New Non-Fiction

Blockbusters: Hit-making, Risk-taking, and the Big Business of...

Tue, 22 Oct 2013 09:13:21 -0400

Blockbusters: Hit-making, Risk-taking, and the Big Business of Entertainment

Anita Elberse

I use one of Elberse’s HBR cases when I teach the business of publishing at Portland State and it clearly shows when media companies need to make big bets on a few projects rather than treating all projects equally.

In Blockbusters, Elberse gathers up her research into one volume. The prose is a little dense and detailed for a big idea book, but I think it’s required reading for anyone who works in entertainment.

“Why the future of popular culture will revolve around ever bigger bets on entertainment products, by one of Harvard Business School’s most popular professors

What’s behind the phenomenal success of entertainment businesses such as Warner Bros., Marvel Entertainment, and the NFL—along with such stars as Jay-Z, Lady Gaga, and LeBron James? Which strategies give leaders in film, television, music, publishing, and sports an edge over their rivals?

Anita Elberse, Harvard Business School’s expert on the entertainment industry, has done pioneering research on the worlds of media and sports for more than a decade. Now, in this groundbreaking book, she explains a powerful truth about the fiercely competitive world of entertainment: building a business around blockbuster products—the movies, television shows, songs, and books that are hugely expensive to produce and market—is the surest path to long-term success. Along the way, she reveals why entertainment executives often spend outrageous amounts of money in search of the next blockbuster, why superstars are paid unimaginable sums, and how digital technologies are transforming the entertainment landscape.

Full of inside stories emerging from Elberse’s unprecedented access to some of the world’s most successful entertainment brands, Blockbusters is destined to become required reading for anyone seeking to understand how the entertainment industry really works—and how to navigate today’s high-stakes business world at large.”

Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success Adam M....

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 20:30:25 -0400

Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success

Adam M. Grant Ph.D.

A groundbreaking New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller that is captivating readers of Malcolm Gladwell, Daniel Pink, The Power of Habit, and Quiet

For generations, we have focused on the individual drivers of success: passion, hard work, talent, and luck. But today, success is increasingly dependent on how we interact with others. It turns out that at work, most people operate as either takers, matchers, or givers. Whereas takers strive to get as much as possible from others and matchers aim to trade evenly, givers are the rare breed of people who contribute to others without expecting anything in return.

Using his own pioneering research as Wharton’s youngest tenured professor, Grant shows that these styles have a surprising impact on success. Although some givers get exploited and burn out, the rest achieve extraordinary results across a wide range of industries. Combining cutting-edge evidence with captivating stories, this landmark book shows how one of America’s best networkers developed his connections, why the creative genius behind one of the most popular shows in television history toiled for years in anonymity, how a basketball executive responsible for multiple draft busts transformed his franchise into a winner, and how we could have anticipated Enron’s demise four years before the company collapsed-without ever looking at a single number.

Praised by bestselling authors such as Dan Pink, Tony Hsieh, Dan Ariely, Susan Cain, Dan Gilbert, Gretchen Rubin, Bob Sutton, David Allen, Robert Cialdini, and Seth Godin-as well as senior leaders from Google, McKinsey, Merck, Estee Lauder, Nike, and NASA-Give and Take highlights what effective networking, collaboration, influence, negotiation, and leadership skills have in common. This landmark book opens up an approach to success that has the power to transform not just individuals and groups, but entire organizations and communities.

Future Perfect: The Case For Progress In A Networked Age by...

Wed, 03 Oct 2012 11:53:00 -0400

Future Perfect: The Case For Progress In A Networked Age

by Steven Johnson

I read everything Steven Johnson writes.

In his new book Future Perfect, he focuses his lens on the systems that fall under the public domain and shows how they are ripe for some change we are seeing in some many other parts of our lives.

Book Description:

Combining the deft social analysis of Where Good Ideas Come From with the optimistic arguments of Everything Bad Is Good For You, New York Times bestselling author Steven Johnson’s Future Perfect makes the case that a new model of political change is on the rise, transforming everything from local governments to classrooms, from protest movements to health care. Johnson paints a compelling portrait of this new political worldview – influenced by the success and interconnectedness of the Internet, but not dependent on high-tech solutions – that breaks with the conventional categories of liberal or conservative thinking.

