Review: Wherever I Wind Up: My Quest for Truth, Authenticity and the Perfect Knuckleball

Wherever I Wind Up: My Quest for Truth, Authenticity and the Perfect Knuckleball by R.A. Dickey
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Dickey’s book follows his life, from being a youngster to entering the world of professional baseball. The beginning of the book describes the abuse he encountered as a child, which continues to impact his life throughout the book, and which seems to be the impetus for his focus on religion. The bulk of the book covers Dickey’s professional baseball career, and it is more up and down than the average player. Given Dickey’s extensive experience in the minors, I expected this to have that minor league flavor. Instead of getting extended descriptions of the lower leagues (and you do get some of this), you get a lot more about Dickey’s take on his career. It’s a more personal book than I initially expected. Given that it’s personal, the book rises and falls based on how well you like Dickey. In the end, I would consider him in a slightly positive manner, but based on some of his responses to events that seem a bit whiny, his stories about issues with his marriage, and his many anecdotes ending in prayer, he comes across as a bit overwhelming. Interesting book, and great telling the story of learning the knuckleball over the last ten years or so.

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Review: Self-Tracking

Self-Tracking by Gina Neff
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

“Self-Tracking” discusses the uses of self-tracking, focusing on medical uses and the technology that is making tracking easier. Think Fitbits and emotion journals and Instragrammed meal pictures. Much of the discussion centers around the ownership and legalities of the data created by tracking. The book describes current state and weighs in on the future. This was a deeper dive into the topic than, say, a Scientific American article. I found it met my expectations on an interesting topic and I learned a few things, but I found the organization of the book seemed too outline-centric, making it harder to follow in the audio version. This short book might be better read than listened to if looking for retention and organizational cues.

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Review: Endurance: A Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery

Endurance: A Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery by Scott Kelly
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I hadn’t read a book about astronauts since “The Right Stuff”, and I figured this would kind of be like that one. Way wrong, even though “The Right Stuff” makes an appearance here as the book that drove author Scott Kelly to becoming an astronaut. Instead of the 1950s test pilot personalities that populated “The Right Stuff”, Kelly’s autobiography shows that nowadays astronauting is less the man against nature story, and more about man against the complex machine. The anecdotes here are not stories of swashbucklers or lone cowboys, they are the stories of scientists forced to follow procedure or, to coin a phrase, action bureaucrats. The stories in space didn’t really grab me.

What did stand out was the story of Kelly’s schooling and of his rise through NASA. Kelly is likely one of the very few self-professed bad students to work his way through college/academy and into the astronaut program. This part of the book is greatly uplifting, showing a student who didn’t apply himself to his schooling and got bad grades could find a purpose (in that Tom Wolfe book!) that would provide the impetus to become a good student with excellent grades in order to become a Navy pilot and later, astronaut. This was very impressive. The author continues telling of his rise through the Navy and NASA, giving details into the conversations he had when getting promotions or reassignments. I found this very interesting as the story of a career.

I listened to the audio version of this book, read by the author. His voice is very even throughout, perhaps too steady and unemotional. A professional narrator would have made this sound quite differently, and possibly better.

Overall, I liked the career story of an astronaut, from difficult student-hood through academy and military training. I found the anecdotes about his time in space to be surprisingly less intense, but maybe this means that space travel is becoming less the risky world of the explorer and more like the world of the office worker, albeit with plenty of procedures.


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Review: Better Scramble Than Lose

Better Scramble Than Lose by Fran Tarkenton
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book was written by Tarkenton when he was quarterback for the Giants, in between his tours with the Vikings. His stories are mostly of his time with the Vikings, though. The book appears to be a heavily edited recorded monologue by Tarkenton covering many of the game situations he had been in. He drops names liberally, especially teammates and key opposing players – he knows opposing defensive line folks well. He spends an entire chapter describing how to pick up opponent’s defenses, though you get the idea that this level of discussion is really aimed at student-age readers of this Scholastic Books imprint that are football-knowledgeable – deep but oversimplified. Tarkenton talks about defensive plays and the offensive plays meant to overcome them, including stunts. This really was more detailed than I expected about the game of football as played by the pros in the late 1960s. I learned a lot, not being a big football fan, but I have the feeling that the strategies and tactics described are all quite dated. Beyond the gameplay, Tarkenton describes some of the business aspects of the game, including how the Vikings used him as their second franchise quarterback, and he describes Viking coaches personalities. You can sense respect for most, but not all. Also I noted that the photo section in the middle used some truly awful pictures, some blurry, some just not interesting shots. Overall, I found this a fun book reminding me of the kinds of books I read decades ago when in school. You really could not tell that Tarkenton would later become a network TV show host and CEO of a software company. Quite a dichotomy.

