What Would Machiavelli Do?

Stanley Bing is the second reason that I buy Fortune magazine at the airport (the first depends on what is on the cover). Bing writes a column on the last page and (even if the entire magazine sucks that month) his column makes it worth the price of a latte that you have to pay for it.

What Would Machiavelli Do? by Stanley Bing, like the column, is super funny (100 Bullshit Jobs and How to Get Them is also funny). And, while Bing makes it clear (even insists) that you shouldn’t have to bother with reading the actual Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli, I started to give it a try (owned it for years).

Before I even got to the text itself, I took a detour. In the foreword to the version published by “Everyman’s Library” the author writes:

The aim is to extract from observed events those recurrent features that provide a basis for practical action. If, as Machiavelli claims, politics can be a science comparable to medicine, then history is its pathology. The decline and fall of the Roman state has always had an obsessive interest for commentators; it could be called the shaping myth of western political thought. (xiii)

Of course, after reading that, I got distracted by Are We Rome? The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America by Cullen Murphy. The Prince will wait, I think, a few more years (back to the shelf with Sun Tzu and The Art of War).

How Much Do I Love The Economist?

While I was an international relations student in the early 90s, the saying used to be that if you wanted to be a Foreign Service Officer, you had to read The Economist magazine or the New York Times every week for a year (every single printed word). If you did that, the conventional wisdom went, you were sure to have an FSO business card.

Since the New York Times has fallen on hard times, I suspect students today have dropped it from the list, but I am certain the belief in The Economist still persists.

Anyway, I never became an FSO (the Internet boom intervened), but I did start reading it every week and have never stopped. It is simply the best magazine published today. I could wax on and on about how great it is and why, but I will give one reason here:

The book review section is totally awesome. For example, the review of Alan Greenspan’s new book The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World in the most recent issue (here) is perfect.

Plus, how much do I want to read Weimar Germany: Promise and Tragedy by Eric D. Weitz? A lot. Not because the review (here) is glowing, but because it is a perfect review.

Alan Greenspan Is Super Cool

The sage of our former times has been on the circuit hawking his new book The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World.

He was on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart a couple nights ago (video clip here). His interview reminded me a little bit of what Albert Einstein said about understanding politics. Einstein said (paraphrasing) that math was much easier to understand than people.

Anyway, Greenspan said just about the same thing. He said (paraphrasing) that we rely on giant reams of data, because people make no sense.

Also, from what I understand, in Greenspan’s book he describes wooing his wife with an essay on the Sherman Antitrust Act. That is pretty funny.

Anyway, I’ve got to get the book!

The Republicans Have To Write Too

Along with the Democrats, the Republican candidates for President of the United States have been busy scribbling out some books too.

Like the Democrats, some of the Republicans manage to pop out a book “all by themselves” while others work with another author.

Rudy Giuliani wrote Leadership.

John McCain wrote Hard Call: Great Decisions and the Extraordinary People Who Made Them and Faith of My Fathers: A Family Memoir. McCain has written a whole passel of books so I am not going to list them all here.

Mitt Romney wrote Turnaround: Crisis, Leadership, and the Olympic Games.

Ron Paul wrote A Foreign Policy of Freedom: Peace, Commerce, and Honest Friendship.

Mike Huckabee wrote From Hope to Higher Ground: 12 STOPS to Restoring America's Greatness.

Tom Tancredo wrote In Mortal Danger: The Battle for America's Border and Security.

Again, I am not positive this is a complete list (politicians write a lot). If I missed one, let me know.

Either way, I have not read any of their books (as it turns out, just like the Democrats, not a time travel thriller in the bunch).

Since I plan on working my way through the books by the Democratic candidates, I think I will work my way through these too, but, where to start?

Maybe I’ll ask the Quip.

Democrats On the Write

The Democrats running for President of the United States sure are busy at their keyboards (or, whatever they use to write) churning out the books. It is almost like writing a book is the price of entry.

Some of the candidates have been writing books “all by themselves” (apparently) while others work with another author.

Joe Biden wrote Promises to Keep: On Life and Politics.

Bill Richardson wrote Between Worlds: The Making of an American Life.

Chris Dodd wrote Letters from Nuremberg: My Father's Narrative of a Quest for Justice.

John Edwards co-edited Ending Poverty in America: How to Restore the American Dream and wrote Home: The Blueprints of Our Lives.

Barack Obama wrote The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream and Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance.

Dennis Kucinich wrote The Courage to Believe and A Prayer for America.

