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: Lonesome Dove

Posted by: Max Dunn on August 30, 2010 20:25:28

Lonesome Dove: A Novel by Larry McMurtry

When I picked this book up at the library, I couldn't believe it - the book was almost 2 inches thick with 850 pages and weighed as much as a brick! I didn't think there was any way that I would ever finish it, but decided to read the first few pages anyways. To my surprise, I was hooked on the first line:

"When Augustus came out on the porch the blue pigs were eating a rattlesnake -- not a very big one."

After that, I had a hard time putting it down. This was one of the excellent books recommended by my friend Christy Hurlburt. While it is probably the longest book I ever read, I would have liked it to be even longer. As Roger Ebert said "No good movie is too long and no bad movie is short enough" and that applies to books as well. Thanks Christy for the recommendation!

 

Books: Plainsong and Eventide

Posted by: Max Dunn on August 8, 2010 13:29:06

Powerfully moving stories of simple, down-to-earth people. There was much sadness, yet ever-present was the glimmer of hope that everything would work out okay.

 

Book: Blue Ocean Strategy

Posted by: Max Dunn on August 4, 2010 08:34:51

Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant by W. Chan Kim, et al. (Hardcover - Feb. 3, 2005)

This book reminded me of surfing. When surfing at a point break, like most of Santa Cruz, there is one takeoff spot where it is best to catch the wave. Lots of people jockey to catch waves at this location and when you do get a wave there, you get a really great ride. But because of the competition, you usually end up sitting a lot and not catching many waves.

However, surfers tend to cluster together and sometimes the pack will drift away from the right takeoff spot. In addition, when the tide comes up or goes down, the takeoff location can change. Keeping an eye out for this can land you some great rides.

Another strategy is is to look around to see if there are other spots to catch waves. Maybe they won't be as big or perfect shaped, but there won't be many (or any) other surfers there so you can catch a ton of fun, smaller waves. 

In a nutshell, this is what the book is about - only instead of surfing, it is about finding uncontested market space so that the competition becomes irrelevant.

 

Book: A Salty Piece of Land

Posted by: Max Dunn on July 30, 2010 07:11:04

A Salty Piece of Land (Hardcover) by Jimmy Buffett 

Does it say something about my taste that I really enjoyed this book by the musician Jimmy Buffett and didn't like the earlier book I read by a noted writer Pat Conroy? Well, I don't care because that is the way it is. A Salty Piece of Land was entertaining, the characters were interesting and it just felt more real unlike Conroy's South of Broad where the plot and characters seemed more like cardboard cutouts. So say what you will about my taste, but I am sticking to my story - I really liked this book.

 

 

Book: South of Broad

Posted by: Max Dunn on June 11, 2010 09:40:09

South of Broad: A Novel by Pat Conroy 

It has been several years since I have read a fiction novel preferring instead to learn something by reading non-fiction. One reason is that while I really enjoy a good story, it often seems that the quality of much modern literature is subpar. But while browsing in our local library, I saw Pat Conroy's latest "South of Broad" and since I enjoyed Prince of Tides so much, I decided to get it. Now that I am finished though, I have to ask: Is this the best of modern literature?

While a fairly enjoyable read with some nice language and inspiring scenic descriptions, the characters were rather insipid and cliche. One of the most interesting themes dangled out early was the suicide of the favorite son. Yet the mystery behind this was not revealed until the last chapters, and then in only the most unimaginative and unsatisfying way. Also, much of the development of the other characters was done by telling us about it rather than showing us. In the end, I didn't come away caring about these characters or feeling if there were anything more than paper cutouts of the writer's imagination. If this is the best that modern literature has to offer, I think I will stick with non-fiction.

 

Book: Just Good Business

Posted by: Max Dunn on March 18, 2010 14:00:22

Just Good Business: The Strategic Guide to Aligning Corporate Responsibility and Brand
by Kelli A. McElhaney

After a year in my Sustainable MBA program at Presidio Graduate School, I had thought I knew pretty much everything I had to know about corporate social responsibility (CSR) so I thought that Just Good Business would be pretty boring. I am glad to report that I was wrong.

McElhaney is one of the world's leading experts on CSR strategy and drew on over ten years of CSR consulting engagements to provide some very valuable and hands on information about CSR strategy. I particularly liked her emphasis that companies couldn't fake CSR but really needed to figure out what their core values were and what kind of social responsibility would be the best fit with them. She also provided some great advice about being consistent, simplifying the message, telling the story and dealing with cynics. 

This is a great book for anyone that is trying to understand CSR or implement it at their company.

 

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.

 

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