Writing on careers - by Horwitz, Woolever, Hoffman, Cashnocha & Yeh

There's been a few interesting pieces of writing I've come across over the past month that dealt with the subject of careers & work, each piece doing so in a very distinct way.

On writing as a career, there was the fascinating New York Times opinion piece "I Was a Digital Best Seller!" by Tony Horwitz a month ago. In it, the author wrote of his experience in online publishing and how the exciting new digital world of the writer not all he dreamed of.

Also a few weeks ago was "From Botanical Gardens Intern to Anthony Bourdain’s Assistant" for The Billfold. Written by Laurie Woolever, it's a remarkable first-person walk through Woolever's career and all its twists, turns, ups and downs.

The third piece to note here isn't traditional writing, but rather a slideshow about the new book The Alliance: Managing Talent in the Networked Age from LinkedIn Founder and CEO Reid Hoffman and his co-authors Ben Cashnocha and Chris Yeh. One idea from the book that's covered in the slides is how employers and employees should focus on a mutually beneficial relationship based on what each gets from working together and the knowledge that the working relationship won't continue if no longer mutually beneficial to both parties. This approach of "we're both benefiting for now" is in opposition to the idea of employees feeling a company owes them jobs or companies viewing an employee as disloyal if they leave for another job.

Again, each of these pieces very different than the other two, but there's fascinating stuff in all three.

One thing that reading these makes me think of is in relation to my own career I feel good having this blog and three books compiled from it as a body of work. I'd rather have my career progress and work opportunities come from what I've done rather than what I say I can do and the blog is as much if not more of a representation of what I've done than my education or actual work experience.

Great sports stories - by Jenkins, Wickersham & Jones

A few of the great sports stories I've read since my last post a few weeks ago on solid sports writing included large feature stories for Sports Illustrated and ESPN respectively as well as two shorter and really well done World Cup pieces for the ESPN website.

The latest issue of SI had as it's cover story a piece titled "Back to the Future" and it's a look by Lee Jenkins at the return to the Caviliers of LeBron James. Jenkins is an excellent writer and it totally made sense to me that James chose Sports Illustrated through Jenkins as the place to annouce the Cavs as his choice given the extremely thorough profile on James that Jenkins wrote in December 2012 for SI (and which I did a lengthly blog post on it's construction).

The recent ESPN issue had as it's largest feature story the great piece "Awakening The Giant" by Seth Wickersham on long-retired NFL star Y.A. Tittle. Each of the stories from Wickersham I've posted on previously were related to football and this probably my favorite story by him as it's a riveting telling of Tittle's life at 87 and the effects of dementia... and correspondingly on his daughter who helps care for him.

The two ESPN World Cup pieces were both by Chris Jones and marvelous storytelling with first "U.S. campaign reaches end of the line" from July 1st and then "Memories of the World Cup" written just prior to the final between Germany and Argentina. Both stories are creatively put together with the U.S. team piece going man by man through many of the players and the Cup wrapup sort of walking a path (well, actually very much walking a path with how Jones wrote it) through the tournament.

My ruminations on writing & work

I've been thinking lately about the point of this blog, specifically  in relation to the labels "writing" and "work" that I've used for some of the posts throughout my six years of regular posting here, with the hyperlinks representing posts in which I had a label of one or the other.

To take these one at a time, perhaps the best way to look at usage of "writing" as a label is through some of the text of my post done in Feb of this year, "My new book compilation - More Words Written Down"...

More Words Written Down is a follow-up effort to the compilation book projects Words Written Down and 111 Books Reviewed with all three coming out of this blog and each an appreciation of words put down on a page in a meaningful order. The blog itself was begun 5 ½ years ago and my approach to it has been to read things of interest and then attempt to describe those pieces well and make connections between them. The result of this is hopefully both a repository of great writing and body of work with my thoughts on the pieces. As part of this body of work idea, the blog and book compilations out of it are also intended to serve as a tangible record for my two boys of what things I found interesting or important early in their lives.

Links noted throughout the print version of the book can be found at the referenced blog post and have as their criterion for inclusion the concept of Interesting. If writing was deemed interesting, it’s noted along with my ruminations on the topic and view of what makes that particular set of words grouped together into a book or story so good that they acquire permanence. The goal of Words Written Down is to highlight and pay homage to this permanence of words. Everybody's gotta have a thing, and for me, one of my big things is words. Here's to hoping that as my boys get older they find the things that have importance for them and get to spend their time pursuing and working on those.

In short, I like words, and that's why I've written this blog.

So, with that, the other label noted above is that of "work." In terms of work, I feel like I've come to the realization that I love reading, love coming across pieces of great writing, describing what it is I like about a particular piece of writing and making connections between it and other pieces of great writing, but I don't feel a particular drive to become a writer producing the type of journalism I love.

Rather, it's the idea of effective communication that I find cool, and to do that for work wouldn't require me to become a journalist, but could well be simply someone helping craft compelling business messages. To this point, one of my more memorable (at least to myself) posts I've done with the label of "work" was titled "The Ethereal Nature of Stock Valuation & Much Corporate Work Activity," with the conclusion to that post noted below...

Me thinks there's also way too much etherealness (yep, it's a word) in the corporate work done at many of the public companies out there. Just as stock valuation can be a matter of (often wrong) perception, corporations can too frequently have their best employees identified on the basis of not terribly important indicators like "being busy." I touched on this phenomenon in the Sept 2010 post "Urgent vs Important Work," but so frequently time gets spent on things that don't really move the success or failure dial much (and this is even using the public company success/failure dial of income/profit).

It's not to say all corporations are filled entirely by employees doing busy work 100% of the time as some corporations (and employees) are going to be much more productive around things of import than others, but it is an interesting morass to try to avoid, both as a corporation and it's employees. Corporate level success or failure at this busy work avoidance isn't going to change the stock increase chasing game, but is probably going to result in the companies that have employees focused on important rather than ethereal/urgent work performing better overall. Not a paradigm breaking statement to be sure, but important nonetheless.

To sum it all up, or as much as I can in this missive, I love great writing that tells an effective story, always will and hope that my boys are going to as well and while business communication may not necessarily carry as much heft as other types of communication, there is a need for people who can both craft and manage it's production effectively and doing this can very much tie into my overall love of great writing.

Great feature stories by Kleinfeld, McCrummen & Baron

Three great recent pieces of feature writing included a story of heroism, one of mental illness and one of a near disasterous situation.

For the New York Times was the story of heroism with "Baptism by Fire" by N.R. Kleinfeld. Just a captivating piece on a rookie New York City firefighter and him in a rarely encountered situation. The story of mental illness was by Stephanie McCrummen for the Washington Post who wrote the incredibly sad "Behind the yellow door, a man’s mental illness worsens" and for GQ, Zach Baron wrote "Cliven Bundy's War: Inside the Rancher's Independent Sovereign Republic," a piece that stood out with it's depiction of an armed standoff between the government and U.S. citizens that could have gone horribly horribly wrong.

Very different topics to be sure, but great writing in each piece.

"The Girl Who Played with Fire" by Stieg Larsson

The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson was from the fiction category that I don't read a heck of a lot, but a really fast-paced and entertaining book.

The book is the second in the Millenium Trilogy from Larsson and picks up largely where The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo finished off. The Girl Who Played with Fire was really an excellent read and it's a shame that apparently there may well not be U.S. movies made of this or The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest.