With his acclaimed gift for multi-disciplinary storytelling and big ideas, Johnson explores this new vision of progress through a series of fascinating narratives: from the “miracle on the Hudson” to the planning of the French railway system; from the battle against malnutrition in Vietnam to a mysterious outbreak of strange smells in downtown Manhattan; from underground music video artists to the invention of the Internet itself.

At a time when the conventional wisdom holds that the political system is hopelessly gridlocked with old ideas, Future Perfect makes the timely and inspiring case that progress is still possible, and that new solutions are on the rise. This is a hopeful, affirmative outlook for the future, from one of the most brilliant and inspiring visionaries of contemporary culture.

The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail-but Some...

Thu, 27 Sep 2012 02:54:29 -0400

The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail-but Some Don’t

by Nate Silver

I have been waiting for this book for a long time. Silver is a data geek who has influenced thinking on everything from baseball to presidential elections. I can’t wait to see what he does with the book.

Here is the book description:

Nate Silver built an innovative system for predicting baseball performance, predicted the 2008 election within a hair’s breadth, and became a national sensation as a blogger—all by the time he was thirty. The New York Times now publishes FiveThirtyEight.com, where Silver is one of the nation’s most influential political forecasters.

Drawing on his own groundbreaking work, Silver examines the world of prediction, investigating how we can distinguish a true signal from a universe of noisy data. Most predictions fail, often at great cost to society, because most of us have a poor understanding of probability and uncertainty. Both experts and laypeople mistake more confident predictions for more accurate ones. But overconfidence is often the reason for failure. If our appreciation of uncertainty improves, our predictions can get better too. This is the “prediction paradox”: The more humility we have about our ability to make predictions, the more successful we can be in planning for the future.

In keeping with his own aim to seek truth from data, Silver visits the most successful forecasters in a range of areas, from hurricanes to baseball, from the poker table to the stock market, from Capitol Hill to the NBA. He explains and evaluates how these forecasters think and what bonds they share. What lies behind their success? Are they good—or just lucky? What patterns have they unraveled? And are their forecasts really right? He explores unanticipated commonalities and exposes unexpected juxtapositions. And sometimes, it is not so much how good a prediction is in an absolute sense that matters but how good it is relative to the competition. In other cases, prediction is still a very rudimentary—and dangerous—science.

Silver observes that the most accurate forecasters tend to have a superior command of probability, and they tend to be both humble and hardworking. They distinguish the predictable from the unpredictable, and they notice a thousand little details that lead them closer to the truth. Because of their appreciation of probability, they can distinguish the signal from the noise.

With everything from the health of the global economy to our ability to fight terrorism dependent on the quality of our predictions, Nate Silver’s insights are an essential read.

Make Space: How to Set the Stage for Creative...

Tue, 01 May 2012 10:22:00 -0400

Make Space: How to Set the Stage for Creative Collaboration

Scott Doorley and Scott Witthoft

Scott and Scott have been heavily involved in the environments that make up Stanford’s d.school and the book describes how to create spaces that are flexible and effective for collaboration. The emphasis is on the how-to with drawings and materials list for the creations they have used at the d.school. People attracted to this book may be familiar with the design and typography series that Ellen Lupton has written and will find the Scotts’ approach very similar. The book made me want to find some loft space and start building acrylic whiteboards.

The Art of the Sale: Learning from the Masters About the...

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 05:00:26 -0400

The Art of the Sale: Learning from the Masters About the Business of Life

Philip Delves Broughton

4/12/12

A revelatory examination of the alchemy of successful selling and its essential role in just about every aspect of human experience.