Hillary Clinton re-published her famous 1996 book It Takes a Village with a new forward.

Last, even Mike Gravel has a book called Citizen Power: A People's Platform (it was published at some point in the 70s and is apparently out of print).

I am not positive this is a complete list (politicians write a lot). If I missed one, let me know.

Either way, I have not read any of their books (not a time travel thriller in the bunch). But, I think that I should. So, I’ll start with It Takes a Village (mostly because I already bought it and Citizen Power looks like it costs over $400).

Guy Kawasaki Reads Faster Than Me

(plus, he gets interviews sometimes.)

When it comes to non-fiction (and maybe fiction, but I am not sure), it seems that Guy Kawasaki is always out in front and cranking out the book reviews and author interviews.

Sometimes, I have already bought the book and am wondering when I am going to read it and “boom” Guy posts something about it on How to Change the World (his blog). Or, other times, I am reading as fast as I can, but he posts about it first so I never get to it (but, I plan to). But, mostly, I am wasting time discussing Lost with the Quip and not focusing on the books.

A couple examples (in order of his posting not preemption):

He interviewed Penelope Trunk who is the author of Brazen Careerists: The New Rules for Success on his blog here just when I was mulling over purchase. I did write about The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil by Phillip Zimbardo here, but Guy got the interview here while I was still waiting for the Amazon box to arrive. Again, he wrote a post here on Founders at Work: Stories of Startups’ Early Days by Jessica Livingston before I was even past page 30.

The list goes on and on.

Cats Would Do Great

The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier (which I wrote about here) is a lot of things, but one part of the book details the slow elimination of human beings on Earth. While I was reading the book, I kept thinking: “would infrastructure really collapse that fast without people maintaining it” (about 6 months or less for some major pieces).

After learning about The World Without Us by Alan Weisman (a review is on the Washington Post site and he appeared on the Diane Rehm Show), I suppose I am convinced some things would disappear much faster.

Weisman’s book details what would happen to our planet without any people on it and it isn’t good for the Internet. For sure it is something that Web developers have known for a long time. Web sites not only don’t build themselves they also don’t keep themselves running!

From what I understand, cats and bronze statues come out great (dogs and cockroaches not so much). I have to read this book!

Leslie Bennetts, Vicki Iovine and Ayn Rand?

I wrote about The Feminine Mistake by Leslie Bennetts here and have been following her various appearances (for example, her debate with Elissa Schappell on BookTV and on The Huffington Post).

She does insist that her book is not another lob in the “Mommy Wars” and I think that is probably true. Beloved “Girlfriend” herself, Vicki Iovine has a similar message (in that she says "it can be done") in many of her books including The Girlfriends’ Guide to Surviving the First Year of Motherhood where she writes:

About half of all mothers return to work within the first year after giving birth, and another big chunk will return when the child is old enough for nursery school or kindergarten, so you know it can be done. Not only can it be done, it can actually be fulfilling and an essential part of your life, but we Girlfriends feel it’s our duty to tell you:

IN THE BEGINNING, GOING BACK TO WORK WILL NEARLY KILL YOU (emphasis Iovine’s). (223-224)

Now, while lots of people absolutely love Iovine, Ayn Rand is a much maligned voice for a bunch of reasons, but not necessarily known for her thoughts on motherhood specifically. In a giant book (Atlas Shrugged) she managed to insert a couple lines about work and motherhood.

The recaptured sense of her own childhood kept coming back to her whenever she met the two sons of the young woman who owned the bakery shop. She often saw them wandering down the trails of the valley – two fearless beings, aged seven and four. They seemed to face life as she had faced it. They did not have to look she had seen in the children of the outer world – a look of fear, half-secretive, half-sneering, the look of a child’s defense against an adult, the look of a being in the process of discovering that he is hearing lies and of learning to feel hatred. The two boys had the open, joyous, friendly confidence of kittens who do not expect to get hurt, they had an innocently natural, non-boastful sense of their own value…(274)

I am not an Ayn Rand expert by any means, but her basic idea is that all work should be compensated with money and not to receive money for labor is to disrespect your human identity. She and Bennetts have a lot in common.

The Feminine Mistake

I first learned about The Feminine Mistake by Leslie Bennetts when I read a review of it in the Washington Post here. Suitably intrigued, I picked it up and read.

The Feminine Mistake darts around like a minnow and continually circles back to a couple of core points. It is a little Momento-ish since each chapter reads like the first, which can be disorienting, but, ultimately, it drives home her main point.