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Review: The President Is Missing

The President Is Missing by Bill Clinton
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Like a Dan Brown book, on steroids, with a plot that makes less sense. There’s a lot of action, and with short chapters, this really goes quickly. Except when it gets to trying to explain the technology behind the threat-to-the-world, it bogs down and gets confusingly written very quickly in an attempt to oversimplify for a mass readership. Technology description is like quicksand here, sounding fake and falsely simple. I was anticipating reading of interesting or believable location or process descriptions about the president and his world, but this was generic D.C thriller. You can’t sense Clinton’s hand on the book here until the tacked-on winner’s monologue at the end of the book – spouting policy initiatives that a president with a high favorable rating could attempt to accomplish. I was quite underwhelmed by the story, but kudos for using Dennis Quaid to read the president’s parts of the audiobook – good casting for a president who’s also an action hero.

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Review: Walden on Wheels: On the Open Road from Debt to Freedom

Walden on Wheels: On the Open Road from Debt to Freedom by Ken Ilgunas
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I chose to read this book because it sounded like an interesting story of a young man who decides to live in a van. Given a short look at the book description and subtitle, it seemed this also would discuss getting out of debt. This seemed to be a very practical direction for a book like this to take, as opposed to another tact, a philosophical review of living in a vehicle. That word “Walden” in the title suggested this might be more philosophical and less practical, but the descriptions seemed to lean toward a practical memoir. Approaching the book this way, I was not looking for wisdom, I was just looking for a good story by a young author. That’s what I got. I’ve noticed reviews that pillory the author for being a self-centered person, finding fault with every one he meets. I saw some of that, but I believe that that is how many young people think. In talking to my nephews, of a similar age to the author, I see the same attempts to “figure out” people and situations, often from a self-centered perspective, and often ending with self-satisfaction in the analysis. That’s what I found here, albeit with an interesting story about the author’s jobs in Alaska, none of which involved a van. In fact, beside a short introductory anecdote, the author doesn’t live in a van until the last third of the book. This didn’t end up being about living in a van.

Instead, this is about an almost paranoid response to having debt. The author frets about his (and his friend’s) student loan debt throughout the book. He decides early on to eliminate his debt as quickly as possible and to not take on more debt for continuing education. He does this through cheap living, low-wage jobs, and a rapid debt repayment schedule. By the time the author decides to return to school and live in a van, he has saved enough to only need free housing for a semester, which is where that van comes in. But of course, the van isn’t free, so the reader wonders if living with roommates would have been as inexpensive. The author ends up writing an article about his van living arrangements, and seems to decide he needs to keep the van despite having the resources to rent his own place. This is an odd choice, not well explained, but I suspect he had decided to write a book about his experiences around that time. Another thing that I was looking for but never found was a discussion about taking on debt for home buying. The author never discusses this, but he seems so opposed to the idea of debt that he will never hold a mortgage.

As a story about a young college graduate rapidly eliminating debt while working interesting jobs, many outdoors and in Alaska, this is a very good story. It’s also interesting in a voyeuristic way to see the lengths the author goes through to avoid spending money. I wouldn’t approach the book expecting great wisdom, though, or a commonly repeatable tightwad-like lifestyle. This seems quite extreme and, in the end, kind of silly.