Businessweek writing on HP & Monsato

Some recent interesting Businessweek writing included pieces on corporate behemoths Hewlett-Packard and Monsato.

The cover story of the latest issue to arrive was "Inside Monsanto, America's Third-Most-Hated Company" by Drake Bennett and it provided a balanced look that covers Monsato's technology to aid farmers as well as GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms) used in food production, their many detractors as well as benefits of GMO usage.

On Hewlett-Packard were two different pieces by Ashlee Vance, first a short story for the web and then an even shorter, but still with new information, piece for the magazine. "With 'The Machine,' HP May Have Invented a New Kind of Computer" was followed up by "Can HP Build the Computer of the Future?" and they covered the company's long-range bet on new hardware technology based on memristors and silicon photonics. Really fascinating stuff that will be interesting to see how it develops.

Outdoor adventure writing - Jones on Antarctica & Jacobsen on the Colorado River

Really enjoyed two recent outdoor adventure pieces with "The Day We Set the Colorado River Free" by Rowan Jacobsen for Outside and "Beyond Belief: A Journey to Antarctica" by Chris Jones for AFAR Magazine.

The article by Jacobsen is a sort of travelogue of his time floating on the Colorado combined with an interesting dissertation on water availability and usage in the West, both now and what's to come and the Jones piece an almost dream-like read on time in a remarkable place.

Writing on journalists & government secrets - by Fagone and Paterniti

Two fascinating pieces of recent writing from authors I like quite a bit dealt with the topic of writers and government secrets.

For the June issue of GQ Magazine, Michael Paterniti did a Q&A (including a fairly lengthy intro) with Glenn Greenwald titled "The Man Who Knows Too Much" that featured some tremendously interesting detail on Greenwald's interactions with government whistleblower Edward Snowden (who I've linked to stories on here).

The other piece to note here was posted a few weeks ago to the website Medium by Jason Fagone with "The Secret to Getting Top-Secret Secrets" on freelance journalist Jason Leopold and his practice of constantly filing FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests for government documents. It's really remarkable reading on the seemingly secret government information that may become available if asked for (and asked for, and asked for).

Great sports writing - by Thompson, Norlander, Keown & Chen

Four pieces of excellent recent sports writing included one on the World Cup, one the NBA draft and two the Oakland A's.

The World Cup piece was by Wright Thompson for ESPN with "Costa Rica 1990 squad's special bond" and it was just really cool work that showed what a team can mean to people, as shown through a powerful story of the team flying back home and seeing mirrors down below sending a message of appreciation.

For the CBS Sports website, Matt Norlander wrote "Isaiah Austin wins the night at the NBA Draft and starts a new life" and provided great in-depth reporting on the riveting details around Austin learning of his Marfan Syndrome diagnosis, ending his basketball career before he could begin it as a professional.

The other two pieces of really good sports writing to note here were on the Oakland Athletics with Tim Keown for ESPN The Magazine providing "How Scott Kazmir came back" on the starting pitcher and Albert Chen for Sports Illustrated writing "In Oakland, Brandon Moss emerges as unlikely star for Athletics" for the SI website a month ago and then expanding that into the longer (and not yet posted online) feature "Business As Usual" from the June 23 issue.

Favorite soccer writing so far - by Phillips, Ballard, Thompson & Jones

There's of course been a tremendous amount of writing on soccer since the World Cup began June 12th and my favorite pieces so far have been by Brian Phillips, Chris Ballard, Wright Thompson and Chris Jones.

The Phillips story is the one I saw most recently with him writing "Train in Vain" for Grantland and it's a remarkable look at the games themselves juxtaposed against the problems in Brazil and just brilliantly done work.

For Sports Illustrated Longform a few days ago, Chris Ballard provided "Coming of Age," an excellent piece on U.S. soccer fandom, told through the lens of the author's trip with longtime friends to watch the Americans play Ghana and that compared to travelling with much the same group to France for U.S. World Cup games in 1998.

As would be expected, there's been a huge volume of writing done for ESPN so far during the tournament, with a big chunk of that provided by Wright Thompson with incredibly frequent posts of stories (and salsa recipes!) to his ESPN World Cup blog. So many of the pieces are well-written features that he's pumping out constantly as he's been travelling through Latin America and the story of his so far that stands out the most as I scroll the blog is "A place that God forgot," written from the "murder capital of the world," San Pedro Sula, Honduras.

The last really good piece of soccer writing to note here wasn't actually on the World Cup, but totally captures the idea of soccer fandom, and to that adds a dollop of fatherhood. "How a Kid Becomes a Fan" was by Chris Jones for the latest issue of Esquire and is just a really nice short piece.

Fast Company writing - on AirBnB, Google X, Preet Bharara & All Power Labs

Some interesting Fast Company Magazine writing from recent issues included looks at Google X, Airbnb, the Berkeley-based energy startup All Power Labs and U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara.

The first piece to note here was by Jon Gertner with "The Truth About Google X: An Exclusive Look Behind the Secretive Lab's Closed Doors" and it brought to mind a Businessweek feature on Google X that I linked to and wrote on a year ago.

A story written by Austin Carr was "Inside Airbnb's Grand Hotel Plans" and it included lots of interesting content on CEO Brian Chesky and newly named head of global hospitality Chip Conley.

On U.S. Attorney Bharara, Max Chafkin wrote "The Most Dangerous Man in Bitcoin Isn't a Criminal," with a part of the story that stood out to me being mention of Bharara having hired Palo Alto-based data mining company Palantir.

The final piece to note here was by Josh Dean with "Meet the Radical Berkeley Artist Whose Company is Turning Trash Into Electricity" on Jim Mason whose company All Power Labs makes the Power Pallet that works through a process called gassification.

"Pilgrim's Wilderness" by Tom Kizzia

Pilgrim's Wilderness by Tom Kizzia was an interesting book with the subtitle "A True Story of Faith and Madness on the Alaska Frontier." Kizzia lives in Homer, Alaska and through Pilgrim's Wilderness he chronicles the story of Bobby Hale and his family that settled in the remote town of McCarthy.

Hale named himself Papa Pilgrim and portrayed to others his role in the family as being all about homespun Christian values, but really he was just an evil loon who used religion as an excuse to control, brutalize and molest his family and take advantage of the charity of those outside his wife and fifteen children. Pilgrim's Wilderness was an interesting book that at first glance could just be dismissed as a horrific story about a madman, but there's also a ton of interesting backstory and subplot to it, both about Hale himself and the people in Alaska who seemed to latch on to him for their own purposes.

Kizzia details in the book how Hale taking his family to Alaska was just another step away from troubles he created, more recently in New Mexico, where they lived on property of Jack Nicholson's, and then back to his time in Texas. Hale grew up the son of an FBI agent and friend of J. Edgar Hoover and later ran off with and married Kathleen Connelly, the daughter of John Connelly, a three-term governor of Texas best known for being shot by Lee Harvey Oswald in the front seat of the JFK limo. Before Kathleen could give birth to Hale's child, she died under suspicious circumstances, officially ruled a suicide, with Hale the only other person in the room.

In terms of people in Alaska wanting to use the Pilgrim Family narrative for their own purposes, the tiny (just a few dozen full-time residents) town of McCarthy is in the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve and after Hale bought land within the Park, he then portrayed  the National Park Service and anyone representing it as being out to get his family, which was a great narrative to use for those who feel the government and Park Service overreach and meddle in the affairs of private citizens.

