Recommended Reading



	Recommended Readings I'm an avid reader, and the following is a partial list of the books I'm enthusiastic about. Economics and Globalization Small is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People Mattered. E.F. Schumacher, Harper and Row, 1989 Edition. (First published in 1973). An outstanding refutation of economic and political globalization written in a positive, inspiring way. The focus is on the positives of scale and proportion in our lives. How living in communities with appropriate scale not only enriches our lives but nourishes the natural systems upon which we depend. How massive systems alienate individuals and impoverish our lives, while destroying natural systems that we depend on for survival and meaning. The Industrial Revolution, 1760-1830, T.S. Ashton, Oxford University Press, 1997 Edition. A classic and easily readable work on the Industrial Revolution in England. Ashton illustrates the environment which fostered the revolution and many of the individuals who drove it. This is a great tour-de-force of the impact of innovation on a society. First published in 1968. State of the World 2004: The Consumer Society. A Worldwatch Institute Report, W.W. Norton & Company, 2004. A sobering, product by product study of the consequences of consumerism. It's clear to me that the rampant consumerism this report describes is primarily driven by unmet needs created by globalization as it destroys local economies, cultures and political systems. What we have chosen is massive consumption rather than meaningful economic and social systems advocated in Small is Beautiful. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, Jared Diamond, Penguin Group, 2005. A careful study of what caused some societies to collapse and what has enabled others to endure in the face of similar challenges to survival. He takes the reader on a global and historic journey. He relates historic failures and successes to the current ecological, economic and social challenges facing us. Against the Grain, Richard Manning, North Point Press, 2004. A challenging study of how agriculture has driven the evolution of modern civilization for the last 10 thousand years; for good and for ill. He concludes with a chilling assessment of the impacts of industrial agriculture on the global ecosystem, global economics and US politics. An All-Consuming Century: Why Commercialism Won in Modern America. Gary Cross, Columbia University Press, New York, 2000. A study of the process by which consumerism emerged as the dominant myth in our culture. How it replaced meaningful work and even religion in the majority of Americans. How shopping malls became substitutes for churches and social systems. The Empty Ocean: Plundering the World's Marine Life, Richard Ellis, Island Press, Washington D.C., 2003. This is a thoughtful documentation of what we have already done to deplete the oceans' marine life. The author knows his subject well, is careful, thorough and easy to understand. But the message is frightening: the best case is that the oceans might recover if we immediately make dramatic changes in how we fish and drastic reductions in annual catches. The worst case is that we have already done irreparable damage and will begin to reap the terrible consequences within the immediate future. Six Modern Plagues: and How We Are Causing Them. Mark Jerome Walters, Island Press, Washington D.C., 2003. How we have changed the natural environment to globalize West Nile virus, mad cow disease, HIV/AIDS, hantavirus, Lyme disease, a new strain of salmonella and SARS. These and other plagues are by products of economic globalization and consumerism. Evolution and Science The Book of Life, Stephen Jay Gould General Editor, W. W. Norton and Company, New York, 2001. A review of Evolution on Earth from the first appearance of life 4 Billion years ago, to its oxygen poisoning some 2 billion years ago, to the rise of the first land plants insects and animals within the last 500 million years, to the rise of modern humans within the last l.5 million years. Integrates climate changes, movements of land masses and other events with mass extinctions and regenerative eras. A great reference book. Well written and profusely illustrated. The Journey of Man: a Genetic Odyssey, Mark Read, Princeton University Press, 2002. A 150 thousand year history of homo-sapiens from our common male ancestor in Africa to our present global distribution. This history of migration is contained in the variations by region of the Y Chromosome of males. Genetic data is augmented and corroborated by information from other fields. Guns, Germs, and Steel: the Fates of Human Societies, Jared Diamond, W. W. Norton & Company, 1997. A Pulitzer Prize winner that traces human history for the last 13 thousand years and points out the "accidental" factors that resulted in Europeans colonizing the Americas and Southeast Asia rather than vice versa. Of particular interest is the role that pathogens have played in our cultural evolution. Darwin's Blind Spot, Frank Ryan, Haughton Mifflin, 2002. A riveting summary of the latest thinking about evolution and the critical role of symbiosis, the