When Philip Delves Broughton went to Harvard Business School, an experience he wrote about in his New York Times bestseller Ahead of the Curve, he was baffled to find that sales was not on the curriculum. Why not, he wondered? Sales plays a part in everything we do—not just in clinching a deal but in convincing people of an argument, getting a job, attracting a mate, or getting a child to eat his broccoli. Well, he thought; he’d just have to assemble his own master class in the art of selling. And so he did, setting out on a remarkable pilgrimage to find the world’s great wizards of sales.

Great selling is an art that demands creativity, mindfulness, selflessness, and resilience; but anyone who says you can become a great salesperson in 15 minutes is either a charlatan or a fool. The more Delves Broughton traveled and listened, the more he found a wealth of applicable insight. In Morocco, he found the master rug merchant who thrives in Kasbah by using age-old principles to read his customers. In Tampa, he met with Tony Sullivan, king of the infomercial, and learned the importance of creating a good narrative to selling effectively. In a sold-out seminar with sales guru Jeffrey Gitomer, he uncovered the ways successful selling approaches religion, inspiring faith and even a sense of duty in customers. From celebrity art dealer Larry Gagosian to the most successful saleswoman in Japan, Broughton tracked down anyone who would help him understand what it took to achieve greatness in sales.

Though sales is the engine of commerce and industry—more Americans work in sales than in manufacturing, marketing, or finance—it remains shrouded in myth. The Art of the Sale is a powerful beam of light onto the field, a wise and winning tour of the best in show of this endeavor which is nothing less than the means by which all of us, one way or another, get our way in the world.

The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World...

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 19:37:01 -0400

The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World (Vintage)

Lewis Hyde

By now a modern classic, The Gift is a brilliantly orchestrated defense of the value of creativity and of its importance in a culture increasingly governed by money and overrun with commodities. Widely available again after twenty-five years, this book is even more necessary today than when it first appeared. An illuminating and transformative book, and completely original in its view of the world, The Gift is cherished by artists, writers, musicians, and thinkers. It is in itself a gift to all who discover the classic wisdom found in its pages.

Imagine: How Creativity Works Jonah Lehrer New York Times...

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 05:00:05 -0400

Imagine: How Creativity Works

Jonah Lehrer

New York Times best-selling author Jonah Lehrer shows us how we can all learn to be more creative.

Did you know that the most creative companies have centralized bathrooms? That brainstorming meetings are a terrible idea? That the color blue can help you double your creative output?

From the best-selling author of How We Decide comes a sparkling and revelatory look at the new science of creativity. Shattering the myth of muses, higher powers, even creative “types,” Jonah Lehrer demonstrates that creativity is not a single gift possessed by the lucky few. It’s a variety of distinct thought processes that we can all learn to use more effectively.

Lehrer reveals the importance of embracing the rut, thinking like a child, daydreaming productively, and adopting an outsider’s perspective (travel helps). He unveils the optimal mix of old and new partners in any creative collaboration, and explains why criticism is essential to the process. Then he zooms out to show how we can make our neighborhoods more vibrant, our companies more productive, and our schools more effective.

You’ll learn about Bob Dylan’s writing habits and the drug addictions of poets. You’ll meet a Manhattan bartender who thinks like a chemist, and an autistic surfer who invented an entirely new surfing move. You’ll see why Elizabethan England experienced a creative explosion, and how Pixar’s office space is designed to spark the next big leap in animation.

Collapsing the layers separating the neuron from the finished symphony, *Imagine *reveals the deep inventiveness of the human mind, and its essential role in our increasingly complex world.

http://www.jonahlehrer.com/

The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and...

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 18:47:32 -0500

The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business

Charles Duhigg

A young woman walks into a laboratory. Over the past two years, she has transformed almost every aspect of her life. She has quit smoking, run a marathon, and been promoted at work. The patterns inside her brain, neurologists discover, have fundamentally changed.

Marketers at Procter & Gamble study videos of people making their beds. They are desperately trying to figure out how to sell a new product called Febreze, on track to be one of the biggest flops in company history. Suddenly, one of them detects a nearly imperceptible pattern—and with a slight shift in advertising, Febreze goes on to earn a billion dollars a year.

