that will be very useful for moving towards a more sustainable economy.

 

Books: Ecological Economics

Posted by: Max Dunn on July 24, 2009 07:12:53

Ecological Economics: Principles And Applications
by Herman E. Daly and Joshua Farley

Is it weird to love a textbook? If so, then I am very weird because I LOVED this book! It is right up there with Natural Capitalism in explaining why sustainability is important and why our current systems are failing us and future generations.

How does ecological economics differ from neoclassical economics? Take the example of a ship. Neoclassical economics is concerned with efficiently distributing the load so the ship floats evenly on the water. Ecological economics, on the other hand, tries to make sure that the ship is not loaded with so much cargo that it sinks!

Daly and Joshua continue the metaphor (paraphrased): "Ecological economists look at the Earth as tha ship and gross material production of the economy as the cargo. The seaworthiness of the ship is determined by its ecological health, the abundance of its provisions, and its design. Evidence exists that the cargo hold is already too full for a safe voyage and many passengers have not been allowed the basic necessities for the voyage. To make room for an ever-growing cargo, we have ripped out components of the ship we deem unimportant (forests, fisheries, wetlands). Ecological economics also assumes that our goal is not simply to load the ship to the limit, but to preserve areas of the ship for our comfort and enjoyment and to maintain the ship in excellent condition for future generations."

 

Book: The Powers to Lead

Posted by: Max Dunn on July 22, 2009 14:51:20

The Powers to Lead
by Joseph S. Nye

Interesting book. Talks about how effective leaders use both soft and hard power, and Nye terms this "smart power". This is a research book with lots of references, not a rah-rah-go-go book, which makes it more reliable but a little less interesting to ready. Some quotes:

• I define a leader as someone who helps a group create and achieve shared goals.
• We can think of leadership as a process with three key components: leaders, followers, and contexts.
• Police power, financial power, and the ability to hire and fire are examples of tangible hard power.
• This is soft power: getting the outcomes one wants by attracting others rather than manipulating their material incentives.
• (Quoting GE CEO Jeff Immelt) When you run General Electric, there are 7 to 12 times a year when you have to say, 'you're doing it my way.' If you do it 18 times, the good people will leave. If you do it 3 times, the company falls apart.
• The ability to combine hard and soft power into an effective strategy is smart power.
• Transformational leaders empower and elevate their followers.
• Three skils are particulary important for soft power: emotional intelligence, communication and vision. The two key hard power skills are organizational and political.

 

Book: The Starfish and the Spider

Posted by: Max Dunn on July 17, 2009 10:41:14

The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations
by Ori Brafman and Rod A. Beckstrom

This book is not about what it claims to be. The title says it is about "leaderless organizations", but that is not true. This book is about decentralized organizations without traditional leaders, and that is a big difference.

Let's look at some of the organizations it discusses:

• Napster, started by Shawn Fanning
• Apaches, led by Nant'an - spiritual and cultural leaders
• Kazaa, formed by Niklas Zennstrom
• Alcholics Anonymous, started and led by Bill Wilson
• Craigslist, run by Craig Newmark
• Wikipedia, guided by Jimmy Wales

Hmm, none of these organizations sound "leaderless" to me. However, it is true that they are all decentralized organizations that don't have traditional leadership.

Brafman and Beckstrom highlight this point by discussing the differences be a traditional leader, like a CEO, and one that acts more like a catalyst. This table sums up this point nicely:

CEO	Catalyst
The Boss	A Peer
Command-and-control	Trust
Rational	Emotionally Intelligent
Powerful	Inspirational
Directive	Collaborative
In the Spotlight	Behind the Scenes
Order	Ambiguity
Organizing	Connecting

 

To highlight the point that this book is not about leaderless organization, the last two chapters discuss hybrid organizations - those that have components of both centralization and decentralization - as well as finding the best balance between the two.

Overall, a very well written, enjoyable and useful book for anyone thinking about building or being involved with a 21st century organization. However, don't expect this book to be about leaderless organizations, regardless of what the title says.

 

Book: The Undercover Economist

Posted by: Max Dunn on July 7, 2009 08:04:52

The Undercover Economist: Exposing Why the Rich Are Rich, the Poor Are Poor--and Why You Can Never Buy a Decent Used Car!
by Tim Harford

When I get a book from the library, I don't underline memorable sentences like I usually do; instead, I attach little yellow stickies. By counting the stickies, I can see how much of the book I want to remember. So on the little yellow sticky scale, this book rates a 14 - pretty good!

One thing I liked about this booked is that it covered common economic principles in a straightforward way that could be understood by anyone. Harford writes, "Economist tech to call this 'own-price elasticity.' Personally, I think 'price sensitivity' is a bit more descriptive." Here are some other interesting points:

• Even if markets are not perfect, the can convey tremendously complex information. (Page 65)
• The nonmarket system suffers suffers from a serious problem: the truth about values, costs and benefits has disappeared. (Page 69)
• Why are taxes inefficient? Because they destroy the information carried by prices. (Page 71)
• Complete, free, and competitive markets are just a bizarre economists' fantasy. However, this fantasy helps us understand why economic problems arise and helps us to move in the right direction to patch them up. (Paraphrased, page 78)
• We should worry about costs and benefits missing from the market transaction. The trick is to mimic perfect markets by getting (consumers) to pay all of the costs of their actions. ('Externality costs', paraphrased, page 87)
• Economists care about the environment but dream of a world where it is no longer an issue that invites moral posturing, but is properly integrated into markets and the world of truth, which would provide both the information and the incentives necessary to persuade ordinary people to behave in an environmentally responsible way. (Page 102)
• Environmental regulations are not a major cost; labor is. The most pollution-intensive American firms spend only 2 percent of their revenues on dealing with pollution. (Page 215)
• The transport costs of moving a CD player from Osaka harbor to the port of Los Angeles are less than the costs of someone driving to Best Buy and back home with the CD player. (Page 219)
• Taxes on transportation fuels are consistent with free trade and much better for the environment than trade restrictions. The worst environmental problems today are caused by poverty not wealth. (Page 221)
• The environmentalist movement should demand free trade immediately. (Page 221)
• Sweatshops are the symptom, not the cause, of shocking global poverty. Workers go there voluntarily, which means that their alternatives are worse. (Page 222)

 

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