More Library Books

I went to the library today with the intention of return a few books and leaving empty handed. As usual, I proved incapable of resisting the lure of more books and I left with seven more (seems to be about what I can justify borrowing on a whim without feeling like I've gone completely overboard).

I'm sure I did overdo it but since I need to read one for a book club and I've already written about my interest in all the others, I don't feel too silly.

I checked out:

• The Moviegoer by Walker Percy (National Book Award for Fiction winner 1962)
• Are We Rome?: The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America by Cullen Murphy (click here to view all my posts about this book)
• In Defense of Food: an Eater's Manifesto by Michael Pollan (click here to view all my posts about this book)
• Promises to Keep: On Life and Politics by Joseph R. Biden, Jr. (click here to view all my posts about this book)
• The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker by Steven Greenhouse (click here to view all my posts about this book)
• The Uncertain Art: Thoughts on a Life in Medicine by Sherwin B. Nuland (click here to view all my posts about this book)
• White House Ghosts: Presidents and Their Speechwriters by Robert Schlesinger (click here to view all my posts about this book)

I first heard about Cullen Murphy's Are We Rome? about a year ago at the Harvard Bookstore in Harvard Square and my interest in this book was renewed when someone in I.O.U.S.A. compared the United States to Rome. As a loyal reader of The Atlantic, I have great respect for Murphy who was their managing editor for two decades. I have high expectations for this book and hope I will not be disappointed. Click here to read an excerpt.

And I suppose the Democratic and Republican National Conventions have once again piqued my interest in speechwriters, so naturally White House Ghosts: Presidents and Their Speechwriters by Robert Schlesinger caught my eye.

With all the talk of tough times, economically, for the average American and the outrage over the recently released GAO data that most U.S. Corporations pay no income tax, I just couldn't resist picking up Steven Greenhouse's The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker. I hope it provides new information and doesn't overlap too much with David Cay Johnston's Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You with the Bill) and Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich - and Cheat Everybody Else.

And like most Americans, all I know about Joe Biden I've learned from reading the news (in my case the New York Times) these past few weeks. It hasn't added up to much. I hope to get a better sense of the Democratic Nominee for Vice President from his 2007 memoir Promises to Keep: On Life and Politics.

I tried to keep myself to just five books but when I saw Nuland's The Uncertain Art sitting on the shelf, I had to borrow it -- it's been a few months since I've read any books related to medicine or the human body and as a scientist I am compelled to reading science books. And all the talk about our nation's broken health care system makes this book about medicine from a doctor's perspective all the more irresistible.



And as I was about to leave, I saw Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto which I've wanted to read since January when I read Janet Maslin's review titled "Obsessed With Nutrition? That’s an Eating Disorder" and published January 3, 2008 in the NYTimes Book Review). I suppose my new gardening hobby (influenced by reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life and Bill McKibben's Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future) has made me even more interested in learning about food and nutrition. Click here to read the introduction of In Defense of Food on the author’s website or here to read the first chapter on the NYTimes Book Review website.

Alright, I think I've spent enough time trying to justify my borrowing way too many books -- I've got to get to reading now! My book club's discussion of Walker Percy's The Moviegoer is scheduled to start in three days!

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

I've been slowly plodding through A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, which I first read when I was a kid.

I had forgotten that this classic piece historical fiction depicting the French Revolution was printed in serialized format in the twopenny periodical All the Year Round -- and I was thrilled to find an edition (by Penguin Classics) that publishes the full text of this story as it appeared in 1859 and includes the original illustrations by H. K. Browne ('Phiz').

I had also forgotten how easy it is to get confused about the plot, so I was thrilled to see that this edition includes a timeline of Dickens's fictional events and historical French Revolution events.

I've included the timeline here for easy reference as I continuing reading this masterpiece.

This timeline represents two kinds of events. Fictional events, involving characters invented by Dickens, are represented in plain type; historical events described or alluded to within the novel in italics. This timeline excludes famous events of the French Revolution not described or alluded to by Dickens; in other words, it is designed to suggest what parts and aspects of the Revolution the novelist works to make visible and to intertwine, and to a greater or lesser degree, with the private, invented action of his narrative.

• 1756-63: The Seven Years War (II.2)
• 5 January 1757: Robert Damiens attempts the assignation of Louis X V; two months later, Damiens is executed, as described by the mender of roads in conversation with the Defarges and their revolutionary associates (II.15)
• 22 December 1757: The twin Evremonde brothers hire Dr Manette (III.10)
• 29 December 1757: Death of the elder sister of the future Mme Defarge - seduced by the uncle of Charles Darnay (III.10)
• 31 December 1757: Dr. Manette arrested and confined within the Bastille (III.10)
• 1766: The Chevalier de la Barre accused, tried and executed (I.1)
• December 1767: Manette starts to write his confessions (III.10)
• 1775-83: The American Revolution (I.1)
• November 1775: Manette released from Bastille (I.4-6)
• March 1780: Darnay tried at Old Bailey (II.2-3)
• June 1780: Lorry, Darnay and Carton attend a gathering at Dr Manette's Soho house and sense (in Carton's words) 'a great crowd bearing down upon us' (II.6)
• July 1780: Monsieur (the uncle of Darnay) attends Monseigneur's reception in Paris; returning to the country, he receives Darnay at his chateau and, the morning after, is found dead (II.7-9)
• Summer 1781: Lucie Manette marries Darnay; Manette reverts temporarily to shoemaking; Jerry Cruncher participates in the 'funeral' of Roger Cly and later tries to dig up his body; the Defarges consult with the mender of roads and visit Versailles (II.10-20)
• 1783: Lucie Darnay's daughter born (II.21)
• 14 July 1789: Storming of Bastille, recovery by Defarge of Manette's confession (II.21)
• July 1789: The first emigration (II.23)
• Late July and early August 1789: The Great Fear, Evremonde chateau destroyed (II.23)
• 21 June 1792: Prussians issue the Brunswick Manifesto, threatening revenge on Paris and the Revolution. Lorry very worried about integrity of documents at Tellson's in Paris (II.24)
• 13 August 1792: Louis XVI and family imprisoned in the Temple (III.1)
• 14 August 1792: Finally receiving Gabelle's letter, Darnay leaves for Paris (II.24)
• 15-18 August 1792: Darnay arrested and imprisoned (III.1)
• 2-6 September 1792: September massacres in Paris (III.2-3)
• 3 September 1792: Lucie and Manette follow Darnay to Paris (III.2-3)
• September 1792-October 1793: They live in Paris, while Darnay languishes in prison (III.4)
• 21 September 1792-20 September 1793: The Year One of Liberty - l Vendemiaire to 30 Fructidor (III.4)
• 23 October 1792: Condemnation to death of returning emigrants (III.6)
• 21 January 1793: Execution of Louis XVI (III.4)
• 24 February 1793: 300,000 men recruited for armies, to combat internal rebellion and threat of invasion (III.4)
• 17 September 1793: Law of suspects (III.4)
• 16 October 1793: Execution of Marie-Antoinette (III.4)
• 31 October 1793: Execution of Girondins (III.4)
• November-December 1793: Lucie's vigils outside the prisons of La Force (III.5)
• 9 November 1793: Execution of Madame Roland (III.15)
• December 1793: The Terror in Lyon (mass drownings in DIckens's 'rivers of the South') (III.4)
• December 1793: Darnay's first trial; he is acquitted and rearrested; Carton arrives in Paris (III.6)
• December 1793 or January 1794: Second trial of Darnay; Darnay saved by Carton (III.9-15)