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Review: The 100: Count ONLY Sugar Calories and Lose Up to 18 Lbs. in 2 Weeks

The 100: Count ONLY Sugar Calories and Lose Up to 18 Lbs. in 2 Weeks by Jorge Cruise
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I don’t read diet books, but I found this short audiobook at the library, and thought I would try one. I probably picked the wrong one. The audiobook covered about what I expected. Of the three CDs in the set, the first two went over what the author finds wrong with other diets. The third CD covered the diet, which really was to limit (specific) sugar-based calories to 100 per day. Sounds like a lot of work if you are tracking these things manually. Unfortunately, the publishers of this audiobook decided that three entire chapters would be withheld from audio, and only made available as PDFs. The publishers apparently forgot that people buy audiobooks in order to listen to them, not to read them. While there is certainly some content that is better read than listened to, and in this case that might have been these chapters that actually gave details on how this diet works through recipes and menus, I was left after finishing the audiobook unable to determine if the author had a point or not. For all I know, he could have told you to only eat eye of newt. In cases where the content may be unsuitable for audio, generally where there are long lists, extensive photos or charts, or recipes or Web URLs, publishers would do their readers a favor by providing an audio summary of the extracted content. Authors really should push back if the audio production of their work gets this kind of treatment. The format of this CD set should be listed as partial e-text with abridged audio. Book was going to rate between 1 and 3 stars if I could have listened to all of it, but the audio version gets a 1.

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Review: The Million Dollar Writer: How to Have a Legitimate - and Lucrative - Career as a Writer

The Million Dollar Writer: How to Have a Legitimate - and Lucrative - Career as a Writer by Richard Gallagher
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Like many other “how to make money writing” books out there. This one suggests focusing on a specialty area of writing, like for technical documentation or writing for trade magazines or for online company marketing efforts. Also describes the author’s ghostwriting practice, but suggests it is very difficult to enter this market. I found the writing was fine, and the stories interesting, making this one of the better of the bunch.

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Review: The Age of Cryptocurrency: How Bitcoin and Digital Money Are Challenging the Global Economic Order

The Age of Cryptocurrency: How Bitcoin and Digital Money Are Challenging the Global Economic Order by Paul Vigna
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A history of money begins this book on cryptocurrency. Following the history (and interesting philosophy discussion about the meaning of value), the book drills into the history of cryptocurrency and the use of blockchain technology to track its use. The author takes what could be a technical subject and gives just enough description to help non-technical readers understand what is going on when they hear these terms. The book provides a lot of recent history on cryptocurrency, including magazine-style profiles of many leading figures in the industry. Many of the ups and downs of the value of cryptocurrency and attempts at regulation are documented. The book ends with a discussion of the future of cryptocurrency. Written in a popular style, not academic. Good for those wanting a readable introduction.

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Review: Retire Securely: Insights on Money Management from an Award-Winning Financial Columnist

Retire Securely: Insights on Money Management from an Award-Winning Financial Columnist by Julie Jason
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Jason has provided a compilation of articles she has written on personal finance topics, organized by theme. I am well read in popular personal finance and retirement planning books, and a majority of the information presented here is covered in other places. Jason does a nice job of organizing the information, and I found that at times she tended to drill a little deeper on topics than, say a Money magazine article. While some times this was useful, at times she included information appropriate when written, such as a discussion on changed savings limits that have, or could, change again in the future. Also, a few topics strayed from the titular intent of this book, such as college funding. Still, overall a good reminder of the issues found when planning for retirement. Two and a half stars, rounded up.

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Review: American Icon: Alan Mulally and the Fight to Save Ford Motor Company

American Icon: Alan Mulally and the Fight to Save Ford Motor Company by Bryce G. Hoffman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Quite an extensive look at the state of the American auto industry during and immediately prior to the financial crisis of 2008, including the story of Ford avoiding bankruptcy. The book starts with Ford’s declining fortunes under Bill Ford, who steps aside as CEO to bring in Alan Mulally from Boeing. The book did an excellent job in setting the background for Mulally’s early tenure at Ford, including describing the board and Bill Ford’s management and style, Mulally’s experience at Boeing, and the detailed pursuit of Mulally for the CEO’s role. The second half of the book described Mulally’s management style and the company’s response to financial issues that ended with Ford’s American competitors in bankruptcy, but with Ford still operating without those protections. Mulally is often described here as having an engineer mindset, and his ability to manage the complexities of Ford through these financial issues is a good explanation of what that means. I found this to be a great story, and a great example of a business book that lets the reader take away ideas about how to approach problems, especially those managing many people with varied alliances within the company.

