Books that I find very interesting
Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman
Yvon Chouinard-legendary climber, businessman, environmentalist, and founder of Patagonia, Inc.-shares the persistence and courage that have gone into being head of one of the most respected and environmentally responsible companies on earth.
From his youth as the son of a French Canadian blacksmith to the thrilling, ambitious climbing expeditions that inspired his innovative designs for the sport’s equipment, Let My People Go Surfing is the story of a man who brought doing good and having grand adventures into the heart of his business life-a book that will deeply affect entrepreneurs and outdoor enthusiasts alike.
Remote Office Not Required
The founders of Basecamp explore the “work from home” phenomenon and show precisely how a remote work setup can be accomplished.
The Industrial Revolution’s “under one roof” model of conducting work is steadily declining as technology creates virtual workspaces that allow employees to provide their vital contribution without physically clustering together. Today, the new paradigm is “move work to the workers, rather than workers to the workplace.”
Remote work increases the talent pool, reduces turnover, lessens the real estate footprint, and improves the ability to conduct business across multiple time zones, to name just a few advantages. As Fried and Hansson explain the challenges and unexpected benefits of this phenomenon, they show why — with a few controversial exceptions such as Yahoo — more businesses will want to promote this model of getting things done.
Steve Jobs
Based on more than forty interviews with Jobs conducted over two years — as well as interviews with more than a hundred family members, friends, adversaries, competitors, and colleagues — Walter Isaacson has written a riveting story of the roller-coaster life and searingly intense personality of a creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing.
At a time when America is seeking ways to sustain its innovative edge, and when societies around the world are trying to build digital-age economies, Jobs stands as the ultimate icon of inventiveness and applied imagination. He knew that the best way to create value in the twenty-first century was to connect creativity with technology. He built a company where leaps of the imagination were combined with remarkable feats of engineering.
Although Jobs cooperated with this book, he asked for no control over what was written nor even the right to read it before it was published. He put nothing off-limits. He encouraged the people he knew to speak honestly. And Jobs speaks candidly, sometimes brutally so, about the people he worked with and competed against. His friends, foes, and colleagues provide an unvarnished view of the passions, perfectionism, obsessions, artistry, devilry, and compulsion for control that shaped his approach to business and the innovative products that resulted.
Driven by demons, Jobs could drive those around him to fury and despair. But his personality and products were interrelated, just as Apple’s hardware and software tended to be, as if part of an integrated system. His tale is instructive and cautionary, filled with lessons about innovation, character, leadership, and values.
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, the beloved classic that has sold over 20 million copies worldwide, is celebrating its 25th anniversary with this reissue! With a new foreword, the wisdom of the 7 Habits still holds true after all these years. The 7 Habits have become so famous because they work. They have been integrated into everyday thinking by many millions of people. The reason: They work. Habit 1: Be Proactive. Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind. Habit 3: Put First Things First. Habit 4: Think Win/Win. Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood. Habit 6: Synergize. Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw. The book presents a principle-centred approach for solving personal and professional problems. With penetrating insights and pointed anecdotes, Covey reveals a step-by-step pathway for living with fairness, integrity, honesty and human dignity — principles that give us the security to adapt to change and the wisdom and power to take advantage of the opportunities that change creates.
Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future
WHAT VALUABLE COMPANY IS NOBODY BUILDING?
The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won’t make a search engine. If you are copying these guys, you aren’t learning from them. It’s easier to copy a model than to make something new: doing what we already know how to do takes the world from 1 to n, adding more of something familiar. Every new creation goes from 0 to 1. This book is about how to get there.
‘Peter Thiel has built multiple breakthrough companies, and Zero to One shows how.’
ELON MUSK, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla
‘This book delivers completely new and refreshing ideas on how to create value in the world.’
MARK ZUCKERBERG, CEO of Facebook
‘When a risk taker writes a book, read it. In the case of Peter Thiel, read it twice. Or, to be safe, three times. This is a classic.’