Economist - Running dry

I'm a little behind on my subscription to the Economist.

Okay, I'm a lot behind.

Months behind.

But I'm going to catch up, starting with the August 23, 2008 issue. From this issue, I just finished the Business section including "Running dry."

As I've mentioned before, I've been seriously concerned about the world's water supply since 2003 when I read Blue Gold: The Fight to Stop the Corporate Theft of the World’s Water by Maude Barlow and Tony Clarke. And having grown up on an island, water conservation and water rights have always been important to me.

My interest has been slowly increasing over the years and it seems like the issue of water is becoming a hotter and hotter subject with each month.

This article just reminded me that I've got to make it a priority to read Marc Reisner’s Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water (click here to read my posts related to this book) and Ken Midkiff's Not a Drop to Drink: America’s Water Crisis (and What You Can Do).

I hope the situation does not get as desperate as some experts foresee.

Got to run to the library!

Founders at Work: Stories of Startup’s Early Days by Jessica Livingston

I've really enjoyed Jessica Livingston's Founders at Work: Stories of Startup’s Early Days -- one of many library books I borrowed last month.

This book tells the story of startups like Firefox, TiVo, WebTV, Craigslist, Hotmail, Adobe, and others through interviews with their founders or creators.

Initially, it made me think of If at First You Don’t Succeed . . . The Eight Patterns of Highly Effective Entrepreneurs by Brent Bowers (click here to read all my posts on this book) in that both books seek to shed light on what makes entrepreneurs tick.

While Livingston interviews individuals who founded or created dot-com or other technology start-ups, Bowers talks with founders of small businesses from varied fields that include jam making, cosmetics, manufacturing and more.

The main difference in the book lies in the way each author organizes his/her book. Where Bowers organizes his book into chapters based on eight traits of entrepreneurs with stories from 40+ entrepreneurs sprinkled throughout the book, Livingston spends just her two-page introduction discussing the patterns of entrepreneurs and then spends a chapter on each person with an in-depth interview.

Call me crazy, but I much prefer the way Livingston organized her book. It is easier to follow and you learn more from each individual.

And, as you know by now, I love primary sources. so I appreciated how each chapter was an interview with a founder or creator of one or more start-ups.

Here are the patterns that Livingston found for comparison to the list by Bowers:

1. Uncertainty that they were actually onto something big.
2. Determination, especially to build things that work.
3. Perseverance through uncertainty, isolation, and sometimes lack of progress.
4. Adaptability and mental flexibility to understand what users/customers want and to change and develop their original idea.
5. Empathy for users/customers.
6. Desire to change the world and to keep building things.

Livingston doesn't assert this list as a steadfast rule (where Bowers does); she merely states that these were some of her observations from interviewing the 32 entrepreneurs featured in her book.

Back to reading!

The 100 Best Business Books of All Time: What They Say, Why They Matter, and How They Can Help You

In addition to books, magazines and newspapers, I also read ChangeThis.com.

Since ChangeThis.com was bought by 800-CEO-READ in Summer 2005, I get email updates from both companies.

Those of you who love business books may want to read the latest email I received from:

Hello Changethisers,

Hope you're well. You may not know us at 800-CEO-READ by name, but we are the folks that maintain and care for ChangeThis. And, we have news to share.

The heads of 800-CEO-READ, founder Jack Covert and vice-president Todd Sattersten, have spent the last year writing a book entitled THE 100 BEST BUSINESS BOOKS OF ALL TIME which will be available in February, 2009.

To celebrate the book's release and help you gear up for the book, we're hosting a six-month book club culminating with the release of THE 100 BEST BUSINESS BOOKS OF ALL TIME. For six months, September ’08 through February ‘09, you will receive a book a month. The first five books will be one of Jack and Todd’s picks from The 100 BEST and will cover a range of business topics, from Management and Leadership to Entrepreneurship and Marketing.

The sixth and final book will be THE 100 BEST, landing in mailboxes in early February.

To learn more, check out Todd's blog post about the about the book club:
http://800ceoread.com/blog/archives/008375.html

Or, go directly the following address to sign up:
http://800ceoread.com/products/?ISBN=COUNTDOWN100

Many thanks & best of days,
ChangeThis and 800-CEO-READ

http://www.changethis.com/
http://800ceoread.com/

Hmm, I don't know -- The Countdown Book Club: Six Months To The 100 Best Business Books of All Time gives you six books for $99. Doesn't sound like too much of a deal to me.

Still, I'd like to browse through a copy of The 100 Best Business Books of All Time. Guess I'll just look for it when it comes out in February 2009.

Promises to Keep: On Life and Politics by Joseph R. Biden

With Joe Biden as Obama's VP choice, I'd like to read Promises to Keep: On Life and Politics by Joseph R. Biden, Jr.

I've listened to the audio version of Obama's Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance and I have a hardback copy of The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream that I've been meaning to read.

Any thoughts on Biden's Promises to Keep?

Is it worth reading?