Bennetts main point is that “stay-at-home wives” (a term she uses frequently) risk financial security when they become economically dependent on someone else. Basically, the old “a man isn’t a plan”.

But, this is the thing, “a job isn’t a plan” either. The logic doesn’t flow straight to financial security from staying employed. Lots of people make lots of money and are still not secure in their future because they don’t have an actual financial plan. I think “only a plan is a plan”.

Exercise guru Bill Phillips said “if you fail to plan, you plan to fail”. Even though he wasn’t referring to money, I think that might be better advice to take to the bank.

That all being the case, I did like the general “you can do it” (succeed) theme of the book. It is a welcome message when many people say “it can’t be done”.

The Feminine Mistake is over 300 pages long, but I would say the entire word of caution that she is preaching can be summarized in this giant quote:

Given the likelihood that you will have to fend for yourself at some point in the future, protect yourself against economic hardship by maintaining the capacity to support yourself. Protect your children by making sure you can take care of them financially should anything happen to their father. Protect your future happiness against the nagging doubts harbored by frustrated stay-at-home mothers who can’t shake the guilt and regret they feel about failing to explore their full potential. Protect yourself against the desolation of the empty nest, which inflicts the deepest sense of loss on full-time mothers with no other identity or outlets to sustain them. Protect your older self against the feelings of uselessness and isolation experienced by so many women who didn’t cultivate meaningful work that could nourish them in their later years. (317)

"Antique, Illogical And Democratically Indefensible"

Recently, the Queen of England came and went (Carter had some interesting comments here in a post titled "Send the Queen Home").

Isn’t it totally absurd that any modern country has a heredity ruler (figurehead, whatever)?

Jeremy Paxon (author of On Royalty: A Very Polite Inquiry Into Some Strangely Related Families) was on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart a couple nights ago. Paxon called the monarchy “antique, illogical and democratically indefensible” (after about three minutes of a meager justification – some indecipherable stuff about the embodiment of a nation blah, blah, blah).

It really just makes no sense.

Comedy Central Sells Books (to me)

I have used a Tivo since 1999 and have no clue what time shows are on since I haven’t watched one while it was being broadcast in almost a decade (and not just because time-shifting is a cool term).

Despite that, I do know that Jon Stewart and the Colbert Report are back to back since they are tied together in between the two shows. As a result, I tend to watch them together.

In a single night I bought The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil by Philip Zimbardo and Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts by Clive James after learning about the first on the Jon Stewart show and the second on the Colbert Report.

I haven’t read either yet (and kind of wonder how Cultural Amnesia is different from The Creators: A History of Heros of the Imagination by Daniel Boorstin).

I hope that both books are worth the price of hardcover!

Cooked

I hate to cook and will go to great lengths to avoid it. I hate talking or thinking about food or recipes. But, I truly hate cleaning up after cooking, which makes me hate the whole concept of cooking even more. At times, I think that people who say they like to cook are just saying it for no good reason.

That is how much I really dislike all things cooking related.

That all being the case, I must read Cooked: From the Streets to the Stove, from Cocaine to Foie Gras by Jeff Henderson.

I heard the author on NPR the other day and it sounds like an amazing story.

In the 80s he was a drug dealer in California and ended up in jail. Today, Henderson is the executive chef at the Café Bellagio in Las Vegas. And, let me tell you, based on the interview, it sounds like it was one hard road to make it.

It makes me think of Horatio Alger.

Which, then, reminds me of Dude, Where’s My Country by Michael Moore. In that book there is an entire chapter devoted to the idea that Horatio Alger stories are not possible. The chapter is called “Horatio Alger Must Die”. Henderson’s story definitely contradicts that claim.

Anyway, despite the fact that he clearly must like cooking, I have to read Henderson’s memoir!

Two History Books The Armchair Historian Must Have (And Read)

The first one I bought about twelve years ago at the Kramer Books and Afterwards Cafe in Washington, DC (the store had its 15 minutes of fame about three years later).

Anyway, A History of Knowledge by Charles Van Doren is an exceptional overview of world history through the lens of all that humankind has created, imagined, invented, admired or otherwise loved.

The book becomes especially fascinating when Van Doren details massive intellectual leaps that were considered ludicrous at the time (a variety of religious, scientific and artistic ideas).

It is a history of civilization, but it is easy to read and absorb. Other benefits include improving your trivial pursuit performance and sounding smart (ish) at cocktail parties.

