Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Bob's Books Read in 2010

Here's my take on the best books I've read in 2010 (July 1, 2010)

American Sucker tells how author, David Denby (Great Books) was captured by greed and manic belief that the stock market offered easy opportunities for unlimited prosperity. Denby sunk his family’s funds in NASDAQ stocks, became addicted to CNBC and the Wall Street Journal, lost his balance in the excess of the time-stock tickers in strip clubs; then lost his money when the market crashed. Denby nearly suffered a nervous breakdown when his wife of 18 years left him, and making enough money to buy out her share of their apartment was his initial motivation for investing in the market. Denby details his decline, from a night of impotence to a six-month obsession with Internet porn. “His dissection of his own Upper West Side narcissism offers some of the most candid critiques of the Manhattan bourgeoisie ever found outside of a Woody Allen film.”

*The Anatomy of Deception by Lawrence Goldstone is a medical thriller set in 1889 Philadelphia. The narrator is Ephraim Carroll, a young, idealistic and somewhat naïve doctor, who works alongside William Osler, often described as the father of modern medicine. Carroll is troubled when Osler forgoes an autopsy of a woman without explanation. Carroll's curiosity is further piqued after George Turk, a colleague who also seemed unsettled by Osler's actions, dies, apparently of cholera. When Turk's autopsy reveals trace amounts of arsenic, Carroll's suspicions of foul play are confirmed. Goldstone artfully integrates a manuscript the actual Dr. Osler wrote and ordered sealed for half a century after his death. This is top-notch historical page-turner that captures the era, the power of social class and the evolution of medical practice.

Replay by Kim Greenwood is a fantasy about Jeff Winston, a failing 43-year-old journalist, who dies and wakes up in his 18-year-old body in 1963 with his memories of the next 25 years intact. Jeff's knowledge becomes both a curse as a blessing. After recovering from the shock (is the future a dream, or is it real life?), he plays out missed choices with differing levels of frustration. Not an original theme, but developed in a thoughtful, engaging manner.

*Solar by Ian McEwan received mixed reviews. The protagonist, physicist Michael Beard, won a Nobel Prize several years ago and has been resting on his laurels ever since. A serial cheater, he is now married to his fifth wife, who leads a totally separate life, indicating her complete disdain for his wandering eye. An accidental death which he covers up, a politically incorrect statement before a professional audience, and his usurpation of research ideas from a deceased ‘post doc’ are part of his disintegrating character. Beard is a despicable, but modestly charming, character. The book blends interesting insights into scientific research, climate change, the press, aging and egoism.

Mennonite in a Simple Black Dress by Rhoda Janzen got great reviews, “an intelligent, funny, wonderfully written memoir.” I didn’t see it—maybe it is a ‘chick’ thing. Her 15-year relationship with Nick ends when he leaves her for someone he met on “Gay.com.” She comes to recognize her co-dependent role in their marriage (even as she tweaks the 12 steps just a bit). She moves back in with her Mennonite parents and “looks at her childhood religion with fresh, twinkling eyes.” One reviewer gushes “… women will immediately warm to the self-deprecating honesty”—but maybe not guys.

*The Three Weissmanns of Westport by Cathleen Schine is an ‘Austenesque’ novel about three women figuring out how to survive and thrive in ‘exile.’ Betty Weissman is 75 when her husband announces he's divorcing her. She moves out of their grand CPW apartment and the conniving girlfriend moves in. Betty lands in a rundown Westport, Conn., beach cottage, but things quickly get more complicated when Betty's aging daughters run into their own problems and move in with her. “It's a smart crowd pleaser with lovably flawed leads…the literary version of a delectable desert”

Siege by psychologist Stephen White has the Yale campus as the site of a unique act of terrorism. Unidentified attackers take over a building belonging to one of Yale's secret where they hold several students hostage. They seem to make no demands, agree to no negotiations and execute or release hostages depending on their unknown logic. Suspended Boulder, Colo., policeman Sam Purdy eventually teams with maverick FBI agent Christopher Poe and CIA terror expert Deirdre Drake in an effort outside official channels to thwart the creatively conceived plan. “This intellectually challenging and provocative thriller brings home the lesson that 9/11 might have been a mere prelude to more sophisticated assaults.”

The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama by David Remnick, editor of the New Yorker, offers a detailed (almost 700 pages) but boring account of Barack Obama's history. One reviewer called it a “major contribution to the river of Obama books…a sharply honed work of biographical journalism.” I found it 300 pages too long due to the author’s tendency to include any related reference or quote he accumulated. For example, in talking about Obama’s job as a community organization, he adds long references to Hillary Clinton’s senior thesis on Saul Alinsky, Alinsky’s background and how he influenced the person who hired Obama. The subtitle of the book could have been, “More than you ever wanted to know about Obama”—and for me that’s pretty hard to do. A tough editor would have helped.

*Innocent by Scott Turow picks up the characters and personality of his hugely successful Presumed Innocent, 22 years after the events of the earlier book. Former prosecutor Rusty Sabich, now an appellate judge, is again suspected of murdering a woman close to him. His wife, Barbara, died in her bed, apparently of natural cause; Yet Rusty comes under scrutiny from acting Tommy Molto, who unsuccessfully prosecuted him for killing his mistress decades earlier. Tommy's chief deputy, Jim Brand, is suspicious because Rusty chose not to report Barbara's death for almost an entire day, which could have allowed traces of poison to disappear. Rusty's candidacy for a higher court and a recent affair with his attractive law clerk further complicate matters. Turow displays an uncanny ability for making the passions and contradictions of his main characters accessible and believable.

**The Lacuna is Barbara Kingsolver's first ambitious new novel in nine years (after the excellent The Poisonwood Bible). It focuses on Harrison William Shepherd, the son of a divorced American father and a Mexican mother. After getting kicked out of an American military academy after seeing the “bonus army riots”, Harrison spends several years in Mexico in the household of Diego Rivera; his wife, Frida Kahlo; and their houseguest, Leon Trotsky. After Trotsky is assassinated, Harrison returns to the U.S. and settles in Asheville, N.C., where he becomes an author of historical potboilers (e.g., Vassals of Majesty) and is later investigated as a possible subversive. Narrated in the form of letters, diary entries and newspaper clippings, the novel starts slowing, but achieves an emotional peak when Harrison wittily defends himself before the Un-American Activities Committee (the panel includes a young Dick Nixon). I thought Kingsolver subtly wove parallels between the fall of Aztec civilization, the 1930s and 40s (and by implication, our own era). Kingsolver was masterful in resurrecting “a dark period in American history with the assured hand of a true literary artist.”

*The Road by Cormac McCarthy is “profoundly dark, told in spare, searing prose…The Road is a post-apocalyptic masterpiece.” The depressing darkness of the book kept me from reading it for a long time, but it is a powerful book that describes a post-nuclear world with gray skies that drizzle ash, most wildlife is extinct and starvation is nearly all-encompassing. A seriously ill father is walking with his sickly son toward warmer weather but are constantly watching for danger that could come in any form—perhaps one of the bands of cannibals who roam the country-side with pieces of human flesh stuck between their teeth. Anyone who doesn’t want to reduce our nuclear stockpile should be required to read this book.

*Body of Lies by David Ignatius tells the story of idealistic CIA agent Roger Ferris, newly stationed in Jordan after being wounded in Iraq. Ferris, is dedicated to forestalling further al-Qaeda attacks, develops an intricate scheme modeled after a British WWII rouse. Ferris's plot to turn the terrorists against each other by sowing seeds of suspicion that their leaders are collaborating with the Americans puts his personal life in turmoil and threatens his professional relationship with the head of Jordanian intelligence. It may be the best post-9/11 espionage novel, with well-developed characters, intelligent, informed writing and plenty of suspense. Unfortunately, the book’s potential for a great movie wasn’t realized.

A Game of Character by Craig Robinson, presidential brother-in-law, Ivy-League MVP and head coach at Oregon State, takes readers behind the scenes to meet his most important influences in the “winning traits that are part of his playbook for success.” The book is a tribute to his remarkable parents who showed their children to believe in themselves and live their lives with love, discipline and respect and a great recruiting tool for OSU. I suspect Robinson is a great coach and brother, but writing isn’t his greatest strength—but this is a great read for high school basketball players.

*The Condition by Jennifer Haigh follows a dysfunctional New England family as it struggles toward normalcy in a poignant novel from the PEN/Hemingway-winner. We follow the children of resentful, controlling, Paulette and distracted, MIT professor Frank. Billy, the oldest and most successful, keeps a secret about his sophisticated New York life. Scott, the uncontrollable brat of the bunch, sees himself in his own troubled son. Meanwhile, Gwen suffers from a genetic condition that prevents her from developing into womanhood. The story starts slowly but each family member grows and matures as the narrative leads to a surprising and satisfying conclusion.

Caught by Harlan Coben is filled with the tension and unanticipated machinations that have become the author’s trademark. A ‘straight arrow’ high school senior is missing. A reporter on a mission to identify sexual predators via elaborate sting operations targets a social worker known as a friend to troubled teens, but the story soon becomes much more complicated, and sometimes hard to follow. The first half is excellently written with an ending that is surprising and engaging.

Food Rules: An Eater’s Guide by Michael Pollan, perhaps the country’s most trusted food writer offers a simple guide for anyone concerned about health and food. Simple, sensible, and easy to use, Food Rules is a set of 64 memorable guidelines for eating wisely. You can probably read it in an hour, and it might change your eating habits and make you more mindful of the food you eat.

*Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy by Joseph Stiglitz is a “spirited attack on Wall Street, the free market and the Washington consensus.”As a Nobel Prize winner, and chairman of Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers, Stieglitz has some practical insights on what lead to the “Great Recession and how to prevent the next one. He provides an understandable overview of modern economic theory and “the wrongheaded national faith in the power of free markets to regulate themselves and provide wealth for all.” It is hard to make economics consistently interesting, but Stiglitz comes close and ends with a plea for the original focus of economics as “moral philosophy.”

U is for Undertow by Sue Grafton is set in 1988 when Kinsey takes on a client who claims to have recovered a childhood memory of men burying a suspicious bundle shortly after the unsolved disappearance of four-year-old Mary Claire Fitzhugh in 1972. Chapters told from the point of view of other characters in other time periods add texture, allowing the reader to assemble pieces of the case as Kinsey works on other aspects. A subplot involves Kinsey wrestling with conflicting information about her estranged family. Engaging, but Grafton seems to be tiring of Kinsey.

How the Mighty Fall by Jim Collins is a mediocre book from a great business writer. The book attempts to explain the five step process by which once great firms become obsolete and how they can avoid the downward trajectory. Collins is a brilliant consultant and writer who has done some of the best analysis of business success. This makes this 120 pages of content and 100+ pages of appendices, notes and index, with moments of great insight but a hurried, almost superficial, feel more disappointing than if someone else had dashed this off. Borrow and scan the book, but don’t buy it.

Increment by David Ignatius has been compared to le Carre’s A Spy Who Came in From the Cold, but for my money, is a better read. Harry Pappas, CIA chief of the Iran Operations receives an unsolicited e-mail from an alleged Tehran scientist that implies Iran is continuing its nuclear weapons program and is a threat to global peace and finds an administration bent on a preemptive strike. Pappas, whose only son was killed while serving in the second Iraq War, must somehow identify the scientist, get him out of Iran and mine his knowledge before the U.S. blunders into another unnecessary war. The insightful and realistic story line builds to a somewhat predictable ending but is well crafted and written.

Googled: The End of the World As We Know It by Ken Auletta uses Google as a stand-in for the digital revolution and takes readers inside the firm’s closed-door meetings and paints portraits of Google's notoriously private founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Auletta shares the "secret sauce" of Google's success, and shows why the worlds of "new" and "old" media often communicate as if residents of different planets. With the operating principle of “Don’t do evil,” Google engineers assume that the old ways of doing things can be improved and made more efficient. The firm is poised to become the world's first $100 billion media company and has been a positive, yet disruptive influence in many areas. Yet, it faces internal threats, from its burgeoning size to losing focus to hubris. An important book that gets a little tedious in the middle.

*The Audacity to Win by David Plouffe, the skillful campaign manager of Barack Obama's 2008 historic campaign is described by one reviewer as “essentially a bound sheaf of press releases.” The NYT thought it provided “a visceral sense of the campaign from an insider's point of view...(with) acute assessments of the larger dynamics at play in the 2008 race.” Plouffe is obviously a genius campaign manager, a decent writer, and honest about missteps that the Obama campaign made. I agree with the Miami Herald that it is an "engaging, detailed and frequently illuminating account of the Obama presidential campaign..."

*Noah’s Compass by Anne Tyler, like her previous books is about an unexceptional man of modest means and limited ambition. At age 60, he's been fired from a teaching job that was already below his academic training and original expectations. An unsentimental survivor of two failed marriages and the emotionally detached father of three grown daughters, Liam life is jolted after he's attacked in his new apartment and loses all memory of the experience. His search to recover the lost hours leads to an uneasy exploration of his disappointing life and an unlikely new relationship with “a socially inept walking fashion disaster who is half his age.” Tyler has an understated ability create empathy with this flawed but decent man. Readers will “marvel at how this low-key, plainspoken novelist achieves miracles of insight and understanding.”

An Alchemy of Mind: The Marvel and Mystery of the Brain by Diane Ackerman is about the "crowded chemistry lab. " Ackerman grounds the scientific information with her own poetic experience of discovery. “The common thread she spies running through the tangible world of the evolving brain and the intangible world of emotion and memory is the ‘sleight of mind’ that provides us with a self-identity through which we experience the world in a unified yet complexly fragmented way.” Even brain buffs used to a more detached approach are likely to be won over by her uniquely personal perspective. Chapters on topics such as consciousness, language and the mental differences between the sexes help you keep up with brain research news without wading through the scientific jargon.

Fugitive is Phillip Margolin’ is fourth thriller to feature Portland, Oregon lawyer Amanda Jaffe who can't turn down the opportunity to defend Charlie Marsh, aka Guru Gabriel Sun. Marsh was a prisoner whose freedom came when he saved the life of a guard during a riot. He became a guru and published The Light Within, in which he spoke of how to achieve personal transformation. Marsh fled the country in 1997 after being accused of murdering Congressman Arnold Pope Jr., and has spent 12 years in the African country of Batanga under the protection of its “benevolent ruler”, whose threat to kill Marsh for sleeping with his favorite wife prompts a return to the U.S. to stand trial. Add Pope's revenge-seeking father, several homicidal maniacs and the evil head of the Batanga secret service, and you've got an above average plot in an engaging quick read.

*Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen by Susan Gregg Gilmore is a charming “coming of age” Southern novel in the tradition of Fannie Flagg. It’s the early 1970s, and Catherine Grace Cline is the quick-witted daughter of Ringgold’s third-generation Baptist preacher, who is dying to escape her small-town life. Every Saturday, she sits at the Dairy Queen, eating Dilly Bars and plots her getaway to Atlanta. At 18, she packs her bags, leaving her family and the boy she loves to claim the life she’s always imagined. But before things have even begun to get off the ground in Atlanta, tragedy brings Catherine Grace back home where a series of extraordinary events alter her perspective–and she begins to wonder where her place in the world may actually be. “Intelligent, charming, and utterly readable, Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen marks the debut of a talented new literary voice.”

*A Happy Marriage by Rafel Yglesias is brutally honest in this deeply personal account of his thorny, but ultimately loving, marriage. He tells the parallel stories of the beginning and the end of this relationship "in something of a tour de force of novelistic architecture" (New York Times), which strikes a fine balance between the heady excitement of budding romance and the agonizing loss of enduring love. Though the story line may seem predictable at first, Yglesias throws in enough twists, surprises, and emotional urgency to keep readers turning the pages, and his fully realized—if not always likeable—characters are wholly convincing. A "profound deliberation on the nature of love, marriage, and the process of dying" (New York Times), this visceral, poignant novel will break your heart.

The Department of Mad Scientists: How DARPA Is Remaking Our World, from the Internet to Artificial Limbs by Michael Belfiore tells how the surprise launch of the world's first artificial satellite, Sputnik lead to the establishment of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. DARPA's mission was to prevent future technological surprises and to stimulate its own world-changing technologies. Early achievements included contributions to NASA, missile technology, the Internet and the Global Positioning System. More recent projects have included electroprostheses, remote robotic surgery, driverless vehicles, battery technology, alternative energy and hypersonic flight. The writing is accessible, even for scientific dunces, but has a few too many ‘chatty asides.’

The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford describes, a Chinese-American in Seattle who has just lost his wife to cancer. The narrative shifts between 1986 and the 1940s in a predictable story that chronicles the losses of old age and the confusion of youth. Henry recalls life in Seattle during WWII, when he and his Japanese-American friend, Keiko are “scholarshipping” in an all white school. Keiko and her family are later interned in a camp, and Henry is horrified by America's anti-Japanese hysteria and his father's anti-Japanese sentiment. Henry's adult life and his relationship with his college-age son, Marty are contrasted with Henry's alienation from a father who was determined to Americanize him but maintain a Chinese identify) but seemed contrived. The wartime persecution of Japanese immigrants is presented well, but the narrative is often flat. I still enjoyed the ‘contrived’ ending.

All the Living by C.E. Morgan is a debut novel about a young woman who moves to Kentucky with her bereaved lover in 1984. Aloma, herself an orphan from a young age, leaves her job at the mission school to help her taciturn, brieved boyfriend, Orren, with his family farm. He retreats into himself and working the land, leaving Aloma to wrestle with her desire to pursue her dream of being a concert pianist. Aloma finds work as a pianist at a nearby church was develops a friendship with the preacher that complicates her feelings for Orren, who drags his feet on marriage. Her growing understanding of love and devotion in the midst of deep despair is lyrically, and Morgan’s prose captures the local dialect beautifully. The writing is insightful, eloquent and positively reviewed, but never quite clarifies why, other than great sex, an aspiring concert musician would give up on her dream for a moody, distant, almost literate lover.

Born to Run by James Grippando is a better than average thriller. In this latest Jack Swyteck story, the vice president dies during an alligator hunt in the Everglades, and Jack's father, the former governor of Florida, is picked to fill the vacant v-p slot. Jack goes to Washington as his Dad’s legal counsel, but soon he is investigating a mystery that could bring down the sitting president. The book's plotting is suspenseful and there is a good sprinkling of diverse characters—not great literature, but a fun read.

Shadow Tag by Louise Erdrich is a bleak chronicle about the collapse of a family. Irene is a beautiful, introspective woman struggling to finish her dissertation while raising three children. She is married to Gil, a painter whose reputation is built on a series of now portraits of Irene who has fallen out of love with him and discovers that he's been reading her diary, so she begins a new, hidden, diary and uses her original diary as a tool to manipulate Gil. Erdrich alternates between excerpts from these two diaries and third-person narration to portray, in a disjointed way, the family’s emotional wars. The NY Times thought it was “A portrait of an 'iconic' marriage on its way to dissolution… (with)startlingly original phrasing as well as flashes of blinding lucidity.” I didn’t see it this way, but the NYT is probably more dependable.

