Make Your Bed by William McRaven

Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life...And Maybe the World by William McRaven was a very short (about an hour to read) book from the retired U.S. Navy Admiral and written out of a 2014 commencement speech on ten principles he learned in Navy Seal training...

1. Start your day with a task completed.
2. You can't go it alone.
3. Only the size of your heart matters.
4. Life's not fair - drive on.
5. Failure can make you stronger.
6. You must dare greatly.
7. Stand up to the bullies.
8. Rise to the occasion.
9. Give people hope.
10. Never, ever quit.

The principles that resonated with me the most were the first, fourth, and tenth, with the tenth a fairly obvious one as to why it's important and first about starting your day with an accomplishment, something that can be built upon or even if nothing else goes right, something that got done out of the day.

The fourth principle about life not being fair was memorable with it's mention of how Navy drill instructors in San Diego would have people run from the beach to the water and get soaked, then roll in sand, and spend the rest of their training day as a "sugar cookie," caked in sand and extremely uncomfortable. What's key is that this directive was done sometimes as punishment for a mistake, and sometimes just because, to teach the valuable lesson that life's not always fair, you have to accept that and continue moving forward. Even if nothing else was of value from the book, this idea alone an important one.

Option B by Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant

Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy by Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant was a really good, and somewhat gutting to read book. Written by the Facebook COO, Sandberg, and psychology professor, Grant, Option B has Grant's research into resiliency along with Sandberg's story about life since the death of her husband and father of two children, Dave Goldberg.

The main premise from the title is that if in any situation, the preferred option A not available, someone has to make the most out of option B, they basically have no choice but to move forward, and the option B idea was quoted by Sandberg in a Facebook post 30 days after Goldberg's death.

One concept that was particularly of interest to me from the book was attributed to psychologist Martin Seligman with how three P's can stunt recovery: Personalization - the belief that we're at fault in our calamities, Pervasiveness - the belief that an event will affect all areas of our life, and Permanence - the belief that the effects of a horrible event will last forever. Additionally, below are the chapter titles, along with ideas that struck me from each.

Chapter 1 - Breathing again... includes how children are uniquely resilient and can move forward to be happy after a tragedy.

Chapter 2 - Kicking the elephant out of the room, acknowledge it... includes how when interacting with someone who has suffered tragedy it can be good rather than to ask "how are you?" to ask "how are you, today?"

Chapter 3 - The platinum role of friendship... includes the importance of being willing to be there for others.

Chapter 4 - Self-compassion and self-confidence... includes how writing helped Sandberg through some of the toughest times.

Chapter 5 - Bouncing forward... includes how there can be growth from tragedy, and that someone's death does not have to be the end of their story.

Chapter 6 - Taking back joy... includes the need for a focus on others, having happiness for them and with them.

Chapter 7 - Raising resilient kids... includes four core beliefs that help kids be resilient: that they have some control over their lives, they can learn from failure, they matter as human beings, and they have real strengths to rely on and share. Also notes how nostalgia can and should be a pleasant state of mind.

Chapter 8 - Finding strength together

Chapter 9 - Failing and learning at work

Chapter 10 - To love and laugh again

Fly by Wire by William Langewiesche

Fly by Wire by William Langewiesche was an excellent book about the landing by Captain Sully Sullenberger of US Airways Flight 1549 on the Hudson River in New York January 15, 2009.

I've previously posted about a couple of great stories for Vanity Fair done by Langewiesche and in Fly by Wire he covers multiple topics pertaining to the successful landing of the Airbus A320 after it hit a flock of Canada geese and had both engines fail. There's interesting material on the history of the industry and airplane accidents as well as near accidents, especially those involving gliding without engine power as Sullenberger did. Referenced was a 20-minute, 34,500-foot, 90-mile glide over the Pacific in August 2001 with Captain Robert Piche in command after his airplane sprung a fuel leak and ran out.

Langewiesche recounts Sullenberger's three minute and twenty one second glide to the Hudson landing, and how it successful due to both Sullenberger's skill and fly-by-wire system the airplane operated with. Fly-by-wire is the working together of electrical control circuits and digital computers and detailed in the book is how the modern jetliner started with Bernard Ziegler building on behalf of Airbus in Europe a commercial airplane not for the top 10% of pilots like Sullenberger appears to be, but for the other 90%. The A320 is designed with flight envelope protections so that it will stop itself from doing things deemed beyond the limits of what it should and these systems were still fully functional after the bird strike killed power to the engines, making the landing on the Hudson one where Sullenberger made the right decisions and the flight control systems executed them, with keeping the airline positioned correctly all the way to the water landing.

The parts of the book about the modern commercial jet were interesting and the flight and rescue compelling, with stories of communication with air traffic control and passenger heroics, including the father of five who held someone else's baby for the crash. The plane was then in the water for four minutes until the first small ferries and rescue boats arrived, eventually getting all 150 passengers and 5 crew members off without a single fatality.

Really a well written book by Langewiesche on a fascinating topic.

Coach Wooden and Me by Kareem Abdul-Jabbbar

Coach Wooden and Me by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was a good book about Abdul-Jabbar's long friendship with and admiration of John Wooden. Covered is Wooden recruiting the high-school phenom Lew Alcindor to UCLA, their four years together there and the challenges Alcindor faced due to his race, his conversion to Islam at 24-years-old and taking the Abdul-Jabbar name, and the ongoing friendship between the two men until Wooden's death in 2010 at 99-years-old.

I've long admired Wooden, have posted on him and writing about him a number of times, and enjoyed quite a bit the stories from Abdul-Jabbar about Wooden. These included how with basketball he was about preparation and practice, controlling what you can control, and with people he always tried to see the best in them, despite any evidence to the contrary. One anecdote in the book I particularly liked had Wooden talking to Abdul-Jabbar about his love of westerns because of the clear good guy and bad guy, with the good guy always doing the right thing. Kareem noted how that's not realistic, to which Wooden agreed that it's not, but could be.

I also was struck by Abdul-Jabbar's story about the photo on the back cover of the book, with Abdul-Jabbar helping Wooden walk across the court at Pauley Pavilion in 2007 and feeling proud to be there for him.

The book is a nice read about both men and includes quotes from Wooden at the beginning of each chapter:

"A coach' primary function should not be to make better players, but to make better people."

"A coach is someone who can give correction without causing resentment."

"Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?"

"You can do more good by being good than any other way."

"Things work out best for people who make the best of the way things work out."

"Friendship is two-sided. It isn't a friend a friend just because someone's doing nice things for you. That's a nice person. There's friendship when you do for each other. It's like marriage, it's two-sided."

"Players with fight never lose a game, they just run out of time."

Anything You Want by Derek Sivers

Anything You Want by Derek Sivers was a solid book that took less than two hours to read and features the subtitle 40 Lessons for a New Kind of Entrepreneur.

Sivers in the book tells his story of starting the online music store CD Baby in 1998 and the things I took away seemed to fall into two primary areas, customer focus and how to run your business (with these ideas also applicable to someone simply doing work).

In terms of customer focus, Sivers early on notes how he started the business to sell his own music, then agreed to sell through the site music from others who also didn't have distribution deals with major companies, and that became his focus. With this, his two customer bases were musicians selling through his site and people who would purchase CDs on it. Several of the concepts that stood out the most to me from Sivers around customer focus were the following...


