A Point To Ponder...
"Don't read science fiction books. It'll look bad if you die in bed with one on the nightstand. Always read good stuff that will make you look good if you die in the middle of the night "
-P.J. O'Rourke
Things Everyone Should Be Reading Right Now...
It's estimated that the typical American will read eight books in their adult lifetime. That's right, eight. Now let's do the math. Let's suppose that the adult life expectancy is 60 years (78-18). If my assumption is close, it means that we all have 21,900 days to roam the earth from the time we graduate from high school. Now, if the typical book has 200 pages and Americans will read eight books total, 1,600 pages will be turned in a lifetime. That's one page every 7.3 days or roughly one word every seven hours. Check out the reading list below--then read TWO words every seven hours--by my calculations, you are now on pace to be twice as smart as your neighbor.
12/02/06: The Coming Generational Storm: What You Need To Know About America's Economic Future.
I read this book some time ago but it remains on my desk. Voted a Forbe's Top 10 Business Book for 2004, The Coming Generational Storm will literally scare the hell right out of you. Author, Laurence Kotlikoff (an Economics Professor at Boston University), charts the course of America's financial future by first examining the future solvency of social security and medicare. This will get your blood boiling due to the fact that our nation's top officials know all of this, but no one wants to touch the political "third rail." Despite your increase in blood pressure, Kotlikoff's just getting warmed up. He then takes a look at the demography of the U.S. population and highlights the fact that 80 million baby boomers (you and me) cannot be supported in our retirement by the small number of workers (our children) who are now entering the workforce--unless radical changes are made right now. To drive the point home, he illuminates the U.S. savings rate and the retirement status of the typical American. At this point, you'll be searching the Yellow Pages for a support group, but he's still not done yet. For the big finish, Kotlikoff proposes extremely insightful public and personal changes that must be made if we are to weather the coming generational storm. Be warned: this book is not for the weak of heart who don't have the intestinal fortitude to face these issues. Or on second thought, maybe it's just what the doctor ordered.
11/09/06: Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think
Written by Dr. Brian Wansink, a marketing professor (formerly at the U of Illinois now at Cornell) this book is so good it's sick. After doing an interview with Brian some two years ago, I knew then that this guy had insight about food consumption that few can match. By using the results from the academic studies that he's conducted over the course of the last decade, Dr. Wansink weaves the data into compelling insight that explains a lot about why Americans are getting fat. Trust me on this one, Dr. Wansink's studies are not the typical bull@$#t that you read in academic journals--they're creative, compelling, funny, and frightening. You are going to love this book.
The Top "Must Reads" For Anyone Whose Serious About Business and Health...
Over the course of the last several years, I've received a lot of letters and phone calls from clients, friends, and colleagues requesting a reading list of the best information that I've come across. After months of putting it off, I've started to put the list together. If you've not read these books, you're missing out.
The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure; Juliet Schor; 1993; Basic Books.
Schor, a Harvard economist, argues from statistics what the rest of us know from experience, that "in the last twenty years the amount of time Americans have spent at their jobs has risen steadily." And the statistics, if accurate, are stunning. Each year our work year increases by one day. We average only 16 hours of leisure a week after jobs and household chores. Working hours are longer than they were 40 years ago. And if present trends continue by the year 2000, we will be spending as much time at our jobs as we did in the 1920s. However, as Schor notes, we are also willing victims of this erosion of leisure as we pursue promotions, bigger salaries, and conspicuous consumption. Her solution? Hold jobs to a set number of hours per week, offer comp time for any overtime, and lower our living standards. Recommended for academic and public libraries.
The Overspent American: Why We Want What We Don't Need; Juliet Schor; 1999; HarperCollins Publishers.
Juliet Schor presents original research showing how keeping up with the Joneses has evolved to keeping up with a referent group that may include co-workers who earn five times one's own salary . The book also describes the growing backlash of people who are "downshifting" by working less, earning less, and finding balance by getting their lifestyles in sync with their values.
The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization; Peter Senge; 1994; Doubleday & Company, Incorporated.
An MIT Professor's pathbreaking book on building "learning organizations" —corporations that overcome inherent obstacles to learning and develop dynamic ways to pinpoint the threats that face them and to recognize new opportunities. Not only is the learning organization a new source of competitive advantage, it also offers a marvelously empowering approach to work, one which promises that, as Archimedes put it, "with a lever long enough... single-handed I can move the world."
