Economic-Life Books

Hit the road running ... hits home run. A must read for soon-to-be and graduating students. Why make the same mistakes as others when you can learn from them instead. Thanks M.L.

I just bought and used portions of this book. I found it to be extremely helpful in my post graduation job search. I had no idea there was such a straight forward and effective method for putting my degree to work.

Thanks Margot!

The good folks at Real Life Guides have once again delivered an excellent "tour guide" for life after college. Margot Lester and her colleagues provide an excellent resouce for the career and financial issues that leave many in the twenty-something crowd perplexed - and it is enjoyable at the same time.

This book by David Shapiro strikes just the right balance between being two technical and too vague about how to plan for retirement. David hits you right between the eyes with the realities that face those who procrastinate in taking retirement planning seriously. However, the planning process that he outlines and the encouragement that he gives makes you confident that it's never too late to start...but START! It's just a great book that I plan on giving each of my children for Christmas.

I am 45 years old and after seeing the amazing david shapiro on your world with cavalto I relized how much trouble I was in. So as soon as I could I went to my local bookstore and bought myself a copy. By now I have probly read it 5 times and each time I find a new way to prepare myself. I was listening to my accountant and I feel that this book has prepared me for retirement so good that I might even be able to retire ealier than my accountant had said. After reading this book I fired my accountant and am saving money quicker than ever and at this rate making 150,000 a year I can retire by age 55. I would definately highly recommend this book.

This book is a must-have for all people who want to retire comfortably and in style. The author is funny (very witty) and makes the process of understanding retirement easy, even for the average layperson. It's a keeper.

In this book you will have to deal with tons of puzzles, primarily of the visual, complete the progression type you find in GMAT (the GMAT puzzles are of the kindergarten level compared to those here). If you enjoy solving puzzles and believe that it can help to improve your IQ (that the authors do diagnose detailedly about your problem solving process which is definitely a plus), you will be highly satisfied. In case you simply get dizzy by looking at them like what my wife does, please give it a pass.

p.s. The five star rating is given to appreciate the effort of the authors for putting the large amount of extremely difficult and diverse puzzles in a 260 page book.

Want to feel dumb? Then just take a look at Retrain Your Business Brain, and try one of the 101 problems inside. Donalee Markus, Lindsey Paige Markus and Pat Taylor designed these visual and verbal puzzles to force open new mental pathways. If pain leads to gain, they've done it, because you'll feel as if your mind is being stretched, bent and twisted. It's like yoga for your brain.

The authors claim that leaders and employees who work their way through the book become better at solving business problems and spotting opportunities; they even promise to turn detail-oriented people into big-picture thinkers. They walk you through solutions, coaching you to color-code and label problem elements, create categories and apply other problem-solving tools. By the final chapter--in which you decipher an ancient Babylonian numbering system without the use of a decoder ring--you'll never approach a problem the same way again, whether it's unraveling a market trend or trying to develop a new product.

I thoroughly enjoyed the book--well, at least when my brain wasn't hurting too much. This book does an excellent job of forcing you to not only solve rather difficult puzzles, but also to understand how to solve them (for some types I found myself getting them right without actually knowing what I was doing) and why you find them difficult. Markus, et al. explain the applications of the thought processes required for the puzzles to business and the symptoms of not doing so correctly. I would highly recommend it.

All too many Route 66 books focus on the Kitsch and the primary colors one could see on the Road, and are written in a jokey, 'weren't people in the old days a hoot' style that wears thin in a few pages.

This book by contrast, takes a more serious look at the Mother Road. The photos are by turns otherworldy and 'down home' and the writing is crisp, factual and engaging. I found out more than I ever expected about the Road, its rise and fall, and the people on the road and in the towns along its path.

It's reminiscent in many ways of some of Studs Turkel's oral histories, as the people 'of and on' the road tell their stories in first person, but here you also have the advantage of the journalistic and historical perspective the writer offers, and the undeniable impact of the photos, which tell stories that mere words cannot.

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Some quotes from press reviews of the book include:

Wall Street Journal
'...while the new interstates are faster and safer, it is impossible not to miss old Route 66. Fortunately, the words and pictures of this delightful book preserve the memories of a road that ran through everyone's life.'