An untested CEO takes over one of the largest companies in America. His first order of business is attacking a single pattern among his employees—how they approach worker safety—and soon the firm, Alcoa, becomes the top performer in the Dow Jones.

What do all these people have in common? They achieved success by focusing on the patterns that shape every aspect of our lives.

They succeeded by transforming habits.

In The Power of Habit, *award-winning *New York Times business reporter Charles Duhigg takes us to the thrilling edge of scientific discoveries that explain why habits exist and how they can be changed. With penetrating intelligence and an ability to distill vast amounts of information into engrossing narratives, Duhigg brings to life a whole new understanding of human nature and its potential for transformation.

Along the way we learn why some people and companies struggle to change, despite years of trying, while others seem to remake themselves overnight. We visit laboratories where neuroscientists explore how habits work and where, exactly, they reside in our brains. We discover how the right habits were crucial to the success of Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, and civil-rights hero Martin Luther King, Jr. We go inside Procter & Gamble, Target superstores, Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church, NFL locker rooms, and the nation’s largest hospitals and see how implementing so-called keystone habits can earn billions and mean the difference between failure and success, life and death.

At its core, The Power of Habit contains an exhilarating argument: The key to exercising regularly, losing weight, raising exceptional children, becoming more productive, building revolutionary companies and social movements, and achieving success is understanding how habits work.

Habits aren’t destiny. As Charles Duhigg shows, by harnessing this new science, we can transform our businesses, our communities, and our lives.

Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of...

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 15:20:08 -0500

Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation

Steven Johnson

In the search for better ideas than we have seen, Steven Johnson take his decade of writing about science and focuses it on the genesis of the best ideas. The prompts in Where Good Ideas Come From are familiar bromides (keep a journal, go for a walk, make mistakes, have hobbies, hang out with others), but the depth of analysis and richness of the stories he tells, reminds us again to do all of those things that we have been meaning to do, because innovation is not a clear path from A to B.

Kingpin: How One Hacker Took Over the Billion-Dollar Cybercrime...

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 06:02:05 -0500

Kingpin: How One Hacker Took Over the Billion-Dollar Cybercrime Underground

Kevin Poulsen

Former hacker Kevin Poulsen has, over the past decade, built a reputation as one of the top investigative reporters on the cybercrime beat. In Kingpin, he pours his unmatched access and expertise into book form for the first time, delivering a gripping cat-and-mouse narrative—and an unprecedented view into the twenty-first century’s signature form of organized crime.

The word spread through the hacking underground like some unstoppable new virus: Someone—some brilliant, audacious crook—had just staged a hostile takeover of an online criminal network that siphoned billions of dollars from the US economy.

The FBI rushed to launch an ambitious undercover operation aimed at tracking down this new kingpin; other agencies around the world deployed dozens of moles and double agents. Together, the cybercops lured numerous unsuspecting hackers into their clutches… . Yet at every turn, their main quarry displayed an uncanny ability to sniff out their snitches and see through their plots.

The culprit they sought was the most unlikely of criminals: a brilliant programmer with a hippie ethic and a supervillain’s double identity. As prominent “white-hat” hacker Max “Vision” Butler, he was a celebrity throughout the programming world, even serving as a consultant to the FBI. But as the black-hat “Iceman,” he found in the world of data theft an irresistible opportunity to test his outsized abilities. He infiltrated thousands of computers around the country, sucking down millions of credit card numbers at will. He effortlessly hacked his fellow hackers, stealing their ill-gotten gains from under their noses. Together with a smooth-talking con artist, he ran a massive real-world crime ring.

And for years, he did it all with seeming impunity, even as countless rivals ran afoul of police.

Yet as he watched the fraudsters around him squabble, their ranks riddled with infiltrators, their methods inefficient, he began to see in their dysfunction the ultimate challenge: He would stage his coup and fix what was broken, run things as they should be run—even if it meant painting a bull’s-eye on his forehead.