1. Be transparent - Sivers covers how purchasers and musicians whose music he selling deserved to know what was going on with the business that existed because of them.

2. Make your decisions be about your customers - with this notion of how choices should be guided, Sivers makes mention of both having the business remain operational and when it should expand. In terms of a business overall, Sivers notes that if your business there to solve a customer problem and that problem goes away, your business should either stop or change. About expansion, Sivers writes that your customer doesn't care if you expand so your decision of whether to do so should be driven by how it could serve customers, either existing or new. Part of this serving of customers and expansion is you should be prepared to get larger, if you do want to grow a customer base, you have to have the business be prepared to handle those new customers, and not have service degrade as a result of the increased volume.

3. Pay close attention to how you deal with people - Sivers covers how you should recognize that those you deal with are people like you, and treat them as such. This matters whether in a room with someone, on the phone, or communicating in any form, including electronically. Also on this subject of working with people is the idea of little things that can thrill customers or just make them happy. Sivers recounts the story of an email he wrote to go out to each customer at time of CD shipment... with it a humorous message about employees carrying the CD on a pillow and then shipping via private jet, something to bring a smile to customers' faces. Additionally, Sivers noted adding to the website store a countdown clock to when the last FedEx shipment of the day is and simply having employees quickly picking up the phone when someone calls.

Sivers in the book also very much wrote about how you run your business, with below the things that stood out to me...

Don't be a slave to a plan - Sivers write of how in many cases, you should just start doing something, you don't need a war chest of money or a full end-to-end plan, if you have an idea, start it, then you can see where it goes. Additionally, he notes the importance of being willing to change course and quotes entrepreneur Steve Blake as saying "no business plan survives first contact with customers."

Know what things are important to you - Sivers covered in the book the idea of being, not having, and to have a firm view of what makes you happy. He states that for him, it was creating useful things that benefited others, and that those things require his creative input to come about.

Think about how you decide what you do - this general topic is covered a few different ways in the book. One is that you should do the things you want to do. Sivers notes how your response to whether you want to do something should be either "hell yeah," or "no," as we're all busy and if your response to whether you want to do something simply a tepid "yes," it's better to say "no." Additionally, Sivers writes of how you especially if you're in a position of being able to do so, you should do the things you're good at and want to do, and have others do the rest if they're good at them and want to do them. He notes how CEOs don't necessarily have to be the high-powered-meeting people, if they want to spend their time on something else and can do so, they should. The last thing to mention from the book on this topic of decisions and involvement is around delegation as Sivers recounts the story of having situations come up that would require a decision of how to respond, coming up with the answer, then having a staff meeting to explain the situation and response that should occur, asking  someone to write it up in a manual, and letting people know they can follow that guide.

It was a really interesting book from Sivers and at the end of it he notes how if people like, they should feel free to reach out to him via his website to ask questions, share any stories, or just say hello.

The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg was a really interesting book that I picked up after previously reading and writing about Smarter Faster Better also from Duhigg.

The Power of Habit covers how habits are a powerful driver of automatic behavior, and contains a few different concepts from Duhigg that stood out to me... with underneath those, stories from the book used to illustrate them:

1. Habits follow the principle of (A) cue, (B) response, and then (C) reward.
2. Habits can be changed by replacing them with new ones.
3. Making one habit change, if it a keystone habit, can lead to other changes.
4. Belief that a habit can take hold is essential to the success of that.
5. Organizational habits can form in the same manner as individual habits.
6. People respond to familiarity, both in what they like and habits they form.
7. Habits form best when there's a social tie that helps enable it.


Tony Dungy-coached football teams – recounts how Dungy would have players in a game focus on simple execution, or response, done well when they see certain game situations, or cues... which brought to mind for me a quote from Arizona Cardinals coach Tom Moore around focusing on “the relentless execution of fundamentals.”

Household cleaning product Febreze – around Procter & Gamble positioning Febreze usage as the final thing done after cleaning, with it as a sort of reward a more powerful motivator than if the positioning something to avoid a negative in the elimination of odors… an idea that made me think of towards rather than away motivated people.

Pepsodent toothpaste and the introduction of it – covers Pepsodent entering the market a hundred years ago with both a clear cue and reward for usage of the product. In terms of the cue, it was noted that people should pay attention to the film on their teeth they can physically feel with their tongue prior to brushing. Additionally detailed was the physical reward, to the point of a craving, which comes when the film gone after brushing and the mouth has a distinct post-brushing feeling from a citric acid ingredient in the toothpaste.

Alcoa and how the aluminum company thrived – tells the story of how new CEO Paul O’Neill in 1987 came into his first public meeting and proclaimed a focus on workplace safety, while O'Neill also noted that it would be an indicator of habits across the institution. Duhigg covers how O'Neill saw that the company had bitter feelings between unions and management and viewed safety as an important goal everyone could agree on. Additionally, safety was a keystone habit, a simple and clear goal that could be measured easily, but also have execution towards it spread throughout the entire organization as for there to be zero injuries, it meant everything had to be working correctly. Part of the focus on safety involved management making the statement over and over that people throughout the company should feel free to speak up about things that they see that are important, and the positive by-product of this was as people would freely make suggestions around safety, it emboldened them to also highlight other things which they felt would improve the company. The focus on safety was a keystone habit, and from that grew a more positive company culture.

Alcoholics Anonymous and what’s caused it to be effective – Duhigg writes of how what AA espouses is very habit-based, and it focuses on replacing the routine for alcoholics from drinking to another activity. When someone faced with a cue that previously would have caused them to drink, the new routine is around meetings, sponsors, basically something other than drinking. Additionally noted in this section is how an important component of someone replacing a routine is to for them believe they can be successful at it, particularly in times of great stress. This belief can come through different forms and one that's covered is having an individual or group model to emulate that’s been successful. The thing to keep in mind as Duhigg writes of it is that a routine can’t just stop, but can be replaced by something else.

Michael Phelps and triggers and habits – covered here is how Phelps reacts to certain triggers, or cues, in advance of or during a race, and then his response. He’s practiced so long at what he’ll do that successful habits win the day. Part of this is how a successful reaction to a small cue which leads to a minor reward is a small win, something accomplished that builds on itself, very much related to this idea of belief building.

Starbucks and the habit of success – detailed by Duhigg is how the company extensively trains employees in how to react when difficult situations arise... with one Starbucks approach for dealing with angry customers the LATTE method: listen, acknowledge, take action, thank them, and explain why the problem occurred. Duhigg notes how these angry customers are like cues, inflection points that then should lead to specific responses, with those much more likely to occur if they’ve been anticipated and prepared for, through either formalized training or even just writing out what situations might happen and how to react. In terms of habit-building, it’s mentioned in the chapter that much of this training is around the keystone habit of willpower, which comes in finite amounts, so the training to build up willpower is important both because it’s hard to have in situations of prolonged stress and when you increase willpower in one area, that spills over into other areas of life. Also noted in this chapter is how self-discipline can be turned into an organizational habit and if people feel a sense of control about something, no matter how small, it means they need to exert less willpower to get through their day successfully and can be happier and more productive.