Library Journal
'Route 66-the late, lamented American Main Street that ran from Chicago to the Pacific-is here given life once again. Those who served its travelers for nearly 50 years (selling Indian artifacts, 'hamburgs,' and chunks of petrified wood, or renting rooms, patching tires, and digging the wounded out of head-on collisions) offer memories both enthusiastic and touching. . .
An enjoyable and rewarding book on a uniquely important road that turned the heat up on the American melting pot.'

Arizona Highways
'Susan Croce Kelly and Quinta Scott spent seven years traveling the route from end to end, interviewing and photographing the people and structures that gave old 66 its flavor. The text is carefully researched and well written, and the 93 photographs (appropriately, black and white) provide convincing images of ordinary people and places lacking the glamour of those at either end of the 2,200-mile-long line.'

Booklist
'The evocative photographs and interviews pay tribute to thousands of small businesses and the people who fueled, sheltered, and entertained millions of travelers. This is a fascinating study of individual entrepreneurs and the growth of advertising, as well as a paean to a vanished way of life.'

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I recommend this book to anyone interested in histories of the 20th century, the impact of the automobile in American life, and to anyone who appreciates fine photography.

I really enjoyed this book as it was one of my fisrt to purchase about Route 66. This book didn't cover only the road but also took you from town to town and introduced you to the People. Great photography added to the experience. This is one book I read over and over.

This books contains all that is needed to make the reader -or viewer- want to travel the road, even just by looking at the pictures. It isn't called a photographic essay for nothing. The text is more social oriented and is probably one way to look at the 20th century and its cultural heritage along Historic Route 66. Those readers going travel old 66 might be a little bit disappointed that it does not give many clues to find the locations easily. This is a book about an icon on its own terms.

A must in your library if you're interested in Route 66.

I picked this book up to read on the beach, and loved it. My wife is reading it now. It's a must read for anyone in corporate America, at any level. No warm fuzzys here, just the cold hard realities of life. In business, if you want a friend buy a dog, if you want to get ahead, read this book.

Whatever your geographic location - whether you work in Austin's high-tech district, Chicago's Loop, San Jose's Silicon Valley, the supermodern, isometric towers of La Défense in Paris, or in the chalk-white highrises of Hong Kong - James Derossitt's Rules of Ruthlessness will apply to your life.
This slim, but insightful book, serves as both manifesto and motivational text, with the ghost of Machiavelli omnipresent. Still, James Derossitt makes this book his own.
Seeing a trend of cutesy business motivational books inundating the market, the author writes how he was inspired to write his own book, which cuts through the B.S.
Structured with 100 easy-to-read chapters, James Derossitt's book is perhaps best read as a daily affirmations book.
Stuck in a rut? Going nowhere in your business career? Are you an office drone addicted to TV's nightly prime-time effervescence of mind-numbing shows like "Everybody Loves Raymond"?
Well, wake up and smell the ruthlessness!
James Derossitt provides the smelling salts.
In business, it's all about self-aggrandizement and jockeying for the position, and Derossitt will help you structure your life (both business and personal) for optimum results.
James Derossitt wants to pump you up. If the author had his way with you, then you'd be embarking on a regimen of running before breakfast and working out at the gym, reading The Wall Street Journal, and scheming your next great move.
It's all about being a leader, building a personal legend, leaving one's legacy.
When you walk into the office, or into a business meeting, there's the symphonic blast of Richard Strauss's "Also Sprach Zarathustra", heads swivel and your entrance is noticed. You're impeccably dressed. Confident. Charismatic.You make things happen. You're a natural born leader.
But it's going to take some time to reach your Pygmalion potential. Some restrictions may apply. There might be Sisyphean stumbling blocks. Trials by fire. Rites of passage. Sacrifices might be mandatory! Friendships might be lost! A Pyrrhic victory!
Derossitt tells you how to avoid dead end jobs and whom to be friends with; he instructs you on time management in whatever timezone you're situated.
Sprinkled with cultural references, politicians and pop figures, "The Rules of Ruthlessness" is a fun read.
As the king of "betterment" Benjamin Franklin so often asked himself (in between his busy schedule of science projects, international diplomacy and fact finding missions): "What good have I done today? What have I accomplished?"
Well, reading James Derossitt's "The Rules of Ruthlessness" is a good start.
-- Alex Sydorenko, Memphis, TN., Sept 2003.

