Staff Picks Book Reviews
Porchlight is a company filled with voracious readers—talented, creative individuals who know books, and who excel at moving them. Whenever we can, we like to do that by telling you about the books we’re reading.
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Blog / Staff Picks
Oil: "A Uniquely Human Story"
Book Review by Porchlight
Very timely, Tom Bower's eighteenth book, Oil: Money, Politics, and Power in the 21st Century, was released by the Grand Central Publishing house today. It is a riveting story of the last twenty years in oil exploration and speculation. I don't often quote press releases, but this book's is spot on: Oil is a story of intrigue, of greed, of arrogance, and extreme risk.
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The Genius of the Beast & Creation Stories
Book Review by Porchlight
Tell me a creation story, from the Sumerian Enuma Elish to Tolkien's Ainulindalë in the The Silmarillion, and you've probably got me hooked. So I am reading Howard Bloom'sThe Genius of the Beast: A Radical Re-Vision of Capitalism with considerable interest. As the author writes in the prologue: Every Culture needs a creation myth, a vision of how it came to be.
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Metamorphosis
Book Review by Porchlight
Last weekend on a little airplane ride, I brought along a book to read with me (as I do every time my feet leave the earth). In this case, during my travels, I engaged myself in the short story by Franz Kafka called The Metamorphosis. The story itself is not very long, just three chapters - but the thought behind this story (that was penned almost a hundred years ago) still resonates in todays culture.
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Life Is What You Make It
Book Review by Porchlight
In a previous life, I worked for a digital media company, and Peter Buffet, son of billionaire investor Warren Buffett, was one of my clients. As we would talk about his projects, Peter always had a certain sense of calm about him. While other clients seemed stressed about deadlines, layout, technical issues, etc.
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Business in Fiction - The Unincorporated Man
Book Review by Sally Haldorson
Incorporated? 300 years in the future, companies and businesses run everything on a ‘more personal level. ’ Every single person alive is their own 'corporation'.
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Business in Fiction: Union Atlantic by Adam Haslett
Book Review by Sally Haldorson
Union Atlantic shows that the subject of business is not exclusive of a good story. A review by Shawn Quinn Union Atlantic by Adam Haslett, Nan A. Talese, 320 pages, $26.
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The Illustration of Rework
Book Review by Porchlight
Rework is a beautifully conceived and designed book, certainly among this year's best. Springing from the big brains of the people at 37signals, the ideas and insights provided are well-written, short and actionable, and they're smartly split up with illustrations by Milwaukeean Mike Rohde. The text alone is probably worthy of an award, but enlisting Rohde to add what he calls skecthnotes puts it in an artistic class business books rarely enter.
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Business in Fiction: The Privileges by Jonathan Dee
Book Review by Sally Haldorson
If biographies or non-fiction management guides litter your day-to-day life, this is what you take to the beach. A review by Todd Lazarski The Privileges by Jonathan Dee, Random House, 272 pages, $25. 00, Hardcover, January 2010, ISBN 9781400068678 30-plus rapid-fire pages, opening with the line, "A WEDDING!
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Blog / Staff Picks
The Right Fight
Book Review by Porchlight
Tensions are going to exist in any organization of human beings, from the marriage of two individuals all the way up to the social contract of a nation. The most successful leaders use that inherent tension and struggle to creatively further the organization—whether it's a spouse gently challenging the other to become the person they aspire to be, a corporate leader fomenting healthy disagreement on strategy to find a better approach, or a civil rights leader confronting an unjust, societal status quo to improve living conditions. It is when we try to suppress those struggles and ignore the tension that we ultimately fail to move forward.
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The Rubber Macondo.
Book Review by Porchlight
In the early part of the last century, Henry Ford was one of the most influential and admired men in the world. He was an industrialist-philosopher, building a new, mechanized Eden in America. He hired men of every color, nation and religion and payed them an unheard-of five dollars a day to stand in one place at work and live a clean life at home (Ford had a Sociological Department that sent hundreds of agents into Dearborn and Detroit to investigate employee's lives and write up personnel reports).
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