Rhode Island Hospital and the London Underground – covered by Duhigg here is, similar to how in the section on Alcoa, there should be an organizational culture where people at any level feel free to speak up about things they see. This organizational habit of openness can eliminate or at least mitigate the effects of internal fiefdoms and rivalries between groups and Duhigg notes in the stories of malpractice at the Rhode Island Hospital and the London Underground fire that a crisis can provide the best opportunity to change an organization, as it's then that change seen as most urgently needed.

Response to the song Hey Ya! and starting an exercise routine – Duhigg details how people like things that are familiar to them and in terms of music, notes how people didn't react favorably at first to the song Hey Ya! because it was so different than other music on the radio, and in order for the song to become popular, DJs would play it in between familiar songs. Duhigg also describes exercising and how people will often respond to the idea of doing it as being something done with friends, a familiar bonding activity.

The Montgomery bus boycott and Saddleback church – in this section, it's noted how community ties, both strong and weak (which extend further than strong ties), helped galvanize people behind Rosa Parks at the beginning of the Montgomery bus boycott, a key event in the Civil Rights Movement. It’s also covered how this principle of both strong and weak ties being beneficial applies to job seekers and how the church Saddleback grew in large part through the groups that people would gather in within their homes, basically a combination of strong ties in small groups and weak ties while in a large church setting.

Duhigg in the book does a solid job of covering how people and organizations have the control to remake and replace habits and the key as he spells it out is to: identify the routine, experiment with rewards, isolate the cue, and have a plan.

The Power Paradox by Dacher Keltner

The Power Paradox by Dacher Keltner was an interesting and short book with the subtitle How we gain and lose influence. Keltner is a professor of psychology at UC Berkeley and someone I heard of from a recent article about Warriors coach Steve Kerr that noted Keltner having attended a few Warriors practices and from the practices and spending time with Kerr, being struck by his positive application of power in his role as an NBA head coach.

Keltner writes on the first page of The Power Paradox that "we rise in power and make a difference due to what is best about human nature, but we fall from power due to what is worst" and this idea of how power granted, and then what can occur with people who have varying levels of power is explored throughout the book. He defines power as making a difference in the world, altering the state of others, and notes how power most commonly isn't something that's grabbed, but given by groups to people to those who are acting in ways that advance the greater good. Specifically highlighted as key character traits that people gravitate towards those who apply them are: enthusiasm, kindness, focus, calmness, and openness, with enthusiasm the biggest indicator of someone that people will want to confer power upon.

Power as Keltner notes isn't about just grand things, but how we relate to and interact with others in our work and social lives. With that, the importance of empathy is prominently featured, both as an indicator of who will likely have power ascribed to them, and something needed once in a position of power. Keltner writes of how enduring power comes from: a focus on others through empathy, giving, expressing gratitude, and telling stories that unite. Additionally, he notes how the power of touch and simple contact between people can have an impact in creating a more dynamic connection between them.

The flip side as Keltner writes of it is how the the experience of power, minus a focus on others, leads to the abuse of power. He details out how if not worked with properly, power can lead to: empathy deficits and diminished moral sentiments, self-serving impulsivity, incivility and disrespect, and self-narratives of exceptionalism. Additionally, it's highlighted that if power held in this negative manner, it can make us blind to our moral missteps, but outraged at the same missteps taken by others.

The antidote if you will, that Keltner covers is that those in a position of power should: be aware of feelings of power, practice humility, stay focused on others and give, practice respect, and also attempt on a larger scale to change the psychological context of powerlessness. To this last point, Keltner writes of growing up in a poor neighborhood in Penryn, CA outside Sacramento, and prices of powerlessness, with the physical reaction of the body to dealing with constant stress and continual threat from those with power. This idea echos what Keltner mentions earlier in the book around how healthy relationships are going to occur when neither partner feels powerless. In writing of his neighbors from long ago and in other areas through the book, Keltner notes how those not in positions of power are much more attuned to the feelings of those with less power than them. Keltner covers well this idea that for many, once they've achieved power, the traits that likely helped them have it bestowed upon them are cast aside. This doesn't have to be the case, but just as someone should work at exercising the traits that will have groups put them in a position of power, it's key to then not let that power become a destructive force. Really an interesting book and a very fast read.

The Stranger in the Woods by Michael Finkel

The Stranger in the Woods by Michael Finkel was an interesting book and eminently fast read about Christopher Knight, who spent 27 years living in the Maine wilderness with only two instances of contact with other people.

Finkel wrote of how Knight grew up in Maine as part of a family that largely kept to themselves and told Finkel he hadn't fled any bad situation or harbored ill will towards anyone, but just left society. He in 1986 went on a solo road trip to Florida at twenty-years-old, then drove back to Maine, went past his house, left his car with an almost empty gas tank, and walked into the woods. Knight recounted to the author how a few weeks in, he spent one night in an unoccupied cabin, then never slept indoors again, and established camp less than 30 miles from his childhood home.

Knight was in a heavily forested area near North Pond lake and accessed his living room sized camp by slipping between large boulders, and survived by pilfering food and other supplies from nearby camps and unoccupied cabins. He said that during the almost three decades there he never lit a fire so as to avoid detection, and wouldn't leave for five or six months during the winter. Everything in Knight’s camp was stolen, including the mattress on box springs and metal bed frame and while there, he would read books, listen to a radio, and just do nothing. In frigid winter stretches he would go to sleep at 7:30, then wake at 2:00 so that he could get his blood flowing and not be asleep for the coldest part of the night.

Finkel wrote a bit about hermits and those that have lived apart from society and notes that Knight is perhaps the most solitary known person in all of human history. To this point, it’s stated in the book that Knight recounted how it was solitude he sought, and never felt alone, and his two interactions with other people were a shared hello with a passing hiker in the 1990s, and then two months before his time in the woods ended, stepping out of his camp upon hearing three people hiking just outside the entrance. The hikers later said that they knew they had come across the fabled hermit and thief, but felt he should be left alone, told Knight they wouldn’t report him, and didn’t come forward until after Knight was no longer in the woods.

Knight almost certainly would have remained in the camp and continued his lifestyle and practice of stealing what he needed, but was in April 2013 arrested while taking supplies from a summer camp. The Maine game warden who caught him and state trooper who took him in later noted that they believed his story and felt very sympathetic. Knight entered the Maine court system and was treated with leniency, with him pleading guilty to 13 counts of burglary, and not receiving any jail time. He went to live with his elderly mother, whom he noted as not contacting while in the woods to tell her he safe because of his shame about being a hermit and thief, and had to for a period of time either hold a job or go to school and report to a case manager, and appear in court monthly.

Finkel wrote a good book, but wraps it up on kind of a melancholy note about Knight becoming compliant and no longer defiant about his life, with him forced back into a society he left behind, and didn’t seem comfortable at all reentering.

Great Sports Illustrated writing by Jenkins & Ballard

There's been a few different stories from Sports Illustrated in recent months that have struck me as particularly outstanding, with one from Lee Jenkins on a high school baseball phenom and two basketball-related pieces from Chris Ballard.

The Jenkins feature was "Hunter Greene is the star baseball needs" on the Sherman Oaks, CA pitcher / shortstop and a cover story, with the most recent previous SI high school athlete cover subjects Jabari Parker, Sebastian Telfair, Bryce Harper, and LeBron James. I'm often captivated by writing about potential future stars and recall the Harper piece by Tom Verducci back in 2009.

