Review: A Small Place in Italy

A Small Place in Italy by Eric Newby
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The author describes buying, rehabbing, and living in a house in the Italian countryside. Making this easier for him is that he is a well-off Englishman who has married an Italian woman. Given the intricacies described of dealing with Italian workmen and becoming a resident, his money and Italian connection through his wife made things easier. But this is a kind of fish-out-of-water story that goes on a long time, as the author becomes part of the neighborhood. I enjoyed the quirky stories of a time gone by. The author’s most interesting observation was about some policemen he was travelling with could easily have killed him a few years earlier, when he was an Allied soldier and they were in the local militia. Things change, often for the better.

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Review: Satan Is Real: The Ballad of the Louvin Brothers

Satan Is Real: The Ballad of the Louvin Brothers by Charlie Louvin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This really wasn’t what I was expecting. I found it exceeded my somewhat high expectations, in a couple of ways. First, I’ve read a number of books by and about older rock and country stars recently. I expected this to be about the same – a well edited story that felt more like a ghost writer overworked the subject instead of letting the subject’s personality come out. In “Satan is Real”, named after a popular Louvin Brothers recording pictured on the cover, you get the feeling that you are reading predominately Charlie Louvin, with perhaps some minor clean up by an editor. This had an edgier personality to the writing as opposed to the laidback voice of many “autobiography” subjects. Another aspect of the book was the series of dichotomies. This is about a famous duet, mostly known for gospel recordings. Yet the book talks of knock down fights between the brothers and others, excessive drinking, woman chasing, pill popping, tantrums, and the like, more like what you’d expect from typical country or hard rock stars than gospel singers. Louvin even unexpectedly throws in a few choice cuss words, often near the end of his short chapters as if he wanted to save the invective until the end of his thoughts, as punctuation. There’s one short brother and one tall, one wild and one sober. They start picking cotton and end up one of the most successful duets in gospel and country music. One brother dies young, while the other writes the story of their lives. It is a surprisingly interesting story that would make a good movie or HBO-type series, and I’m surprised this hasn’t been done yet. The writing tends to be simple, and the author doesn’t go into any depth about his own life after his brother’s death, so there are bits that feel missing, but overall I found this a very good story. I had never listened to songs by the Louvin Brothers prior to reading this book, but I am a fan of what I’ve heard since.

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Review: The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past

The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past by John Lewis Gaddis
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

A historian analogizes the practice of writing history. It’s like making a map, where the mapmaker gets to decide what to feature, and how to measure, and level of detail. Later, it’s like something else. I found this interesting for a bit, but found the intellectual navel gazing, while very well written in non-academic prose, still couldn’t hold my interest beyond the first change of analogy. The style of writing was interesting enough that I would look for other books by this author on actual histories.

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Review: The Bogleheads' Guide to the Three-Fund Portfolio: How a Simple Portfolio of Three Total Market Index Funds Outperforms Most Investors with Less Risk

The Bogleheads' Guide to the Three-Fund Portfolio: How a Simple Portfolio of Three Total Market Index Funds Outperforms Most Investors with Less Risk by Taylor Larimore
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Quite a short book laying out the main reasons the “three-fund portfolio” of the book title makes sense compared to investing in individual stocks or actively managed funds/etfs, or any other index funds/etfs. If you’ve read about index funds, say from any of Bogle’s books, you will see this is just a shortened version of one of his arguments for his funds. Fine for what it is, and fine as a reminder of why you invest in these funds, but the author interjects short testimonials within the text, making this sound too much like a marketing pitch. Without these testimonials, the book would be much shorter. Similar to some of the postings I've seen on Bogleheads and Reddit financial independence sites, and very similar to Bogle's own books.

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Review: The Friendly Orange Glow: The Untold Story of the PLATO System and the Dawn of Cyberculture