intimate interdependence of different species. For example, the survival of our very cells depends on their mitochondria to turn oxygen from a poison to a source of energy. Those mitochondria, with their own DNA were once separate living microbes that adapted to a symbiotic existence in our cells. Our genome evolved and made critical leaps of growth with the help of retroviruses. The takeaway is that intimate cooperation is as essential as competition and random mutations to the evolutionary processes. The Seven Daughters of Eve, Bryan Sykes, W.W. Norton and Company, 2001. Tells the story of how mitochondrial DNA, passed on solely through mothers, was used to identify the mitochondrial Eve (an individual woman) and the 7 women descendants of Eve from whom all modern Europeans descended. This is not fiction, it is hard science. The book also introduces ongoing work on the DNA of human Y chromosome which enables the tracing of male lineage back through the ages. (See The Journey of Man above.) Acquiring Genomes: a Theory of the Origins of Species, by Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan, Basic Books, 2002. An in depth explanation of how symbiosis helped produce complex genomes. Lynn Margulis was a pioneer in this field. Dorion Sagan is her son. This well written book has a narrower scope and is a bit more scientific than Darwin's Blind Spot, but very satisfying and enlightening. Ubiquity: the science of history....or why the world is simpler than we think, by Mark Buchanan, Crown Publishing, 2000: This book describes the ubiquitous patterns of change and self organization that occur throughout our world. Avalanches, forest fires, economic disasters, mass extinctions and global weather all share common characteristics. Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid, Douglas R. Hofstadter, Vintage Books, 1979. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize. Hofstadter weaves together mathematics, art, music, biology, computer science, and much more into a fun and mind expanding experience. If you know about one of these topics when you start, you can map that knowledge into the other subjects and discover that you already know a lot about them too! This book does not directly talk about business, but it does talk about self-organizing systems and degrees of coupling at low levels (components) that cause "clumped" behaviors at higher levels. This material contributes to the understanding of coherent behaviors in teams of people. In general, this book is just too good for me to pass up an opportunity to recommend it. Suggestion: When you read it, don't plod through it cover to cover. Follow themes (there are seven) with which you are comfortable or familiar, then tackle the unfamiliar. Schrödinger's Kittens and the Search for Reality, John Gribbin, Little, Brown and Company, 1995. A marvelous book on the basic mysteries of Quantum Mechanics. Simple and powerful, and with some of the latest thinking. I've read a multitude of these Physics expositions, John Gribbin is a first rate teacher; the first one (besides the late Richard Feynman) that I'd like to write a fan letter too. General Wider than the Sky, the phenomenal gift of consciousness, Gerald M. Edelman, Yale University Press, 2004. Edelman, a Nobel laureate, provides a concise and readable description of how our brains enable us to integrate a myriad of different sensations (including sound, light, touch, memories, emotions, etc.), make decisions and act on them. Then he lays out a theory of biologically based consciousness as an emergent, robust, and natural consequence of the same processes. This is a small book, well written and powerfully presented. His theory is worth serious consideration. (Note: some general ideas about emergent systems as explained in "Turbulent Mirror" provide a helpful context to this book.) Turbulent Mirror, John Briggs & F. David Peat, Harper and Row, 1989. A study of chaos theory and self-organizing systems that is interesting, very readable, and relevant to markets and business systems. You don't have to be a technologist to read this book. It will alter, for the better, your perspective on how a business actually operates, as a self-organizing system. The True Believer, Eric Hoffer, Harper & Row, 1951. An easy to read, but profound, study of the nature of mass movements. Many of the issues he discusses apply to current events and to the strategies and cultures of many businesses. "There have been many successful movements without a god, but none without a devil." The unifying role of a devil in mass movements. What to do when you're the devil, and what never works. What never works are belligerence and threats or turning the other cheek. According to Eric Hoffer, and he backs his contention with examples, extremists of the right and left are blood brothers. They are easily converted from one movement to another, but not to moderation. George Bush needs to read this book... as well as several others. The Battle for God: A History of Fundamentalism, Karen Armstrong, Random House, 2001 The author describes the development of Fundamentalism in Islam, Christianity and Judaism. She does so with respect for all parties involved. Reading this book (and The True Believer) gave me a clearer understanding of 9/11, Bush's reaction to it and the causes of our tragic difficulties in Iraq. It is uncomfortable to realize that George Bush is comfortable with the fundamentalists of Christianity, the terrorists espouse fundamentalist Islam, and the illegal Jewish settlers in the Palestinian territories are primarily fundamentalist Jews. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig: This book has been widely read by Liberal Arts majors, when it's really a must for technologists. One theme is that Socrates and Aristotle corrupted western thought by making Reason the measure of all things rather than having Quality (in the sense meant by the Greek Rhetoriticians) be the context of all things. The book uses an autobiographical motorcycle journey as the metaphorical framework for a journey of the mind. However, it starts out at a slow pace. In fact it took me a year to make myself read the first 75 pages. After that it was hard for me to put the book down. Use Both Sides of Your Brain, Tony Buzan, Plume/Penguin, 1991. A practical, powerful book that applies what we've learned about the brain to dramatically improve how we study, take notes, plan, and remember. The original book was published in 1974 in conjunction with a BBC television series. It has helped me enormously since I first started applying its lessons 15 years ago. I've given copies to my wife and each of my five children. One daughter, who got her copy the year she started college, credits it with raising her college grade point average above the one she had in high school. The sections on mind-mapping are dynamite for anyone trying to learn new material. Tony Buzan offers a thought that I used at a discussion on computer science curriculum some years ago: The human brain is the only instrument that all of us use that we're not taught how it works. I suggested that computer science curriculum should include a semester on how the human brain works for three reasons: it's an instrument that every computer scientist uses, and should be understood to be used properly; it's the instrument that every computer connects to; its architecture is dramatically different than that of computers and a study of it might spark some needed innovations in computer design. Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, Betty Edwards, Jeremy P. Tarcher, Inc. 1989. Normally my drawing skills peak at stick figures, circles, squares. Betty Edwards shows anyone, and I do mean anyone, how to draw like an artist. Within a week I was doing drawings I couldn't believe. You can too. She teaches that a key to drawing is to relax the left side of the brain! When it is in control we draw stick men. When the right side is in control, which it is most often for artists, we are capable of creating notable artwork, and losing all sense of time as we do so! Business and Marketing Mastering the Dynamics of Innovation, James M. Utterback, Harvard Business School Press, 1994. Must reading for any strategic thinker or visionary in high-tech. James Utterback identifies three distinct phases in the life cycles of all industries. He points out that the critical event in every industry is the emergence of a dominant design, which dramatically and irrevocably changes the industry, the nature of successful innovations, and the fortunes of companies in it. The closed steel body chassis redefined the automobile industry in 1923, and the IBM PC standards (or Intel/Microsoft standards) redefined the Personal Computer industry in 1983. (See my related essay "Standards, Innovation, and Survival") Going to Market, E. Raymond Corey, Frank V. Cespedes, V. Kasturi Rangan, Harvard Business School Press, 1989. An excellent book that studies distribution systems for industrial products. This book isn't currently on book shelves. It can be ordered from McGraw-Hill by calling 1-800-722-4726. The Marketing Imagination, Theodore Levitt, The Free Press, 1986. A practical book on how to develop a competitive advantage for any product in a global market. One thesis of this book, amply demonstrated by example and analysis, is that there is no such thing as a commodity. That is, no company has to compete strictly on price. Executives who think they are selling commodities simply lack an understanding of how to differentiate their products. Strategic Selling, Warner Books, 1986, and Conceptual Selling, Warner Books, 1987 by Robert B. Miller and Stephen E. Heiman, . Two of the finest and most professional books on high-tech selling I've ever read. I've used them in practice. I recommend them unconditionally to every CEO, sales executive, and sales professional. They are important books on the win-win strategies and tactics of selling products and services to major accounts. They cover everything from how to conduct account calls to how to develop account strategies. Hewlett-Packard and Coca Cola are just two of many companies who have incorporated the teachings of these books in their sales programs. John Young, then CEO of HP, wrote an enthusiastic endorsement in the Forward of Strategic Selling. 06/05/2005 Homepage