Does it provide insight into the man who may be our next Vice President?

How does it compare to Obama's books?

I've listened to Biden's August 2007 interview with NPR's Morning Edition; how does this memoir compare to this interview?

Click here to read an excerpt from Promises to Keep, courtesy of Random House, or click here to view the table of contents.

And lastly, click here if you're interested in a free Obama-Biden sticker, courtesy of MoveOn.org.

If at First You Don’t Succeed by Brent Bowers

After reading If at First You Don’t Succeed . . . The Eight Patterns of Highly Effective Entrepreneurs by Brent Bowers (click here to read all my posts on this book), I've updated the list of the magic eight entrepreneurial traits:

1. An aptitude for spotting and seizing opportunities that nobody else has noticed.
2. Compulsion to be in charge, a gift for leadership, a strong belief in the importance of integrity, and a hypomanic personality. A "hypomanic is fast-talking, is witty and gregarious, and has a natural self-confidence that can make him charismatic and persuasive."
3. A history of innovative activities and salesmanship dating back to childhood, usually in a family environment that encouraged that bent. Being a male with an absent father seems to help.
4. A talent for improvisation and multi-tasking, a tolerance for ambiguity, and openness.
5. Doggedness - fierce drive, energy, and tenacity (the combination of patience, persistence, and perserverance). Also, the ability to live on just four hours of sleep per night and the drive to work ninety-hour weeks.
6. Lofty ambition, optimism, idealism, passion, and enthusiasm that borders on the delusional for a product.
7. Unfailing pragmatism and a good eye for taking calculated risks.
8. Self-confidence and a knack for "falling upwards" - viewing setbacks as opportunities.

Bowers also ends his book with these lessons from other entrepreneurs:

• Know when to fold 'em.
• Try harder next time.
• Stick to what you know best.
• Make pleasing customers your number-one priority.
• Analyze what you did wrong.
• Maintain your self-respect.
• Keep a lid on spending.
• Expect no sympathy for your snafus.
• Don't assume that all publicity is good publicity.
• Realize that success isn't as important as being in the game.

While I think both these lists are useful, these two quotes that Bowers used may sum up the entrepreneur in fewer words:

If an idea does not at first seem insane, it has no hope.

-Albert Einstein

Entrepreneurs are dreamers who do.

-Judith Cone

One thing that surprised me about If at First You Don’t Succeed was the number of other books mentioned throughout the book:

• The Hypomanic Edge: The Link Between (a Little) Craziness and (a Lot of) Success in America by John D Gartner
• The Monk and the Riddle by Randy Komisar
• Integrity is All You've Got by Karl Eller
• The Great Game of Business by Jack Stack
• The Stranger by Albert Camus
• The Plague by Albert Camus
• One Man's Leg by Paul Martin

Of these, I've read The Monk and the Riddle and the The Plague (and I've been meaning to re-read The Plague and read some of Camus's other works) but will have to take a look at the others. Back to reading!

George Orwell Blog

George Orwell. Famous writer of Nineteen Eighty-Four, Down and Out in Paris and London, and Animal Farm. But a blogger?

“I think he would have been a blogger,” said Jean Seaton, a professor at the University of Westminster in London who administers the Orwell writing prize and thought up the idea of publishing George Orwell's copious diaries every day in blog form, exactly 70 years after they were written.

Noam Cohen's August 24, 2008 New York Times article "What George Orwell Wrote, 70 Years Later to the Day" writes, "The scholars behind the project say they are trying to get more attention for Orwell online and to make him more relevant to a younger generation he would have wanted to speak to.

A similar blog is made up of transcripts from Harry Lamin's letters from the first World War, posted exactly 90 years after they were written by Bill Lamin a retired mathematics teacher in England and grandson of Harry Lamin.

I'd never heard of this concept before but it intrigues me. I wonder if there will be a flood of similar blogs in the next year.

And while I may not read the Harry Lamin blog or other blogs in this format, I plan to follow the Orwell blog.

Perennial Vegetables by Eric Toensmeier

I want to cultivate taro to eat here in Maryland and need some advice.

Ans great as Mel Bartholomew’s All New Square Foot Gardening is, the fruits and vegetables listed by Bartholomew are pretty run-of-the mill -- no taro or other asian fruits or vegetables!

And while Better Homes and Gardens Step-By-Step Successful Gardening is certainly helpful for learning about gardening basics (fruits, vegetables, flowers, trees, shrubs, vines, you name it!), the content is also pretty standard.

I've been told to get these books to learn about taro cultivation:

• Perennial Vegetables: From Artichokes to Zuiki Taro, A Gardener's Guide to Over 100 Delicious and Easy to Grow Edibles by Eric Toensmeier
• Taro: Mauka to Makai by The College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources, University of Hawaii at Manoa

Any thoughts?

I already know that people grow taro (otherwise known as kalo and elephant ears) here in Maryland for landscaping purposes, but I want to know whether I can grow it to eat and whether I need to buy a specific variety for eating instead of just landscaping.

Fall Garden with Square Foot Gardening - Updated

My fall vegetable garden is looking great!

The arugula and radish look about ready to eat; the lettuces, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, carrots, kale, and asian greens (Mibuna mustard greens and Prize Choy bok choi) are all coming along quite nicely. And the winter squashes (Burgess Buttercup winter squash, Uchiki Kuri winter squash, and Delicata winter squash) are just beautiful small plants with large leaves that are growing rapidly.

I’ve also just planted the peas along side my tomato plants (I'm hoping to train the vines up my tomato cage) and planted more of the lettuce, arugula, and radishes alongside my broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage plants -- I'm trying to master companion planting after reading Mel Bartholomew’s All New Square Foot Gardening and Better Homes and Gardens Step-By-Step Successful Gardening.

I've also just updated my fall garden map. Take a look:

What do you think?

Labyrinths for the Spirit by Jim Buchanan

Do you like labyrinths? Or meditative natural spaces? Then you'll love this book I just flipped through -- Labyrinths for the Spirit: How to create your own labyrinths for meditation and enlightenment by Jim Buchanan.