Really an interesting book overall that's about a horrific individual who terrorized his family, but also contains a lot more and additional details can be found in an interesting New York Times interview with Kizzia after publication of the book last July.

Interesting Fast Company writing - on GoPro, DonorsChoose and Dutch flood prevention

A few different interesting pieces from Fast Company Magazine included two features and one brief mention of a company.

From the November issue was the fairly long "Against The Tide" by Jeff Chu on flood prevention measures in the Netherlands and the March "50 Most Innovative Companies" issue included two interesting stories, one on DonorsChoose and one GoPro.

The feature was "Beyond School Supplies: How DonorsChoose is Crowdsourcing Real Education Reform" by Peg Tyre on the #9 company on the list and later on was a short missive on GoPro, the #39 company and a fascinating one to me in how they've built a lifestyle brand to sell a piece of hardware (reminiscent of how Red Bull has created a lifestyle around an energy drink).

ESPN writing - Jones on lessons from his column & Pirlo and Thompson on Messi and Maradona

Three different pieces of ESPN writing recently struck me as particularly excellent with two short works by Chris Jones and a not all that long feature story by Wright Thompson.

The Thompson piece was from the ESPN The Magazine World Cup preview issue with "Shadowed by the Hand of God" on Argentinian soccer legends current and past Lionel Messi and Diego Maradona.

The other two pieces to note here were "Chris Jones' lessons learned," his final back-page column for ESPN The Magazine and "Another architect in Manaus," posted today to the ESPN World Cup blog and about a play made by Italian player Andrea Pirlo.

Businessweek writing of note - on IBM, MLB Advanced Media & Tankchair LLC

Recent issues of Businessweek included three stories that stoood out to me as particularly interesting, with one on an absolutely inspiring small company.

The May 26-June 1 issue featured as its cover story "The Trouble with IBM" and it was a fascinating piece by Nick Summers that noted how the once high-flying technology company now known in some circles more for its financial engineering of performance results than actual growth.

The June 9-22 "Global Tech" issue included two pieces to mention here with the smaller of them "How Major League Baseball Helps ESPN Stream World Cup Soccer" by Ira Boudway about MLB Advanced Media (or BAM), which I two years ago linked to a Fast Company article on.

Additionally in this issue was a story noted by Businessweek editor Josh Tyrangiel as one that may be his "favorite story we've published in 2014." The piece was by Joshua Green and titled "The Incredible Stair-Climbing, Self-Parking, Amphibious Wheelchair" on the company Tankchair LLC. Really a great story about Brad Soden and the company that came out of his desire to improve quality of life for his paralyzed wife and now helps many seriously injured veterans. 

Excellent basketball writing - by Lee Jenkins & Flinder Boyd

Two really good recent pieces of basketball writing were "New NBA commissioner Adam Silver is his own man" by Lee Jenkins for Sports Illustrated and "The Birdman's Vengeful Ghost" by Flinder Boyd for Newsweek.

The thing I appreciate most about writing from Jenkins is how he includes tremendously interesting anecdotes in his stories and this feature definitely no exception. The piece from Boyd stood out to me as something that was well-written, but really told just an amazing tale of catfishing or internet deception that could have unjustly landed now Miami Heat player Chris Andersen in jail.

Great sports storytelling - writing by Joe Posnanski & video segments from ESPN

Two completely different sets of recent pieces struck me as excellent sports storytelling in columns by Joe Posnanski for the NBC Sports website and ESPN E:60 video segments.

The Posnanski columns were "Don't Call it a Comeback" a couple of weeks ago on Michael Phelps and his return to competitive swimming and "The Oakland Way" about this year's A's team. It's not surprising by any means to see it from Posnanski, but some interesting and insightful stuff from both pieces.

The ESPN videos were both really well done with the first "Dominic Moore: Coming Home" on the New York Rangers forward who several years ago lost his wife to cancer.

The second video was "Qatar's World Cup" about the migrant labor building facilities in for the 2022 World Cup. From the employment system controlling the laborers to their horrible living conditions and all too frequent deaths while in Qatar, it's a revealing and important piece.

"Show Your Work" by Austin Kleon

Show Your Work by Austin Kleon was a good book that followed up on and provided much more detail than Kleon's prior excellent book, Steal Like An Artist (which I reviewed two years ago).

The subtitle of Show Your Work is "10 Ways to Share Your Creativity and Get Discovered" and some of what Kleon writes is noted below...

1. You don't have to be a genius. Be part of a group contributing something and remember to be an amateur; amateurs know that contributing something is better than contributing nothing. Think about what you want to learn and make a commitment to learning it in front of others. You can't find your voice if you do to use it; talk about the things you love and your voice will follow. Read obituaries and keep in mind that they're not about death, they're about life, and second acts.

 2. Think process, not product. Take people behind the scenes of your creative work and show the idea and then all the steps to the idea. Kleon quotes journalist David Carr as saying "you have to make stuff, nobody is going to give a damn about your resume; they want to see what you made with your own little fingers."

3. Share something small every day. Don't worry too much about the big picture, just focus on what you do in a given day, do that and then give a daily update, whether that update be a blog post, tweet, LinkedIn update or whatever gets your message out. Also keep in mind that most of your work isn't great, but you have to get it out there to let people decide.

4. Open up your cabinet of possibilities. Don't be a hoarder, share your tastes, you may not have great output yet, but you do have tastes.

5. Tell good stories. Work doesn't speak for itself, people really do want to hear the story behind work. Structure is everything, a good pitch is three acts, where you've been, where you are now, where you want to go and this same principle can be applied to storytelling about others. Talk about yourself at parties, figure out how to describe who you are and what you do and don't describe yourself as aspiring if you really are doing something, it's ok to wear it.

6. Teach what you know. Share your trade secrets.

7. Don't turn into human spam. You want hearts, not eyeballs and practice the vampire test and be done hanging with people that suck the life out of you. At the same time, find the people similar to yourself... "identify your fellow knuckleballers."

8. Learn to take a punch. Let people take their best shot at you and don't feed the trolls.

9. Sell out. Kleon on the topic of selling out quotes from a great interview with Dave Eggers I linked to and wrote about a few years ago.

10. Stick around. The phrase "don't quit your show" is used along with "you can't plan on anything; you can only go about your work. You can't count on success; you can only leave open the possibility for it, and be ready to jump on and take the ride when it comes for you."

It was really solid stuff in the book and at the end Kleon both notes the blog on his website and book twitter hashtag #showyourwork.

Writing about 9/11, it's aftermath and loss - by Kandell & Thompson

Two great pieces of writing I came across about a week ago both dealt with loss out of 9/11. For Buzzfeed, Steve Kandell wrote "The Worst Day Of My Life Is Now New York’s Hottest Tourist Attraction" about visiting the 9/11 Memorial Museum after his sister dying in the World Trade Center.

For ESPN, Wright Thompson in 2008 wrote "Bedtime Stories for Catherine" about Matthew Conley and the family he left behind after being killed in Iraq.

Both were really well written and moving pieces of writing.

Businessweek pieces of note - by Stone, Faris, Stein, Paskin & Brustein

There were some interesting pieces of writing on a variety of different subjects from recent issues of Businessweek.