Recommended Readings

I'm an avid reader, and the following is a partial list of the books I'm enthusiastic about.

Economics and Globalization

Small is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People Mattered. E.F. Schumacher, Harper and Row, 1989 Edition. (First published in 1973). An outstanding refutation of economic and political globalization written in a positive, inspiring way. The focus is on the positives of scale and proportion in our lives. How living in communities with appropriate scale not only enriches our lives but nourishes the natural systems upon which we depend. How massive systems alienate individuals and impoverish our lives, while destroying natural systems that we depend on for survival and meaning.

The Industrial Revolution, 1760-1830, T.S. Ashton, Oxford University Press, 1997 Edition. A classic and easily readable work on the Industrial Revolution in England. Ashton illustrates the environment which fostered the revolution and many of the individuals who drove it. This is a great tour-de-force of the impact of innovation on a society. First published in 1968.

State of the World 2004: The Consumer Society. A Worldwatch Institute Report, W.W. Norton & Company, 2004. A sobering, product by product study of the consequences of consumerism. It's clear to me that the rampant consumerism this report describes is primarily driven by unmet needs created by globalization as it destroys local economies, cultures and political systems. What we have chosen is massive consumption rather than meaningful economic and social systems advocated in Small is Beautiful.

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, Jared Diamond, Penguin Group, 2005. A careful study of what caused some societies to collapse and what has enabled others to endure in the face of similar challenges to survival. He takes the reader on a global and historic journey. He relates historic failures and successes to the current ecological, economic and social challenges facing us.

Against the Grain, Richard Manning, North Point Press, 2004. A challenging study of how agriculture has driven the evolution of modern civilization for the last 10 thousand years; for good and for ill. He concludes with a chilling assessment of the impacts of industrial agriculture on the global ecosystem, global economics and US politics.

An All-Consuming Century: Why Commercialism Won in Modern America. Gary Cross, Columbia University Press, New York, 2000. A study of the process by which consumerism emerged as the dominant myth in our culture. How it replaced meaningful work and even religion in the majority of Americans. How shopping malls became substitutes for churches and social systems.

The Empty Ocean: Plundering the World's Marine Life, Richard Ellis, Island Press, Washington D.C., 2003. This is a thoughtful documentation of what we have already done to deplete the oceans' marine life. The author knows his subject well, is careful, thorough and easy to understand. But the message is frightening: the best case is that the oceans might recover if we immediately make dramatic changes in how we fish and drastic reductions in annual catches. The worst case is that we have already done irreparable damage and will begin to reap the terrible consequences within the immediate future.

Six Modern Plagues: and How We Are Causing Them. Mark Jerome Walters, Island Press, Washington D.C., 2003. How we have changed the natural environment to globalize West Nile virus, mad cow disease, HIV/AIDS, hantavirus, Lyme disease, a new strain of salmonella and SARS. These and other plagues are by products of economic globalization and consumerism.

Evolution and Science
The Book of Life, Stephen Jay Gould General Editor, W. W. Norton and Company, New York, 2001. A review of Evolution on Earth from the first appearance of life 4 Billion years ago, to its oxygen poisoning some 2 billion years ago, to the rise of the first land plants insects and animals within the last 500 million years, to the rise of modern humans within the last l.5 million years. Integrates climate changes, movements of land masses and other events with mass extinctions and regenerative eras. A great reference book. Well written and profusely illustrated.

The Journey of Man: a Genetic Odyssey, Mark Read, Princeton University Press, 2002. A 150 thousand year history of homo-sapiens from our common male ancestor in Africa to our present global distribution. This history of migration is contained in the variations by region of the Y Chromosome of males. Genetic data is augmented and corroborated by information from other fields.

Guns, Germs, and Steel: the Fates of Human Societies, Jared Diamond, W. W. Norton & Company, 1997. A Pulitzer Prize winner that traces human history for the last 13 thousand years and points out the "accidental" factors that resulted in Europeans colonizing the Americas and Southeast Asia rather than vice versa. Of particular interest is the role that pathogens have played in our cultural evolution.