Here's the product description provided by Gaia Press, the publisher:

"By moving in a focused and directed way through the labyrinth, we begin to relax, and our sixth sense becomes heightened." That's how the author, a renowned labyrinth-maker and "land artist," describes the effect of walking the traditional and contemporary labyrinths explored here. Examples range from classic Greek and medieval designs to patterns used in Native American basketry, as well as the author's distinctive creations, which push the boundaries of the form. Connecting the spiritual aspects of walking the labyrinth to the creative act of construction, the guide offers illustrated instructions for making more than 20 different labyrinths, with suggestions on how to choose the site and the materials that best enhance the symbolic power of the completed work.

Seems like a must-have book if you plan on building large labyrinths of any kind -- it even includes plans on building a medieval Chartres type labyrinth which incorporates complex numerology, having deep significance for its walkers.

I think I've got about all I can handle with my garden, so while I won't be making a labyrinth in my backyard I would love to hear about your plans!

The World is Flat by Thomas L Friedman

I've started listening to the free audio version of Thomas L Friedman’s The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century and it's every bit as fantastic as I was told.

And listening to the bonus free prepublication audio excerpt of Friedman’s Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution–and How It Can Renew America makes me want to get my hands on a copy when it is released by Farrar, Straus and Giroux on September 8, 2008.

I'm thrilled that I heard about the free giveaway!

I'd love to hear about any other free book offers!

Age 18 - 25: Not quite a teen, not fully an adult

As we all know, the teenage years can be a time of huge emotional upheaval. But research gathered, analyzed and published this summer by the MIT Young Adult Development Project suggests that the years from 18 to 25 should be regarded as a specific developmental period with its own characteristics, milestones and limitations--a time of stunning accomplishment, wonderful energy, and creativity as well as chilling risk as young adults are propelled into full maturity.

A. Rae Simpson, the program director of parenting education and research at MIT's Center for Work, Family and Personal Life, and the creator of the Young Adult Development Project is an authority on parenting and adolescent issues.

She examined more than 500 articles and other sources about the young adult years, with a special focus on about 30 researchers and bases her conclusions in part on research that indicates that some important developments in the prefrontal cortex of the brain don't occur until the early 20s. But she also considers cultural factors: Today's American young adults are attending school longer, delaying marriage and often living at home due to economic pressure. "The kind of milestones that we have associated with adulthood are happening later in the 20s," she says.

Simpson's work has implications for colleges and universities hoping to ease student stress and depression as well as for parents dealing with adult children and employers and human service providers working with young adults. Young adults also may gain greater understanding into their own psyche.

So good news, the quarterlife-crisis that we were all afraid we were making up is real!

Click here to download a print-friendly PDF summary of the report; or click here to download a PDF version of a set of PowerPoint slides summarizing the web material.

The Opposable Mind by Roger Martin: Chapters 5 - 8

As promised, here are my thoughts on Chapters Five through Eight of Roger Martin's The Opposable Mind: How Successful Leaders Win Through Integrative Thinking (click here to read all my posts on this book).

In the second half of this book, Martin mentions some of the same people from the beginning of the book and continues to write about people from a wide range of disciplines:

• Victoria Hale of the Insitute for OneWorld Health
• K V Kamath, ICICI Bank
• Meg Whitman, eBay
• Nandan Nilekani, Infosys Technologies Limited
• Ramalina Raju, Satyam Computer Services
• Bruce Mau, Bruce Mau Design
• Taddy Belcher, CIDA City Campus
• Gerry Mabin, The Mabin School

Chapter Five, Mapping the Mind, is when Martin begins to teach readers how to hone their integrative thinking skills. Martin puts forth a model of "your personal knowledge system" (which is "highly path-dependent") broken down into three parts:

• Stance: Who You Are and What You're After - further discussed in Chapter Six
• Tools: Knocking the World into Shape - further discussed in Chapter Seven
• Experiences: Where Stance and Tools Meet the World - further discussed in Chapter Eight

The example stances that Martin discusses are all varied and interesting in their own right.

Within experiences, Martin defines skills and sensitivities that are built through experience as follows:

• Sensitivities: capacity to make distinctions between conditions that are similar but not the same
• Skills: capacity to carry out an activity so as to consistently produce the destined result

Chapter Six, The Construction Project, is all about the integrative thinker's stance and the six key features they have in common:

1. Integrative thinkers believe that whatever models exist at the present moment do not represent reality; they are simply the best or only constructions yet made.
2. Integrative thinkers believe that conflicting models, styles, and approaches to problems are to be leveraged, not feared.
3. Integrative thinkers believe that better models exist that are not yet seen.
4. Integrative thinkers believe that not only does a better model exist, but that they are capable of bringing that better model from abstract hypothesis to concrete reality.
5. Integrative thinkers are comfortable wading into complexity to ferret out a new and better model, confident they will emerge on the other side with the resolution they seek.
6. Integrative thinkers give themselves the time to create a better model.

In my opinion, these six key features could really be condensed into fewer points but it's still useful as it is.

Martin goes on to describe three stances about the world (first three) and three about the self (last three) that he believes are the foundation of a personal knowledge system that will lead to integrative thinking:

1. Existing models do not represent reality, they are our constructions.
2. Opposing models are to be leveraged, not forced.
3. Existing models are not perfect; better models exist that are not yet seen.
4. I am capable of finding a better model.
5. I can wade into and get through the necessary complexity.
6. I give myself the time to create a better model.

Strangely, Martin uses the movie Crash to illustrate a need for integrative thinking. But what I found most interesting from this chapter was that Bruce Mau, one of Martin's integrative thinkers, meditates when faced with complex problems -- it's not everyday that a business book advocates meditation!

Chapter Seven, A Leap of the Mind, breaks down the tools required for integrative thinking as generative or modal reasoning (as opposed to declarative reasoning), causal modeling, and assertive inquiry. The aspects of "multidirectional feedback loops" are also discussed. And Martin's use of Taddy Belcher's successful creation of CIDA City Campus as a model of integrative thinking is both educational and inspirational.

Finally Chapter Eight, A Wealth of Experience, concludes the book by detailing A G Lafley's experiences starting from the Navy Exchange to Harvard Business School and finally to Procter and Gamble. The key experiences an integrative thinker strives for are ones that deepen mastery and nurture originality.

You know, having written my thoughts on each of these chapters, I feel like I've learned more from this book than I initially realized. I love when that happens!