The older of the two Ballard stories to note here was "'You Can't Give In': Monty Williams On Life After Tragedy" about the NBA coach whose wife died unexpectedly. The story of how Williams and their five kids dealt with the grief and have carried on with their lives in honor of Ingrid is a great one well told by Ballard.

The final piece to note here was the cover story from the latest SI issue, with Ballard writing "Steve Kerr's Absence: The True Test Of A Leader" about the Warriors' head coach. It's great stuff on Kerr, including him being a grinder, over-communicator, someone who works with people based on how they are and what they'll respond to, doesn't take himself too seriously, and is joyful and just plain likable. Ballard wrote a really compelling story and also interesting from it was mention of how Kerr last season brought into a pair of practices Dacher Keltner, a social psychologist from Cal who studies verbal cues and the dynamics of compassion, and Ballard notes as having played a role in how the filmmakers of Pixar's Inside Out looked at emotion.

The Lost City of the Monkey God by Douglas Preston

The Lost City of the Monkey God by Douglas Preston was a solid read about the search for the ruins of an undiscovered city deep in the La Mosquitia region of Honduras.

Preston provides the history of this remote Amazonian rainforest region and archaeologists being interested in it and exploration done there all the way back to the 1930s, with legends out of that about the Cuidad Blanca, or White City.

Recounted in the book is how he as a writer got invited to join a 2012 aerial mapping trip of a specific area within La Mosquita that was seen as a promising location of the city's ruins. The mapping effort was led by filmmaker Steve Elkins and utilized lidar, a technology that works like radar, bouncing lasers off the ground, in this case from a Cessna airline, to determine distance and find the existence of geologic features as well as structures. This aerial mapping appeared to confirm the existence of the city ruins and their location and then in 2015, Preston also was part of a ground expedition to survey the area, with Chris Fisher leading a team of archaeologists and financing provided in large part by filmmaker Bill Benenson.

The time on the ground in the jungle was recounted as quite dangerous, with the area containing poisonous snakes like the fer-de-lance, jaguars, disease, and drug cartel activity. Ruins were found and even from that, little known about the people who lived there, other than they weren't Mayan and their society basically vanished around 1,500 AD, the time the Spanish came to the Americas, bringing Europeans diseases the locals had never been exposed to and which decimated populations, even those that never came in direct contact with European explorers. Preston notes how it's said that a third of the native population across Hispaniola and the Caribbean died between 1494 and 1496 and it appears that whoever lived within this city abandoned it.

The book wraps up with how some members of the expedition team after returning home began to show as having acquired the tropical disease leishmaniasis, a third world one that as such has received scant attention and funding, but is noted in the book as being part of a group of third world diseases coming to the first world as a result of climate change. The Lost City of the Monkey God was somewhat sobering with this mention of how quickly native populations were decimated by disease, and the tale of disease troubles modern day expedition members faced upon their return, but it's also a great adventure tale told well by Preston.

Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann

Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann was a really good book with the subtitle The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI. The book is split into three sections, with the first the story of the Osage Indians and deaths of many in and around the 1920s, the second on the FBI pursuit of the killers, and third an important postscript on the murders close to 100 years later.

Grann writes early in the book of how the Osage were considered the wealthiest people in the world per capita due to royalties from oil drilling on their Oklahoma land, which they had purchased after being pushed there by the federal government in the 1870s. Individual members of the tribe had a headright, or share in the mineral trust, and collectively they received in 1923 more than $30M, the equivalent of $400M today.

With the wealth of the Osage, there was a systematic exploitation of them, both by whites grossly overcharging for goods and services and the government denying many Osage of the ability to control their money. The Office of Indian Affairs could determine whether a particular member of the tribe capable of handling their funds, and if not, guardians, usually prominent whites, would do it. Full blooded Osage Indians were almost always declared unfit to handle their money and had guardians appointed over them, which led to the murders of tribe members as guardians would consolidate power over the headright funds and get at the money.

The book begins with the murder by gunshot of Anna Burkhart in May 1921, notes how her sister Minnie had died from an unexplained illness three years prior, and not long after Anna’s death, mother Lizzie, and other sister Rita died, with Rita’s death coming from her house being blown up along with husband Bill Smith and their servant Nettie Brookshire. There were other murders as well around this time, with the methods including additional fatal gunshots, poisonings, and someone found dead after being thrown from a train. Following the house bombing, the Osage saw that local law enforcement seemed uninterested, if not complicit, in the crimes and urged the Federal Government to investigate what would become known as the Osage Reign of Terror.

The second section of the book details FBI involvement in the case, coinciding with the rise of J. Edgar Hoover, who was newly in charge of the Bureau of Investigation in 1925 and dispatched agent Tom White to investigate the murders. White and his team built a case for the house bombing against Mollie Burkhart’s husband, a white man named Ernest Burkhart, and his uncle, the prominent cattleman William K. Hale, seen as a friend of the Osage and well connected politically. Headrights got passed along by inheritance and Mollie's family being targeted meant everything was getting passed to her, with the money then controlled by Ernest and Hale.

While the first parts of the book interesting, the third takes it to a different level with how it reveals the government stating the murders solved, declaring victory, and moving on, when killers very much remained free. The section switches to first person writing by Grann, with him finding the murder of W.W. Vaughn likely committed by H.G. Burt, a businessman and confidant of Hale's. Additionally, government accounts of the Reign of Terror have it from 1921 to 1926 and all about Hale, but Grann found cases of Osage being killed for their headrights as early as 1918 and late as 1931, while Hale in jail. The Bureau estimated 24 murders, but the number likely much higher and the death rates were particular high for Osage who had guardians in control of the wealth of more than one in the tribe. It was a much bigger story than Hoover wanted told and the book's ending includes a quote from an elderly current Osage with "this land is saturated with blood."

Smarter Faster Better by Charles Duhigg

Smarter Faster Better by Charles Duhigg was about an interesting topic in the science of productivity and the book an excellent one, broken down into eight different chapters.

Chapter 1: Motivation - Duhigg writes of how a feeling of control about things big or small can generate motivation, with examples given both from how in Marine boot camp, recruits would have to problem solve with little direction and people in nursing homes would defy orders by doing things like arranging their rooms a certain way or trading the food they were supposed to eat. From this, people would develop a feeling of control over their destiny, often with a corresponding bias towards action.

Chapter 2: Teams - In this chapter it's noted how teams work best when members feel a level of psychological safety, that it's ok to both be an individual and make mistakes. Additionally important is that people feel comfortable speaking freely, that their sentiments are heard by others, and are sensitive to how their teammates feel.

Chapter 3: Focus - The chapter on Focus has two interesting stories of commercial airline situations, with the first Air France Flight 447 that crashed after leaving Rio de Janeiro in 2009 and second Quantas Flight 32 out of Singapore in 2010 that had disaster averted due to decisions made by the cockpit crew. In Flight 447, the pilots should have easily been able to keep the plane flying safely, but didn't, with cockpit voice recordings showing the pilot in charge becoming the victim of cognitive tunneling, where he didn't have any mental models, or stories, of problems that might occur so when they did, he just became confused and didn't react well. The Quantas flight on the other hand featured a pilot and crew who talked through scenarios that might occur before even boarding the plane. When cascading problems then started to occur in flight, they saw that the problems were so numerous and severe that the best mental model to work with wasn't how to deal with each issue, but rather to focus on what still did work on the plane, with the pilot later saying he reframed his view to thinking of himself flying a very basic Cessena airplane, and what would be required to land one successfully. The whole notion as Duhigg explains it is around the benefit of narrating to yourself your life events as they occur and constantly building models of the situations you're in and may face.