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Review: The Octopus: A Story of California

The Octopus: A Story of California by Frank Norris
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

With more carnage and destruction than a typical Rambo movie, “The Octopus” shows the battle of the farmers against the railroad, but serves as a comparable stand in for the little guy against big business. As Norris writes it, there are winners and losers, but even the winners face a deserved bad ending. I found the story here more depressing than my normal fare, but it’s what I expect from Norris. In Norris’ “McTeague” the dentist main character tells others “don’t make small of me”. That same term comes up here, as a small farmer, specifically one who seems more lucky than smart, worries about others making small of him. Norris chronicles the growing pissing contest between the railroad and the farmers, with carnage, physical and familial, resulting. It seems the smartest guys in the book are the businessmen, so I wonder where Norris’ allegiance lay. I found the description of the farmer’s and the railroad owner’s parties to be quite interesting, and it surprised me that so much of this book’s action revolved around parties. He seemed to be comparing the farmers to the rich businessmen here, who acted in similar ways. One key lesson: stay away from the grain handling equipment.

I listened to the Librivox audio edition of this book. The narrator, Delmar H. Dolbier, used distinctive voices for the many characters in this book. His voices helped distinguish characters throughout the book, and helped with my enjoyment and recollection.

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Review: Daddy, Stop Talking! And Other Things My Kids Want But Won't Be Getting

Daddy, Stop Talking! And Other Things My Kids Want But Won't Be Getting by Adam Carolla
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

In short, uncomfortably funny, to me. The overuse of profanity and the general trashing of his own parents are not what I’d consider highlights, but he has some funny bits here, some that seem very familiar to this Dad of two kids. I listened on audio, and this has to be the best way to experience this book. Carolla (apparently) goes off script a number of times, conversing with his producer and bringing his kids to the studio to have their say on how they were raised. Many years ago I enjoyed Carolla’s radio show online, and this was like a cable version of his old show, rants and all. I suspect this is an acquired taste, so ymmv.

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Review: The Cloudbuster Nine: The Untold Story of Ted Williams and the Baseball Team That Helped Win World War II

The Cloudbuster Nine: The Untold Story of Ted Williams and the Baseball Team That Helped Win World War II by Anne R. Keene
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

After reading many books on baseball, and many on history, I’ve separated the two kinds of books. There’s a baseball book. In a baseball book, the author tends to focus on a perspective or two, from a player, coach, umpire, or someone else intimately involved in the playing of the game. Level or age doesn’t matter here, it could be kids or major leaguers, there is still a baseball-informed point of view. Or you see the fan’s perspective, or the front office guy perspective. These are similar in that they show thought about the game itself, but not necessarily from the on field perspective. “The Cloudbuster Nine” didn’t strike me as a baseball book, but as a history book about baseball, one step removed from those baseball books I described above.

The author tells a lot of different but related stories here. The story of how the US military used baseball and other sports to train pilots. The story of how baseball continued outside of the major leagues during the war. The story of how the university at Chapel Hill sold the military on creating a pilot training academy on campus. The storyline that was the source of the title is about one of those military teams, with a few major leaguers, some well known, but others not so. There is a story about the Cloudbusters taking on an all star major league team that was managed by Babe Ruth, and where Babe had his final at bat. Outside of that story, which gave some game details, most of the stories were more about travel, schooling, and the like. More of what I’d consider a history book. The author points out that not a lot is known about these teams by current fans, but she then describes how well covered their games were by a press that was looking for stories like this – major leaguers playing with high school kids, against all stars as well as college teams and industrial teams. The impetus of the book was her discovery after her father passes away of photos and mementos of his time with the Cloudbusters.

The author bookends the history with a personal story of her father, who was a Cloudbuster bat boy. She tells a very human story, interweaving anecdotes about her father. He played ball well but never made the majors, and it impacted him for the rest of his life. This was quite a poignant telling.

Interesting, and a good slice of history of military pilot training in WWII, and baseball and other organized sports as part of that training.