Click here to view an excerpt of this book.

If you'd like to learn more, click here to listen to a podcast by Roger Martin about this book, courtesy of businessweek.com or click here to view the whole January 2008 Special Report on the book.

Enjoy!

I.O.U.S.A.

I just got back from I.O.U.S.A.: LIVE with Warren Buffett, Pete Peterson & Dave Walker, a primer on why we should be concerned about the rising national debt, in a packed house -- click here to watch a trailer.

As you may recall, there is a billboard-size clock near Times Square was put up by Seymour B. Durst in the late 1980's to bring attention to government borrowing. It had been turned off for nearly two years starting in 2000 while the federal government was flush with surpluses when in 2002 it flickered back to life, showing a national debt of $6.1 trillion, as George W. Bush's presidency racked up the national debt quickly.

The national debt has continued to increase an average of $1.86 billion per day since September 28, 2007 and is now over $9.7 trillion thanks to an ever-expanding government and military, increased international competition, and debts to foreign countries that are becoming impossible to honor. That makes each citizen's share of this debt more than $30,000! And according to I.O.U.S.A. that number rises to $53 trillion when you take into account total unfunded and overextended entitlement programs (Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid).

I.O.U.S.A. examines the rapidly growing national debt and its consequences for the United States and its citizens by following U.S. Comptroller General David Walker (who has resigned as head of the Government Accountability Office to be a more politically active in the grassroots effort to education Americans about the problem of our national debt) and Robert Bixby director of the Concord Coalition) as they crisscross the country during their "Fiscal Wake Up Tour" explaining America’s unsustainable fiscal policies to its citizens.

The documentary was written and directed by the husband and wife team of Patrick Creadon and Christine O'Malley and based in part on Empire of Debt: The Rise of an Epic Financial Crisis by William Bonner and Addison Wiggin, who also wrote Financial Reckoning Day: Surviving the Soft Depression of the 21st Century.

Topical and nonpartisan, I.O.U.S.A. drives home the message that we must mend our spendthrift ways or face an economic disaster of epic proportions while proposing solutions about how we can recreate a fiscally sound nation for future generations.

It features a number of candid appearances, including by Warren Buffett, Alan Greenspan, Paul Volcker, Peter G. Peterson, Sens. Kent Conrad and Judd Gregg, former Treasury Secretaries Paul O'Neill and Robert Rubin, former CBO chief Alice Rivlin, Rep. Ron Paul, Bob Bixby, and David M. Walker.

Watching the movie made me think of all the ways the super rich are cheating the tax code and other government regulations at the expense of everyday Americans -- which I learned all about from David Cay Johnston’s Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich - and Cheat Everybody Else (click here to read my entries on this book or click here to read an excerpt of the book) and Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You with the Bill) (click here to read my entries on this book or click here to read excerpts and view the table of contents on the author's website for this book).

I.O.U.S.A. premiered at the Sundance Film Festival 2008 where it was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize. It also played at the 2008 Maryland Film Festival where it was a huge hit -- sold out in nearly every showing!

I.O.U.S.A.: LIVE with Warren Buffett, Pete Peterson & Dave Walker was broadcast via satellite to about 400 theaters nationwide. The documentary was immediately followed by a live satellite broadcast of a fantastic 45-minute town meeting style Q&A on the US economy from Omaha with America's most notable financial leaders and policy experts, including:

• Warren Buffett, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway
• William Niskanen, chairman of the CATO Institute
• Bill Novelli, CEO of AARP
• Pete Peterson, senior chairman of The Blackstone Group and chairman of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation
• Dave Walker, president & CEO of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation and former U.S. Comptroller General.

Agora Financial's Addison Wiggin (who concieved of, co-written and executive produced the movie) and David Walker (President and CEO of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation which purchased the movie in July 2008) are also releasing a book I.O.U.S.A to accompany new feature-length documentary based on the writings of Agora's The Daily Reckoning. It features stories about the people involved in making decisions about the four major deficits in the country (federal deficit, trade deficit, savings deficit, and leadership deficit) including Warren Buffet, Robert Rubin, Alice Rivlin, Pete Peterson, David Walker, Paul O'Neill, James Areddy, and Bill Bonner.

Click here to download the Peter G Peterson Foundation's Citizens Guide, intended to provide a clear and concise summary of where our nation stands financially and where it is headed fiscally.

I.O.U.S.A. opens in 12 cities nationwide Friday August 22, 2008:

• Atlanta
• Chicago
• Dallas
• Irvine, CA
• Omaha
• Miami
• Kansas City
• Los Angeles
• New York
• Philadelphia
• San Francisco
• Washington DC

And after tonight, other theaters nationwide may decide they want to show it too!

Now maybe I should finally get to reading my copy of Peter G. Peterson's Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do about It!

Click here to view the table of contents of Running on Empty; or click here to read an excerpt; or click here to read a chapter by chapter summary.

But first, I'm going to read Warren Buffet's essay about Squanderville and Thriftville titled "Why I'm not buying the U.S. dollar," published in Fortune Magazine in October 2003 and mentioned in I.O.U.S.A.

Magazines and Newspapers

As I've mentioned before, I am a faithful reader of the New York Times, The Atlantic, Technology Review, and The Economist -- have been for nearly a decade.

Still, I haven't really looked at any other news publications in quite some time and wondered if anyone had any new recommendations?

Should I quit reading the New York Times in favor of the Washington Post?

Or maybe I should start reading Harper's? Or Barron's?

Am I missing out by not reading Foreign Policy? What about the Wilson Quarterly?

Or maybe you think all newspapers and magazines are old fashioned and you'd like to recommend some blogs?

I should mention that I do also read these publications (with decidedly less frequency, though at one point or another I have held a subscription to these): PINK, Scientific American, Seed, Outside, Vegetarian Times, Wall Street Journal, the New Yorker, Shambhala Sun, tricycle, Radar, Plenty, and Hallmark.

And some of the other unusual subscriptions I've held?