Chapter 4: Goal Setting - Covered in this chapter is how goals need to be a combination of wide-ranging stretch goals, and to-do lists that make up those goals. Duhigg gives the example of how SMART goals from General Electric when done poorly were simply at the to-do list level, with people focusing on checking items off, and not enough on whether the goal a worthwhile one to do. This notion of having worthwhile big picture goals very much related to the third chapter on mental modeling and creating stories of where you both want to wind up and situations you may encounter.

Chapter 5: Managing Others - Duhigg in this chapter on managing others cited a study begun in 1994 by Stanford professors James Baron and Michael Hannon, in which they examined Silicon Valley companies and found five different cultures: commitment model, star model, engineering model, bureaucratic model, and autocratic model companies. The commitment culture firms were by far the most successful as a whole, with these investing heavily invest in training of employees and then putting a lot of responsibility on them, creating a sense of ownership in their situation, an idea that brings to mind concepts from Duhigg's chapter one. Covered in the book is the reopening of the NUMMI plant in Fremont, CA as a GM-Toyota partnership and how workers were encouraged to pull cords to stop the assembly line and fix problems, a practice that would have been unheard of under the prior GM-only factor. Also cited was the FBI database program Sentinel, and how it was developed from a basis of what individual agents requested it do.

Chapter 6: Decision Making - This chapter covered how good decision making is about thinking probabilistically, envisioning various scenarios and the odds of each occurring, with those scenarios and odds coming from past events, another harkening back to the chapter on focus and mental models.

Chapter 7: Innovation - The subtitle of the Innovation chapter is How idea brokers and creative desperation saved Disney's Frozen and written of by Duhigg is how in the case of Frozen, the musical West Side Story, and successful scientific papers, people were taking conventional ideas from other settings and combining them in new ways. Covered is a 2011 study by university professors Brian Uzzi and Ben Jones of close to 18 million scientific papers which showed that the most popular papers, those cited by others, had a combination of different ideas from elsewhere. Also noted in this chapter is the idea of being sensitive to your own experiences as you work the creative process.

Chapter 8: Absorbing Data - This final chapter of the book covers how data most powerful if it's worked heavily with by the people who can impact it. Duhigg tells the story of a failing Cincinnati public school and how much data there was even when the school failing, but then how when teachers forced to work with the information, they conducted trials and experiments to see if the data would reflect improvement. The basic idea is that data matters when ownership is taken by the people who can impact it, especially if they're coming up with ideas they think will have an impact, running with them, then evaluating the results and course-correcting.

Also around this topic of how people interact with data is the notion of how solid decisions are more likely to be made when there's fewer choices, with 401K plan selection as an example, and the idea of the Engineering Design Process, the breaking up of problems or questions into sub problems or questions that can be tested and worked on as a methodical search for potential solutions. This section on choices and data makes me think of how TurboTax software works, it's a series of questions that walks someone through a process. The final thing that struck me from this chapter was Duhigg's mention that research has shown taking notes longhand more effective run via laptop as it's harder to do that way, people are interacting more closely with the material.

There's a lot of material covered by Duhigg in Smarter Faster Better and he does it in an engaging way and provides a number of things to consider out of the book.

The Cubs Way by Tom Verducci

The Cubs Way by Tom Verducci was a really solid read from the Sport Illustrated writer who I’ve posted on a number of times. The book features the subtitle The Zen of Building the Best Team in Baseball and Breaking the Curse and details the 2016 World Series victory that broke 107 years of futility, with the Cubs last world championship in 1908.

The Cubs Way does an excellent job of avoiding the common sports book trap of just covering how "this happened, then this happened," as along with chapters on each of the seven games of the World Series, Verducci writes about the path taken around team construction, principles, and the personalities involved with the Cubs.

Detailed is how Theo Epstein took over baseball operations in 2012 after great success with the Red Sox in Boston and in Chicago built one of the youngest World Series teams ever around position players Anthony Rizzo, Kris Bryant, Kyle Schwarber, and Addison Russell. Also playing a huge role were starting pitchers Jon Lester, Jake Arrieta, and Kyle Hendricks, along with two relief pitchers acquired at the 2016 trade deadline in closer Aroldis Chapman and Mike Montgomery, who was on the mound for the final out of the World Series.

There was also quite a bit about manager Joe Maddon, who won the championship in his second season with the club and the book covers well how both Epstein and Maddon combined the best of modern and old school approaches to the game. Verducci noted work around things like the tracking of curveball spin rates and mental skills development and timeless concepts like the importance of empathy in working with people and building relationships, along with a focus on character in player evaluation and acquisition. Also interesting was how Maddon quoted in the book saying “you will remember 75% of what you write down and 90% of what you teach” and Verducci details the huge focus on communication, including individual player development plans, with management open and frank with players about their strengths and weaknesses. Additionally, a story about Maddon that struck me was his love of a statement made by Arizona Cardinals assistant coach Tom Moore with "in football, you break the other team's will through the relentless execution of fundamentals."

From an actual game perspective, Verducci writes of how the Cubs were down 3-1 in the series, with then a close win in game five, a game six in which Chapman came out for the ninth with a 9-2 lead, and of course the seventh game, in which Chapman lost a lead in the eighth on a Rajai Davis two run homer and then held the Indians scoreless in the ninth. After a fortuitously timed rained delay, Kyle Schwarber (who played the first two games of the 2016 regular season, tore ligaments in his left knee, and then returned for game one of the World Series) led off the 10th with a single and became the first of two Cubs runs in the inning, leading to an 8-7 win.

It was amazing stuff to watch on television and written of very well in book form by Verducci, with also some excellent immediate aftermath of the game writing done, including "In Chicago, the final wait for a Cubs win mixes joy and sorrow" by Wright Thompson for ESPN.

The Only Rule is it Has to Work by Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller

The Only Rule Is It Has to Work by Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller was an entertaining and fast read about two baseball writers who for a summer take over baseball operations for the independent minor league Sonoma Stompers.

Lindbergh and Miller write of how they're apostles of sabermetrics, coined by Bill James as "the search for objective knowledge about baseball" and their goal for the season to apply statistical based input and decision making to the team, impacting things including player evaluation and selection, lineup and pitching change decisions, and positioning of fielders.

The two work during the season with Stompers GM Theo Fightmaster, Manager and outfielder, Fehlandt Lentini, Assistant Manager turned Manager Yoshi Miyoshi, and of course the players themselves. It's an extremely entertaining read for anyone who likes baseball and while many of the goals Lindbergh and Miller set out with around the payoff of advanced statistics, or even the utilization of them, don't get fully realized, the book reveals how it's not always easy to do the things you'd like as you have to work through others to do them, and sometimes they just don't work. For example, their use of statistical analysis in evaluating players sight unseen turned out to much more effective when evaluating pitchers than position players.