This is the book for those who need a little boost to get a head in the business world. It shows you how to look out for the most important person in the business world---YOU!
Must read for those that are scared to ask for what they really want and perfect book for those who want affirmation that they know the rules of the road.

I would like to say that it's a shame on my part that it took me so long after becoming familiar with this subject to now have purchased this book. It is stimulating and personal non-fiction about a man who deserves far more credit to his name than we now give him. Each chapter reads like a letter to the general public from someone who knew R. Gordon Wasson personally. If you have any interest in knowing how America became familar with the psilocybe mushrooms proceed and read the Life Magazine article from the 1950s. It's on the net. If you want an expanded version from various angles, including biographical information on Wasson, pick this book up.

"The Sacred Mushroom Seeker" has been selected for listing in "Religion and Psychoactive Sacraments: An Entheogen Chrestomathy." http://www.csp.org/chrestomathy

This is a one-of-a-kind tribute to R. Gordon Wasson, widely credited as the primary founder of ethnomycology, whose history-making investigations into fungi across culture led him to the trail of the sacred mushrooms of Mesoamerica. The contributions by various authors are excellent, and the production superb. It features high-quality reproductions of historic photographs of mushroom ceremonies of the Mazatec (some originally published in LIFE magazine), along with some breath-taking pictures never-before-seen. Interesting, informative highlights come one after the other, from a nice assortment of Wasson's highly accomplished colleagues. This is a distinguished work that cannot be praised too highly, and will grow in stature with time. It was fittingly published as #11 in Wasson's Ethnomycological Studies, and goes well on the shelf alongside the others in that series. Very well done, and highly recommended for those with serious interest in this fascinating and important subject.

I stumbled across this book while doing research for a master's thesis that dealt with, of all things, the history of paleontology and the Peking man digs in China. I found it eye-opening and fascinating. Through showing the history of the British Royal Botanical Gardens, the author manages to teach a great deal about the rise of Europe and the West, Colonialism, science, agriculture and economic production throughout the British empire, and the world at large, up to modern times. Of special interest to me was the intertwining of science and economic exploitation in colonialized nations of the time. I consider this book remarkable in that it taught me more than if I had read five similar books.

This is an excellent book, very easy to read and covering the colonial economic botany (rubber, quinin, sisal) in a true apealing way.

The author was my mother. The book, based on her anthropology thesis, applied anthropological concepts to the sweeping GLOBAL influence and changes of Western colonization using the British empire as the model. Its a ground breaking book, easy and interesting to read (don't mind the implicit occasional politics). "The best part" (that's an inside family joke) is learning about the relationship between colonial expansion, Kew Gardens, rubber plantations, malaria, chinchona (sp?) and Gin and Tonics. I actually typed an early version of this chapter and couldn't have been happier with the content

This book has changed my life! To achieve my retirement income goal, I learned how to accumulate a portfolio of over $2.4 million. I am so fortunate to have read Securing a Retirement Income for Life.

If you are serious about becoming financially independent, this book is for you. This is not the kind of book that you read, get excited about then ask yourself, "Okay, what do I do now? You are going to know what to do. It's the next best thing to having a Certified Financial Planner work with you "one on one." The great thing about this book is that you can be working on your own dreams, your own goals, how much you want to make as you are reading. You'll need a calculator but everything else is provided for you - right in the book.

Unlike other books on the subject, Securing a Retirement Income for Life is written by a Certified Financial Planner who has experience working with clients on a daily basis. His firm is known for having expertise in retirement income and distribution planning.

In this book, you will learn about proven strategies to ensure a consistent and reliable flow of income for your lifetime. How managing your retirement plan is different after you retire and how to change the way you invest during retirement. You will learn how to protect your retirement funds from uncertainties such as how long you will live, changes in rates of return and inflation. I discovered strategies the wealthy use to build and preserve their wealth.