From the April 24 issue, Brad Stone wrote the short pieces "Twitter Wants to Be Your TV" on Twitter Amplify and "Google and Facebook's Fight for the Future of Tech" about acquisitions strategies.

The May 1 issue had two interesting features by excellent writers with "Greenland's Prime Minister Looks on Global Warming's Bright Side" by Stephan Faris and "Blue Bottle Coffee and the Next Wave of Artisanal Coffee Shops" by Joel Stein.

 Additionally, the May 10 Design issue contained the interesting piece "Sha Hwang, the Designer Hired to Make Obamacare a Beautiful Thing" by Janet Paskin and a really solid feature from the May 15 issue was "Font War: Inside the Design World's $20 Million Divorce" by Joshua Brustein.

Outside Magazine story on murder in Papua New Guinea

The latest issue of Outside Magazine had a captivating piece of writing in "Murder and Revenge in Papua New Guinea" by Carl Hoffman. Very much one of those stories about a different world and written well.

Writing by Peter Bach on losing his wife to cancer

Really a remarkable and said story was done recently for New York Magazine with "The Day I Started Lying to Ruth," a first-person piece by Peter Bach with the subtitle "A cancer doctor on losing his wife to cancer." It's a painful read throughout and then the part at the end where she says goodbye to her second-grader... just so sad.

"Flash Boys" by Michael Lewis

Flash Boys by Michael Lewis was a really detailed look at high-frequency trading in the financial markets and a disquieting read due to in the types of predatory activity taking place at the expense of average investors.

The book begins with a description of a fiber cable line run between stock market locations in Chicago and New Jersey and how the speed of the line would enable millisecond advantages in receiving financial data for those paying to access the line.

This speed advantage, how money can be made off, and how it's advantage can be mitigated was covered by Lewis in part through the story of Brad Katsuyama, beginning with his experiences as a New York-based trader for Royal Bank of Canada. Katsuyama started with RBC in 2002 and in 2006 began to notice trouble buying stocks, as prices would bump up between the time he would begin and then complete transactions. What was occurring is a concept known as front-running, where people (through a speed advantage) would figure out what investors were trying to do and then make money off it. High-frequency traders in a span of milliseconds were seeing that a buyer for a given stock was out there, then purchasing it themselves to drive up the price and selling it at a profit to people like Katsuyama and investors he would purchase on behalf of.

Lewis details in the book how this unfair advantage for high-frequency or high-speed traders has been enabled due to new market parameters such as multiple stock exchanges that receive buy or sell signals at slightly different times, dark pools within a given financial institution where stock transactions can occur with notice only going to the institution or those who pay to access information within the dark pool, traders paying for co-location close to trading sites to get a speed advantage, fees and kickbacks to exchanges for buy or sell orders, and multitudes of different trade types (particularly "flash orders" that aren't really orders, just fake market signals) utilized by high-frequency traders to suss out information on what's going to occur so they can then get in front of the intentions of investors who don't enjoy the same speed advantage.

Covered in Flash Boys is how Katsuyama after seeing the market predation that was occurring sought to educate others in the industry on it and then created a new stock exchange to try to limit the amount of market advantage enjoyed by high-speed high-frequency traders and have buying and selling of stocked be based on actual company valuations and investor intention. The new stock exchange is IEX and some of the particulars around trading on it include a limited number of order types and no co-location for the purpose of speed along with requiring where firms could connect with the exchange so no speed advantage would exist. IEX opened on October 25, 2013 and on December 19 Goldman Sachs became the first large investment bank to show it's agreement with the principles of IBX by sending a huge volume of trades to them. One interesting thing about Goldman doing this is Lewis in the book also tells the story of Sergey Aleynikov, a former Goldman staffer who was arrested in 2009 for stealing Goldman code, but really appears to have done little wrong, other than show in a way the limitations of Goldman in high-frequency trading.

It's a fascinating book by Lewis that was covered by 60 Minutes around the time of its publication and recently written about in The Guardian as having triggered political attention (or at least public statements about paying attention) to needed regulatory changes around high-speed trading and front-running activities.

Excellent sports stories - Wickersham on Derek Carr, Svrluga on a baseball marriage & Michael Sam being drafted

Over the past few weeks three different sports stories stood out to me, one as particularly well-written, one as being on an interesting topic and a third as being just a fantastic thing.

The one I found noteworthy due to the writing was by Seth Wickersham for ESPN The Magazine with "Sins of the Brother" on Derek Carr, the Oakland Raider second-round pick at QB and whose brother David was the first pick of the 2002 draft, also at QB. Really focused look at the connection between the two and fascinating reading.

The second piece of writing that was memorable for me in the past few weeks was by Barry Svrluga for the Washington Post with "The Wife: Chelsey Desmond" about the baseball life led by the young family of Washington Nationals SS Ian Desmond. Tremendously interesting look at a family life very different than most.

The final sports story to note here wasn't writing, but the ESPN video of Michael Sam learning of getting drafted by the St. Louis Rams and kissing his male partner. Really great stuff...

Story on NFL prospect Pierre Desir by Jeff Pearlman

Really loved a recent story for Bleacher Report by Jeff Pearlman. "For NFL Prospect Pierre Desir, It's Always Been Fatherhood, Then Football" began with the text below and stayed just as interesting throughout.

"In a few moments, you may become very angry. That's just a warning, before you dive into a story that features a confident 23-year-old man, a scared 15-year-old boy, a pregnant aspiring dancer, two adorable little girls, Haitian immigrants, NFL dreams, floating diapers, knee-high liquid feces and a Division II football coach who nearly destroyed the whole damn thing."

Louie C.K. GQ story by Andrew Corsello

The latest issue of GQ Magazine had a great cover story with "Louis C.K. Is America's Undisputed King of Comedy" by Andrew Corsello. Just some really cool stuff on the comedian who often seems to have fascinating takes on life.

Gary Smith retirement writing - by Price, Posnanski, Tomlinson & Reilly

There was some excellent pieces of writing done recently with longtime Sports Illustrated feature writer Gary Smith announcing his retirement from the magazine.

There were missives by Joe Posnanski and by Tommy Tomlinson for their respective personal blogs and for Sports Illustrated, appreciation pieces from Rick Reilly and from S.L. Price as well as the SI compilation "The best of Gary Smith: Picking the greatest stories of his SI career." Really great writing on someone I've posted on and linked to a number of times.

Boston Marathon stories - by Lowery & Pfeiffer

Two really interesting pieces sports writing were done recently on the Boston Marathon last month, with one before and one after the race.

"The story behind that Boston Marathon photo of runners carrying a competitor toward the finish" was written by Wesley Lowery for the Washington Post and about a heartwarming moment from the race and "One Last Boston Marathon For Legendary Father-Son Team" was by Sacha Pfeiffer for the Boston-area radio station WBUR and about the longstanding heartwarming tale of Dick Hoyt and his quadriplegic son Rick Hoyt, the duo many learned about from a great Sports Illustrated profile (which I wrote about in 2011) by Gary Smith.

GQ piece by Paterniti on Spanish restaurant & Esquire by Pierce on Elizabeth Warren

Recent issues of GQ and Esquire had two really sold pieces of recent feature magazine writing to note here. From GQ, Michael Paterniti wrote about the Spanish restaurant Mugaritz and Charlie Pierce for Esquire did a fairly lengthy story on Elizabeth Warren.