Darwin's Blind Spot, Frank Ryan, Haughton Mifflin, 2002. A riveting summary of the latest thinking about evolution and the critical role of symbiosis, the intimate interdependence of different species. For example, the survival of our very cells depends on their mitochondria to turn oxygen from a poison to a source of energy. Those mitochondria, with their own DNA were once separate living microbes that adapted to a symbiotic existence in our cells. Our genome evolved and made critical leaps of growth with the help of retroviruses. The takeaway is that intimate cooperation is as essential as competition and random mutations to the evolutionary processes.

The Seven Daughters of Eve, Bryan Sykes, W.W. Norton and Company, 2001. Tells the story of how mitochondrial DNA, passed on solely through mothers, was used to identify the mitochondrial Eve (an individual woman) and the 7 women descendants of Eve from whom all modern Europeans descended. This is not fiction, it is hard science. The book also introduces ongoing work on the DNA of human Y chromosome which enables the tracing of male lineage back through the ages. (See The Journey of Man above.)

Acquiring Genomes: a Theory of the Origins of Species, by Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan, Basic Books, 2002. An in depth explanation of how symbiosis helped produce complex genomes. Lynn Margulis was a pioneer in this field. Dorion Sagan is her son. This well written book has a narrower scope and is a bit more scientific than Darwin's Blind Spot, but very satisfying and enlightening.

Ubiquity: the science of history....or why the world is simpler than we think, by Mark Buchanan, Crown Publishing, 2000: This book describes the ubiquitous patterns of change and self organization that occur throughout our world. Avalanches, forest fires, economic disasters, mass extinctions and global weather all share common characteristics.

Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid, Douglas R. Hofstadter, Vintage Books, 1979. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize. Hofstadter weaves together mathematics, art, music, biology, computer science, and much more into a fun and mind expanding experience. If you know about one of these topics when you start, you can map that knowledge into the other subjects and discover that you already know a lot about them too! This book does not directly talk about business, but it does talk about self-organizing systems and degrees of coupling at low levels (components) that cause "clumped" behaviors at higher levels. This material contributes to the understanding of coherent behaviors in teams of people. In general, this book is just too good for me to pass up an opportunity to recommend it. Suggestion: When you read it, don't plod through it cover to cover. Follow themes (there are seven) with which you are comfortable or familiar, then tackle the unfamiliar.

Schrödinger's Kittens and the Search for Reality, John Gribbin, Little, Brown and Company, 1995. A marvelous book on the basic mysteries of Quantum Mechanics. Simple and powerful, and with some of the latest thinking. I've read a multitude of these Physics expositions, John Gribbin is a first rate teacher; the first one (besides the late Richard Feynman) that I'd like to write a fan letter too.

General

Wider than the Sky, the phenomenal gift of consciousness, Gerald M. Edelman, Yale University Press, 2004. Edelman, a Nobel laureate, provides a concise and readable description of how our brains enable us to integrate a myriad of different sensations (including sound, light, touch, memories, emotions, etc.), make decisions and act on them. Then he lays out a theory of biologically based consciousness as an emergent, robust, and natural consequence of the same processes. This is a small book, well written and powerfully presented. His theory is worth serious consideration. (Note: some general ideas about emergent systems as explained in "Turbulent Mirror" provide a helpful context to this book.)

Turbulent Mirror, John Briggs & F. David Peat, Harper and Row, 1989. A study of chaos theory and self-organizing systems that is interesting, very readable, and relevant to markets and business systems. You don't have to be a technologist to read this book. It will alter, for the better, your perspective on how a business actually operates, as a self-organizing system.

The True Believer, Eric Hoffer, Harper & Row, 1951. An easy to read, but profound, study of the nature of mass movements. Many of the issues he discusses apply to current events and to the strategies and cultures of many businesses. "There have been many successful movements without a god, but none without a devil." The unifying role of a devil in mass movements. What to do when you're the devil, and what never works. What never works are belligerence and threats or turning the other cheek. According to Eric Hoffer, and he backs his contention with examples, extremists of the right and left are blood brothers. They are easily converted from one movement to another, but not to moderation. George Bush needs to read this book... as well as several others.