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Review: The Organized Home: Simple, Stylish Storage Ideas for All Over the House

The Organized Home: Simple, Stylish Storage Ideas for All Over the House by Julie Carlson
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Many pretty pictures, but of parts of houses where there are few possessions. I liked the listing of storage containers and products at the end, although I'm not sure a bag of rubber bands, with artsy photo, was something I couldn't figure out on my own. (I've used rubber bands since way back. Call me a rebel.) There were a number of ideas here that were new to me, like decanting your liquid laundry detergent into a Pottery Barn-esque olive oil container. This was obviously written before the advent of Tide Pods and their not-so-obvious confusion as edibles. Another idea was to use trays, like a nice porcelain tray, on a countertop or dresser to demark where to put things with a commonality, like stuff from your pockets, or measuring devices. This also seemed to cause more work (more stuff to dust), and with doubtful practical benefit. But I agree, it did look pretty and minimalist, with little else on the counter. Interesting for that kind of view, and good if you are looking for a stylish product to store things. Or rubber bands.

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Review: The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win

The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win by Gene Kim
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“The Phoenix Project” gave me what I was expecting – a story of a couple of months in the life of an earnest low-level IT manager thrust into an IT disaster-in-the-making and solving his companies issues through low-emotion thinking, planning, and negotiating while learning at the feet of an optimization guru. Through the hero’s actions, no one is laid off or outsourced, and his boss looks like a hero to his board and investors. And the hero is rewarded by being promoted out of IT. An IT success story. I enjoyed the way the author wove into the story issues that illustrated the learning path of the hero. The story didn’t suffer too much with the extended descriptions of what the guru was teaching. This is one of those books that would be good to take a few notes on in order to remember the concepts, but there aren’t a lot, and the afterward to the book included many helpful sections for further information. This felt a lot like “The Goal”, but with an IT workflow perspective. Entertaining way to learn, or relearn, some workflow optimization.

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Review: I'll Be There for You: The One about Friends

I'll Be There for You: The One about Friends by Kelsey Miller
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I’ve not been a fan of Friends, but my wife is, and I’ve grown accustomed to hearing episodes drone by at night like an audio nightlight. Friends tends to get turned to after the local news, and it’s often on until we go to sleep, sometimes for minutes and sometimes for hours. I was a half generation past the Friends cadre (I was more of the Thirtysomething aspirational set), and wasn’t a city dweller, so it didn’t pique the interest. But in the years of living with Friends on in the background, I’ve become accustomed to the characters. I find the characters well written, at times, and well acted, at times. And I appreciated how the show was put together. This book tells of Friends in all aspects, including the genesis of the show, the building of the cast, the highlights over the years, and the negotiations that made entertainment news. I suspect this book contains more detail than a fan would have picked up reading People or entertainment news while the show was running, but not a lot more detail. There is some of what I would consider analysis of the characters, and I found that part quite interesting. For instance, I learned more about the Rachel character than I expected, and since reading this I’ve watched the reruns with a more observant eye for her spoiled rich kid personality. I really hadn’t noticed it before (it didn’t stand out in comparison to many local characters). Also interesting was the analysis of “fat” Monica. I was also surprised that the authors didn’t drill down into every episode for some content, but I’m glad they didn’t. Just the highlights are here. For those looking for a trip down memory lane, or looking to what went into a successful comedy, this is a nice telling.

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Review: I, The Jury

I, The Jury by Mickey Spillane
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I remember watching Stacy Keach’s Mike Hammer on television when it was first run, back in the 80s. At the time, I was a fan of what seemed to be the more cerebral tough guy detectives, like Lew Archer, the Continental Op, Philip Marlowe, and the like. I got the impression, from the tv show or from the reviews I had read, that Spillane was “working class” in terms of writing and in terms of his detective. I found in reading “I, the Jury” that that is true, but like many writers that found popularity, the tone has a way of growing on you. This certainly had more violence than the others, and more deeply described to almost a comic-book level. It also had more sex than I recall compared to the others mentioned, but Hammer is still kind of a one girl guy here. He’s got sex on his mind, enough to think about it a lot but not enough to do anything about it beside propose. I’m sure this was racy for the 40s, when written, but seems very tame compared to stuff, say, from the 60s. Nowadays, this book as written would be too tame for an HBO series, though it certainly isn’t Disney material either. I will read more in this series, at least to see how the writing grows as the author ages and how the characters reflect the times.