Paterniti's recent writing is heavy on great description and feeling and this very much comes through in the GQ feature and while Pierce also an excellent writer, I'm most fascinated in the Esquire profile for who it's about in the Massachusetts Senator frequently talked about as a presidential candidate.

Writing on Matthew Powers & Alaska's Aniakchak National Monument

Two pieces of recent writing I found to be excellent were a feature on travel to a remote national park system area at the start of the Aleutian island chain in Alaska and a remembrance of frequent outdoor adventure writer Matthew Power.

The tribute for Power who died while working on a story in Africa last month was "No Way Is Matt Power Gone" by Brad Wieners for Businessweek and both lovely writing on him and provided details into the heat stroke that brought about his death. Such a shame that he passed away and also understandable to read how someone could unwittingly put themselves in great danger.

The Outside Magazine piece was also really well done and struck me as being on the type of adventure that Power would frequently embark on and then write about. Written by Christopher Solomon, "Surviving Aniakchak National Monument" covered his time travelling in Aniakchak National Monument, "the least visited site in the national park system," and was a cool story about a place that also happens to be brown bear country.

GoPro story by Bill Gifford in Businessweek

A terribly interesting story in a recent Businessweek was "GoPro Goes Big as a Hybrid Media Company/Videocam Maker" by Bill Gifford and it brought to mind past writing on another company that's built a huge business based on the lifestyle around their product, just as much if not more so than around the product itself.

"Red Bull's Billionaire Maniac" was written by Duff McDonald for Businessweek in 2011 and then there was a Teressa Iezzi feature on the company at #29 on the 2012 Most Innovative Companies list by Fast Company Magazine.

Really interesting on both companies and the approach they've taken towards becoming fairly iconic brands.

"Bigger Than the Game" by Dirk Hayhurst

Bigger Than the Game by Dirk Hayhurst was an interesting follow up book to his first two books Out of My League (which I reviewed here) and The Bullpen Gospels about his journey as a professional baseball player.

This most recent book was set during a baseball season Hayhurst lost to injury and in the process had to deal with the mental pain caused by not being able to play.

In terms of his injury rehab program, it was both remarkable and entirely believable reading about how some medical programs would have a seemingly guessing based approach with the "sure, can't hurt" principle to getting better and then other approaches would be highly methodical. What ultimately got Hayhurst better was care at the Andrews Clinic in Birmingham, AL with rehab direction done there by Kevin Wilk under Dr. James Andrews. While many of the stories of his time there are fairly mapcap and entertaining, Hayhurst detailed some pretty remarkable work done on high profile athletes done at the clinic.

Overall, it was an entertaining book on the experiences of a player in the world of professional baseball.

Surfing story by Joe Spring for SB Nation

Really enjoyed reading last week "The Deadliest Wave" by Joe Spring for SB Nation.

It was about the 2013 Billabong Pipe Masters in Memory of Andy Irons competition on Oahu's North Shore as well as the overall season points crown between Kelly Slater and Mick Fanning and brought to mind the fantastic Susan Casey book The Wave that I wrote about back in 2010.

Great Sports Writing - by Michael Rosenberg, Jane Lee & Jeff Pearlman

Three recent sports stories I particularly liked included a short MLB player profile, a feature on the players from an NCAA men's basketball Final Four 25 years ago and piece about writing a huge sports story 15 years ago.

The one about writing a story was "A Reporter's Tale: The John Rocker Story 15 Years Later" for Bleacher Report by Jeff Pearlman on putting together the story he's perhaps best known for.

The Sports Illustrated feature on the 1989 NCAA Final Four participants was by Michael Rosenberg and title "A memorable title game twenty-five years ago brought joy, heartbreak." Really some fascinating stories about the people involved, including: referee John Cloughtery, coaches P.J. Carlesimo, Mike Krzyzewski and Steve Fisher and players Rumeal Robinson and Ramon Ramos.

The baseball piece was a short one by Jane Lee for MLB.com titled "Thanks to his dad, Gray was built for success" about Oakland A's starting pitcher Sonny Gray and his late father Jesse Gray.

"Hatching Twitter" by Nick Bilton

Hatching Twitter by Nick Bilton was about some compelling people that came up with a pretty revolutionary business. Reading the book reminded me of my thoughts about what I wanted to do with blogging when I began in 2008 and just over 20 of my posts since have included Twitter as a label, with many of them linking to writing (the most memorable to me being this by Clay Travis) about Twitter as a platform for disseminating all types of communication.

Bilton in Hatching Twitter writes a highly entertaining book that I found myself at times wondering how accurate it all was, but the people portrayed (with the possible exception of a seemingly batty CEO Coach) and their actions struck me as quite plausible, especially given the presence of power, prestige, money and strongly held beliefs.

Detailed in the book is how Twitter began in 2005 out of a podcasting startup, Odeo, that was founded by Noah Glass and funded by Ev Williams who made his money by starting and then selling Blogger to Google. With $200K in Odeo, Williams became CEO and around this time, Jack Dorsey and Biz Stone joined the company and then the podcasting website idea basically got killed when Apple said they were going to have Podcasting on iTunes, leading to Dorsey’s idea of building something around a “status update” message similar to what was up on AOL instant messaging. Glass came up with the name Twitter for the venture and was completely enthused about the human connections the idea could foster, but then fired from the company by Williams as the lead investor lost confidence in and disagreed with Glass on many things.
 
Twitter hit big at the 2007 South by Southwest conference in Austin, TX and when roles and leaders were then established, Dorsey was the first CEO with 20% of the company, Williams as the lead investor 70%, Stone and Jason Goldman around 3% each with the remaining 4% split up among other employees. Not long after this, Williams and Dorsey began to have disagreements and Venture Capital investors Fred Wilson and Bijan Sabet came into the picture and sided with Williams on feelings of unhappiness with the CEO.

In 2008, Dorsey was forced out as CEO, but not from the company and he then accepted any and all press requests that came his way and burnished his reputation and perceived role at Twitter at the same time that he began the payment processing company Square. Additionally, Peter Fenton came in as a Twitter investor and would prove a Dorsey ally as the former CEO began to undermine Williams and, along with the aforementioned unbelievable CEO-coach Bill Campbell, force Williams out as CEO with him being replaced in Summer of 2010 by then COO Dick Costello.

There are lots of salacious details throughout the story from Bilton and it makes for entertaining reading that of course portrays some people in a better light than others, but all seems plausible and makes a fascinating read on the people behind a remarkable communication tool.

Esquire essays by Chiarella on helping someone & Jones on doing stand-up

Two different pieces of writing in the latest issue of Esquire stood out as excellent life-lessons type stories as part of the "83 Things You Need to Do Before You Die" section of the issue.

Tom Chiarella wrote "I Don't Have a Life List" and Chris Jones did "Live Your Nightmare," with both being really well-done introspective looks at things they've done.

"Grandma Gatewood's Walk" by Ben Montgomery

Grandma Gatewood's Walk by Ben Montgomery was an interesting tale of one woman's determination and journey as she in 1995 became the first woman to through-hike the entire 2,050 miles of the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine.

The story of Emma Gatewood was a compelling one with her raising 11 children while enduring an abusive husband, leaving him, and then after her children were grown taking off on her own and doing the AT hike at the age of 67. Then two years later, she hiked the trail again, later hiked the general path of the Oregon Trail from Missouri to Oregon and in 1964 did the Appalachian Trail for a third time.