Through the story of this criminal’s remarkable rise, and of law enforcement’s quest to track him down, Kingpin lays bare the workings of a silent crime wave still affecting millions of Americans. In these pages, we are ushered into vast online-fraud supermarkets stocked with credit card numbers, counterfeit checks, hacked bank accounts, dead drops, and fake passports. We learn the workings of the numerous hacks—browser exploits, phishing attacks, Trojan horses, and much more—these fraudsters use to ply their trade, and trace the complex routes by which they turn stolen data into millions of dollars. And thanks to Poulsen’s remarkable access to both cops and criminals, we step inside the quiet, desperate arms race that law enforcement continues to fight with these scammers today.

Ultimately, Kingpin is a journey into an underworld of startling scope and power, one in which ordinary American teenagers work hand in hand with murderous Russian mobsters and where a simple Wi-Fi connection can unleash a torrent of gold worth millions.

From the Hardcover edition.

Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of...

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 09:04:00 -0500

Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone

by Eric Klinenberg

A revelatory examination of the most significant demographic shift since the Baby Boom—the sharp increase in the number of people who live alone—that offers surprising insights on the benefits of this epochal change

In 1950, only 22 percent of American adults were single. Today, more than 50 percent of American adults are single, and 31 million—roughly one out of every seven adults—live alone. People who live alone make up 28 percent of all U.S. households, which makes them more common than any other domestic unit, including the nuclear family. In GOING SOLO, renowned sociologist and author Eric Klinenberg proves that these numbers are more than just a passing trend. They are, in fact, evidence of the biggest demographic shift since the Baby Boom: we are learning to go solo, and crafting new ways of living in the process.

Klinenberg explores the dramatic rise of solo living, and examines the seismic impact it’s having on our culture, business, and politics. Though conventional wisdom tells us that living by oneself leads to loneliness and isolation, Klinenberg shows that most solo dwellers are deeply engaged in social and civic life. In fact, compared with their married counterparts, they are more likely to eat out and exercise, go to art and music classes, attend public events and lectures, and volunteer. There’s even evidence that people who live alone enjoy better mental health than unmarried people who live with others and have more environmentally sustainable lifestyles than families, since they favor urban apartments over large suburban homes. Drawing on over three hundred in-depth interviews with men and women of all ages and every class, Klinenberg reaches a startling conclusion: in a world of ubiquitous media and hyperconnectivity, this way of life can help us discover ourselves and appreciate the pleasure of good company.

With eye-opening statistics, original data, and vivid portraits of people who go solo, Klinenberg upends conventional wisdom to deliver the definitive take on how the rise of living alone is transforming the American experience. GOING SOLO is a powerful and necessary assessment of an unprecedented social change.

Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How...

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 19:45:49 -0500

Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives — How Your Friends’ Friends’ Friends Affect Everything You Feel, Think, and Do

by Nicholas A. Christakis and James Fowler

Christakis’ and Fowler’s research is amazing. They present evidence that shows how the people around influence our behavior. And I am not talking about your family and close friends. People who are two and three degrees away from you can influence if you smoke, are overweight, or drink excessively. Your mom always told you to be careful who you hang out. It’s truer than you ever imagined.

evidence for our profound influence on one another’s tastes, health, wealth, happiness, beliefs, even weight, as they explain how social networks form and how they operate.

A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts by...

Sat, 07 Jan 2012 12:04:51 -0500

A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts

by Andrew Chaikin

Chaikin’s 720 page account of the Apollo missions is the best way to read about the decade when humans left the planet for the first time. In researching the book, Chaikin interviewed 23 of the 24 astronauts who made trips to the moon. When Tom Hanks researched his role for “Apollo 13” and later decided to produce the HBO series “From The Earth To The Moon”, he looked to “A Man on The Moon” as the definitive account.

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman Kahneman with his...

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 09:51:46 -0500

Thinking, Fast and Slow

by Daniel Kahneman

Kahneman with his partner the late Amos Tversky changed how we view the human process of decision making. They uncovered several “bugs” in our mental programming that create blind spots and often lead us to the wrong answer. The work earned him a Nobel Prize in Economics.