*The Man From Beijing by Henning Mankell is reportedly the world’s current best-selling mystery novel. After massacre in a remote Swedish village, Judge Birgitta Roslin comes across diaries from the house of one of the 19 mostly elderly victims kept by an ancestor of Roslin's. The diaries cover his time as a foreman on the building of the U.S. transcontinental railroad. An extended flashback charts the journey of a railroad worker, San, who was kidnapped in China and shipped to America in 1863. After finding evidence linking a mysterious Chinese man to the murders, Roslin travels to Beijing to see if the crime is rooted in the past. Sections of the book range over 150 years and from the building of the railroad and bleak frozen landscape of northern Sweden to modern-day China, London, and Zimbabwe in a compelling, but somewhat disjointed manner.

Super Freakonomics by Economist Stevan Levitt and journalist Stephen Dubner capitalize on their best selling Freakonomics with another effort to make the dismal science go gonzo. For me, there's a disappointing lack substance to the authors' project of applying economics to all of life. Their method is to notice some contrarian statistic (adult seat belts are as effective as child-safety seats in preventing car-crash fatalities in children older than two), turn it into economics by tacking on a perfunctory cost-benefit analysis (seat belts are cheaper and more convenient) and append a libertarian sermonette (governments tend to prefer the costly-and-cumbersome route). “The intellectual content is pretty thin, but it's spiked with the crowd-pleasing provocations.”

Ordinary Thunderstorms by Whitbread-winner, William Boyd (A Good Man in Africa), moves into thriller territory with a fun, fast-paced Hitchcockian wrong-man whodunit. While in London interviewing for a job, Adam Kindred meets immunologist Philip Wang at a restaurant who leaves a folder of papers behind. Adam tries to return them to Wang's flat only to find the man's bloody corpse—and to leave lots of evidence of his visit. Fearful of pursuing police and a persistent hired assassin, and without much thought or logic, Adam flees with Wang's papers and goes underground. Meanwhile, at Wang's pharmaceutical company, there’s a coup brewing to rush to market a potentially dangerous anti-asthma drug. The disparate story lines weave a competently plotted, intelligently written tale of corporate and criminal skullduggery that almost sinks with too many improbable coincidences and stock characters.

Homegrown Democrat by Garrison Keillor, writer-host of NPR's long-running Prairie Home Companion promotes egalitarianism, manifested by good-neighborliness and a social safety net sustained by government, as the bedrock of being a Democrat. The Party goes wrong when it forgets the powerless, and fails to focus on "real consequences in the lives of real people." The real value of the partisan but beautifully written autobiography is the recollection of growing up in a simpler time and place.

*Game Change by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin is the best, by far, of the four books I’ve read about the 2008 campaign—gossipy and informative. “Sarah Palin was serene when chosen for V.P. because it was “God’s plan.” Hillary didn’t know if she could control Bill (duh).”The men get less attention than the women and tend to come off slightly better. “Obama can be conceited and windy; McCain was disengaged to the point of recklessness; Biden talks a lot, and John Edwards is a cheating, egotistical blowhard. But, hey, that’s politics.” The authors worked their “200 sources” well. Many of the book’s events were covered previously, but sometimes, this volume delivers totally behind-the-scenes and genuinely surprising information. I was a campaign junkie, but was surprised that Senators Schumer and Reid (official Hillary supporters) encouraged Obama to seek the presidency and that Palin was initially screened by a Google search for “female Republican officeholders.”

Homegrown Democrat by Garrison Keillor posits that Democrats embrace “the politics of kindness," and he traces his ideology to his kindly aunts and his access to good public education. He reminds readers that “Do-Gooder Democrats” are responsible for positive programs from civil rights to clean air., though he acknowledges, "The great hole in the compact is health care." "The good democrat," he says, “distrusts privilege and power, believes in equality, supports unions, and is individualist.” It vintage Keillor– a marriage of Prairie Home Companion and Air America or a liberal, intelligent Glen Beck, if you can imagine it

*Provenance by Laney Salisbury and Aly Sujo describes a ten year art scam that bruised the reputation of museum archives and experts alike. Struggling painter and single father John Myatt advertised copies of famous paintings, but never imagined he'd become a key player in one of Britain's biggest art frauds. Enter John Drewe, who claimed to be a physicist and avid art collector. Soon Drewe was passing off Myatt's work as genuine, including paintings in the style of artists like Giacometti and Ben Nicholson. When buyers expressed concern about the works' provenance, Drewe began falsifying records of ownership, even posing as a benefactor to plant false documents in the archives of London's Tate Gallery. Eventually, suspicious historians and archivists assist Scotland Yard in bringing him to justice. Thoroughly research and elegantly written, Provenance is a blend of thriller and art history course.

A Change in Altitude by Anita Shreve who worked in Kenya as a journalist early in her career, returns with the story of a photojournalist and her doctor husband, whose temporary assignment there goes sour. The trip is a research opportunity for Patrick, but leaves Margaret floundering in colonialist culture shock, feeling like an actor in an old British play. When a climbing trip to Mt. Kenya goes fatally wrong, Margaret’s “guilt” creates tension between the couple. Compound stressors include multiple robberies, adulterous temptations, and Margaret's freelance work for a controversial newspaper. One reviewer thought it was “written in a strangely emotionless third person …stuffed with travelogues and vignettes of privileged expatriate life.” Perhaps not Shreve’s best, but still enjoyable to me.

The Last Child by John Hart is about the aftermath of 12-year-old Alyssa disappearance on her way home in a small North Carolina town. Her twin brother continues to search the town, street by street, even visiting the homes of known sex offenders. The lead cop on Alyssa's case keeps a watchful eye on Johnny and his mother. When a second girl is taken, Johnny is even more determined to find his sister. What he unearths is more sinister than anyone imagined and puts Johnny's own life in danger. “Despite a tendency to dip into melodrama, Hart spins an impressively layered tale of broken families and secrets that can kill.”

True Blue by David Baldacci is a formulaic ‘thriller’ with cardboard characters. It introduces Beth Perry, chief of the DC Metropolitan Police, and her younger sister, Mace, a former police officer was seized by bandits, drugged and taken along on a series of armed robberies. Mace is getting out of prison after a two-year sentence, risks everything to clear her name. The murders of a powerful lawyer and U.S. attorney provide Mace an opportunity to vindicate herself. “While Baldacci draws his characters in bright primary colors, and some of the action reaches comic book proportions, he delivers his usual intricate plotting.”

Friday, April 9, 2010

Bob's Best Books from 2009

Fiction

**The Help by Kathryn Stockett who, like her heroine, Sketer Phelan, grew up in Jackson, Mississippi. The novel is set during the civil rights movement when black women were trusted to raise white children but not to polish the household silver or use a guest bathroom. Skeeter is just home from college in 1962, without a husband and anxious to write something more significant than the Junior League newsletter. She begins to collect the stories of the black women on whom the country club sets relies by enlisting Aibileen, a maid who's raised 17 children, and Aibileen's best friend Minny, who's been fired several times after mouthing off to her white employers. The stories are scathing, shocking, totally believable, and help bring pride and hope to the black community, while alienating Skeeter from her lifelong friends. Written in three distinct voices that are pitch perfect and confident, this my favorite book so far this year. (written in March and true for the year)

*Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese is a wonderful 534-page first novel by a physician (and Stanford Professor) about identical twin boys born in Addis Ababa in 1954 and orphaned when their mother, a nun, dies in childbirth, and their surgeon father flees. Lovingly raised by Indian doctors at the mission hospital, Shiva and Marion have an almost telepathic connection until an adolescent love story goes awry and they go in very different directions with the practice of medicine. The sometimes exhaustive gore of medical procedures is matched by a poetic perception of the world. After medical school in Ethiopia, Marion escapes to America where the past catches up with him and he “must entrust his life to the two men he thought he trusted least: the surgeon father who abandoned him and the brother who betrayed him.”

*The Little Giant of Aberdeen County is the first novel of the very talented Tiffany Baker—and is what The Ugly Duckling might have been if John Irvine had written it. Truly, the largest baby ever born in Aberdeen, is blamed her for her mother's death and becomes the subject of constant abuse and humiliation at the hands of her peers while her sister is destined to be May Queen and the wife of the youngest in a line of Dr. Robert Morgans. When her sister leaves town and a loveless marriage, Truly becomes a serf to Morgan and mother substitute to her eight-year-old nephew. She is a “flawed, prickly, enchanting heroine--part Cinderella, part Witch, and part Behemoth…(who learns) that happy endings are possible but hard-won.” Truly's brother-in-law degrades her more than anyone could take —and ultimately Truly doesn’t. She finds her calling--the ability to heal with naturopathic techniques--hidden in a Morgan's family quilt and takes control over her life and herself.

*We are Rich by Dori Carter who seems to have an uncanny ability to pick just the right words to construct the most elegant sentences to portray powerful, poignant and hilarious insights about her neighbors in “Brigadoon by the Beach”. I couldn't put the book down or sleep until I finished it and now can hardly wait to read it more slowly and savor each page. Scott Fitzgerald once said, “The Rich are very different from you and me”. Carter shows us just how different they are from the rest of us--and from each other. From the cook's son who has the audacity to make it big in silicon valley to the gardener’s son who marries the boss' daughter, a new generation in Rancho Esperanza is displacing the old guard (‘men with noses that look they've been sniffing Bordeaux’, you will never feel the same way about the top level of a Santa Barbara parking deck again.