• Organic Gardening
• Body + Soul
• Harper's Bazaar
• Horticulture
• Saveur
• Fast Company
• Inc.
• Travel + Leisure
• National Geographic
• Organic Style
• Harvard Business Review
• Budget Living
• Health
• Gourmet
• Metropolitan Home
• Psychology Today
• Red Herring
• Running Times
• Garden Design
• Kiplinger's Personal Finance
• Qualified Remodeler
• Art in America
• MIT Sloan Management Review
• Berkshire Living
• National Geographic Adventure
• Lucky
• Tennis
• Contract
• PC Magazine
• strategy+business

Man, just looking at this list makes me a little dizzy.

Thoughts?

The Eight Patterns of Highly Effective Entrepreneurs by Brent Bowers

Still getting through the stack of library books I borrowed -- I'm about through reading If at First You Don’t Succeed . . . The Eight Patterns of Highly Effective Entrepreneurs by Brent Bowers.

In Chapter Four, Bowers concedes that he is attempting the near impossible with this book:

With the help of some nationally recognized experts on the topic, I am dissecting into a observable parts something that in reality can't be stripped apart: the human personality.

I feel like because the goal of the book was so ambitous, Bowers went overboard with his examples. Where five good stories would do, Bowers provides twenty -- leaving the reader feeling dizzy and overwhelmed. The book would be more successful if it focused on fewer entrepreneurs and/or was half as long as it is.

Here's a list of the interesting people featured in just the first chapter:

• J. Robert Hillier, Hiller Architecture & Obit magazine
• Greg Herro, LifeGem & Anything's Possible
• Farnam Jahanian, Arbor Networks
• Peter Amico, Airtrax, Martin Divisions Steel Products, American Consolidated Steel Foundations, Centurion Securities Services, & Titan Detective Services
• Frank Landsberger, CRT Capital
• Mark Hughes, Buzzmarketing
• Josh Kopelman, Half.com
• Sig Anderman, American Home Mortgage
• Gary Doan, Intradyn, Transition Networks, & Neo Networks
• Umang Gupta, Gupta Technologies
• Timothy Mahoney, vFinance.com
• John Heagney, Heagney Public Relations
• Charlie Horn, Promirus Group & Affordable Medical Solutions and HealthTrans
• Michael Huddy, Barrier International
• Herbert Jian, US Import & Export Company
• Cameron Johnson, SurfingPrizes.com, CertificateSwap.com, beaniebabywholesale.com, cheersandtears.com, myezmail.com, zablo.com, & trueloot.com
• Alex Lidow, International Rectifier
• James Poss, Seahorse Power Company
• Karl Eller, Eller Media
• Paul Brown, Metropolitan Pathology Laboratory Inc (MetPath) & HearUSA
• Joe Macchia, Macchia General Agency & Early American Insurance Company
• Kevin Plank, Under Armour Performance Apparel
• Luke Visconti, Diversity.com & DiversityInc Magazine
• Liz Ryan, WorldWIT
• Richard Wellman, International Airline Support Group
• Myke Templeton, Owensboro Christian Church

That's 26 people featured in fewer than 40 pages!

Some of the other folks mentioned:

• Pete Newman, Gotham Software, Inc.
• Kerry Sulkowics, Boswell Grups LLC
• Lara & Lisa Helene Meiland, Lara Helene Bridal Atelier
• Martin G Klein, Electro Energy
• Laura Gasparis Vonfrolio, Revolution: The Journal of Nurse Empowerment, CPR Associates, Oh-la-la Caterers, & Education Enterprises
• David Weistein, Chicagoland Entrepreneurial Center
• Ross Levin, Accredited Investors, Inc.
• Peter Gyenes, Ascential Software Corporation
• Joan Schweighardy, GreyCove Press
• Craig Aronoff, Family Business Consulting Group
• Kirtland Poss, VisEn Medical
• Nadine Thompson, Warm Spirit Inc
• Jeff & Richard Sloan, StartupNation
• Dot Smith, Pepper Patch
• Scott Cook, Intuit
• Jack Stack, Springfield Remanufacturing Corporation

The sheer number of anecdotes doesn't add weight to Bowers arguments; instead it makes his eight traits seem like arbitrary and that he's filling pages with stories so you won't figure it out!

Still, the eight traits appear to be a useful measure if you are considering going into business for yourself. And even if the nine to five lifestyle suits you best, you'll enjoy these inspirational entrepreneurial stories -- just as long as you can keep the names straight.

Here are some of the passages I have enjoyed the most:

From Chapter Three, Nurture vs. Nature:

So which is it that makes for a successful entrepreneur? Genes or family? Nature or nurture?

Not surprisingly, the experts take a nuanced position on the matter. They remind me a bit of Franklin D. Roosevelt's comment about economists: He wished he could find one with only one arm, because all the others he had met were forever saying, "On the one hand this, on the other hand that."

From Chapter Four, Turning on a Dime:

Vonfrolio wasn't averse to making exaggerated claims to get deals done. When she came home from nursing duty one night exhausted and decided to start a business, she wrote letters to E. F Hutton and Merrill Lynch, advertising herself as a CPR instructor and sprinkling her prose with made-up statistics about death rates from heart attacks in high-pressure industries.

A few weeks later Merrill Lynch called, and Vonfrolio asked her roommate, "Do you know anybody named Merrill Lynch?" It sounded familiar, but she couldn't picture the face. Then she remembered the letters. She arranged to teach a class two weeks later. The next day, E. F. Hutton phoned. This time, she was ready with the crisp announcement, "CPR Associated." When E. F. Hutton requested classes for 500 people right away, she said she was booked solid for several weeks but could set up an appointment after that.

Then the scrambling began. Vonfrolio took a two-day course to obtain certification to teach CPR. Refused a business loan by a male bank manager, she returned a few days later and talked a female manager into approving a $10,000 personal loan by saying she had just lost 150 pounds and needed $10,000 to buy a new wardrobe. She bought mannequins and other equipment, hired ten instructors, and got her business up and running with time to spare.

From Chapter Five, Tenacity:

Brown's training schedule demonstrates an elevated form of doggedness. To succeed, he says, you have to have patience, persistence, and perseverance. "Patience is discovering that you don't have the key to your house and so you wait for your wife to arrive. Persistence is circling the house and checking all the doors and windows to see if you can get in through one of them. Perseverance is removing the hinges from the door.

"That is the bulldog mentality," he says. "The entrepreneur has to have all three of those qualities."