Also interesting was mention of how heavily she was followed by the national media as word of her hike began to spread, and then towards the very end of the book, Montgomery wrote of meeting on the top of Mount Katahdin in Maine through-hikers who cited Gatewood as an inspiration.

The read for me did get to be slow going at times, but I think that was due simply to the less than glamorous subject and the book built up to solid meaning with (among other things) the idea that it's never too late for someone to do what they want to do and turn themselves into something they weren't previously.

I waited until completing the book to read it, but also found interesting Montgomery's piece for Nieman Storyboard on writing the book.

Great writing by Price, Sandomir & Jacobsen

Three pieces of recent great writing I hadn't previously posted on were from Sports Illustrated, the New York Times and Outside Magazine.

For SI was "As Reds' Chapman recovers, dangers of line drives hit close to home" by S.L. Price and reminiscent of the excellent 2009 book Heart of the Game by Price, which I wrote about here.

The Times story was "A Story of Perseverance" by Richard Sandomir on ESPN SportsCenter Anchor Stuart Scott and his battle with cancer and the feature for Outside was "The Gourmet Invasivore's Dilemma" by Rowan Jacobsen on the havoc wreaked by invasive species and one chef's small-scale approach towards the problem.

Esquire writing - new feature by D'Agostino on ADHD & old one by Junod on Mr. Rogers

The latest issue of Esquire had a great feature by Ryan D'Agostino titled "The Drugging of the American Boy" on ADHD. D'Agostino covers the huge increase in it being diagnosed (particularly in boys) and also written about in captivating form is an alternate approach towards treatment as practiced by therapist and author of Transforming the Difficult Child, Howard Glasser.

Also posted to the Esquire website last month was a story I posted on previously, but that hadn't been online at the Esquire site. "Can You Say... Hero?" was by Tom Junod on Mr. Rogers and one of the most memorable magazine pieces I've read.

Pieces on writing - by Michael Kruse, Bethany McLean & on Tom Bodett

It's been a while since I last posted on pieces about writing and I was fascinated by three that I came across recently.

For his personal blog, Tampa Bay Times writer Michael Kruse wrote "How I did the Bounty story," which had fascinating stuff in it about the year-long process of researching and writing (really about the dogged researching) of a lengthy story and I saw on Twitter a few writers noting as great wisdom the final two sentences...

"No matter the story, no matter your process, no matter the timetable — somewhere in the middle, you won’t be able to see the end. Can’t stop. Keep going."

"But the most important thing I learned doing Bounty — the most important thing I learned in 2013 — is that you can’t try to make something happen. All you can do is try to make something."

The shorter pieces to note here were one on fact-checking by Bethany McLean for LinkedIn and an interview with Tom Bodett for Alaska Magazine. The Bodett interview stood out as interesting to me with him having lived for quite a while in Homer, AK (where my parents have a house) and in that it showed how sometimes unexpected opportunities can develop.

ESPN The Magazine writing by Jones and Olney

Two great recent stories from ESPN were "A Long Journey to Spring" by Chris Jones on Kansas City Royals coach Mike Jirschele and "Creative Control" on Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw by Buster Olney.

The piece on Kershaw details his meticulous preparation leading up to starts and profiles well (Olney is just an excellent writer) someone that seems to be a really good guy. On Jirschele, Jones provides a more profound story on someone who has endured enormous family tragedy with three brothers dying from muscular dystrophy and this season has his first big-league job after 36 years in the minors. Really a sad and at the same time heartwarming story told well by Jones.

"Showtime" by Jeff Pearlman

Showtime by Jeff Pearlman was on the Los Angeles Lakers team of the 1980s and would be a great read for a Lakers fan, and was still an interesting one for myself as not a huge basketball fan.

Some of the things in the book that stood out as fascinating included what Magic Johnson was like coming in as a breath of fresh air rookie, the details of his ridiculously great performance at center that year to win the 1980 NBA Championship and his womanizing.

Also particularly interesting in the book (and covered in an excerpt for Sports Illustrated) was info on how Pat Riley became head coach, with first Jack McKinney in charge, him suffering a devastating head injury and Paul Westhead taking over, and then Westhead following up initial success with becoming an overbearing force on his team, much like Riley would later do on both counts. In this regard, Pearlman tells a fascinating story throughout the book of how people would change with success and fame.

Again, I went into Showtime as someone who loves sports, but not particularly basketball and while for me as a reader I could have done without some of the details of particular games or series, I can definitely see how the book called for it and really enjoyed the read.

Michael Paterniti writing - on burrneshas in Albania & a jumbo jet crash at sea

Michael Paterniti is a non-fiction writer I've posted on a number of times and recently I've seen two additional features from him, with the latest an interesting piece and one from 2000 a brilliantly done one that made me wonder what it was like to write when just reading it was heart-wrenching.

The March issue of GQ Magazine had "The Mountains Where Women Live as Men" on a small and dwindling group of people in the Albanian Alps and originally published in the July issue of Esquire Magazine was "The Long Fall of One-Eleven Heavy" on Swiss Air flight 111 that crashed into the Atlantic, killing all 229 passengers. Just amazing writing in this Esquire piece that's popped back up again with the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.

Writing by and on Matthew Power

Recently while on assignment in Africa, non-fiction writer Matthew Power died and his passing brought about some profound remembrances as well as mentions of his work.

Two pieces on his memory were "Relentless Generosity" by Abe Streep for Outside Magazine and "Remembering Journalist Matthew Power" by Kara Bloomgarden-Smoke for New York Observer.

Really well-done and thoughtful pieces both and while I've only read a few of Power's works, stories of his from a number of publications have recently been highlighted, including his archive of articles for Harper's Magazine (with "Mississippi Drift" being the Harper's piece I saw the most mentions of by readers of Power).

Book excerpt from Ron Suskind

A couple of days ago in the New York Times Magazine was a great book excerpt from political writer Ron Suskind. "Reaching My Autistic Son Through Disney" was taken from Life, Animated: A Story of Sidekicks, Heroes, and Autism and really powerful reading. It's embedded in the Times excerpt, but there's also a great 4-minute long video with Suskind and his now adult son Owen.

Great sports writing - by Pearlman, Kennedy and Tomlinson

Three excellent pieces of sports writing I've seen recently included two book excerpts in Sports Illustrated and a feature for the ESPN website.

From the Mar 3 issue of SI was "The Birth of Showtime" by Jeff Pearlman. It was taken from his book Showtime: Magic, Kareem, Riley, and the Los Angeles Lakers Dynasty of the 1980s and fascinating reading about the events that led to Pat Riley becoming head coach.

The second SI published except was written by Kostya Kennedy with "A quarter century later, there are no easy answers to the Pete Problem." Out of the book Pete Rose: An American Dilemma, it paints a vivid portrait of Rose and covers the question of whether he should be in the Baseball Hall of Fame when his misdeed of gambling on his team considered against against the actions of steroid users.

The final piece to note here was by Tommy Tomlinson for ESPN with "Precious Memories."  About former North Carolina men's basketball coaching legend Dean Smith, it's powerful reading on the toll that Dementia takes on people and their loved ones.

"Young Money" by Kevin Roose

Young Money by Kevin Roose was an interesting and very fast read about junior investment bankers working on Wall Street. The book chronicled under assumed names the early in career lives of eight different people and, while the approach seemed to diminish the amount of narrative throughout, there were fascinating stories told of these workers at heavyweight financial firms like Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan.

