Review: There’s no shortage of how-to books. There are books on how to get rich, how to be successful, how to become famous, how to be happy, how to win friends and influence people. Pink wrote a when-to book instead. When is a thoroughly researched book on chronobiology, the special effects of beginnings, midpoints and endings, and the stages of timing and synchronisation. Some people are larks, rise early and are obnoxiously high-sp...
Yay, one year of excellent reviews! Well, technically, this blog is less than one year old, but I think I started early enough to have a year-end conclusion of 2017 already. In 2017 I read and rated 15 books, and posted two special reviews, as well as two additional articles. I reached an average of more than one view per day, which is in tune with my efforts at promoting this blog. At least I now repost my reviews on goodreads.com. For...
Review: The Art of War is a collection of stratagems (bite-sized, aphoristic strategic teachings) by chinese military commander Sun Tzu (or Sun Zi or a dozen variations) – and well over 2500 years old. So why this review? Because The Art of War still makes the management book bestseller lists (like here, here, here or here). This review is based on the annotated german translation by Patrick Lindley of the 1910 english translation...
Review: When it comes to books on leadership, Leading with Kindness is about as generic as it gets. Two leadership educators interviewed a bunch of leaders (with a slight bias to banking and investment) and aggregated their leadership experiences. A good, efficient and ”kind” leader sets expectations, sticks to the truth and focuses on mutual gain and growth. Baker and O’Malley then simply define this set of features and behavio...
Review: A tall tale of market efficiency, informed choice and the quest for the right discount rate. I’ve been reading on modern economics lately. Some authors challenge dearly held economic assumptions, others use new and radical methods. Uncommon Sense is the old-fashioned kind of economics. The kinda bad kind. Becker and Posner curated a collection of their blog posts, each one written by one author with a commentary of the oth...
It’s time for a special review, where I have a look at other media, and this time I want to talk about crowdfunding. I did support some projects in the past, so I wanted to look into Kickstarter.com, the biggest crowdfunding website, to see if there are some interesting books to be found. For those of you who don’t know what crowdfunding is, here is a short introduction. A creator initiates a project by opening a project p...
Review: A good coffee should be dark, intense and rich in taste, right? That’s what you and me will tell when asked. Based on consumer research, coffee companies will create new coffee roasts that are extra dark and strong and full of flavour. Then you and me are going to completely ignore those and go buy something mild, probably with a lot of milk and sugar in it. Because everybody lies. There is a difference between action and inte...
I already mentioned that I’m a big fan of Dilbert. Creator Scott Adams is apparently in the process of writing a new book called Win Bigly – Persuasion in a World where Facts don’t Matter. I do not really care about Adams’ non-Dilbert activities (especially not his political campaigning), I do not read his blog and I know absolutely nothing about the book, but recently a post headline got my attention. Adams is offering a bo...
Review: Many books on success out there summarize as “Look at these successful people! Study their habits and learn their ways, so you will be successful, too!”. Actually, I have reviewed a prime example here. Barking up the Wrong Tree presents a nice counterpoint and states that imitating the successful does not necessarily make successful. Instead we get a thorough analysis of perceived and real success factors, somewhat hidden be...
There are a lot of books out there that claim to make you successful. Let’s discuss if there is actually some merit to this. A little guide how to use self-help success books, if you will. Most books go “Our research shows that successful people do X!” and “Successful people attribute their success to Y!” – and now I am going to explain why there is a crucial and fundamental difference between those two premises. Let’s...