MORE … from my bookshelf

MORE Books of interest in Leadership, Equity, World Travel … and Best Sellers

Hope

Finding Muchness: How to Add More Life to Life
by Kobi Yamada and Charles Santoso | Jun 29, 2021
Another winner.  Kobi Yamada writes kids books … for grown ups.  Blub says, Recommended for ages 99 and younger.  Wonderful pictures.  Whimsical.  Filled with messages of hope, joy and imagination to warm the soul.  Yamada’s books make great gifts for colleagues.

A Dedicated Life: Journalism, Justice and a Chance for Every Child
by David Lawrence | Sold by: Amazon.com Services LLC  | Jun 26, 2019
Part family memoir, part armchair view of the news business … and part manifesto on how to create a free pre-school movement statewide. Good stories and some good tools for mobilizing public support for education.

Leadership and Decision Making

You’re It: Crisis, Change, and How to Lead When It Matters Most
by Leonard J. Marcus, Eric J. McNulty , et al. | Sold by: Hachette Book Group  | Jun 11, 2019
I’ve included this before … but it goes with the theme of adaptive leadership.  Lots of insights about how to lead in times of uncertainty.  And lots of stories about crisis moments, large and small.

HBR Guide to Making Better Decisions
by Harvard Business Review  | Sold by: Amazon.com Services LLC  | Feb 11, 2020
If you haven’t seen one of these Harvard Business Review summary books, grab one.  A great place to start your research.  Short overviews from the major thinkers in the field.

Better Decisions, Fewer Regrets: 5 Questions to Help You Determine Your Next Move
by Andy Stanley  | Sold by: HarperCollins Publishing  | Oct 20, 2020
Popular mega-church pastor writes on the character and core values of decision making. Honesty. Am I being honest with myself? Legacy. What story do I want to tell? Conscience. Is there a tension I need to examine? Wisdom. Am I getting too close to the cliff? Love. What does love require of me?

Effortless: Make It Easier to Do What Matters Most
by Greg Mckeown  | Sold by: Random House LLC  | Apr 27, 2021
Hacks to simplify life. By the author of Essentialism.  Worth buying.  Great stories and worthwhile summary of tips and tricks at the end of each chapter.

Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative (Austin Kleon)
by Austin Kleon  | Sold by: Amazon.com
Three picture books in one.  Filled with practical, and creative, advice.  Keep putting your creative work out there – take your lumps – learn – get better – find community – stay focused.  And steal from others:  study, remix, reimagine.

Skip the Line: The 10,000 Experiments Rule and Other Surprising Advice for Reaching Your Goals
by James Altucher  | Sold by: HarperCollins Publishers  | Feb 23, 2021
Fascinating backstory.  Author was down and out when he started making lists of 10 things per day.  He started offering those ideas to others.  Those ideas opened doors to start multiple businesses.  Try his idea on today.  What 10 things can you think of to whittle one of your challenges down to size?

Frictionless: Why the Future of Everything Will Be Fast, Fluid, and Made Just for You
by Christiane Lemieux and Duff McDonald  | Sold by: HarperCollins Publishers  | Jun 23, 2020
Author was designing custom furniture but couldn’t make it work.  Then learned, like Amazon, to remove needless steps.  Reinvented herself with a remote staff, no office, no factory, no friction. Makes you wonder where education could streamline our processes to benefit kids.

Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts
by Annie Duke  | Sold by: Penguin Group (USA) LLC  | Feb 6, 2018
This is certainly the funnest (is that a word?) book on decision making.  Filled with great stories starting with the Seahawks infamous interception that cost them the Super Bowl.  And chock full of practical advice on decision making, large and small.

Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment
by Daniel Kahneman , Olivier Sibony , et al. | Sold by: Hachette Book Group  | May 18, 2021
Well there are some good decision-making nuggets here, you have to work really hard to find them.  Kahneman is one the great thinkers of our time.  But his books are pretty deep.

Death by Meeting: A Leadership Fable…About Solving the Most Painful Problem in Business (J-B Lencioni Series Book 19) | by Patrick M. Lencioni
An oldie but goodie.  As all of Lencioni’s books: short novel, shorter summary.  Here, Lencioni, provides a simple process for creating four types of meetings for four kinds of purposes.  Short stand up check-ins. Tactical meetings to hash out details. Longer meetings to debate strategic decisions.

World Travel – staying at home and letting the mind wander

Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings
by Neil S. Price  | Sold by: Hachette Book Group  | Aug 25, 2020
What we know about the Vikings has expanded exponentially in the last few decades.  Individual “digs” can now be assembled to show the worldwide picture of how Vikings roamed the world from China to Istanbul to Russia to America.  A bit long.  I might have given it up but for my Nordic roots.