Additionally, in the second half of the season, the Stompers lost many of the best players on their roster to teams in higher level leagues, and to this point, I found profound from the book the notion that "the other guy lives in a big house, too" and how that has a big impact on winning and losing. In addition, Lindbergh and Miller cover well how baseball can be a fickle game. Between things like what park a game played in or whether it's at night or during the day with the ball carrying out, events can have radically different results. Whether the end result of the season was what Lindbergh and Miller set out for or expected to happen, it's an interesting tale of how it all progresses.

Exit West by Mohsin Hamid

Exit West by Mohsin Hamid was a novel I was drawn to after reading (and then reviewing) How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia from Hamid and while this latest book didn't resonate with me quite as much as the first, it's definitely lyrically written and interesting.

The cover jacket for Exit West notes it telling the story of Nadia and Saeed, two young people who meet and fall in love in a country on the brink of civil war. The book then turns mystical with doors being available that people can enter through to far away places in the world. The result of these doors is a world of refugees, people fleeing one conflict-filled land in search of somewhere better, with that arrived at place torn by conflict being natives and immigrants.

Hamid writes of these conflicts, and how societies form and orbiting societies coexist, through the prism of two people finding their way together in an ever changing and dangerous world, all the while with exceptional prose, like about Saeed's father, and the arc of a parent's life along with the arc of their child's.

Two of the phrases from Mohsin that stood out to me from the book were around how the world featured "religions pulling away from nations, and cities pulling away from hinterlands, and it seemed that as everyone was coming together everyone was also moving apart" and "depression is a failure to imagine a plausible desirable future for oneself." While the first of the phrases was at a macro level, the second very much about individuals and how they react to their circumstances, both negatively, and in many places throughout the book, positively.

The Upstarts by Brad Stone

The Upstarts by Brad Stone was an interesting book on Uber and Airbnb, two still privately held companies that in the past decade have become behemoths in their respective spaces.

Stone is a Businessweek writer who also previously wrote The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon and while having The Upstarts be on two companies felt at times to make it harder as a reader to get a consistent flow from the book than was the case with that on Amazon, it also made sense to include both as Uber and Airbnb very much linked in their dual reliance on sharing economies and similar paths to success.

Stone details very well the founding stories of each company, with Airbnb from CEO Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia, and Nathan Blecharczyk, and how they early got attention Selling Obama O's and Cap'n McCains cereal around the 2008 Presidential election. This helped them get into the Y Combinator startup school in Silicon Valley as the story and mental toughness it showed impressed Paul Graham, the program's co-founder who told them "you guys are like cockroaches, you just won't die."

Uber was started by Garrett Camp, who made money from founding StumbleUpon then became interested in the idea of transportation and the woeful taxi industry in San Francisco, and Ryan Graves and now CEO Travis Kalanick joined early on. The company started out with licensed town cars delivering a premium service and then moved from being about luxury to more about time and convenience. Price also is an interesting factor around Uber's growth, with how Uber would utilize dynamic customer pricing to entice more drivers.

Stone wrote that while Chesky as CEO of Airbnb known as having a less publicly adversarial approach than Kalanick, both are fiercely competitive leaders and two huge factors leading to the success of each company have been fund raising and public demand. Each has raised huge amounts of money and it was interesting reading of how initial investments made by people would get diluted through later fund raising. In terms of public demand, especially Uber found footing through the sheer force of people wanting the service and the success of each company has been in part from building momentum and public will to overcome legal hurdles.

The story of Airbnb and Uber up to present day is a fascinating one well told by Stone and makes me think back to writing that I did on each years ago, with a May 2011 post on a Fast Company Sharing Economy piece on Airbnb and other firms and an April 2012 post on an interview with early Uber investor Chris Sacca that noted the hustle of Ryan Graves.

The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis

The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis was the latest book from the bestselling author who I've now read eight book by, with the others: Flash Boys, The Big Short, Boomerang, The New New Thing, The Blind Side, Moneyball, and Home Game. 

The Undoing Project has the subtitle A Friendship that Changed Our Minds and is about Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, Israeli psychologists credited as the forefathers or at least popularizers of the fields of Decision Sciences and Behavioral Economics. Lewis details in the book how the two men greatly influenced people including economists and writers Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, NBA General Manager Daryl Morey, and Lewis himself, with Moneyball being in many ways about the need to mistrust intuition, and the work of Kahneman and Tversky about where the bias behind that intuition comes from. Much of the contribution from Kahneman and Tversky was about how people make decisions, and how their choices get framed by circumstances. People develop beliefs and make decisions not in a vacuum, but out of the context around them that leads to those beliefs and decisions.

Along with The Undoing Project being on the work of Kahnman and Tversky, Lewis also very much wrote a biography of the two men, starting from childhood, then with each in the Israeli military, later close collaborators, and with their relationship strained prior to Tversky's death. It's noted in the book that Israelis were interested in people and what made them tick, and both men brave soldiers, with each brilliant, and yet having wildly diverging personalities. Kahneman at times felt like he wasn't developing fully his ideas, whereas Tversky's views commanded attention from early in his career and he certainly seemed both aware of that and to bask in it. Additionally, Tversky was combative about his ideas and decisive regarding his time and attention, with Lewis writing that "his likes and dislikes could be inferred directly and accurately and at all times from his actions." Part of the book by Lewis was very much about the difference between the men and how they drifted apart.

From later in Tversky's career I found compelling mention of how he was brought in by the Training Department of Delta Airlines to help improve pilot decision making, and the result of that was an encouragement of co-pilots to more readily question pilots and their actions, basically to work on the circumstances around which decisions are made to improve the odds of the correct ones resulting.

Lewis noted at the end of the book how after Tversky died, Kahneman continued producing well-received work and is the author of the best seller Thinking, Fast and Slow and The Undoing Project presents a really thorough look at the men, their work, and how they influenced those to follow.

Tools of Titans by Tim Ferriss

Tools of Titans by Tim Ferriss was a really good book with the subtitle The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers.

The book is split into into Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise sections and along with the wisdom and recommendations from well over a hundred people, Ferriss includes his own thoughts and highlights where ideas from one person intersect with another. This is the type of book that could be revisited many times over and the concepts and recommendations I found particularly of note, and then resources mentioned, are the following...

Within the Healthy section is the import of exercising, however briefly, first thing when you wake and mentioned a few times is the health benefit of both cold and heat exposure, like via a sauna, and the remarkable sounding exercise of AcroYoga.

Ferriss notes that more than 80% of the people featured in Tools of Titans have some form of daily mindfulness or meditation practice and noted multiple times in the book are Transcendental and Vipassana Meditation. Additionally on the subject of mental heath was the notion of if you can't make yourself happy, try to make others happy, or even just wish for specific people to be happy, and see the impact it has on you. Also mentioned was the idea of going first, being willing to make the opening friendly interaction with strangers, and if depressed, to express gratitude, and remember that you're not alone and are better than you think.

One thing I found particularly interesting from the book is the notion of writing morning pages, and the related idea of doing regular work before you worry about doing good work. Additional ideas around this are if stuck on something, to be willing to produce just one word at first if that's all that can be done, or if stuck at the beginning with something to start it in the middle. Also interesting was the story about how IBM developed their sales force by intentionally setting quotas low so people wouldn't be intimidated.