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Review: How Not to Run a B&b

How Not to Run a B&b by Bobby Hutchinson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

For those interested in the financial aspects of how to run a B&B, this is not the book you are looking for. There is little here on finances, beyond noticing how expensive things are. There’s actually more financial info here on income of romance authors. And this doesn’t contain how-to’s on running a B&B. It’s not that kind of book. Oddly, it is more like “A Year in Provence”, albeit on a different scale and a tight budget. Instead of swimming pools and vineyards, this is more about electric toilets, stained sheets, and vermin infestations. The author describes many of her guests and renters, as well as the local folks that help her maintain her home and that provide the flavor of a neighborhood. She comes at innkeeping without having actually stayed at a B&B, and without apparently having lived in a large older house that required plentiful maintenance. She shares many mistakes and learnings, as many make for good anecdotes. I found this a quite interesting slice-of-life story, and I’m not surprised at where the story, and the author, goes in the end. The author includes some of her recipes, including some “tricks” she’s learned along the way. Most surprising to me were the number of foreign guests she attracts, many who stay for extended periods. If you have thought about opening a B&B, this will give you enough stories to either give pause or light your fuse. Entertaining.

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Review: Superhubs: How the Financial Elite and their Networks Rule Our World

Superhubs: How the Financial Elite and their Networks Rule Our World by Sandra Navidi
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Lifestyles of the financial rich and famous. Eye opening, but in that kind of way. You get behind the scenes descriptions of top financial meetings like Davos and Bilderberg. Item that stuck in my head (since I was listening to this audiobook while on a treadmill): top financiers must be very fit to attract others into their “super-hub” of relationships. I found more of the writing focused on the celebrity, and much less on the academics of networks than I would have expected. This is much more readable because of this. I’d consider it an example of “pop international finance” in that you learn a bit about how top financial executives work while also learning about how their social lives work. In that Robin Leach kind of way, this has some fascinating content.

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Review: Magic Words: The Science and Secrets Behind Seven Words That Motivate, Engage, and Influence

Magic Words: The Science and Secrets Behind Seven Words That Motivate, Engage, and Influence by Tim David
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

When I first saw this book, I thought it would be a good place to learn when to use “Shazam” and when to use “Presto”, and if it was polite to use “Abracadabra” in all circumstances. After all, the book is called “Magic Words” and it is written by a magician. But no, this ended up being about my second favorite subject, the impact of the words you use on influencing the way people think. I’ve read quite a few books that cover this topic as part of a larger review of influence, but this book focuses on 7 “words”. There’s actually 6 words and one special “word”, the listener’s name, that is analyzed. The words are all simple, short common words, the longest being “because”, but also including “yes” and “but”. Given just this description, this could have been written as a Hallmark Cards book, with just some advice in adages. But again, no, this book includes research descriptions and describes how the simple word can be used in a powerful way, with examples and anecdotes to illustrate. For example, the author describes the use of the word “but” to, in effect, bury the lead phrase. If you hear “I enjoyed the book but it was too short” you would focus on “it was too short” and may not even register the speaker enjoyed the book. The author suggests a tactic to counter this is to repeat the phrase but rearrange the parts, or in this case “The book was too short but you enjoyed it?” An interesting tactic. I've found myself unintentionally using "but" this way, and I know now why I get a different reaction than I expect. The book has a few other suggestions in a similar vein. I found this very readable and actionable.

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Review: The Compassionate Achiever: How Helping Others Fuels Success

The Compassionate Achiever: How Helping Others Fuels Success by Christopher L. Kukk
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Given the title of this book, the “Compassionate Achiever”, it could have gone about anywhere. Much of the book ended up being about decision making and looking for mutual benefit, listening skills, as well as thinking outside the box or perspective shifting. If those topics sound familiar, you’ve probably been reading self help books written in the past decade or so. These are common topics. The author comes at this from a different angle – using these tactics to do compassionate things for others. I didn’t find that angle to be that different from how I normally approach my life, so this didn’t cause any life changes here. At least at times, the author was writing for an audience of leaders, which also limited my appreciation. But I did enjoy the voice of the author and the anecdotes he used to illustrate various concepts, and I would consider reading more by this author.

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