I Do Not Come to You by Chance
by Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani | Sold by: Hachette Book Group  | May 5, 2009
I serve as board chair for Schools for Africa, providing schools for 1500 Fulani students in Nigeria.  This book, not the most uplifting, gives a novelize personal perspective on how hard it is to find a way forward in Nigeria,.

The Night Tiger: A Novel
by Yangsze Choo  | Sold by: Macmillan  | Feb 12, 2019
Another book of personal interest, wanting to learn more about the nations and cultures where I work.  Due to the pandemic I have been zooming with a strategic planning team in Malaysia but can’t yet travel there.  The Night Tiger was one effort to learn a bit about Malaysia.

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
A classic.  One the 100 best novels of all time.  Obviously from a time before television when you might read a good book night after night before the fire.  1200 pages! Injustice and revenge.  Ends with the famous line about all life being summed up in two words: “wait” and “hope.”

Best Sellers

The Four Winds: A Novel
by Kristin Hannah  | Sold by: Macmillan  | Feb 2, 2021
Another winner from a NW author.  I have read about the dust bowl and watched the Ken Burns documentary.  Hannah’s book makes it up close and personal.  Tells the heartache of loss, survival, and even the challenges of making a new life in California.

The Personal Librarian
by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray  | Sold by: Penguin Group (USA) LLC  | Jun 29, 2021.  Creative non-fiction. Truer than historical fiction.  Based on fact, the story of an African American woman that “passed” as white in order to build J.P. Morgan’s library into the best in the world.  Good story-teller. Adds perspective on the realities of race in the early 1900s.

Sooley: A Novel
by John Grisham  | Sold by: Random House LLC  | Apr 27, 2021
A page turner about the outsized success of an African athlete making good in U.S. college basketball.  Lots of perspective on Africa, race in America, and the world of college/pro basketball.

The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War
by Malcolm Gladwell  | Sold by: Hachette Book Group  | Apr 27, 2021
Who knew? Gladwell, known for his contemporary social-psychological books (Blink; Tipping Point) has a long standing love of history.  Here, he tells the story of how precision bombing failed us in World War II, and gave way to carpet bombing.  As always, a good story-teller.

Beyond Valor: A World War II Story of Extraordinary Heroism, Sacrificial Love, and a Race against Time  by Jon Erwin and William Doyle  | Sold by: HarperCollins Publishing  | Aug 18, 2020
This is biography of “Red” Erwin, an African American airman, tells The Bomber Mafia story in first person.  Red flew in the first sorties over Tokyo.  When one of the napalm bombs ignited inside the plane, he got it out the window to save the crew.  He was terribly burned and not expected to live.  Within hours President Truman awarded a medal of honor.  And a crew was dispatched to fly 1000 miles to deliver the medal.  Miraculously, he lived.  Written by his grandson.

Equity

How to Fight Racism: Courageous Christianity and the Journey Toward Racial Justice
by Jemar Tisby  | Sold by: HarperCollins Publishing  | Jan 5, 2021
Author of Color of Compromise tells how churches can and are stepping up do more than talk about racism.  Practical ideas on positive steps forward.

How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America
by Clint Smith  | Sold by: Hachette Book Group  | Jun 1, 2021
Author visits landmarks to tell the well-researched story of slavery.  Jefferson’s plantation – home to 175 slaves.  Angola prison, built on a former plantation.  How Central Park (NYC) was taken from a thriving community of African Americans.

A Mercy by Toni Morrison  | Sold by: Random House LLC  | Nov 11, 2008
Toni Morrison tells the story of life in the American colonies in the 1600’s.  How slavery, poverty, indentured servants, class and race and religion intersected.  How color lines began to emerge.

Black Magic: What Black Leaders Learned from Trauma and Triumph
by Chad Sanders  | Sold by: Simon and Schuster Digital Sales Inc  | Feb 2, 2021
Interviews with many rich and famous African American leaders, artists, and others who have come to success.  Their stories tell, as the subtitle says, how they emerged from trauma to triumph.  Author shows how being Black provides an identity and the funds of knowledge to persevere.

Mutant Message Down Under
by Marlo Morgan  | Sold by: HarperCollins Publishers  | Mar 17, 2009
Author spends months on a walkabout with an indigenous tribe in Australia.  This is her story of how she learned to see and hear and feel with a new perspective and appreciation for the deep stores of knowledge in first people’s groups.