The Battle for God: A History of Fundamentalism, Karen Armstrong, Random House, 2001
The author describes the development of Fundamentalism in Islam, Christianity and Judaism. She does so with respect for all parties involved. Reading this book (and The True Believer) gave me a clearer understanding of 9/11, Bush's reaction to it and the causes of our tragic difficulties in Iraq. It is uncomfortable to realize that George Bush is comfortable with the fundamentalists of Christianity, the terrorists espouse fundamentalist Islam, and the illegal Jewish settlers in the Palestinian territories are primarily fundamentalist Jews.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig: This book has been widely read by Liberal Arts majors, when it's really a must for technologists. One theme is that Socrates and Aristotle corrupted western thought by making Reason the measure of all things rather than having Quality (in the sense meant by the Greek Rhetoriticians) be the context of all things. The book uses an autobiographical motorcycle journey as the metaphorical framework for a journey of the mind. However, it starts out at a slow pace. In fact it took me a year to make myself read the first 75 pages. After that it was hard for me to put the book down.

Use Both Sides of Your Brain, Tony Buzan, Plume/Penguin, 1991. A practical, powerful book that applies what we've learned about the brain to dramatically improve how we study, take notes, plan, and remember. The original book was published in 1974 in conjunction with a BBC television series. It has helped me enormously since I first started applying its lessons 15 years ago. I've given copies to my wife and each of my five children. One daughter, who got her copy the year she started college, credits it with raising her college grade point average above the one she had in high school. The sections on mind-mapping are dynamite for anyone trying to learn new material. Tony Buzan offers a thought that I used at a discussion on computer science curriculum some years ago: The human brain is the only instrument that all of us use that we're not taught how it works. I suggested that computer science curriculum should include a semester on how the human brain works for three reasons: it's an instrument that every computer scientist uses, and should be understood to be used properly; it's the instrument that every computer connects to; its architecture is dramatically different than that of computers and a study of it might spark some needed innovations in computer design.

Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, Betty Edwards, Jeremy P. Tarcher, Inc. 1989. Normally my drawing skills peak at stick figures, circles, squares. Betty Edwards shows anyone, and I do mean anyone, how to draw like an artist. Within a week I was doing drawings I couldn't believe. You can too. She teaches that a key to drawing is to relax the left side of the brain! When it is in control we draw stick men. When the right side is in control, which it is most often for artists, we are capable of creating notable artwork, and losing all sense of time as we do so!

Business and Marketing

Mastering the Dynamics of Innovation, James M. Utterback, Harvard Business School Press, 1994. Must reading for any strategic thinker or visionary in high-tech. James Utterback identifies three distinct phases in the life cycles of all industries. He points out that the critical event in every industry is the emergence of a dominant design, which dramatically and irrevocably changes the industry, the nature of successful innovations, and the fortunes of companies in it. The closed steel body chassis redefined the automobile industry in 1923, and the IBM PC standards (or Intel/Microsoft standards) redefined the Personal Computer industry in 1983. (See my related essay "Standards, Innovation, and Survival")

Going to Market, E. Raymond Corey, Frank V. Cespedes, V. Kasturi Rangan, Harvard Business School Press, 1989. An excellent book that studies distribution systems for industrial products. This book isn't currently on book shelves. It can be ordered from McGraw-Hill by calling 1-800-722-4726.

The Marketing Imagination, Theodore Levitt, The Free Press, 1986. A practical book on how to develop a competitive advantage for any product in a global market. One thesis of this book, amply demonstrated by example and analysis, is that there is no such thing as a commodity. That is, no company has to compete strictly on price. Executives who think they are selling commodities simply lack an understanding of how to differentiate their products.

Strategic Selling, Warner Books, 1986, and Conceptual Selling, Warner Books, 1987 by Robert B. Miller and Stephen E. Heiman, . Two of the finest and most professional books on high-tech selling I've ever read. I've used them in practice. I recommend them unconditionally to every CEO, sales executive, and sales professional. They are important books on the win-win strategies and tactics of selling products and services to major accounts. They cover everything from how to conduct account calls to how to develop account strategies. Hewlett-Packard and Coca Cola are just two of many companies who have incorporated the teachings of these books in their sales programs. John Young, then CEO of HP, wrote an enthusiastic endorsement in the Forward of Strategic Selling.

06/05/2005

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