*Still Alice by first-time author Lisa Genova, who holds a Ph. D in neuroscience from Harvard, is a compelling debut novel about a 50-year-old professor of cognitive psychology at Harvard when she begins a sudden descent into early onset Alzheimer's disease. Alice Howland is happily married with three grown children and a house on the Cape, is at the height of her career when she notices a forgetfulness creeping into her life. As confusion starts to cloud her thinking and her memory begins to fail her, she receives the most frightening of diagnosis. Alice struggles to maintain her lifestyle and live in the moment, even as her sense of self is being stripped away. Sometimes heartbreaking and inspiring and often terrifying, Still Alice describes what’s it must be like to literally lose your mind.

*Wild Nights: Stories About the Last Days of Poe, Dickinson, Twain, James and Hemingway by Joyce Carol Oates. In these stories, Oates imagines the final days of five of America’s best known writers: Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Henry James, and Ernest Hemingway. Each of these is homage to the writer, an often ironic look at their work, and a tribute to Oakes’ knowledge and facility. After his death, Edgar Allan Poe finds himself on a desolate island, where he keeps a rambling diary and ultimately mates with a sea creature. A robotic replica of Emily Dickinson, “EDickinsonRepliLuxe,” is in danger of being ravished by her owner while showing the shallowness of contemporary life. Sam Clements grows weary of Mark Twain and is threatened with a lawsuit by the parents of one of his beloved young “angelfish”. As a volunteer at a London hospital during the Great War, Henry James finally finds love and learns that life is more brutal and bloody than his genteel, finely constructed prose reveals. Finally, in Ketchum, Idaho, Ernest Hemingway reevaluates his rugged “macho” persona and puts a shotgun to his head. Oates succeeds in capturing the style of each author and reveals more of their sexual proclivities than I needed to know; however, if the book were for a class in writing agility, Oates deserves an A.

Non Fiction

*The Battle for America—2000: The Story of An Extraordinary Campaign by Dan Balz and Haynes Johnson is the winner in the battle to claim the Theodore White mantel for best book about the last presidential campaign. Written in more engaging terms, and with much better editing and organization, than Richard Wolfe’s Renegade, it provides an “evenhanded and comprehensive account of the race, based on interviews with key players.” Even for campaign junkies (like me), there’s lots of new insights. “It's fast-paced and beach-worthy, as good a page turner as any mystery thriller”—except, of course, you do know how it turns out.

*My Stroke of Insight by Jill Bolte Taylor, A very positive review in the New York Times encouraged me to pick up this book about how 37-year-old neuroanatomist Taylor experienced a massive stroke that erased her abilities to walk, talk, do mathematics, read, or remember details. The book details her slow recovery of those abilities (and the cultivation of new ones) and recounts exactly what happened with her brain. The explanation of how the brain works is the best part of this fascinating memoir of the brain's remarkable resiliency and of Taylor’s determination to regain her faculties and recount her experience for the benefit of others. Although she is now fully recovered, Taylor is not the same driven scientist that she was before the stroke. Her holistic approach to healing will be valuable to stroke survivors and their caregivers, who can pick up suggestions from Taylor's accounts of how her mother provided just the kind of care to bring her back to life. The last section of the book suffered, in my opinion, with a little too much ‘energy dynamics’ and ‘angel cards.’ Maybe I just haven’t been in California long enough.

*Proust was a Neuroscientist by Jonah Lehrer explores unfamiliar (at least to me) often-overlooked places in art and literary history where artists, writers and even a cookbook writer predicted scientific breakthroughs with their artistic insights. The 25-year old former Rhodes Scholar draws from his diverse background in lab work, science writing and fine cuisine to explain how Cézanne anticipated breakthroughs in the understanding of human sight, how Walt Whitman intuited the biological basis of thoughts and, in the title essay, how Proust penetrated the mysteries of memory by immersing himself in childhood recollections. Lehrer also draws from George Elliot, Virginia Wolfe, Stravinsky and Auguste Escoffier, the chef who essentially invented modern French cooking. I thought it was insightful, illuminating and well-written.

*The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls opens with the author, en route to a spiffy NYC event, spotting her mother on the sidewalk, “rooting through a Dumpster.” Walls's parents were a matched pair of eccentrics. Her father was a self-taught man, a would-be inventor who could “stay longer at a poker table than at most jobs” and had “a little bit of a drinking situation.” Dad’s version of Christmas presents—walking each child into the Arizona desert at night and letting each one claim a star—was delightful; but he wasn't so charming when he stole the kids' hard-earned savings to go on a bender. The Walls children learned to support themselves, eating out of trashcans at school or painting their skin so the holes in their pants didn't show. Walls is a worthy heir of Dickens and McCourt.

Bob's Books Read in 2009

Fortune Rocks by Anita Shreve, who is one of my favorite fiction writers. Although described as a “romantic feminist,” she is also concerned with the complexities of her characters’ motivations, relationships, and lives. Set at the turn of the 20th century, the setting a rocky New Hampshire coastline area called "Fortune's Rocks." Olympia Biddeford, age 15, is walking the beach, feeling the first stirrings of a being an adult. The strong-willed daughter of an upstanding Boston couple, she soon "learns of desire" as she begins a passionate affair with a married writer and physician, John Haskell, three times her age. Upon meeting, they experience a sexual spark. Soon, they fall into “sinful trysting.” Once the plot gets a chance to develop, Olympia gets pregnant, gives up the child, fights to get child back, settles down considerably, turning into a modernized The Scarlet Letter, a tale of a woman attaining feminist independence by living outside her period's societal mores, but fortunately with adequate financial resources provided by her family (Hester never had it so good). One reviewer suggested, In the end, Anita Shreve's seventh novel is a polished, supremely entertaining variation on Wuthering Heights, with Olympia and Haskell sitting in for Catherine and Heathcliff.” The author did some meticulous research for her New England background, which gives this study of one wayward woman some extra historical heft—especially as Olympia gets some exposure to the “Franco” mill worker community. The plot twists are a bit pat, Still, Fortune's Rocks is a romance in the classic sense of the word, and should be enjoyed as such, unless you are allergic to happy endings.

* The English Major by Jim Harrison: Cliff, a 60-year-old former Michigan high school teacher and farmer, bids good-bye to his inherited family farm (lost in a shady real estate deal); his wife, Vivian, of 38 years (who has been cheating on him and orchestrated the shady deal) and dear departed dog Lola (the truest woman in his life); and sets off on a yearlong, countrywide jag reminiscent of “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” or more accurately, “Transcendentalism and the Lack of Taurus Maintenance” . Armed with his childhood jigsaw puzzle mapping the 50 states, Cliff tosses out a puzzle piece every time he crosses state lines, reminisces and tries (with as much humor as he can muster) to make the best of his shattered existence. The miles between Minnesota and Montana play host to a melodramatically drawn-out love/hate romantic triumph with Marybelle, a married former student. After they split, she returns during a visit with his affluent gay son, Robert, in San Francisco. As more calamities ensue in Arizona, New Mexico and Montana, the possibility of reconciliation with Vivian looms. With less plot than meditations on aging, sex, and the meaning of life, Harrison is consistently witty and engaging as he drives home his timeless theme: that change can be beneficial at any point in life.

Ahead of the Curve, Philip Delves Broughton, a former journalist at the Daily Telegraph of London chronicles the author's love-hate relationship with the Harvard Business School, where he spent two years getting his M.B.A. Beginning with an account of his disillusionment with journalism and conflicted desire to make money, Broughton provides an account of his experiences in and out of the classroom as he struggles to survive the academic rigor and find a suitably principled yet lucrative path. Simultaneously repelled by his aggressive fellow capitalists in training and dazzled by his classes, visiting professors and the surprising beauty of business concepts, Broughton vacillates between cautious critique and faint praise. Although reflecting a professional journalist's polish and attention to detail, the book flounders as it fails to provide enough color or damning dirt on the school to entertain in the manner of some tell-alls. The true heart of the story is less b-school confidential than a memoir of Broughton's quest to understand the business world and find his place in it. It doesn’t live up to its aspiration to “do for HBS, what Scott Thurow’s One L did for Harvard Law”. Broughton leaves HBS without a job offer, but with the idea of a book that, hopefully, will provide a return on his $150+K investment.

Nicholas Sparks, The Lucky One, In his 14th book, Sparks tells the story of former U.S. Marine, Logan Thibault, who carries a picture of a woman he's never met because it brings him good luck. When he sets out to find the woman, he meets with unexpected circumstances surrounding his new love and his shrouded past in a small town near Wilmington, NC. Though not Spark’s most original tale, the story flows well. Thibault, a manly man if ever there was one, is ideally but still convincing portrayed, and the supporting characters are interesting in their own right, even if not drawn with much nuance. The final result is a fun, quick read without too much over-the-top sentimentality. Sparks is probably the best male writer of romance novels around and has a formula that is usually engaging. I continue to read him largely because The Notebook is probably the most romantic novel I’ve ever read.