Griffith covers the important topic of asset allocation and how a well-defined portfolio allows for several stages of lifestyle and cash flow during the extended retirement many people hope to experience. He discusses the importance of integrating your retirement plan with other aspects of your financial picture, such as investments, legacy planning and tax issues. This is what I think makes this book different from others on the subject. You will learn how your retirement plan fits in with your overall financial situation. You will learn a lot more than just how to build wealth. You will learn how to protect and preserve it. After all, who wants to have nearly half of a million-dollar portfolio wiped out because of one costly mistake?

Overall, I highly recommend this book, which serves as a "roadmap" demonstrating exactly how you can start from where you are right now to achieve your goal of financial independence.

Written by Bill Griffith Jr. (principal of W.E. Griffith & Associates, a fee-based wealth management firm), Securing a Retirement Income for Life is a no-nonsense guide to what, in today's era of long life spans, is becoming an increasingly lengthy stage of adult life. Securing a Retirement Income for Life addresses how much to accumulate to provide a stable retirement income and fully address one's quality of life needs, how to prepare for uncertainties most effectively when confronted with unknown future variables, addressing healthcare risks, choosing the right financial advisor for one's needs, and much more. Written in plain terms for the lay reader, Securing a Retirement Income for Life features a wealth of easy-to-use tables for quickly estimating relevant figures, as well as an index for cross-reference, and is especially recommended for anyone confused by myriad options for retirement planning.

I have finally found a book written by a Certified Financial Planner who provides a concise explanation of the investment process used by investment pros to accumulate money for retirement along with the research and illustrations to back it up. Hypothetical case scenarios show how integrating your retirement plan with other aspects of your financial life will protect you against the risk of outliving your money and other unforeseen events.

This book shows you very methodically how to determine the amount of money needed to provide a retirement income for the rest of your life. It covers the methods for managing your retirement funds and how to protect them from among other things an extended market decline. Unlike other books on the subject, Griffith provides questionnaires and tables to guide you through the process of understanding your own retirement needs and objectives. He tells you what you should be looking out for not only in investing but also with rising expenses, such as healthcare, increasing inflation and tax issues. The author gives you not only the positive side to certain issues but also some of the negatives.

If you are looking for a guide to teach you how to invest for retirement and how to make sure that your retirement income will last for the rest of your life, then I would suggest you start here. It will keep you from making the mistakes that the vast majority of people make causing them to outlive their resources.

If you are looking for an investment professional, this book will answer many of your questions and make you an educated client.

You should buy this book.

I was fascinated throughout. Sounds and looks "dry" when you see it on the shelf, but so full of juicy bits that make his life very real. You cheer for him when he manages to think his way around the obstacles that apartheid and his own nature put in his way and you are continually forced to confront the "What would I have done here?" question.



Yes, it is long. But when you are through you want to know still more. What has happened to the rest of the family since the book was published? What was the effect of those years of scrutiny on their "real" lives?



I stared at the pictures and studied the faces. I have been selectively pushing the book on all the thoughtful people I know. It wakes up your brain.

The daily life of Kas Maine over 90 odd years on the high veldt of South Africa says more about the history of that part of the world than all the history books and newspaper articles and military actions that could ever be recounted. I felt as though I myself had lived those same 90 years, breathed the dust, lost my crops, driven my livestock from farm to farm trying to find sharecropping work, put up and taken down my corregated metal shack, been hounded by bureaucrats, maintained my dignity and kept my family together against incredible odds. Although the place names and indigenous family names were difficult and their abundance presumed some familiarity with South Africa, I learned to visualize rather than pronounce them, and they became like one of Kas's stony fields in the story and I liked the "rough footing." A unique experience in book form.

