Monday, August 31, 2015

Current writers whose work I look for

Related to a post I did back in 2011 titled "Waiting on Writing: Good Authors - Good Books," I wanted to list out the current writers whose work I most look for.

So, with the arbitrarily chosen cut-off line at 22 people, here's the alphabetical list (which of course may be overlooking someone):

Ashlee Vance, Atul Gawande
Bill Bryson, Brad Stone
Chris Ballard, Chris Jones
David Von Drehle
Eli Saslow, Erik Larson
J.R. Moehringer, Jason Fagone, Joe Klein, Joe Posnanski, Justin Heckert
Lee Jenkins
Michael Lewis, Michael Paterniti
S.L. Price, Susan Casey
Tom Junod, Tom Verducci
Wright Thompson

Voices in the Ocean by Susan Casey

Voices in the Ocean by Susan Casey was a solid book on how we as a people treat the environment, animals in it and specifically as the subject of this book, dolphins.

I was excited for the book after loving Casey's previous books, The Devil's Teeth and The Wave, which I wrote about in 2010, and this one was well-written and interesting, but also depressing.

Casey covers how dolphins are incredibly smart creatures, but oftentimes are either treated poorly for our amusement in places like traditional marine parks, subject to the effects of sonar tests conducted by the U.S. Navy, or slaughtered by people to make a few dollars, even to the point of basically putting a ransom on their heads. From places like the town of Taiji, Japan, where The Cove was set, to the Solomon Islands off Australia, Casey shows the atrocities people will commit against dolphins.

Casey writes a really thorough book that's as appreciation of dolphins, and also lament for them.

Sunday, August 23, 2015

Great business writing - on MLB Advanced Media, Tesla, Amazon, and working a career

There's been some really interesting business writing lately to note here, including several company profiles as well as pieces around the topic of the work people put into their jobs.

The first company profile to mention was for The Verge by Ben Popper with "The Changeup: How baseball’s tech team built the future of television," a fascinating piece on Major League Baseball Advanced Media. The company (known also as BAM) started out as MLB's technology division and has since done extensive work for HBO, just signed a technology and rights holder deal with the NHL, and is almost certain to spin off from MLB into it's own company.

Another profile I found excellent was "Decoding Tesla's Secret Formula" by Jeff Dyer and Hal Gregersen for Forbes Magazine. The company a fascinating one to me and as with other piece I've read on Tesla, this story paints a picture of the cars as remarkable feats of engineering.

Additionally of interest recently was another solid company profile, "Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace," one that has in the past week generated a huge amount of discussion. For the New York Times by Jodi Kantor and David Streitfeld, the piece has the subtitle "The company is conducting an experiment in how far it can push white-collar workers to get them to achieve it's ever-expanding ambitions." I found it to be a well-balanced story and part of me reads it and thinks that it fine for people to be pushed so hard if those employees feel the positives outweigh the negatives from the hours and pressure. However, the larger part of me then thinks of how unsustainable it seems to have a large company made up of people either young enough to not have family to go to after work or older people willing to spend so much time in pursuit of work goals and away from family. It just feels like that abandonment of balance is eventually going have a detrimental impact on one's work. Granted, those people can then be forced out when their work suffers, but it's a cycle that it seems would eventually hit it's limits and negatively impact the company.

A couple of other pieces that the Amazon story inspired and which I found interesting were "Jeff Bezos and the Amazon Way," a column by Joe Nocera for the New York Times and "Work Hard, Live Well," published to Medium by Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz. The Nocera commentary is about Amazon following the lead of Bezos and that from Moskovitz on the negatives, to both employees and the company itself, that can come from too many hours put into work.

Related to the idea of how someone goes about their job, there was a great career advice post to his blog done last month by entrepreneur and angel investor Jason Calacanis"The most important piece of advice for folks starting their careers" contains a number of interesting and highly relevant suggestions. To say it's simply a counter-argument to the idea of balance in work and life would be to miss many of the ideas Calacanis puts forth, but a theme throughout his post is about hustle and how to succeed especially when starting out in something, you gotta hustle.

Saturday, August 22, 2015

Great sports stories - by Bissinger, Beech, Delle Donne & Doyel

Some fairly recent sports writing to note here included ones were about heartwarming and amazing stories as well as two pieces that very much brought to mind past writing I've posted on.

Buzz Bissinger for Sports Illustrated had an excerpt from the 25th anniversary edition of Friday Night Lights, a fantastic book that spawned a movie, television series and follow-up ebook that I wrote about two years ago.

Also from SI was the Mark Beech feature "Catching up with the dogs of Sochi," about dogs rescued out of the Russia Olympics by people including snowboarder Lindsey Jacobellis, hockey players David Backes and Kelli Stack and slopestyle skier Gus Kenworthy.

Another recent piece that reminded me of past writing on the topic was "Lizzie" by Elena Delle Donne for The Players Tribune. Delle Donne is someone I last wrote about two years ago and the story of she, her sister, and rest of their family is a remarkable one.

Also involving a sibling was the absolutely wild piece "Officer back on the streets, with a story to tell" by Gregg Doyel for the Indianapolis Star. About Indianapolis-area police office Marty Dulworth, it's an amazing story told very well by Doyel.

Wednesday, August 19, 2015

In the Kingdom of Ice by Hampton Sides

In the Kingdom of Ice by Hampton Sides was an excellent adventure yarn with the subtitle The Grand and Terrible Polar Voyage of the USS Jeannette.


Sides is an author who I first learned about from his 2013 Outside Magazine piece "Wake-Up Call: Surviving an Attack by Flesh-Eating Bacteria" and in his book on the Jeanette and her men getting trapped in the ice north of Siberia, he wrote a fascinating tale.

I'm definitely glad to have read the book and additional information can be found in this Wall Street Journal book review by Howard Schneider.