NASSIM NICHOLAS TALEB, author of The Black Swan
Awareness A de Mello Spirituality Conference in His Own Words
The heart of Anthony de Mello’s bestselling spiritual message is awareness. Mixing Christian spirituality, Buddhist parables, Hindu breathing exercises, and psychological insight, de Mello’s words of hope come together in Awareness in a grand synthesis.
In short chapters for reading in quiet moments at home or at the office, he cajoles and challenges: We must leave this go-go-go world of illusion and become aware. And this only happens, he insists, by becoming alive to the needs and potential of others, whether at home or in the workplace.
Here, then, is a masterful book of the spirit, challenging us to wake up in every aspect of our lives.
Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future
In the spirit of Steve Jobs and Moneyball, Elon Musk is both an illuminating and authorized look at the extraordinary life of one of Silicon Valley’s most exciting, unpredictable, and ambitious entrepreneurs — a real-life Tony Stark — and a fascinating exploration of the renewal of American invention and its new “makers.”
Elon Musk spotlights the technology and vision of Elon Musk, the renowned entrepreneur and innovator behind SpaceX, Tesla, and SolarCity, who sold one of his Internet companies, PayPal, for $1.5 billion. Ashlee Vance captures the full spectacle and arc of the genius’s life and work, from his tumultuous upbringing in South Africa and flight to the United States to his dramatic technical innovations and entrepreneurial pursuits.
Vance uses Musk’s story to explore one of the pressing questions of our age: can the nation of inventors and creators who led the modern world for a century still compete in an age of fierce global competition? He argues that Musk — one of the most unusual and striking figures in American business history — is a contemporary, visionary amalgam of legendary inventors and industrialists including Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Howard Hughes, and Steve Jobs. More than any other entrepreneur today, Musk has dedicated his energies and his own vast fortune to inventing a future that is as rich and far-reaching as the visionaries of the golden age of science-fiction fantasy.
Thorough and insightful, Elon Musk brings to life a technology industry that is rapidly and dramatically changing by examining the life of one of its most powerful and influential titans.
In Praise of Shadows
“Were it not for shadows there would be no beauty.”
In Praise of Shadows is an eloquent tribute to the austere beauty of traditional Japanese aesthetics. Through architecture, ceramics, theatre, food, women, and even toilets, Tanizaki explains the essence of shadows and darkness, and how they are able to augment beauty. He laments the heavy electric lighting of the West and its introduction to Japan, and shows how the artificial, bright, and polished aesthetic of the West contrasts unfavorably with the moody and natural light of the East. Dreamy, melancholic, and mysterious, In Praise of Shadows is a haunting insight into a forgotten world.
The popular translation by Thomas J. Harper and Edward G. Seidensticker is essential listening for anyone interested in Japan and Japanese culture.
Anastasia (The Ringing Cedars Series)
You’re about to meet Anastasia — a beautiful young woman — found in 1995 living alone deep in the remote wild forests of Siberia. Anastasia is unlike anyone you have met, yet what she is about to share with you will have you remembering so much that you have forgotten — that you may feel like you are awakening from a long sleep!
Born in 1969, Anastasia is thought to be a surviving member of an ancient Vedic civilization whose extraordinary powers and knowledge far exceed anything known today. Anastasia’s powerful, myth-shattering messages — a gift for all of us living in the outside world — reveal a profound wisdom, grounded in ancient knowledge; expose secrets suppressed for thousands of years and hidden historical facts that will completely change your understanding of our past, and offer you a whole new paradigm for our planet’s future.
NEVER Work
That Will
NEVER Work
The Birth of Netflix, and the Amazing Life of an Idea
You’ve heard the Netflix founding story, right? About an entrepreneur who gets fed up with video rental fees, has a brilliant idea about DVDs-by-mail, and launches a company that revolutionizes the entertainment world? It’s the stuff of startup legend.
Except that’s not the whole picture. The full story is a lot more complicated, involves a lot more people, and makes for a much better story.