A recurring idea from the book was about spending your time doing the things you choose to do, rather than what people want you to do, in a way it's the difference between spending your time on offense or on defense. A notion from the book is we're only here a short time on earth, like monkeys on a spinning rock. Related to the idea of how to spend your time is you should either be saying Hell Yes or No to things, with the result of that you shouldn't be lamenting how busy you are as you're doing things you want to do. I also liked the concept that you shouldn't wait for inspiration and then act, just act and then inspiration has a chance of coming.

Also interesting was the concept of nerds at night, what people do outside of work and 1,000 true fans, getting a dedicated following. In terms of what one should be doing, an interesting idea from Tools of Titans was think small, be great at something thin. Related to this is the idea of picking what you're spending time on and are after, is it hunting mice or chasing antelope?

If things don't go well, it's noted that you shouldn't get upset about things, rather think about whether it happened for a reason and what can you learn from it. When something happens that's bad, it's ok to say "good" and move on, and when stuck on something, go around, try a different way. There are three options in life with any situation, change it, accept it, or leave it. Also, one should be willing to live poor, it's not that hard if you don't have people to support and your well being doesn't really require money.

About things to do at the of the day was the idea of writing at the end, noting what you're thankful for and happy about and taking notes before bed on what happened to you. Additionally, a couple of very tangible things from the book related to sleep are usage of the ChiliPad for cooling at bedtime and Sleep With Me podcast to fall asleep to.

Books of interest noted - haven't read

Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
Dropping Ashes on the Buddha by Seung Sahn
Anything You Want: 40 Lessons for a New Kind of Entrepreneur by Derek Sivers
Stumbling on Happiness by Dan Gilbert
How Proust Can Change Your Life by Alain de Botton

The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles by Steven Pressfield
10% Happier: How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, and Found Self-Help That Actually Works--A True Story by Dan Harris
Joy on Demand: The Art of Discovering the Happiness Within by Chade-Meng Tan
Zen in the Art of Archery by Eugen Herrigel
The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell

The Artist's Way Morning Pages Journal: A Companion Volume to the Artist's Way by Julie Cameron
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini
Levels of the Game by John McPhee
I Seem to be a Verb by Buckminster Fuller
Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why by Laurence Gonzales
Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action by Simon Sinek

Books of interest noted - have read

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
Show Your Work by Auston Kleon
Born Standing Up by Steve Martin
Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feyman by Richard Feynman

Daily Rituals by Mason Currey
Not Fade Away by Peter Barton and Laurence Shames
How to Get Rich in Rising Asia by Mohsin Hamid
The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande

Other resources of interest

1,000 True Fans and Cool Tools by Kevin Kelly
Inviting Mara to Tea poem by Rumi
The Shortness of Life by Seneca on the site Brain Pickings
Don Wildman profile for Esquire

The Tim Ferriss Show podcast
Derek Sivers podcast with Ferriss
Hardcore history with Dan Carlin podcast
Neil Gaiman University of the Arts commencement speech

Shoe Dog by Phil Knight

Shoe Dog by Phil Knight was an excellent memoir from the Nike creator, who served as CEO from 1964-2004, Board Chairman through 2016, and then Chairman Emeritus of the company. In addition to being a compelling story of business success, the book was really well written and in the acknowledgements, Knight thanked author J.R. Moehringer and noted relying on his storytelling gifts through drafts of the book. Learning of Moehringer’s involvement felt to make complete sense for me as I saw throughout how good the writing was, and Moehringer wrote along with tennis great Andre Agassi perhaps my favorite sports biography, Open.

Part One of Shoe Dog began after Knight’s graduation at twenty-four from Stanford Business School, with him embarking on what wound up being a solo backpacking trip through Asia, Europe, and Africa. Additionally, he went to Japan to try to start a business importing running shoes, based off a research paper written in an MBA entrepreneurship class. Knight visited the Japanese company Onitsuka, maker of Tiger shoes, convinced them he had an importing company called Blue Ribbon Sports, and placed an order for $50 in shoes. Knight then continued on with his journey around the world, from which he seemed to gain a great deal, and wrote in Shoe Dog of how he early on knew he wanted his work to be play, something where he could hopefully feel what athletes feel while competing.

After returning to Oregon from his trip, Knight was counseled by a friend of his father to get his CPA so that he'd have "a floor under his earnings," enrolled in three classes at Portland State and nine credit hours later took a job at an accounting firm. Knight noted that while later staffing his own company, he tended to hire a number of accountants and lawyers, both for the thinking skills they had acquired and that they showed they could pass a difficult test.

The shoes from Onitsuka arrived in December 1964 and Knight sent a couple of pairs to the track coach from his Oregon undergrad days, Bill Bowerman, who went in with him on the business, 49% to Knight's 51%. Knight placed a large order with Onitsuka and then quit his job at the accounting firm to sell shoes out of his car and hired Jeff Johnson as his first sales rep for Blue Ribbon. While the company was growing fast, cash on hand was always a problem and Knight took a job with another accounting firm, Price Waterhouse, with this one requiring less hours so he could continue growing Blue Ribbon at the same time. Additionally, he in this role met Del Hayes, who would work for Knight for years, and got experience learning what caused some companies to succeed, and others to fail. It was also interesting to read of how Knight spent so much time in a traditional job, while still growing his company outside of that. Blue Ribbon continued expanding and to free up more time, Knight left the firm for a job at Portland State, teaching accounting and it's maxim of assets equals liabilities plus equity, a principle Knight was often up against.

One quote about business that stuck with Knight was "don't tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results," and also of note from Shoe Dog was how many different times the company could have gone under, and still made it through. There were various inflection points and Knight battled in business like it was a race, one taking every ounce from him.

As Blue Ribbon continued to grow, it made a deal with a Japanese trading company, Nissho Iwai, and while Onitsuka was considering dropping Blue Ribbon as it's U.S. distributor, Knight made a football shoe in a factory in Mexico, and under the name Nike. A legal battle later ensued with Onitsuka and while it was settled in 1974, Nike battled supply and demand issues with the new waffle trainer shoe a huge hit. Then in 1975 the company had a cash crunch and lost it's local banking partner, with the relationship with the trading company saving the day and keeping them in business as Nissho paid the Oregon bank in full. Then after getting past this hurdle, Nike received a letter from the U.S. Customs Service saying they owed $25M in retroactive import duties, as the result of orchestration by competitors. A lengthy back and back with the government ensued and after a settlement of $9M was reached, Nike was able to continue forward, with going public at least in part to finally get past it's constant cash flow issues.

The ending of Shoe Dog is heavily about Knight's sons, including his first born Matthew, who as an adult died in a scuba diving accident, and the final chapter beautifully written and really brought everything together as a poignant and compelling read.

Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance

Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance was a really compelling memoir by someone born into difficult circumstances who with key help provided along the way, made it to his current state of being a 31-year-old Yale Law graduate working as a principal at a Silicon Valley investment firm.

Vance grew up in the Rust Belt city of Middletown, Ohio, with his grandparents from the Appalachian town of Jackson, Kentucky, and he notes that places like Middletown have over the years become practically feeder towns for those leaving Appalachia. Many of the problems of unstable home lives, alcoholism, and at least flirting with poverty have fed into the new communities and Vance writes how the problems of Middletown in many ways mirror those in the inner cities of metropolitan areas.