*East of the Mountains by David Guterson. This novel showcases the author's narrative and descriptive powers but lacks the crucial central theme found in his debut book, Snow Falling on Cedars. Ben is a 73-year-old physician with terminal cancer. He heads to the mountains, ostensibly on a bird-shooting trip, but really to end his life in order to spare his children and himself further suffering. But chance deflects his purpose. Guterson is meticulous in his background research and manages to make every detail realistic, but often with too much detail, I found myself skipping paragraphs that were well written but boring (to me). The people he meets on this odyssey were engaging, but the marijuana induced flashbacks were a bit contrived. Ben’s decision not to carry out his plan is, in my opinion, a bit of a copout, but the ending is satisfying. “A somber and competent novel - but without the magic of his first book.”

So Brave, Young and Handsome by Leif Enger. The book follows Monte Becket (a writer who lost his muse after one published work). He is about to reclaim his job at a small-town Minnesota post office when he meets Glendon Hale, a former outlaw who is traveling to Mexico to find his estranged wife. The odyssey is reminiscent of Huck Finn or Don Quixote and filled with colorful, almost too sharply drawn, characters. The story moves away from Monte's artistic struggle and becomes an adventure story with growing sense of redemption for the travelers. The progress has many listless moments, but reviewers seem to like Enger’s ability to “craft scenes so rich you can smell the spilled whiskey and feel the grit.”

*Wild Nights: Stories About the Last Days of Poe, Dickinson, Twain, James and Hemingway by Joyce Carol Oates. In these stories, Oates imagines the final days of five of America’s best known writers: Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Henry James, and Ernest Hemingway. Each of these is homage to the writer, an often ironic look at their work, and a tribute to Oakes’ knowledge and facility. After his death, Edgar Allan Poe finds himself on a desolate island, where he keeps a rambling diary and ultimately mates with a sea creature. A robotic replica of Emily Dickinson, "EDickinsonRepliLuxe," is in danger of being ravished by her owner while showing the shallowness of contemporary life. Sam Clements grows weary of Mark Twain and is threatened with a lawsuit by the parents of one of his beloved young "angelfish". As a volunteer at a London hospital during the Great War, Henry James finally finds love and learns that life is more brutal and bloody than his genteel, finely constructed prose reveals. Finally, in Ketchum, Idaho, Ernest Hemingway reevaluates his rugged "macho" persona and puts a shotgun to his head. Oates succeeds in capturing the style of each author and reveals more of their sexual proclivities than I needed to know; however, if the book were a class in writing agility, Oates deserves an A.

The Lost Diary of Don Juan by Douglas C. Abram: Set in the city of Seville at the end of the sixteenth century, this purported diary of Juan Tenario recounts his childhood raised by nuns in a convent, adolescent disillusionment, and escape to the city of Seville. There he becomes a cat burglar, then the protégé of the powerful Marquis de la Mota, who teaches him spying, swordsmanship (yes, both kinds), the appreciation of fine wine, and the seduction of women. The plot focuses on Don Juan’s increasingly complicated life: King Philip wants him to marry (someone, anyone); Don Ignacio, the head of Seville's Inquisition, wants him to burn; and the marquis plans to marry Don Juan’s newly recognized true love, Dona Ana. Abrams may take liberties with the social details of the time (according to the critics) but to folks who haven’t taken a history class in a few years, the historical occurrences seem to be treated with accuracy. Characters are stock, and the action is largely predictable. It was an enjoyable quick read, but did not live up to the reviews.

A Most Wanted Man by John le Carre. The author is considered to be the greatest living writer of spy thrillers, and has 20 successful previous novels to support that claim. His plot, characters and their morality are, in my opinion, unduly complicated and sometimes confusing. Turkish Muslims living in Hamburg, take in a street person calling himself Issaa setting off a chain of events implicating intelligence agencies from three countries. Issa, who claims to be a Muslim medical student, is a wanted terrorist and the son of Grigori Karpov, a Red Army colonel whose considerable assets are concealed at a private Hamburg bank. Tommy Brue, a stereotypical flawed everyman caught up in the machinations of spies and counterspies, enters the plot when Issa's attorney seeks to claim these assets. The book depicts the rivalries among post-9/11 intelligence agencies that should be allies. So bureaucrats have their own objectives and even basically decent people have flaws. None of the characters is as memorable as George Smiley, and I found “The Spy Who Came Out of the Cold” pretty slow going. Le Carre seems to always disappoint me, no matter how low my expectations are.

*My Stroke of Insight by Jill Bolte Taylor, A very positive review in the New York Times encouraged me to pick up this book about how 37-year-old neuroanatomist Taylor experienced a massive stroke that erased her abilities to walk, talk, do mathematics, read, or remember details. The book details her slow recovery of those abilities (and the cultivation of new ones) and recounts exactly what happened with her brain. The explanation of how the brain works is the best part of this fascinating memoir of the brain's remarkable resiliency and of Taylor’s determination to regain her faculties and recount her experience for the benefit of others. Although she is now fully recovered, Taylor is not the same driven scientist that she was before the stroke. Her holistic approach to healing will be valuable to stroke survivors and their caregivers, who can pick up suggestions from Taylor's accounts of how her mother provided just the kind of care to bring her back to life. The last section of the book suffered, in my opinion, with a little too much ‘energy dynamics’ and ‘angel cards.’ Maybe I just haven’t been in California long enough.

River of Doubt, Candice Millard, A year after Roosevelt lost a third-party bid for the White House in 1912, he accepted an invitation for a South American trip that quickly became an ill-prepared journey down an unexplored tributary of the Amazon known as the River of Doubt. The small group, including his son Kermit, was hampered by the failure to pack enough supplies and the absence of canoes sturdy enough for the river's rapids. An injury Roosevelt sustained became infected with flesh-eating bacteria and left the ex-president so weak that, he told Kermit to leave him to die in the rainforest. Millard, a former staff writer for National Geographic, provides a touch of suspense and a tremendous amount of detail about the wildlife that Roosevelt and his fellow explorers encountered on their journey, as well as the cannibalistic indigenous tribe that stalked them much of the way. I sometimes got lost in the details and struggled to finish the book.

Gringos In Paradise by Barry Golson, In 2005, Barry and his wife Thia sold their Manhattan apartment, packed up their SUV, and moved to one of those idyllic hot spots, the surfing and fishing village of Sayulita on Mexico's Pacific coast. With humor and charm, Golson describes the year they spent planning and building their dream home in Sayulita -- population 1,500. They made lasting friends with Mexicans and fellow expatriates, and discovered the skill and artistry of local craftsmen. But the book focuses on the challenging process of building their house. It took them almost six months to do the planning and get permits. Then, they complete the construction in another six—much less that we took to renovate our house in Santa Barbara. They engaged a Mexican architect, builder, and landscape designer who not only built their home but also changed their lives. The book is a good read, but the Golson’s are either incredibly smart and lucky or they gloss over some of the challenges of building and living on a budget in a new country.

A Is For Alibi by Sue Grafton: This is the book that started it all, back in 1982, for Grafton. Since I see her walking at East Beach when she isn’t in Louisville, I wanted to go back to the beginning. A tough-talking former cop, private investigator, Kinsey Millhone has a one person detective agency in a quiet corner of Santa Teresa (read Barbara), California. A twice-divorced loner with few personal possessions or attachments, she’s got a soft spot for underdogs and lost causes and takes on a case to find out who really killed Laurence Fife, a slick divorce lawyer and slippery ladies' man—at least until someone killed him. The jury believed that it was his pretty young wife Nikki, so they sent her to prison for eight years. Now, Nikki's out on parole and wants Kinsey to find the real killer. There are a few suspects and a bit of danger, but Kinsey gets her man (in more ways than one). It is a fun, fast read.

*The Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell was #1 on the NYT best seller list when I read the latest in a genre Gladwell has essentially pioneered—books that illuminate surprising patterns behind everyday phenomena. His gift is ability for spotting an intriguing mystery, luring the reader in, then gradually revealing his insights in engaging prose. Outliers begins with a provocative look at why certain five-year-old boys enjoy an advantage in ice hockey, and how these advantages accumulate over time. We learn what Bill Gates, the Beatles and Mozart had in common: along with talent and ambition, each enjoyed an unusual opportunity to intensively cultivate a skill that allowed them to rise above their peers. Gladwell investigates a few other mysteries (why the sons of Jewish clothiers became the best attorneys in NYC or why the culture of rice growing in Asia made their people seem more successful—especially in math (but not as pilots) but seems to build his cases by cherry picking the data that support his point of view. Despite this reservation, this is a important effort to get people to think ‘out of the box’ and is easy to read and enjoy.

Divine Justice by David Baldacci The fourth installment of the Camel Club series is an engaging 24 hour reading exercise. If you like Baldacci, you’ll enjoy this book. If you are a literary reader, you may want to pass. The book starts off with John Carr (aka Oliver Stone) on the run after taking out two senior US officials who had been responsible for the death of his wife and daughter when he gets involved in a fracas and ends up in Divine, a small town which is hiding a lot of secrets, which he has to resolve, and clear his name. The book’s plot is a little hit and miss. The Camel Club elements are interesting and Baldacci is an engaging writer, but some of the plot twists and the scenario around bad guys in high places seemed a little too contrived.

The Risk of Infidelity Index by Christopher G. Moore who has written nine novels starring Vincent Calvino, a disbarred American lawyer working as a PI in Bangkok. His prize-winning novels have been translated into ten languages, and were first published in North America in 2007, with The Risk of Infidelity Index, which received a short recommendation in the NYT. Calvino’s office is above the One Hand Clapping massage parlor where he find a dead “working" girl lying. The same day his major client dies from an alleged heart attack; his law firm refuses to pay Vincent. As demonstrations rock the city, Vincent finds himself unpaid and short of cash. Three of the Fab Four expatriate female friends hire him to conduct surveillance of their spouses. They have just read The Risk of Infidelity Index, which names Bangkok as the number one city for spousal infidelity. The plot takes several twists and turns but provides an entertaining, insightful and inexpensive tour of Bangkok.