I have been taking my time with this book, savouring it while I can. The rhythms of the prose and the world it describes are so seductive, that I have often found myself reading "just a few more pages" at 3AM despite having to get up for work the next day. If you wish to have a sense of what life in rural South Africa was like over the past century, I can't think of a better book (or any other book for that matter). Kas was an exceptionally gifted farmer, a traditional herbalist and healer, and a patriarch who struggled against the almost impossible odds of being a black man in South Africa. As the insanity of apartheid took hold, he and his family were forced to move from place to place, his dreams of agricultural success and land ownership gradually eroding. Yet the book also portrays the rich, multicultural environment of the Transvaal, the varied relationships between Blacks, Boers, Englishmen, Jews and Asians; the shift from a paternalistic but, in many ways more egalitarian society to a racist police state. Kas is a complex man: wise, cruel, patient, tender, pragmatic, apolitical, opportunist, and honourable. The portrayals of his relationships with his ever expanding family are as complex and engaging as one could wish from a fine novel. Van Onselen makes no apologies for him: he simply gives us the man and, above all his humanity. Perhaps his greatest achievement with this book is in bridging the gap between the Western reader and an illiterate African farmer, in underlining our human commonalities rather than our differences. Despite occasional passages that are a tad purple, the author's prose is clear and flowing. He manages to make the ebb and flow of the seasons with their triumphs, tragedies, and ignominies absolutely gripping. I never thought that I could be enthralled by descriptions of the complexities of plowing and harvesting, or the purchase of agricultural equipment, but I was. No it's not too long as the reviewer in the New York Times claimed. In fact one often wishes that one could know more about this extraordinary yet very ordinary man.

Early this morning in the locker room of my local YMCA, I had a recurring discussion with a friend and senior executive from an internationally recognized American bank. We discussed a subject of mutual interest to both of us--the need in our society to develop effective managers. In our opinion leaders may be born (to a degree) but managers are made (or more precisely, developed) over time. It takes great focus, patience, and courage to become an effective manager. John Sullivan's book give great insight into the secret of what it takes to become particular type of manager--one who can capably serve society through responsibly using the leadership qualities they possess.

I have been a manager for a large corporation, taught undergraduate and graduate management courses, and been assigned responsibility for developing managers at a large federal agency. As a result of my interest in the subject I have read a number of books on the subject of servanthood, or stewardship, and--in my opinion--John Sullivan's book is the best. Why do I believe "Servant First" is a book that deserves to be read?

In the first half of his book, John builds a sound foundation by addressing the best of existing management theory. I have known John Sullivan for several years and he is in his element here. John has also been a manager and he has has also taught management for years. He knows the breadth, depth, and current state of management study--with at times its shortcomings and shallowness--and he is an excellent communicator. His balanced treatment of this initial section can probably only be truly measured for its scholarship by someone who has read widely in the field, but it does not take a scholar to understand and appreciate what John is writing about. He is clear, practical, and to the point.

Then, in the second half of the book, John turns with great insight and enthusiasm to directly address his thesis. "One needs to start with the attitude of a servant if one is to successfully serve others, and the teachings of Jesus Christ provide some great insight into this task that should be understood--not ignored or disregarded." John is as capable in his Biblical scholarship as he is in the field of management study. This is no simplistic cookbook written for the amateur. In this short book, John has provided his reader with a very lucid, succinct summary of management thought taken from a distinctly Christian perspective.

John is consistently logical, and his book has an organization that neither presumes too much, nor bores the reader. By the time one finishes "Servant First," one has a good picture of both the challenges and contributions of a servant ethic that attempts to emulate the teachings of Jesus Christ. One doesn't have to be a Christian to learn important principles from this book, but if one is a Christian there is a special insight into this process of developing one's servanthood that can be gained because of one's experiences and difficulties in attempting to serve--with competence.

I recommend it without reservation for the practitioner, the scholar, or the beginning student. I also recognize that it may have value for those working within churches. The experienced manager will fine that there is contained in this book a timeless, classical wisdom written with an understanding of the modern world of the twenty-first century. It is a passionate message that one can only hope will find root in contemporary soil.

JOHN SULLIVAN HAS DONE A MASTERFUL JOB OF COMPILING EXSISTING DATA, ADDING HIS PERSONAL TOUCHES AND CONCLUDING WITH POWERFUL LEADERSHIP PRINCIPLES AND EXAMPLES FROM THE LIFE OF CHRIST. I HAVE BEEN READING LEADERSHIP BOOKS FOR SOME TIME AND THIS ONE KEPT ME READING EVERY PAGE AND LEARNING FROM JOHNS RICH BACKGROUND AND INSIGHTS. DETAILED AND PRACTICAL. I LOVED IT!