The jobs embarked on were difficult to get with the top Wall Street firms recruiting top-level students from elite colleges and most of the positions two-year programs that people work as analysts and those wanting to stay in banking either getting hired as an associate at that firm or take what's viewed as the ideal next step in investment banking with a job at a leading hedge fund or private equity firm. Roose details in the book how these positions are also pitched and viewed by many as a sort of way-station stop, with many people spending the two years in investment banking and then making a decision to either remain in the field or leave, with now more than ever there being opportunities to take the experience and move into technology start-ups.

In terms of the two-year investment banking analyst roles, Roose notes how annual salaries out of college typically around $70K, with a bonus of anywhere from $20-70K on top of that. He also covers how as a junior analyst, you're on call for whatever associates or executives want you to do for oftentimes 100 hour work weeks with the deliverable typically large Excel spreadsheet (incredibly to me as it seems there would be a better tool to use) models about company valuations and what might happen if a particular mergers or acquisition were to occur through that particular investment bank.

It's an interesting book and one thing I found noteworthy was the categorization of investment banking and finance as falling under the category of work not necessarily creating anything. Not that everyone in a position to get a fulfilling job where they create, but it's an interesting thing to think about. Related to this, I found compelling in the book mention of 2012 Yale graduate and writer Marina Keegan and an essay she wrote for the campus news magazine about working in investment banking, with her then adapting the essay into "The Science and Strategy of College Recruiting" for the New York Times website. Roose at the end of the epilogue dedicates his book to the memory of Keegan, who died in a car accident a week after graduating Yale and had her essay "The Opposite of Loneliness" for the Yale Daily News distributed at commencement.

Writing I liked - with pieces by Moallem, Schur and Hampikian

Three excellent pieces of non-sports writing from the past few weeks which I haven't posted on yet included pieces from Grantland and the New York Times.

For Grantland, Michael Schur wrote "A Particular Kind of Genius: Remembering Harold Ramis" on the Hollywood actor, writer and director and there were two Times pieces I found of note including a Jon Moallem written feature "A Journey to the Center of the World" on Jacques-André Istel and the strange town of Felicity, Arizona he built near Yuma.

The other piece of really good writing from the Times was the op-ed column "When may I shoot a student?" by Greg Hampikian on the state of Idaho considering a bill that would allow guns on college and university campuses.

My new book compilation - More Words Written Down

Well, I wrote another book. After in March 2012 self-publishing a compilation culled from of 3 1/2 years of blog posts and then in October 2012 a compilation of book review blog posts, I've now written and have available on Amazon in both print and Kindle versions my new book More Words Written Down taken from blog posts since the prior two books.

Overview

More Words Written Down is a follow-up effort to the compilation book projects Words Written Down and 111 Books Reviewed with all three coming out of this blog and each an appreciation of words put down on a page in a meaningful order.

The blog itself was begun 5 ½ years ago and my approach to it has been to read things of interest and then attempt to describe those pieces well and make connections between them.

The result of this is hopefully both a repository of great writing and body of work with my thoughts on the pieces. As part of this body of work idea, the blog and book compilations out of it are also intended to serve as a tangible record for my two boys of what things I found interesting or important early in their lives.

Links noted throughout the print version of the book can be found at the referenced blog post and have as their criterion for inclusion the concept of Interesting. If writing was deemed interesting, it’s noted along with my ruminations on the topic and view of what makes that particular set of words grouped together into a book or story so good that they acquire permanence.

The goal of Words Written Down is to highlight and pay homage to this permanence of words. Everybody's gotta have a thing, and for me, one of my big things is words. Here's to hoping that as my boys get older they find the things that have importance for them and get to spend their time pursuing and working on those.

Contents

More Words Written Down (like my prior two books) is a cleaned up compilation of blog posts I've done, with those posts separated into the below categories:

Book Reviews
Writing
My Writing About My Writing
Sports
Outdoor Adventure
Family / Parenting
Business
Everything Else

The idea behind putting it into a book (or three books) relates to both the aforementioned permanence of words idea and I've found interesting the process of editing the posts into book form, both a print version and Kindle book that has embedded links to the stories I wrote about.

Assembling the book

The creation of the print version of the book was done via CreateSpace by Amazon and the eBook version via Kindle Direct Publishing by Amazon.

From a process perspective, I first copied over posts from my blog into a Word document and then cleaned each with taking out any html formatting and organizing into the categories above. From that point, the work was around formatting with getting the post spacing and usage of bold consistent as well margins correct for a CreateSpace book (involving left and right as well as book gutter margins). Additionally, headers were inserted, with it seeming to take an excessive amount of time to create in Word new headers for each of the post category sections.

The steps of then uploading a .pdf file on CreateSpace were easy, but then reviewing the submitted file resulted in my time after time having to go back to the Word document to correct something. In many cases these corrections were to line spacing that worked fine in just a Word document, but had to be changed for the purpose of a book so that I wouldn't have for instance the first line of a new post on one book page and then everything else on the next page. The cover creation via CreateSpace was also a fairly simple process, the only thing I really had to figure out was how to create my "Beckam Callum Book Company" publisher logo via first Word and then the Snipping Tool and saving it as a .jpg file.

The creation of the eBook version via Kindle Direct Publishing was fairly easy in comparison, especially since most of the time I spent editing the print version was around headers and new page line spacing, neither of which exists in eBooks. The only real step required was to create an eBook table of contents and that was a simple process to do on the Word document I then uploaded to Kindle Direct Publishing.

Having the book(s) completed

I'm not going to make any broad declarative statements about this absolutely being my last blog post book compilation lest I change my mind, but this third one likely was it as while I still expect to continue reading a lot and keeping track of great writing I've come across, I'd like to find new ways to spend my writing time and energies than simply writing about excellent work from others.

That said, the time spent on the blog (and books resulting from the blog) has been enjoyable and resulted in tangible outputs that I think have permanence to them (there's permanence word again) and I'm happy with that.

"Trapped Under the Sea" by Neil Swidey

Trapped Under the Sea by Neil Swidey was a highly entertaining read that combined a disaster tale with a fascinating story of engineering feats and organizational dynamics, with this all told well through the lives of people who 15 years ago found themselves facing disaster at the end of a 9 1/2 mile tunnel below the sea in the Boston Harbor.

From an organizational dynamics perspective, Swidey recounted the huge number of poor decisions that came as a result of different agencies, contractors and sub-contractors all seeking to further their own ends and the result at the expense of the big picture goal of workplace safety. Along with this was how the various parties would agree to risky plans, but in an arm’s length manner because to get too involved would have been to invite culpability.

Also noted in the book was how things became much worse as a result of occurring late in an overdue project when everyone wanted it done. Additionally, the story was about hubris and the guy most in charge of worker safety coming up with an untested and dangerous plan and not listening to concerns from others. In terms of worker safety, Swidey notes that a poorly thought out safety measure can be worse than no measure at all as it provides the illusion of safety.

Overall, it was a compelling read on extreme danger, modern engineering and institutional failures and Swidey did an excellent job covering all this while still having the book focused on and told through the stories of the men (and one worker in particular) at the center of the story. With this combining together really well story and character, the book reminded me of the Brendan Koerner book The Skies Belong to Us that I read and reviewed last summer.