Nothing to Be Afraid of by Julian Barnes, who is a literate Oxford intellectual (a very elite class who relish making the rest of us feel like Philistines). Most of the things that we worry about won’t actually happen, but death will. Barnes sifts through ‘unreliable memory’ to summon up how his ancestors, real and assumed, (most of them dead, and quite a few of them French, like Jules Renard, Flaubert, Zola) contemplated death and grappled with the perils and pleasures of pit-gazing. Barnes's self-professed amateur philosophical rambling seem self-indulgent to me, but literate reviewers loved his ramblings. I struggled to get through this book and at several points began to wonder if I was already in purgatory—if only I believed in purgatory.

A Walk on the Beach by Joan Anderson--In two previous books Anderson wrote about taking a break from her marriage and spending a year of solitude at the beach. Now, she tries to wring another book out of the experience by introducing her walking companion, Joan Erikson, wife of psychoanalyst Erik Erikson. Erikson's enthusiasm for life prompted Anderson to re-evaluate her own marriage and her role as she aged through the life stages that were the subject of Erikson's published writing, coauthored with her famous husband. Erikson reminded Anderson of the importance of continuing to learn, grow, change and, most notably, play as one ages, to be surprised by life and where it leads. She explained, "[A]s long as we are alive, we must keep transforming ourselves." I read the book because I also enjoy beach walks with a wise 92 year old who shares insights from a long successful life.

*The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga won the Man Booker Prize and is a darkly comic début novel set in India. Balram rises to become a chauffeur, then murders his employer and justifies his crime as the act of a "social entrepreneur." In a series of letters to the Premier of China, the chauffeur recounts his transformation from an honest, hardworking boy growing up in "the Darkness"— rural India where education and electricity are scarce because of poverty and corruption, and where villagers talk about local elections "like eunuchs discussing the Kama Sutra"—to a successful entrepreneur. He places the blame for his rage and crime on the avarice of the Indian élite, for whom bribes grease the wheels of progress and perpetuate a system in which many are sacrificed to the whims of a few. Adiga’s message isn’t subtle or unique, but Balram’s appealingly sardonic voice and acute observations about the social order are entertaining and unsettling.

Bright Futures by Stuart M. Kaminsky, the author of more than 60 novels and an Edgar Award winner who received the coveted Grand Master Award by the Mystery Writers of America, must be a good writer. I’m impressed by his productivity and reviews, but suspect it is hard to stay fresh and original after 60 books. In this mystery, 17-year-old Greg Lagerman, a student at a school for the gifted, hires Lew Fonesca, to exonerate a friend, 17-year-old Ronnie Graell who is accused of bludgeoning an eccentric wealthy politician who opposed a college financial-aid program. Fonesca’s initial probes soon place him in the crosshairs of an unknown assailant. Kaminsky provides enough twists, turns and odd ball characters to keep most readers guessing or confused, but I was glad to finish the book and find something better to read.

*The Little Giant of Aberdeen County is the marvelous first novel of the very talented Tiffany Baker—and is what The Ugly Duckling might have been if John Irvine had written it. Truly, the largest baby ever born in Aberdeen, is blamed her for her mother's death and becomes the subject of constant abuse and humiliation at the hands of her peers while her sister is destined to be May Queen and the wife of the youngest in a line of Dr. Robert Morgans. When her sister leaves town and a loveless marriage, Truly becomes a serf to Morgan and mother substitute to her eight-year-old nephew. She is a “flawed, prickly, enchanting heroine--part Cinderella, part Witch, and part Behemoth…happy endings are possible but hard-won. “ Truly's brother-in-law degrades her more than anyone could take —and ultimately Truly doesn’t. She finds her calling--the ability to heal with naturopathic techniques--hidden in a Morgan's family quilt and takes control over her life and herself.

*Everyman (audiobook) by Phillip Roth who has published 27 books, most of which deal with being Jewish, American, and horny. Recently, he has focused on aging and family connections. This is brief, elegant and powerful story boy who grows up obsessed with his and everybody else's health, and eventually dies in his 70s, just as he believed he would. This grown up Portnoy is a veteran of three failed marriages, successful adman, a father and a philanderer, a 70-something who spends his last days agonizing about his lost prowess (physical and sexual), envying his healthy and beloved older brother, and refusing to apologize for his many years of bad behavior, although he clearly regrets them. My favorite line is when, in retirement, he tells an art student, “"Amateurs look for inspiration; the rest of us just get up and go to work," Roth is clearly a professional.

The Year of Magical Thinking (audiobook) by Joan Didion's whose husband, writer John Gregory Dunne, died of a heart attack, just after they had returned from the hospital where their only child, Quintana, was lying in a coma. This book is a memoir of Dunne's death, Quintana's illness, and Didion's efforts to make sense of experiences when nothing made sense. Critics were impressed by the candid examination of her own emotional disintegration, the book’s raw honesty and Didion’s meticulous reporting and research that “allow her memoir to transcend the merely personal and become a universal road map of loss.” I probably wouldn’t have finished reading the book, but enjoyed the audiobook on a boring drive.

**The Help by Kathryn Stockett who, like her heroine, Sketer Phelan, grew up in Jackson, Mississippi. The novel is set during the civil rights movement in Jackson, Miss., where black women were trusted to raise white children but not to polish the household silver or use a guest bathroom. Skeeter is just home from college in 1962, without a husband and anxious to write something more significant than the Junior League newsletter. She begins to collect the stories of the black women on whom the country club sets relies by enlisting Aibileen, a maid who's raised 17 children, and Aibileen's best friend Minny, who's been fired several times after mouthing off to her white employers. The stories are scathing, shocking, totally believable, and help bring pride and hope to the black community, while alienating Skeeter from her lifelong friends. Written in three distinct voices that are pitch perfect and confident, this my favorite book so far this year. (Mar.)

Runner by Thomas Perry is the sixth formulaic Jane Whitefield novel and has Jane, a Native American guide who helps people assume new identities, living quietly under an assumed name. Pregnant Christine Monahan shows up and the two women wind up fleeing cross-country with bad guys on their trail. Jane learns that Christine is the girlfriend of a sociopathic real estate mogul in San Diego obsessed with finding her and their unborn child. Jane puts $40K on her own new credit card (on an assumed identity) to give Christine and her baby new identities and the chase is on. Blending one dimensional characters, a sloppy plot, tenuous premises, gratuitous violence and Native American mysticism, the book suggests that success has made Perry sloppy or lazy. Don’t waste your time.

The Spare Room by Helen Garner begins with ‘Helen’ preparing a room in her Melbourne home for Nicola, an old friend who travels from Sydney to begin a course of alternative treatment for cancer. The story centers around these seemingly fraudulent treatments which probably do more harm than good, but Nicola has ‘undying’ faith in the unorthodox vitamin C injections. Helen begins to question her ability to care for someone so ill and so deep in denial. Nicola's unflinching optimism and grand naïveté are unconvincing. As the story wears on, I shared Helen’s exhaustion with the litanies of worsening symptoms and platitudes about death. (25)

*Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese is a wonderful 534-page first novel by a physician (and Stanford Professor) about identical twin boys born in Addis Ababa in 1954 and orphaned when their mother, a nun, dies in childbirth, and their surgeon father flees. Lovingly raised by Indian doctors at the mission hospital, Shiva and Marion have an almost telepathic connection until an adolescent love story goes awry and they go in very different directions with the practice of medicine. The sometimes exhaustive gore of medical procedures is matched by a poetic perception of the world. After medical school in Ethiopia, Marion escapes to America where the past catches up with him and he “must entrust his life to the two men he thought he trusted least: the surgeon father who abandoned him and the brother who betrayed him.”

*The Little Book by Selden Edwards, Written by the former headmaster of The Crane School, over a 30 year period, this book is a testimony to persistence, intelligence and good editing. If Mark Twain had written this (and he shows up in the book), the title might be "A California Baseballer in Doctor Freud's Court. Burden travels to 1897 Vienna from 1988 San Francisco. He has been a teenage baseball star and famed rock 'n' roller, but he's dreamed of Vienna since his prep school days, where his academic mentor instilled a love of the city's gilded paradoxes. Vienna is a cross roads on the emerging new century. Freud is discovering the Oedipus complex, Mahler is conducting his symphonies, Klimt is painting, Wittgenstein in starting to philosophize and the mayor, Karl Lueger, “is inventing modern, populist anti-Semitism-which the young Hitler will soon internationalize. To ensure true oedipal drama, Wheeler's father and grandparents come to town, too, all at different ages, and with very different agendas. “Edwards has great fun with time travel paradoxes and anachronisms, but the real romance in this book is with the period” and the type of prep-school Edwards probably attended and directed. “This novel ends up as a sweet, wistful elegy to the fantastic promise and failed hopes of the 20th century”. It also emphasizes the interconnectivity and impact of numerous small events and was one of my favorite reads in 2008. I read it again after hearing Edwards talking about the book and his path to becoming an overnight success and enjoyed it even more the second time around. On my first read, I didn’t pick up on who Wheeler’s father really was.