There's such a sense of upheaval and uncertainty for kids growing up in that region and Vance writes of how he doesn't view himself as a genius preordained to make it out, but rather someone shepherded during the times he most needed stability. When his mom would either be on a bender or otherwise busy switching from one failed male relationship to another, Vance was able to go his grandmother or even rely on his older sister. There was certainly entertaining reading in the book about hillbilly justice administered by his extended family, but the biggest thing that gave Vance a chance was this stability that wasn't coming from a more traditional mother and father present for him home life. Vance lived full-time with his grandmother the last few years of high school and then spent four years in the Army prior to attending Ohio State University and Yale Law School.

The book is a very fast read and interesting in that it tells the story of Vance’s upbringing, but also the themes related to his success. There's both the need for kids to have stability growing up and notion that even in areas where jobs are scarce, the larger problem can be a scarcity of a culture of hard work and idea that, especially with some help along the way, someone can overcome obstacles and have control over their life, effectively breaking out of a cycle.

The Legends Club by John Feinstein

The Legends Club by John Feinstein has the subtitle Dean Smith, Mike Krzyzewski, Jim Valvano, and an Epic College Basketball Rivalry and covers well the three men, and particularly the relationships between them.

Feinstein notes in the beginning how Smith was hired by North Carolina in 1961 and in a nine-day period in 1980, Duke and NC State hired Valvano and Krzyzewski. The three men were very different from one another, with Smith the cover all bases in the pursuit of winning obsessive, Valvano the comet across the sky force of personality, and Krzyzewski the grinder, who adapted himself to succeed and improved in areas he needed to.

A commonality between the men seems to in their character, with one example Smith decades ago telling Feinstein that "you should never be proud of doing the right thing. You should just do the right thing" and another Valvano's speech at the 1993 ESPY Awards just prior to his death from cancer. The interactions written of between Krzyzewski and Valvano prior to him dying and then later between Krzyzewski and Smith prior to the former North Carolina coach dying were the most compelling parts of the book, first with Valvano undergoing cancer treatments at Duke and Krzyzewski often at his bedside and then Krzyzewski spending time with Coach Smith as he suffered from Dementia prior to his death in 2015.

There was definitely some poignant scenes written of the book and Feinstein seemed to do a very good job writing about the men, their competition with one another, and their coming together.

Playing Through the Whistle by S.L. Price

Playing Through the Whistle: Steel, Football and an American Town by S.L. Price was a really good book from the Sports Illustrated writer who has penned three other books I've enjoyed, Pitching Around Fidel: A Journey Into the Heart of Cuban Sports and especially Far Afield: A Sports Writer's Odyssey and Heart of the Game: Life, Death and Mercy in Minor League America.

Playing Through the Whistle expands greatly on a feature for SI several year ago and the book is a look at the dying town of Aliquippa, PA and high level football from a high school that's produced NFL stars Mike Ditka, Ty Law, Sean Gilbert, and Darrelle Revis. Additionally from Aliquippa were Henry Mancini, composer of Moon River, the father of basketball star Pete Maravich, and former Surgeon General Jesse Steinfeld.

Price wrote of how early Aliquippa was the story of immigrants, people who came with nothing but the desire to work hard and who formed a life, for many of them through their labors on behalf of the Jones & Laughlin Steel Corporation (or J&L Aliquippa Works) in town. Towards the beginning of the book, the struggle between the employer and unions coming in is chronicled and then later on, racial tension in town (and America as a whole) detailed. In 1962, some black players walking off the football team to protest the lack of any black cheerleaders on the squad, and then Price provides remarkable reading about the fights in town between blacks and whites in the 1970's. In many ways, the book is a history of class and race in America, told through the prism of the town, football in it, and a struggle between sports as a positive force and societal and economic problems off the field.

Another major local sports star that Price wrote about was former Cowboys star Tony Dorsett, who played for nearby Hopewell Senior High in the early 1970's as Aliquippa High was in the quagmire of racial tension and constant fights. Dorsett not going to Aliquippa High School echoed what many families who could were doing, moving their kids out of Aliquippa public schools, either by sending them to private schools or just moving away to areas like that covered by Hopewell High. From an economic perspective, Aliquippa Works in 1979 employed 10,000 people, then in 1981 the bleed of jobs began and by 1985 there were only 700 remaining. As jobs were leaving town, crack cocaine came to Aliquippa in the mid 1980's and the drug trade, and accompanying violence, hit the town hard. Aliquippa High School was often a dangerous place and for many there, it was a choice between football or the streets, with each pulling on them.

The book closes out with modern day Aliquippa and paints a picture of a hard town and a hard life for those who live there, with things seemingly going the wrong direction. Some people succeed and get out, but it's a tough go for the place when the primary goal for those looking to achieve something positive includes them leaving.

Originals by Adam Grant

Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World by Adam Grant was an interesting read that brought to mind books such as those by Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt and by Malcolm Gladwell.

Grant is an acclaimed 35 year-old professor at the Wharton School of Business and in Originals, he puts forth a number of compelling ideas, some he covered in his February 2016 TED Talk, "The surprising habits of original thinkers." Those included the benefits of procrastination, with the example of how Martin Luther King Jr. delayed in writing his "I Have a Dream" speech and his ideas germinated, and the power of those who have doubts about their ideas and proceed cautiously, with the example of Grant's students who started the business Warby Parker.

Some of the ideas from Originals that weren't in Grant's TED Talk included how people who use Firefox or Chrome as their PC browser in aggregate tend to be more successful than those who use an already installed web browser because they took the initiative to go and get something different, and how if you want to do original and impactful work, the big thing is to do a lot of work, much of it unremarkable.

Also tremendously interesting from Originals was the chapter on leaders in the women's rights movement who in the 1800's should have been allies, but became bitter enemies, delaying success for the movement. The idea that Grant put forth was that if people agree on some things, their disagreement on others can be much more profound than disagreements between people who don't agree on anything, and never expected to. Very much related to this idea is how methods and tactics can be more important than values, as they're more easily agreed upon, and can avoid the bitter fights over value differences. From Grant in his chapter on first and later born kids was the concept of praising and speaking to character rather than actions, with the example "don't be a cheater," rather than "don't cheat," having more impact. It's an interesting idea which actually runs counter to notions I've seen elsewhere about praising the actions and activities of kids rather than making character based statements out of their actions.

The final concept out of Originals to note here was the the idea of fighting a battle in different ways depending on how strong the support for your fight. Grant told the story of the non-violent resistance group Otpor! that helped lead the charge to overthrow Slobodan Milošević in Yugoslavia. When Otpor! was gathering support for the cause, they focused having people feel part of a larger group opposing Milošević and engaging in smaller-scale resistance tactics they could get behind and not feel exposed them to much retribution and danger. Along these lines, a story was told how in Chile in the 1980's, people drove slowly in town to protest the Pinochet government and in Poland, people pushed their televisions in wheelbarrows through town to protest government lies in the news. The idea of all this was that when commitment toward a goal is wavering or thin, it's best to consider progress already made, or focus on humor, then when commitment solid, it's then best to look at bad things to overcome or avoid or work still to be done. If that "negative motivation" brought up too soon, it can jeopardize the movement before it gains it's footing.