Back to Trapped Under the Sea... was an excellent book and also the subject of a short review by Chris Jones for Esquire.

Great sports writing - by Passan, Jenkins & Schlereth

There's been a few pieces of really good sports writing over the past few weeks that I haven't linked to previously.

for Yahoo Sports, Jeff Passan wrote "Lockerbie: A story beyond tragedy, a story of curling and Olympic pride," a very cool story about a town, it's painful past, current Olympic heroes and a writer wanting to tell it's story.

For Sports Illustrated, Lee Jenkins wrote "How Pacers' Hibbert emerged to anchor NBA's best defense" and what struck me about the piece was how Jenkins described the style of defense employed by Roy Hibbert as different than most if not actually revolutionary.

For ESPN, Mark Schlereth wrote the excellent "Don't lose crucial parts of 'the code'" on Richie Incognito and the NFL workplace harassment of Jonathan Martin and also from ESPN was the great 30 for 30 video "Judging Jewell" on Richard Jewell and the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Park bombing.

Really solid work in all of these.

Outside Magazine feature on Zina Lahr by Grayson Schaffer

A great story posted recently to the Outside Magazine website was "The Brief, Wondrous Life of Zina Lahr" written by Grayson Schaffer.

It's one of the pieces that just sticks with you as a reader, in part because of what the family has had to go through with Zina's seven-months pregnant sister dying in a 2010 car accident and also just because of the description of Zina herself.

Really just captivating writing on someone that most people would never have known of if not for this story.

Favorite Winter Olympics writing so far - by Farber, Wetzel & Drehs

There's of course been a lot written about the Sochi Olympics and my three favorite stories to date are by Michael Farber, Dan Wetzel and Wayne Drehs.

The first two stories were both about US Men's Hockey with "T.J. Oshie: The new American hero" by Wetzel for Yahoo Sports after the preliminary round shootout defeat of the Russians and then Farber for Sports Illustrated wrote "Uncommonly introspective, Bylsma leads USA hockey into the spotlight," an in-depth profile of head coach Dan Bylsma.

The third story I found interesting in large part because the people it covered in US skeleton competitors Katie Uhlaender and Noelle Pikus-Pace were so captivating. "Smallest Margin Between Victory, Defeat" was by Drehs for ESPN and showed both the great highs and rough lows that can come from the Olympics.

It was really excellent writing in all three pieces and there's I'm sure going to be much more great work published in the next week.

"The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon" by Brad Stone

The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon by Brad Stone was a thoroughly reported and well written look at Bezos and what the company he founded has done so far.

Amazon is described in the book as a hugely challenging place to work at and Bezos someone who can be difficult to work for. That said, it was interesting to read of how Bezos would hire really smart people into the company and then find something for them to work on. Also fascinating to me about working at Amazon is per direction from Bezos, PowerPoint presentations are never done within the company. Instead six page narratives are written, with meetings beginning by everyone reading the narrative. The idea behind the narrative documents is both keep the focus on customers by having them be like a press release and to encourage employees to critically think through an idea.

One interesting thing from the introduction to the book was a conversation between Bezos and Brad Stone with the author being asked how he'll handle the narrative fallacy, a concept written about by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a noted statistician and writer who has decried the propensity people have for seeking simple explanations for complex events, when in reality there's often many factors, including those of the random variety. The response Stone wrote into the introduction was one that seems a good idea in many pursuits, in putting the book together given this narrative fallacy idea he wanted to "acknowledge it's potential influence and plunge ahead anyways."

Another author that Stone referenced Bezos influenced by is Clayton Christensen who wrote The Innovator's Dilemma about how companies are afraid to threaten or cannibalize their existing markets, with The Everything Store referencing how brick and mortar companies like Barnes & Noble and Wal-Mart fell into this trap, contributing in large part to the success of Amazon.

Also of note to me was how when Bezos would set low prices for products or services (as Amazon often manically does) it would be for a variety of reasons, ranging from simply providing the lowest customer price to putting pressure on a competitor and/or acquisition target to the fascinating to me idea of not pricing too high lest high margins bring in more competition.

Overall, it was a fast read and interesting business book from Stone.

Excellent sports writing - by Murphy, Magary and Arthur

Three different pieces of excellent sports writing I've seen recently ran the gauntlet of topics with them respectively covering topics of entertainment, sportsmanship and courage.

In terms of entertainment, Austin Murphy wrote about the Super Bowl halftime show for Sports Illustrated with "It's Halftime!", an interesting feature with lots of embedded videos of performances.

The other two pieces to note here were columns by Bruce Arthur and Drew Magary. For Canada.com, Arthur wrote "Cross-country coach Justin Wadsworth makes Canadians proud with Olympic sportsmanship" and Magary for Deadspin did "Michael Sam Shouldn't Have To Do This Alone," a great piece on the Missouri graduate and NFL prospect who earlier this week publicly came out as gay.

ESPN writing - Saslow on Aroldis Chapman & Jones on Cuba and Hemingway

The latest issue of ESPN The Magazine had two excellent pieces of writing, a feature by Eli Saslow and column by Chris Jones. The column was titled "Idol Thoughts" and an interesting and introspective look at Cuba, Ernest Hemingway and believing in something. The Saslow feature was yet another great story from him with "A World of His Own" about Cincinnati Reds closer Aroldis Chapman. It was a fascinating view into the life of someone who seemingly has it all, but also misses the life he left behind in Cuba.

Ashlee Vance on Illumina and the $1,000 genome sequencing

There was a really interesting feature from a recent issue of Businessweek with Ashlee Vance writing "Illumina's new low-cost genome machine will change health care forever."

It's fascinating from the perspective of people gaining affordable access to information about the genetic traits that may eventually kill them and with it being in the medical realm, brings to mind other pieces I've linked to in "Has Carl June Found a Key to Fighting Cancer?" by Jason Fagone for Philadelphia Magazine, "Craig Venter’s Bugs Might Save the World" by Wil Hylton for the New York Times Magazine and "Patient Zero" by Tom Junod and Mark Warren for Esquire.

Jeff Sharlet GQ piece on the hatred of gays in Russia

There's a tremendous feature from the latest issue of GQ with "Inside the Iron Closet: What It's Like to Be Gay in Putin's Russia" by Jeff Sharlet.

It's a pretty terrifying story of the state-sponsored hate crimes and some of the background that Sharlet provides reminds me past writing I saw about how Putin's oppression of homosexuals stems from and the need to get his people to rally behind him even with the country no longer flush with oil money. While Jews as a group to hate might be considered, Putin's reason to not pick them stems in part from it bringing to mind the WWII enemy Nazi Germany and focusing hatred on homosexuals also gets the Russian Orthodox Church to support Putin.

Excellent writing from Sharlet on a horrible thing occurring in Russia.

"Beautiful Ruins" by Jess Walter

Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter is a novel that swept across decades in it's scope and featured really well-formed and memorable characters.

It included Italian villagers in the 1960s, a fictional depiction of actor Richard Branson and a young American actress, modern day Hollywood producers and a wanna-be Hollywood writer, and an intersection of the various storylines. The title seemed very appropriate as it really was a beautifully written book that featured some very large life decisions made throughout.

Intention isn't to give away much of the plot in this post, but a review by Helen Schulman for the New York Times does provide many of the details of what transpires in the book.