The Women by T.C. Boyle Frank is about four of the women in Lloyd Wright’s life. The story moves backwards in time through the accounts of four women in Wrights life: Olgivanna, the strong-willed, grounded dancer from Montenegro; Miriam, the drug-addled narcissist from Paris via Memphis; Kitty, the devoted first wife; and Mamah, the beloved and murdered soul mate and intellectual companion. But the novel centers on Taliesin, Wrights Oz-like Wisconsin home. The tragedies that befall Taliesin—fires, brutality—serve as proxy for Wrights inner turmoil. The most interesting character engaging person, to me, was Tadashi Sato, the fictional Japanese-American apprentice and narrator. The book didn’t make me like Wright (or his work) any better, but the critics found it “ a lush, dense and hyperliterate book—in other words, vintage Boyle.”

Long Lost by Harlan Corbett: Ten years ago, Myron Bolitar, sports agent, retired FBI agent, mystery solver and attorney, had a torrid affair with TV personality, Terese Collins. She disappeared and suddenly calls Myron from Paris because her ex-husband has been murdered and, of course, she is the primary suspect. The plot thickens when DNA at the scene belongs to her dead daughter. The twists and turns in this international search for the truth brings up shades of the Boys from Brazil and is engaging but not satisfying. Corbett is a terrific writer when he takes time to do his best work—too bad he was in a hurry with this.

*Proust was a Neuroscientist by Jonah Lehrer explores unfamiliar (at least to me) often-overlooked places in art and literary history where artists, writers and even a cookbook writer predicted scientific breakthroughs with their artistic insights. The 25-year old former Rhodes Scholar draws from his diverse background in lab work, science writing and fine cuisine to explain how Cézanne anticipated breakthroughs in the understanding of human sight, how Walt Whitman intuited the biological basis of thoughts and, in the title essay, how Proust penetrated the mysteries of memory by immersing himself in childhood recollections. He also draws from George Elliot, Virginia Wolfe, Stravinsky and Auguste Escoffier, the chef who essentially invented modern French cooking. I thought it was insightful, illuminating and well-written.

The Associate by John Grisham is the formulaic David v. Goliath story with Kyle McAvoy, President of the Yale Law Review, planning to take a public service job until shadowy figures blackmail him with a videotape that could destroy his future. So Kyle accepts a position the largest and most prestigious law firm, whose clients include a military contractor enmeshed in a $800 billion lawsuit concerning a newly-designed aircraft. Kyle can avoid exposure only if he feeds his new masters inside information on the case. Readers should be prepared for predictable twists, an ending with some unwarranted ambiguity and some unconvincing details. Still, Grisham is the master of this genre, and it was hard for me to put down.

Man in the Dark by Paul Auster: The death of his wife and a car accident have left the retired book critic August Brill confined to his house with his recently divorced daughter and an adult grandchild stricken with grief after the murder of her ex-boyfriend in Iraq, Bril attempts to stave off thoughts of death by telling himself bedtime stories. His tired mind weaves a tale that combines details of his life with the story of a man who, waking up in an alternate universe where 9/11 never happened and the 2000 election led to civil war, is sent on a mission to destroy the very person who has imagined him into existence. “Reactions to Paul Auster’s new novel may very well have come from alternate universes themselves. In one world, Ouster is a great American man of letters writing a postmodern response to the events of our time… In another world, his novel is yet another failed attempt at fictional engagement with the past eight years.”

*We are Rich by Dori Carter who seems to have an uncanny ability to pick just the right words to construct the most elegant sentences to portray powerful, poignant and hilarious insights about her neighbors in "Brigadoon by the Beach". I couldn't put the book down or sleep until I finished it and now can hardly wait to read it more slowly and savor each page. Scott Fitzgerald once said, "The Rich are very different from you and me". Carter shows us just how different they are from the rest of us--and from each other. From the cook's son who has the audacity to make it big in silicon valley to the gardener’s son who marries the boss' daughter, a new generation in Rancho Esperanza is displacing the old guard ('men with noses that look they've been sniffing Bordeaux'. You will never feel the same way about the top level of a Santa Barbara parking deck again.

A Saint on Death Row by Tom Cahill who is known for books like How the Irish Saved Civilization, The Gift of the Jews, and other erudite excursions into cultural history. He received rave reviews from Desmond Tutu and Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking for this book, but I didn’t enjoy the writing style that seemed lik a set of extended reflective, and unedited, journal entries. The 'saint' of the title is Dominique Green who was executed by the infamous Texas penal system and was obviously an impressive person who deserved more from life than he received.

The Year You Write Your Novel by Walter Mosley is a slim guide for writers guide that provides basic common sense (write every day), basic grammar (book (the difference between simile and metaphor) or tips most would-be writers will have already read elsewhere (voices or POV). Mosley, author of the Easy Rawlins mysteries and several other books, sets out to show how we can write the first draft of a novel in a few months and to complete the project in year. The best point of the book for me was that writing every keeps your subconscious working on your project.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery brings Renée, an intelligent, philosophical concierge who poses as the stereotypical uneducated “super” to avoid suspicion from the building’s pretentious inhabitants together with Paloma, the adolescent daughter of a parliamentarian, who has decided to commit suicide on her thirteenth birthday because she cannot stand living in the fishbowl of the vapid, superficial wealthy. The plot thins at moments and is replaced by intellectual discourse on culture, the ruling class, and the injustices done to the poor. The book was loved by most reviewers and half a million French readers because of its “intelligent humor, fine sentiments, an excellent literary and philosophical backdrop, good taste, sophistication and substance.” For me, the book was more impressive than enjoyable.

*Still Alice by first-time author Lisa Genova, who holds a Ph. D in neuroscience from Harvard is a compelling debut novel about a 50-year-old professor of cognitive psychology at Harvard when she begins a sudden descent into early onset Alzheimer's disease. Alice Howland is happily married with three grown children and a house on the Cape, is at the height of her career when she notices a forgetfulness creeping into her life. As confusion starts to cloud her thinking and her memory begins to fail her, she receives the most frightening of diagnosis. Alice struggles to maintain her lifestyle and live in the moment, even as her sense of self is being stripped away. Sometimes heartbreaking and inspiring and often terrifying, Still Alice describes what’s it must be like to literally lose your mind.

Beat the Reaper by Josh Bazell: The Washington Posts says, “Making a hit man turned medical intern a sympathetic figure would be a tall order for most authors, but first-time novelist Bazell makes it look easy in this breezy and darkly comic suspense novel.” The Locanos, a mob family, take in 14-year-old Pietro Brwna (pronounced Browna) after a couple of thugs gun down the grandparents who raised him. Pietro pursues the killers and executes them a year later. David Locano recruits Pietro as a hit man. After more traumas, Pietro tries to make a break from his past by entering the witness protection program. Now known as Peter Brown, he eventually lands a position as a doctor at a decrepit Manhattan hospital, where by chance a former Mafia associate turns up and threatens to rat him out. The hero's sardonic narrative voice, coupled with Bazells use of flashbacks to backfill are a winning combination. Not great literature read, but a fun read.

Nothing to Lose is Lee Child's 12th Jack Reacher novel. Obviously Child is an accomplished writer, but despite generally positive reviews and a positive mention in the NYT, you wouldn’t know it from this book. Basically, the ex-military policeman hitchhikes into Colorado, where he finds himself crossing the metaphorical and physical line that divides the small towns of Hope and Despair. Despair lives up to its name and Reacher beats up or outsmarts several groups of miscreants who wish him ill while bedding the lovely police office in Hope. I’ve never read a book with so many incomplete sentences, and you shouldn’t waste your time.

How We Decide- by Jonah Lehrer is not as good as his previous book (reviewed earlier) but Lehrer holds his own with Malcolm Gladwell and other science writers who focus on the complexities of the human brain. "There isn't any spectacular revelation, unique viewpoint or knockout final summation," noted the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Washington Post felt that Lehrer "does little to integrate science's contradictory findings." Lehrer nonetheless illuminates the many processes involved in even the simplest decisions. For me, the first portion was very engaging, but the most endless review of the voluminous research and knowledge of the field became tiring before the book ended.

The Brass Verdict by Michael Connelly is one of his most intricate plots in his 20th book and a professionally crafted crime thriller. Unlike many bestselling authors, Connelly still delivers. When L.A. lawyer Mickey Haller, star of The Lincoln Lawyer (2005), inherits the practice and caseload of a fellow defense attorney, who's been murdered, he focuses on the high-profile double-homicide case against a famous Hollywood producer. Mickey copes with his own demons and manages to unravel several interconnected mysteries.

The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet by Reif Larsen is about a 12-year-old mapmaking prodigy, who receives a call from the Smithsonian informing him that he has won the prestigious Baird award. He hops a freight train to accept the prize and meets a taciturn Winnebago, a homicidal preacher, a racist trucker and members of the secretive Megatherium Club. The book is probably a work of genius, with overwhelming marginal notes and drawings, but I found the middle third slow going. I suspect that T.S. is an autistic savant. One reviewer described it as a combination of Mark Twain, Thomas Pynchon, and Little Miss Sunshine.