And from Chapter Six, Delusions of Grandeur:

If you are thinking about starting a coffee shop or Christmas tree farm because you think it might be a rewarding way to make a living, you might have a great future as a business owner, but you aren't an entrepreneur. If you are planning to open a Dunkin' Donuts franchise, you may end up selling millions of doughnuts, but you aren't really an entrepreneur. If you are hoping to amass a stable of a dozen Applebee's restaurants, you might make some serious money, but that will not make you an entrepreneur.

Entrepreneurs have grand ambitions.

Looking forward to more!

If at First You Don’t Succeed . . . The Eight Patterns of Highly Effective Entrepreneurs by Brent Bowers

Still getting through the stack of library books I borrowed -- just read If at First You Don’t Succeed . . . The Eight Patterns of Highly Effective Entrepreneurs by Brent Bowers.

I've read a few chapters of this book and I have found it entertaining if not substantive.

Bowers starts out his book with a bold statement:

This is not an ordinary business book.

And I would agree. While I've read many articles that attempt to help a bright-eyed person with a business idea determine whether he or she should go ahead and start a small business, I've never seen a whole book devoted to this topic.

And it is certainly a worthwhile topic. As Bowers tells us of our "grassroots capitalist culture":

• There are 24 million entrepreneurs in the United States -- that's 11% of the adult population.
• Fifty percent of those entrepreneurs have started their venture as a side project and the other fifty percent devote their full-time attention to their venture.
• Small businesses account for 51% of the gross domestic product (GDP) and two-thirds of new jobs.

The eight traits of entrepreneurs sound great but there's just simply no way to know if they really are the characteristics you need to successfully start your own company. Bowers certainly tries to prove the accuracy of his list of eight by devoting an entire chapter to each trait. And to prove his point, Bowers spends a paragraph to a page and a half on stories of successful entrepreneurs after successful entrepreneurs, each story embodying the spirit of that chapter's trait.

It is less than convincing.

Here are the magic eight traits, if you're curious:

1. An aptitude for spotting and seizing opportunities that nobody else has noticed.
2. Compulsion to be in charge and a gift for leadership.
3. A history of innovative activities dating back to childhood, usually in a family environment that encouraged that bent.
4. A talent for improvisation.
5. Doggedness - fierce drive, energy, and tenacity.
6. Enthusiasm that borders on the delusional for a product.
7. Unfailing pragmatism.
8. A knack for "falling upwards" - viewing setbacks as opportunities.

Still this business book is worth reading. The stories are inspirational (particularly those of the entrepreneurs who aren't widely known) and finding out if you've got these eight traits can't hurt -- even if Bowers doesn't convince you that his list is accurate.

Click here to read an excerpt.

Expect to hear more from me as I read more of If at First You Don’t Succeed . . . The Eight Patterns of Highly Effective Entrepreneurs by Brent Bowers.

Not a Drop to Drink: America's Water Crisis (and What You Can Do) by Ken Midkiff

Just heard about another book related to the potential water crisis facing America: Not a Drop to Drink: America's Water Crisis (and What You Can Do) by Ken Midkiff.

Published in 2007 with a foreword by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. , this book details the current state of America's water supply including the current condition of major groundwater supplies, privatization and agricultural production issues, and the effect of global warming trends on future water supplies.

Looks like a good book to me -- I'll have to check it out at my local library. I still have to get my hands on a copy of Marc Reisner’s Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water!

Click here to view the table of contents or visit the author's website to find out more about his views.

The Opposable Mind by Roger Martin

I've finally gotten through yet another one of my library books -- The Opposable Mind: How Successful Leaders Win Through Integrative Thinking by Roger Martin (click here to read all my posts on this book).

Will write more in detail about Chapters Five through Eight (just as I did for Chapters One through Four) but just wanted to write down a few of my thoughts now.

While I enjoyed this book and the stories and examples of integrative thinking, I didn't feel like it was substantive enough.

Call me a scientist, but I much prefer business books like Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t by Jim Collins for the hard data and proofs.

Still, I would recommend this book as it does provide insights to becoming a better thinker and thus a better decision maker.

Most U.S. Corporations Pay No Income Tax

Just read "Most U.S. Corporations Pay No Income Tax" published August 13, 2008 in the New York Times DealBook blog. Here's an excerpt:

Two out of every three United States corporations paid no federal income taxes from 1998 through 2005, according to a report released Tuesday by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress.

...

Among foreign corporations, a slightly higher percentage, 68 percent, did not pay taxes during the period covered — compared with 66 percent for United States corporations. Even with these numbers, corporate tax receipts have risen sharply as a percentage of federal revenue in recent years.

Immediately made me think of David Cay Johnston's Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich - and Cheat Everybody Else (click here to read my entries on this book) and Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You with the Bill) (click here to read my entries on this book).

Now let's see if Senate, armed with this GAO data, actually makes any changes!

The Opposable Mind by Roger Martin: Chapters 1 - 4

So far I've read the first half of Roger Martin's The Opposable Mind: How Successful Leaders Win Through Integrative Thinking (Chapters One through Four) which focus on examples of CEOs succeeding through integrative thinking (defined as the ability to hold two opposing ideas in your mind at once, and then reaching a synthesis with elements of both while improving on both). Some of the people featured were quite varied:

• Michael Lee-Chin, AIC Limited
• Isadore "Issy" Sharp, Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts
• A G Lafley, Procter & Gamble
• Bob Young, Red Hat (and now Lulu.com)
• Tim Brown, IDEO
• Piers Handling, Toronto International Film Festival
• Marta Graham, Denishawn School dance company
• Moses Znaimer, CityTV

In Chapter Two, No Stomach for Second-Best, Martin discusses the process of thinking and deciding and isolates four key parts to this process: salience, causality, architecture and resolution. He further defines the differences between integrative and conventional thinkers:

1. Integrative thinkers take a broader view of what is salient.
2. Integrative thinkers don't flinch from considering multidirectional and non-linear causal relationships.
3. Integrative thinkers don't break a problem into independent pieces and work on each piece separately. They keep the entire problem firmly in mind while working on individual parts.
4. Integrative thinkers search for creative resolution of tensions, rather than accept unpleasant trade-offs.

Chapter Three, Reality, Resistance, and Resolution, focuses on the concept that how each of us filters the world around us (which we do to protect our brain from being overloaded) determines how we see the world; that none of us experiences reality as it is but simply a model of reality.

