Book Club 2015

APLG Book Club titles.  The newer the book, the more difficult to find (and easier to purchase).

The Heart and the Fist: The Education of a Humanitarian, the Making of a Navy SEAL (2011) by Eric Greitens, 309pp. Growing up in Missouri, his big fears were that he’d “been born at the wrong time” — that “the time for heroes” might have passed — and that he might miss his “ticket to a meaningful life.” He attended Duke University, won a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford and earned a Ph.D., writing a dissertation on humanitarian movements and relief work.  Over the years Mr. Greitens would work in refugee camps in Croatia, visit aid projects in Rwanda and meet Mother Teresa in India. He became an “advocate for using power, where necessary, to protect the weak, to end ethnic cleansing, to end genocide” but wondered how he could “ask others to put themselves in harm’s way” when he hadn’t done so himself. At 26 he signed up with the Navy, turning down offers to stay on at Oxford and a lucrative consulting job.  Although Mr. Greitens does an evocative job of describing the hell of training and the valor of the comrades he served with in Iraq, much of his book is concerned with the evolution of his larger vision of public service.

THE SIGNAL AND THE NOISE (2012) by Nate Silver, 523pp. 

Nate Silver has lived a preposterously interesting life. In 2002, while toiling away as a lowly consultant for the accounting firm KPMG, he hatched a revolutionary method for predicting the performance of baseball players, which the Web site Baseball Prospectus subsequently acquired. The following year, he took up poker in his spare time and quit his job after winning $15,000 in six months. (His annual poker winnings soon ran into the six-figures.) Then, in early 2008, Silver noticed that most political prognostication was bunk. Silver promptly reinvented that field, too. His predictive powers were such that at one point the Obama campaign turned to him for guidance. out how likely a particular hunch is right in light of the evidence we observe). These triumphs have built Silver a loyal following among fantasy-baseball aficionados and the political buffs who flock to his New York Times blog, FiveThirty­Eight. His signature approach is to concentrate enormous amounts of data on questions that lend themselves to pious blather. For example: television blowhards are fond of proclaiming that the winner of the Iowa caucuses enjoys a big bounce in the New Hampshire primary. Silver crunched numbers dating back to the 1970s and found that the bounce comes less from winning Iowa than from exceeding expectations there.

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking (2012) by Susan Cain, 333pp.  The introverts who are the subject of Susan Cain’s new book, “Quiet,” don’t experience their inwardness in quite so self-congratulatory a way.   They and others view their tendency toward solitary activity, quiet reflection and reserve as “a second-class personality trait, somewhere between a disappointment and a pathology,” Cain writes. Too often denigrated and frequently overlooked in a society that’s held in thrall to an “Extrovert Ideal — the omnipresent belief that the ideal self is gregarious, alpha and comfortable in the spotlight,” Cain’s introverts are overwhelmed by the social demands thrust upon them. They’re also underwhelmed by the example set by the voluble, socially successful go-getters in their midst who “speak without thinking,” in the words of a Chinese software engineer whom Cain encounters in Cupertino, Calif., the majority Asian-American enclave that she suggests is the introversion capital of the United States.

DOUBLE DOWN: Game Change 2012 (2013), by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann, 499 pp.  Details of the 2012 Presidential campaign.  Halperin and Heilemann had a huge success with their previous book, “Game Change,” a seemingly minute-by-minute account of the 2008 presidential campaign. Now they want the franchise, the way Theodore H. White had it with his “Making of the President” series in the 1960s. Their new book is chock-full of anecdotes, secret meetings, indiscreet remarks. They gathered string in 500 interviews. All the usual Washingtonians talked to them not for the sake of history, or even to make sure their side of the story got told, but because they wanted to be included. People buy the book for similar reasons. No one can compete. That’s what it means to own the franchise. It’s a small club: these two guys and Bob Woodward. And with this book, they’ve earned their admission.

Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead (2013) by Sheryl Sanderg, 229pp. Her point, in a nutshell, is that notwithstanding the many gender biases that still operate all over the workplace, excuses and justifications won’t get women anywhere. Instead, believe in yourself, give it your all, “lean in” and “don’t leave before you leave” — which is to say, don’t doubt your ability to combine work and family and thus edge yourself out of plum assignments before you even have a baby. Leaning in can promote a virtuous circle: you assume you can juggle work and family, you step forward, you succeed professionally, and then you’re in a better position to ask for what you need and to make changes that could benefit others.
THE POWER OF HABIT (2012). by Charles Duhigg, 371pp. An examination of the science behind habits, how we form them and break them.  Charles Duhigg, an investigative reporter for The New York Times, has written an entertaining book to help us do just that, “The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business.” Duhigg has read hundreds of scientific papers and interviewed many of the scientists who wrote them, and relays interesting findings on habit formation and change from the fields of social psychology, clinical psychology and neuroscience. This is not a self-help book conveying one author’s homespun remedies, but a serious look at the science of habit formation and change. 

BEING MORTAL (2014) by Atul Gawande, 282pp. The surgeon and New Yorker writer considers how doctors fail patients at the end of life, and how they can do better.  The surgeon in the story is the father of Atul Gawande, who is also a surgeon as well as a writer for The New Yorker. His new book, “Being Mortal,” is a personal meditation on how we can better live with age-related frailty, serious illness and approaching death.  It is also a call for a change in the philosophy of health care. Gawande writes that members of the medical profession, himself included, have been wrong about what their job is. Rather than ensuring health and survival, it is “to enable well-being.”