The second book is called Freedom: A History of US by Joy Hakim. It is a companion to a PBS series by the same name (which I never saw). I love this book. If you find yourself completely forgetting your US history, pick this one up and you’ll feel high school flooding back (without the Monday morning test).

If you are an American, it is a reasonably good read most times of the year, but it goes especially well with July 4th (if you are reading anything at all at that time). That stated, while it is driven by pride, it is a balanced perspective.

Freakonomics

While Freakonomics is by some definition an economics book and purists might say that the study of economics has nothing to do with useful math, when I read it all I keep thinking was “lies, damn lies and statistics”.

Admittedly, it is an entertaining book and has been on the NY Times hardcover non-fiction best seller list for over 90 weeks (in February occupying the 11th spot). But, I can’t help but thinking that it is a gimmicky mind game book intended to “show” that correlations and regression analysis are tools to prove anything you want – especially if it is shocking.

Ultimately, the book makes me think that economics is not the dismal science, but the silly science.

Some Of The Best Of Immortality

Milan Kundera published a work of non-fiction called The Curtain: An Essay in Seven Parts.

Let me start by making it clear that I love every word Milan Kundera has ever written. I think he is brilliant and his books (since the ones that I have read are translations) are almost enough for me to devote a large part of my day to learning Czech (almost).

I do have a friend who learned to read German so that she could fully appreciate and enjoy the writings of Franz Kafka. After reading The Castle, I decided that she must be partially insane, because it must be even worse in its original form. Or, at least, make the reader more nuts.

Anyway, back to Kundera, The Curtain is a non-fiction book about the art (or the place?) of the novel (I won’t regurgitate the synopsis here, but it sounds great) and I will read it in short order.

In the meantime, I will provide a couple of my favorites from Immortality (over the next weeks or maybe months, I’ll quote the others, but, for no particular reason, I am starting with Immortality).

On burning old letters and diaries:

Imagine yourself in her place: it isn’t easy to burn intimate documents that are dear to you; it would be like admitting to yourself that you won’t be here much longer, that tomorrow you may die; and so you put off the act of destruction from day to day, and then one day it’s too late. Man reckons with immortality, and forgets to reckon with death. (74)

On politics, terrorism and lines:

He never expressed his opinion about Palestinians, Israelis, the October Revolution, or Fidel Castro, or even about terrorists, because he knew there existed a border beyond which murder is no longer murder but heroism, and that he would never be able to recognize just where that border lay. (105)

On self-perception:

He suddenly realized, too, that people saw him differently from how he saw himself or from how he thought he was seen by others. (124)

On perceiving others:

She was therefore certain that she knew him by heart and that nobody had ever known him as well as she. The emotion of love gives all of us a misleading illusion of knowing the other. (132)

Another on self-perception:

As for her, she saw her inappropriate behavior and rash words as marks of her personality, as the charm of her self, and she was happy. (147)

On history and death:

I refuse to die with this day and its cares, I wish to transcend myself, to be a part of history, because history is eternal memory. (164)

On time and youth:

When someone is young, he is not capable of conceiving of time as a circle, but thinks of it as a road leading forward to ever-new horizons (275)

One that is just plain interesting:

Episodes are like land mines. The majority of them never explode, but the most unremarkable of them may someday turn into a story that will prove fateful to you. (305)

Next up, quotes from Identity.

Three Books For Expecting Parents

The three books listed below are required reading for parents and I say “expecting” parents in the title, because I think that all three should be read at least once before a first born enters the world.

Then, after the baby is born, each will be consulted many times during the course of the first two years. Of course, lots of other books pile up around the house, but these three are the three that you should get if you are only able to get three!

Baby Signs: How to Talk with Your Baby Before Your Baby Can Talk by Linda Acredolo, Susan Goodwyn, Douglas Abrams

Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child by Marc Weissbluth, MD

Super Baby Food by Ruth Yaron

Best Story Of A Book

Heavy Words Lightly Thrown: the Reasons Behind the Rhymes is an exceedingly funny and entertaining book that tells the history of some of the most common nursery rhymes (London Bridge, Jack and Jill, Humpty Dumpty etc.).

So, while I absolutely love this book, I like the tale behind it even more. It was written by a London-based tour guide who realized that (during his tours) the background on nursery rhymes was incredibly popular.

He set out to write a book and was forced through a variety of circumstances to self-publish. The book went global, attracted a publisher and is on the shelves (both virtual and otherwise) today.

It is every self-publishers dream, yes?