Chapter Four, Dancing Through Complexity, condemns simplifications and specialization in clear terms:

Truly creative resolutions . . . spring from complexity.

Simplification makes us favor linear, unidirectional causal relationships, even if reality is more complex and multidirectional.

...

Simplification also encourages us to construct a limited model of the problem before us, whatever it might be. The alternatives we perceive are meager and unattractive, closing any remaining avenue to an integrative resolution. The simplifying mind has no choice but to settle for trade-offs, also known as the best bad choice available.

...

Specialization is a variant of simplification. . . the specialist attempts to preserve depth and thoroughness by masking out all but a few square inches of a vast canvas.

Hmm, seems a little harsh to me but Martin does show some convincing examples of integrative thinking at work.

Slowly getting through these library books -- must keep plugging away!

The Opposable Mind: How Successful Leaders Win Through Integrative Thinking by Roger Martin

These past few weeks I've been so slow at getting through my library books.

I did start reading The Opposable Mind: How Successful Leaders Win Through Integrative Thinking by Roger Martin (published by the Harvard Business School Press).

Roger Martin has been dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto since 1998 and is also professor of strategic management at the Rotman School focusing his research in the areas of global competitiveness, integrative thinking, business design and corporate citizenship. During his 13 years with Monitor Company (a global strategy consulting firm based in Cambridge, Massachusetts), Martin founded and chaired Monitor University, the firm's educational arm, served as co-head of the firm for two years, and founded the Canadian office.

Martin starts off his book with this appropriate F. Scott Fitzgerald quote:

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.

Interestingly, Martin mentions three top selling business books in the first chapter, Choices Conflict, and the Creative Spark:

• Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done by Honeywell CEO Larry Bossidy and consultant Ram Charan
• Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t by professor-turned-guru Jim Collins.
• Jack: Straight from the Gut by Jack Welch, the former super-CEO of GE General Electric Company

Martin appears to mock the ineffectiveness of these books, though he does state:

I don't wish to denigrate any of th books mentioned. They were best sellers for a reason: businesspeople want to know what makes a great leader because they themselves would like to be better leaders. Each book offers a particular perspective, and each perspective is valuable. But to approach every business problem with the question, "What should I do?" is to foreclose options before they can even be explored.

Sounds to me like he's just covering himself.

Diana Beresford-Kroeger

I just read "Advocating an Unusual Role for Trees" about the intriguing and pioneering scientist Diana Beresford-Kroeger (written by Jim Robbins and published on NYTimes.com on August 11, 2008).

I was drawn to this article partly because of my newfound appreciation for trees due to reading Richard Preston's The Wild Trees: A Story of Passion and Daring (click here to read all my posts on that book).

Born in Ireland and currently working at the University of Ottawa school of medicine, Beresford-Kroeger is a botanist, agricultural and medical researcher, lecturer, and self-described "renegade scientist" in the fields of classical botany, medical biochemistry, organic chemistry, and nuclear chemistry.

Here's an excerpt from the NYTimes.com article:

She calls herself a renegade scientist, however, because she tries to bring together aboriginal healing, Western medicine and botany to advocate an unusual role for trees.

She favors what she terms a bioplan, reforesting cities and rural areas with trees according to the medicinal, environmental, nutritional, pesticidal and herbicidal properties she claims for them, which she calls ecofunctions.

...

But some of Ms. Beresford-Kroeger’s claims for the health effects of trees reach far outside the mainstream. Although some compounds found in trees do have medicinal properties and are the subject of research and treatment, she jumps beyond the evidence to say they also affect human health in their natural forms. The black walnut, for example, contains limonene, which is found in citrus fruit and elsewhere and has been shown to have anticancer effects in some studies of laboratory animals. Ms. Beresford-Kroeger has suggested, without evidence, that limonene inhaled in aerosol form by humans will help prevent cancer.

Sounds a little crazy, and definitely lacking hard scientific proof, but it could be true! After all, studies have not been done to study the effects on humans due to natural ambient compounds from trees.

And that Miriam Rothschild, an eccentric home-schooled British naturalist whom I greatly admire, "wrote glowingly of Ms. Beresford-Kroeger’s idea of bioplanning and called it 'one answer to 'Silent Spring'' because it uses natural chemicals rather than synthetic ones" makes me even more interested in Beresford-Kroeger work.

Beresford-Kroeger is also the author of several books, all of which I'd like to take a look at:

• A Garden for Life: The Natural Approach to Designing, Planting, and Maintaining a North Temperate Garden
• Arboretum America: A Philosophy of the Forest
• North American Trees: An Ecological Green Guide
  
• North Temperate Gardening: An Ecological Green Guide
  

I will have to see if my local library carries any of these!

Fall Garden with Square Foot Gardening

I've just laid out and started planting my fall vegetable garden after reading Mel Bartholomew's All New Square Foot Gardening. Take a look:

What do you think?

Perfectly Legal by David Cay Johnston

I've finally finished reading David Cay Johnston's Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich - and Cheat Everybody Else!

I have also read Free Lunch (click here to read my entries on that book) and I felt like while I preferred Free Lunch, I really think the preference was mostly due to the order in which I read these books.

Had I read Perfectly Legal first, I think I would have liked Perfectly Legal more than I liked Free Lunch. (Sorta how I felt about Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code versus Angels & Demons having read The Da Vinci Code first.)

Funny how that works huh?

Still I like how David Cay Johnston concludes both books with calls for action and discussion of some potential solutions -- he actually ends both books with "Reform begins with you."

I particularly like this story from the conclusion of Perfectly Legal:

There is a fable of a village in wine country where each fall, after the grapes have been crushed and the vintage bottled, a bacchanal is held. Each vinter climbs a ladder in the town square and pours into a common cask a jug of his wine. One year the last vinter making the climb had fallen on hard times. The weather had not been kind to his grapes and he felt pinched. He decided that no one would notice if he thinned the wine with a jug of water. When he came down from the ladder, everyone applauded and the mayor swung a mallet to knock the cork from the base of the cask, out of which flowed clear water.

The moral is that when one person cheats, no one but the cheat notices. But when everyone cheats, there is no party for anyone.

Now on to cheerier books, I hope.