THE INNOVATORS (2014) by Walter Isaacson 560pp.  Studies of the people who created computers and the Internet, beginning in the 1840s.  Following his blockbuster biography of Steve Jobs, The Innovators is Walter Isaacson’s revealing story of the people who created the computer and the Internet. It is destined to be the standard history of the digital revolution and an indispensable guide to how innovation really happens.  What were the talents that allowed certain inventors and entrepreneurs to turn their visionary ideas into disruptive realities? What led to their creative leaps? Why did some succeed and others fail?  In his masterly saga, Isaacson begins with Ada Lovelace, Lord Byron’s daughter, who pioneered computer programming in the 1840s. He explores the fascinating personalities that created our current digital revolution, such as Vannevar Bush, Alan Turing, John von Neumann, J.C.R. Licklider, Doug Engelbart, Robert Noyce, Bill Gates, Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs, Tim Berners-Lee, and Larry Page.

BETWEEN THE WORLD AND ME (2015), by Ta-Nehisi Coates, 176pp.  In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation’s history and current crisis. Americans have built an empire on the idea of “race,” a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men—bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden.

NOTORIOUS RBG (2015), by Irin Carmon and Shana Knizhnik, pp240.  Notorious RBG, inspired by the Tumblr that amused the Supreme Court Justice herself and brought to you by its founder and an award-winning feminist journalist, is more than just a love letter. It draws on intimate access to Ginsburg's family members, close friends, colleagues, and clerks, as well an interview with the Justice herself. An original hybrid of reported narrative, annotated dissents, rare archival photos and documents, and illustrations, the book tells a never-before-told story of an unusual and transformative woman who transcends generational divides. As the country struggles with the unfinished business of gender equality and civil rights, Ginsburg stands as a testament to how far we can come with a little chutzpah.

EXTREME OWNERSHIP: Applying the principles of Navy SEALs leadership training to any organization (2015) by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin, 317pp.   In Extreme Ownership, Jocko Willink and Leif Babin share hard-hitting, Navy SEAL combat stories that translate into lessons for business and life. With riveting first-hand accounts of making high-pressure decisions as Navy SEAL battlefield leaders, this book is equally gripping for leaders who seek to dominate other arenas. Jocko and Leif served together in SEAL Task Unit Bruiser, the most highly decorated Special Operations unit from the war in Iraq. Their efforts contributed to the historic triumph for U.S. forces in Ramadi. Through those difficult months of sustained combat, Jocko, Leif and their SEAL brothers learned that leadership--at every level--is the most important thing on the battlefield. They started Echelon Front to teach these same leadership principles to companies across industries throughout the business world that want to build their own high-performance, winning teams.

Wooden on Leadership: How to Create a Winning Organization (2005) by John Wooden, 305pp.  John Wooden’s goal in 41 years of coaching never changed; namely, to get maximum effort and peak performance from each of his players in the manner that best served the team.Wooden on Leadership explains step-by-step how he pursued and accomplished this goal. Focusing on Wooden’s 12 Lessons in Leadership and his acclaimed Pyramid of Success, it outlines the mental, emotional, and physical qualities essential to building a winning organization, and shows you how to develop the skill, confidence, and competitive fire to “be at your best when your best is needed”--and teach your organization to do the same.

Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World (2015) by Bruce Schneier. 400pp.  You are under surveillance right now. Your cell phone provider tracks your location and knows who’s with you. Your online and in-store purchasing patterns are recorded, and reveal if you're unemployed, sick, or pregnant. Your e-mails and texts expose your intimate and casual friends. Google knows what you’re thinking because it saves your private searches. Facebook can determine your sexual orientation without you ever mentioning it.  We cooperate with corporate surveillance because it promises us convenience, and we submit to government surveillance because it promises us protection. The result is a mass surveillance society of our own making. But have we given up more than we’ve gained? In Data and Goliath, security expert Bruce Schneier offers another path, one that values both security and privacy. He shows us exactly what we can do to reform our government surveillance programs and shake up surveillance-based business models, while also providing tips for you to protect your privacy every day. You'll never look at your phone, your computer, your credit cards, or even your car in the same way again.

 

Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen (2015) by Mary Norris, 240pp.  Between You & Me features Norris's laugh-out-loud descriptions of some of the most common and vexing problems in spelling, punctuation, and usage―comma faults, danglers, "who" vs. "whom," "that" vs. "which," compound words, gender-neutral language―and her clear explanations of how to handle them. Down-to-earth and always open-minded, she draws on examples from Charles Dickens, Emily Dickinson, Henry James, and the Lord's Prayer, as well as from The Honeymooners, The Simpsons, David Foster Wallace, and Gillian Flynn. She takes us to see a copy of Noah Webster's groundbreaking Blue-Back Speller, on a quest to find out who put the hyphen in Moby-Dick, on a pilgrimage to the world's only pencil-sharpener museum, and inside the hallowed halls of The New Yorker and her work with such celebrated writers as Pauline Kael, Philip Roth, and George Saunders.

 

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2015) by Yuval Noah Harari, 464pp.  One hundred thousand years ago, at least six different species of humans inhabited Earth. Yet today there is only one—homo sapiens. What happened to the others? And what may happen to us? Most books about the history of humanity pursue either a historical or a biological approach, but Dr. Yuval Noah Harari breaks the mold with this highly original book that begins about 70,000 years ago with the appearance of modern cognition. From examining the role evolving humans have played in the global ecosystem to charting the rise of empires, Sapiens integrates history and science to reconsider accepted narratives, connect past developments with contemporary concerns, and examine specific events within the context of larger ideas.