A Review of John J. Sullivan's
Servant First! Leadership for the New Millennium

By J. Thomas Whetstone, D.Phil.

Pessimism is the prevailing mindset at the beginning of the new millennium among discontented intellectuals, the media, and those who seek a utopia on earth (Johnson, 2003). We can do nothing in the face of economic stagnation, business corruption, global warming, and international terrorism, according to pessimists. But there is a viable alternative: the optimism of those who can adopt the leadership example set by Jesus Christ to serve others.

John Sullivan's book, Servant First! Leadership for the New Millennium, sets forth this optimistic alternative in a lucid and practical manner. Drawing from scholarship on management and leadership, especially Deming's (1982) total quality management and Greenleaf's (1991) servant leadership, his own diverse experience, and biblical examples, Sullivan develops a practical model for Christian leadership.

Servant leadership differs from trait, behavioral, situational, and contingency leadership approaches by to its focus on human persons and relationships. This normative paradigm involves recognition of the leader and the followers as spiritual as well as material creatures, ones worthy of dignity and respect unconditionally, not merely for their instrumental contributions. As Robert K. Greenleaf and his followers (e.g., Spears, 1995) note, a genuine servant leader puts the needs and desires of her followers before her own needs. Her preferred methods are use of persuasion and example rather than command and control or manipulation. She measures success by manifest growth in the people served and the positive effects on overall society.

Critics, such as Craig Johnson (2001), argue that servant leaders can be unrealistically naïve, too passive and too tolerant of followers, pursue the wrong ends, and ineffective in some situational contexts, such as prison administration. Even admitted advantages of servant leadership, including its altruism, simplicity, and self-awareness, can be viewed as weakened through naivety. According to Norman Bowie (2000), a servant leader can be too subject to manipulation by followers.

John Sullivan, while not directly refuting such criticism, presents a strong positive case for servant leadership, describing and explaining how the biblical Christ led and mentored his disciples. Sullivan's book indeed demonstrates that proper servant leadership need not be limited by the above objections. Moreover, Sullivan argues that the leadership model exemplified by Christ is not beyond ordinary human capability, but it may be studied and applied effectively within a variety of contemporary organizations.

Sullivan identifies character traits, competencies, and leadership types exemplified by Christ as leader. He describes how Christ built a values-driven organization based on principles honoring the dignity and worth of each imperfect individual. Drawing on his military experience and management education, Sullivan offers a five-phased strategy for preparing, deploying, and growing an organization. Especially helpful are the suggested questions that the contemporary leader can address at each phase. Examples, often blending the methods of Deming with biblical accounts, explain specific tactics that have been used successfully to implement the strategy in military, educational, and business situations. The concluding example, that of Chris Heuertz, Executive Director of Word Made Flesh, shows how servant leadership has been used in organizing and implementing a program for serving the poor in many of the most underdeveloped regions of the world.

Sullivan does not argue ideologically, but seeks to persuade the reader by using numerous examples that a person who adopts the nature of a servant leader, applying the principles and behaviors exemplified by Christ, can lead well. His book thus presents a positive alternative for anyone interested in moving away from the naysayers toward a culture of personal, corporate, and societal optimism. Sullivan explains how it has worked well and can continue to do so. His book is recommended reading for anyone searching for an optimistic and practical stimulus for more effective leadership.

References:

Bowie, Norman: 2000. "Business Ethics, Philosophy, and the Next 25 Years". Business Ethics Quarterly. 10(1), 7-20.

Deming, W. Edwards: 1982. Out of Crisis. Cambridge, MA: Center for Advanced Engineering Study, M.I.T.

Greenleaf, Robert K.: 1991. Servant Leadership. NY: Paulist.

Johnson, Craig E.: 2001. Meeting the Ethical Challenges of Leadership. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Johnson, Paul: 2003. "An `Ism' for All Seasons". National Review (October 13), 17-18.

Spears, Larry (Ed.): 1995. Reflections on Leadership: How Robert K. Greenleaf's Theory of Servant-leadershipInfluenced Today's Top Management. NY: John Wiley & Sons.