PUBLISHED REVIEWS—

Bob Johnansen, Leaders Make the Future, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., 2009

Bob Johansen, a Ph.D. in comparative religion, is the former President and a current Board member of the Institute for the Future (IFTF) - an independent think tank that has produced forecasts, scenarios and studies about the future for over 40 years. Johansen argues convincingly that in a world of increasing volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA), leaders must learn new skills in order to make a better future. The identification of the “Ten New Leadership Skills for an Uncertain World” are less convincing. Here is a brief summary of Johansen’s list:

1) Maker instinct (leaders should approach their leadership with commitment and energy)
2) Clarity (leaders should be clear about what they are creating but flexible about how it gets done)
3) Dilemma Flipping (leaders should turn problems that can't be solved into opportunities)
4) Immersive Learning (leaders must be learners, especially learning by doing)
5) Bio-empathy (leaders understand, respect and learn from nature)
6) Constructive depolarization (leaders should be able to calm tense situations and bring people from different background together for constructive engagement)
7) Quiet transparency (leaders should be open and authentic about what matters without self-promotion)
8) Rapid Prototyping (leaders should work quickly to create early versions of innovations)
9) Smart mob organizing (leaders must create, engage and nurture social networks)
10)Commons creating (leaders stimulate, grow and nurture shared assets that benefit others)

The early section of the book was engaging and exciting. For me, it soon became ‘heavy going.’ Johansen explains the "what" and the "why" in much more detail than the "how."
He concludes with an interesting set of questions to ask yourself in evaluating your level of competence for the new leadership skills along with a self-assessment rating system.

The book is thoughtful and worthwhile, but not the best work to come out of the Institute for the Future.

****

Jim Taylor, Doug Harrison, and Stephen Kras, The New Elite: Inside the Minds of the Truly Wealthy,(New York, Amacom, 2008) 241 pages.

Scott Fitzgerald once observed to Ernest Hemingway, “the rich are very different from you and me." The New Elite is intended to explain Fitzgerald's koan about what makes the wealthy different. Early in 2008, 1% of Americans owned more than one third of the country's assets. (With valuations changing daily, who knows what the numbers are now) Approximately a million households have liquid assets of $5-10 million and constitute what the authors call “The New Elite.” They are different from most of us in that they have inordinate impact on business profitability, tax revenues, charitable contributions, and the overall economic health of the country.

If you recall the 1996 best selling, The Millionaire Next Door, you will be pleased to learn that the typical millionaire, described then as a hard working, frugal small business owner, has become wealthier and more common. From 1983 to 2005, the population of the United States grew by about one third. Even after adjusting for inflation, the number of millionaires grew by 168%, those with $5 million in net worth grew 353% and hecamillionaires (those with over $10 million) grew over 400%. Ronald Reagan once explained “trickle down economics” by saying, “a rising tide lifts all boats." Recent history has refuted this theory-- at least for smaller boats. We can, however, conclude that a rising tide does lift most yachts.

We may imagine that they are living in extreme luxury in multi-million dollar mansions, cruising on yachts and jetting off to exotic locales at a moment’s notice. They are a very important demographic, and they do have more money to spend than ordinary mortals. In "The New Elite", the authors reveal what drives our country's most powerful and influential class, what they want, where they shop and how they really spend their money.

The authors contend that accurately understanding this group is critical for success in the marketing, sales, product development, branding and advertising fields. They dispel the myth that most of the rich have inherited their money and reveal the socioeconomic factors behind their self-made rises to success. Exploring how the rich spend their money and what influences their buying decisions, the authors identify the five classes of the newly wealthy with distinct reactions to the value and purpose of money—neighbors, wrestlers, patrons, mavericks and directors—groups that greatly differ in their lifestyles and financial attitudes. Charts and graphs throughout distill key data and make it possible to skim the book and still comprehend the main concepts.

Based on thorough research (survey of 1800) and extensive access to the wealthy, "The New Elite" is must reading for consumer marketers and interesting reading for the rest of us. Except for a few simple precepts (work hard, own your own business, and earn more that you spend), this book will not tell you how to become “rich and famous, “but it will help you understand more about the thinking and behaviors of those who are.

Overall assessment: 4.0 Reviewed by Robert M. Fulmer, co-author, The Leadership Advantage, for Graziadio Business Review.

The Leadership Code, Dave Ulrich, Norm Smallwood and Kate Sweetman, HBR Press, 2009

Is there a “Da Vinci Code” for leaders? Ulrich, Smallwood and Sweetman purport to have found “The Leadership Code,” As they point out, “This leadership code, like any other code, provides both structure and guidance, and helps you know not only what to do to be a better individual leader, but also how to build better leadership capability.” Since there are probably “half a million books on leaders and leader­ship, we turned to recognized experts in the field who had…already spent years sifting through the evidence and developing their own theories.” Since I was honored to be included in their acknowledgements, my review may be somewhat biased. (But if they appreciate my work on leadership skills and development, they are clearly brilliant people, right?)

From their literature review and body of interviews conducted, they con­cluded that 60 to 70 percent of leadership effectiveness would be contained in the leadership code. Their analysis and synthesis result in a framework that they believe is accurate, logical, and useful. While many academics will turn up their noses at the lack of elegance in their research design, the book is likely to pass a more important test: perceived value and relevance to leaders on the firing line!

The Leadership Code essentially breaks down into five deceptively simple rules:

Rule 1: Shape the Future. This rule is embodied in the strategist dimension of the leader. Strategists not only envision a future, they help create it . As practical futurists, they figure out where the organization needs to go to succeed, they test these ideas pragmati­cally against current resources (money, people, organiza­tional capabilities), and they work with others to figure out how to get from the present to the desired future.

Rule 2: Make Things Happen. The execution dimen­sion of leadership focuses on the question, “How can we ensure that we get to where we want to go?” Executors translate strategy into action. Executors understand how to make change happen, to assign accountability, to know which key decisions to take and which to delegate, and to make sure that teams work well together.

Rule 3: Engage Today’s Talent. Leaders who optimize talent today answer the question, “Who goes with us on our business journey?” After getting “the right people on the bus, talent managers generate intense personal, professional, and organizational loyalty.

Rule 4: Build the Next Generation. Leaders who are human capital developers answer the question, “Who stays and sustains the organization for the next generation?” Just as good parents invest in helping their children succeed, human capital developers help future leaders to be successful.

Rule 5: Invest in Yourself. At the heart of the lead­ership code—literally and figuratively—is personal proficiency. Effective leaders cannot be reduced to what they know and do. Who they are as human beings has everything to do with how much they can accomplish with and through other people.

Leaders are learners: from success, failure, assignments, books, classes, people, and life itself

The RBL Group has developed both self assessment and 360 degree feedback exercises to help readers know how well they exemplify The Leadership Code. If interested, go to www.leadershipcodebook.com for a short video lesson from Dave Ulrich that will help understand results of the short leadership code self-assessment contained in the book. The firm has also developed a one-day seminar to help leaders utilize the feedback they receive from the “Leadership Code 360.”

The book is well-written, engaging and pragmatic. Cracking the leadership code might help you take your leadership to a higher level—and you don’t have to worry about crazed monks trying to stop you from sharing your insights.

Overall assessment: 5.0 Reviewed by Robert M. Fulmer, co-author, The Leadership Advantage, for Graziadio Business Review.

The Future of Management

By Gary Hamel (with Bill Breen)
Harvard Business School Press, October, 2007

Recommended by Robert Fulmer, PhD, Distinguished Visiting Professor

Upon first meeting Gary Hamel in 1999, I asked, “Since you were an inventor of ‘strategic intent,’ what is your personal statement of strategic intent?” Without hesitation, he responded, "I want to be to innovation what Ed Deming was to quality." In his new book, The Future of Management, the bestselling author of the Leading the Revolution and Competing for the Future (with C. K. Prahalad), moves a step closer to achieving this career objective.

In my opinion, the title may be somewhat misleading: The book is less about the future of management and more about the importance of “reinventing the concept of management” by being innovative.

Chapter two is largely spent on recognizing the limitations of traditional management. Much of this is old news. In 1977, Abraham Zaleznic published a classic essay outlining key differences between the historic emphasis on management and an emerging need for the qualities of leadership. Of course, Hamel is building the case that innovation is more important than the budgeting and controls associated with traditional management. This is clearly true, but hardly an ‘innovative' insight. To be fair, Gary Hamel (with Bill Breen) writes creatively and shows an enviable ability to present familiar concepts in unique and interesting ways.

The book’s second section, "Management Innovation in Action," presents three case chapters that showcase companies considered to be true management innovators. Whole Foods is described as having “the most engaged employees of any major retailer.” W. L. Gore has been called the world's most innovative company, and has one of the most effective organizations to be found. Though young and untested, Google has developed a management system that values adaptability above everything else. As Hamel points out, “these companies aren't perfect or invincible, but they are heralds of a new management order—ongoing experiments in management innovation from which we can learn lessons both salutary and cautionary."

Section three outlines "The Principles of Management Innovation." Key chapters include:

  • Escaping the Shackles: How can leaders challenge long-standing management orthodoxies that constrain creative thinking?
  • Embracing New Principles: What principles can be discovered by looking at insights from the life sciences, market economies, democracies, religious faith, and dynamic cities?
  • Learning from the Fringe: What lessons can be learned by listening to "positive deviants and looking for people and practices that are eccentric yet effective”?

The book's final section is about getting started on the process of becoming a management innovator and building a new future of management. For me, the key insight was the importance of "working from the future backwards." This isn't a new concept, but it is an important aspect of thinking strategically and being innovative.

No one is better than Gary Hamel at saying things that are challenging, provocative, and creative. He is able to see what everyone else sees and then to think about it in new and intriguing ways. He is insightful, articulate, and an exemplar of innovative questioning.

This is an important book. In my opinion, The Future of Management is better than Hamel’s Leading the Revolution, but not quite to the standard of Competing for the Future—still one of my favorite management books of all time. Neither he nor C.K. Prahalad have written as well independently as they did together. Yet, they both continue to make significant contributions to the understanding of strategic thinking.