The Friendly Orange Glow: The Untold Story of the PLATO System and the Dawn of Cyberculture by Brian Dear
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Five star books get that high ranking from me when they deliver an emotional connection. Sometimes it is because of a topic covered, at times it is the strength of the writing that forges that connection. Here, it is a linkage between a topic of great, career-building interest to me, computer history, with my own history. With an author that can mix these things together, creating interesting and varied stories along the way, you have a great book. I found “The Friendly Orange Glow” to be a great book, although I expect that opinion will match that of a very small cadre of fans. This book tells the story of the Plato system, used principally for education but later morphing into one of the first interconnected systems for electronic communications and gaming. Most of the book covers the creation of the system and its growth, mostly in the 60s and 70s. My personal connection was as a gamer in the early 80s at the home base for Plato, the University of Illinois’ CERL. I spent many nights (you could only play games after 10pm) in the CERL Plato classroom among the glowing orange touchscreens of the Plato system. Many early games are described in the book, from the perspectives of the game authors as well the players. I haven’t thought about these games in decades but this really brought back intense memories. I was interested to learn that the Plato system represented many developments that later became commonplace on the internet, including message boards, instant messaging, notes groups, shared screens, and the like. Authors on Plato went on to create popular computer games like Flight Simulator and Mah Jong and ubiquitous applications like Lotus Notes. This history-making computer system was enabled through a very open environment with try-anything leaders, always willing to do a demo. Much of the early system work was accomplished by interesting kids from the neighboring Uni High in the goings on, and later hiring them. The book follows the Plato system through its initial development at CERL and other colleges, through the years that CDC attempted to sell it around the world, and to its demise.

This is a great book for a detailed telling of the history of this computer system. The author provides stories of many of the players on the team building and selling Plato, and developing applications. This would be a good business book for those looking for an example of open door recruitment, as well as the use of non-traditional employees. And it provides a detailed example of what can go wrong in moving a research project to commercialization. I found the commercialization section the least interesting parts, though mainly because they were mostly about missed opportunities. Overall, an excellent computer history.

“The Friendly Orange Glow” was written to counter the lack of credit that the Midwest, in particular Illinois, gets in computer history. Here the Plato system gets credit for many innovations later popularized by various applications over the Internet. This is the second book I’ve perused that gave credit to the Midwest, and Illinois, for major advances in computers. The inventor of the computer says that he first wrote down his description of a computer in a bar in Rock Island, Illinois. Maybe there’s something in the water.


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Review: The Terranauts

The Terranauts by T. Coraghessan Boyle
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Boyle takes the concept of Biosphere 2 and builds it into what could easily become a TV series. We follow two inhabitants of the desert biosphere and one support worker, who all take turns narrating the story from their point of view. There’s danger, but it’s a kind of manufactured danger due to the cult-like sense of mission. There’s passion, but it revolves among the limited number of characters seeming to pair up in as many combinations as you’d get on a few seasons of Friends. There are surprising occurrences, but they are telegraphed. One character, or rather all characters, are schemers at some level, trying to get what they want. One is played for comic relief (and not surprisingly that was the character I most appreciated). So it was a lot like a typical cable series. While I appreciated the overall discussion on mission and the lengths people go to fulfill one, this didn’t come across to me as a very “literary” book, but more of a pop entertainment story. Enjoyable as such.

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Review: The Zappos Experience: 5 Principles to Inspire, Engage, and Wow

The Zappos Experience: 5 Principles to Inspire, Engage, and Wow by Joseph A. Michelli
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Zappos is known for their excellent customer service. In this book, the author, Joseph Michelli, investigates the company to determine how they have architected their company to provide this service. He breaks it down into 5 sections, but it can truly be focused on creating company process that enables stellar service, and creating HR processes that focus on benefiting the employee and the company. For instance, Michelli describes using anecdotes how employees have responded to customer issues, even those not involving the products being sold. An example is sending flowers to a customer who is dealing with returning shoes bought by her mother, who died before handling the return. An example of HR processes that Michelli highlights is the extensive employee training curriculum offered by the company, and the free use of business books from the company library. (Of course, since they are now owned by Amazon, I can understand the book benefit.) The book did bring up an issue that wasn’t covered in much detail – given this company has a single large office, with a second large office being built during the timeframe of this book, and with a large warehouse, geographically distant, the company would need to ensure their workers in all locations could deliver that high level of customer service. But it seemed from my reading that the training classes and many of the HR tactics to build a cohesive workforce (like invite-a-coworker-to-lunch prompting) generally require co-located employees. A minor miss, but perhaps this will be followed up on by other authors or editions. My favorite gleaning from this book is that Zappos openly calls themselves “weird”. And given many of the examples of employee parties, as well as company processes, that seems an apt description. It’s working for them.

Michelli includes questions within each chapter to help the reader consider adapting Zappos’ ways in their own companies. I enjoyed the author’s voice in this book, and appreciated the way the author categorized Zappos’ somewhat unique way of working. While I am not in a position in my company to enact these strategies and tactics, I can see how these descriptions could change an executive's thinking. Another excellent company dissection by Michelli.


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