Thinking, Fast and Slow is the first time we have been able to access these theories outside of academic journals and college textbooks. Take the opportunity to learn from Kanheman directly.

Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering...

Fri, 30 Dec 2011 10:46:00 -0500

Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything

by Joshua Foer

Moonwalking with Einstein would alone have been interesting for the multi-faceted reporting on memory and the incredible impact it has on our lives, but what makes Joshua Foer’s book even more compelling is the book also details his journey to become the U.S. Memory Champion in 2006.

You can get a sampling of the book’s contents in Foer’s feature that ran in The New York Times Magazine titled “Secrets of a Mind-Gamer”.

The Science of Fear: How the Culture of Fear Manipulates Your...

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 18:11:38 -0500

The Science of Fear: How the Culture of Fear Manipulates Your Brain

by Daniel Gardner

A timely and entertaining psychological look at why we’re afraid and what to do about it

From terror attacks to bursting real estate bubbles, from crystal meth epidemics to online sexual predators and poisonous toys from China, our list of fears seems to be exploding. Yet we are the safest and healthiest humans in history. Why are we so worried?

The Science of Fear is an introduction to the new brain science of risk, dissecting the fears that misguide and manipulate us every day. Award-winning journalist Daniel Gardner demonstrates how irrational fear springs from the ways humans miscalculate risks based on our hunter-gatherer brains. With the exclusive cooperation of risk-science pioneer Paul Slovic and other leading experts, Gardner reveals how our “gut” reactions lead us astray. Understanding our irrational fears frees us from political and corporate manipulation, and makes our choices better, and our lives braver.

The Influencing Machine: Brooke Gladstone on the Media Brooke...

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 10:43:44 -0500

The Influencing Machine: Brooke Gladstone on the Media

Brooke Gladstone

A visionary and opinionated work of graphic nonfiction on the media and its discontents.Nearly one million weekly listeners trust NPR’s Brooke Gladstone to guide them through the distortions and complexities of the modern media. This brilliant radio personality now bursts onto the page as an illustrated character in vivid comics drawn by acclaimed artist Josh Neufeld. The cartoon of Brooke conducts the reader through two millennia of history-from the newspapers in Caesar’s Rome to the penny press of the American Revolution and the manipulations of contemporary journalism. Gladstone’s manifesto debunks the notion that “The Media” is an external force, outside of our control, since we’ve begun directly constructing, filtering, and responding to what we watch and read. With fascinating digressions, sobering anecdotes, and brave analytical wit, The Influencing Machine equips us to be smart, savvy, informed consumers and shapers of the media. It shows that we have met the media and it is us. So now what? Two-color illustrations

Survival of the Sickest by Sharon Moalem Joining the ranks of...

Wed, 28 Dec 2011 22:30:00 -0500

Survival of the Sickest

by Sharon Moalem

Joining the ranks of modern myth busters, Dr. Sharon Moalem turns our current understanding of illness on its head and challenges us to fundamentally change the way we think about our bodies, our health, and our relationship to just about every other living thing on earth. Through a fresh and engaging examination of our evolutionary history, Dr. Moalem reveals how many of the conditions that are diseases today actually gave our ancestors a leg up in the survival sweepstakes. But Survival of the Sickest doesn’t stop there. It goes on to demonstrate just how little modern medicine really understands about human health, and offers a new way of thinking that can help all of us live longer, healthier lives.

The New Kings of Nonfiction Edited by Ira Glass Glass says in...

Tue, 27 Dec 2011 22:30:00 -0500

The New Kings of Nonfiction

Edited by Ira Glass

Glass says in the introduction that we are living in a golden age of non-fiction writing. I agree and it is the reason I started this site.

The New Kings of Non-Fiction is a wonderful collection of non-fiction written by people like Michael Lewis, Malcolm Gladwell, and Susan Orlean and the topic range from the World Series of Poker to the wonderfully complex nature of when to award damages to individuals who suffer from environmental contamination caused by corporations.

And for one more reason to buy the collection–proceeds from the book benefit 826CHI, a literary project in Chicago that helps kids from eight to eighteen with their writings.