I find Andrew Carnegie was a fascinating man, born into poverty in Scotland during a time of economic upheaval to a hardworking mother and a father who was not. In his lifetime he made and gave away millions of dollars. I learned that he was a very hard worker who appeared to intuitively know what he needed to do to take himself to the next level of success. ...
I enjoyed the side stories and insight into the way we make decisions and form opinions. I found this book interesting but it really didn’t excite me. I had a hard time writing this review because the book left me with no strong feelings about it. There are some insights into human nature in this book, but nothing that really jumped out at me and changed the way way I think or challenged my perceptions. ...
This book is the personal memoir of Steve Wozniak, one of the founders of Apple Computers. Woz fascinates me, he is an engineer at heart but he is also a teacher, a humanitarian, and a jokester. In this book he recounts his childhood experiences at science fairs, his teenage years with neighborhood friends plying practical jokes and making cool electronics, on to college, the creation of Apple, creating the US festival, becoming a 5th grade teacher, having children, and everything in between. ...
The audiobook is made up of the novels Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon, Time Travelers Strictly Cash, and Callahan’s Secret. These three books contain the stories of Mike Callahan and the visitors to his bar somewhere in the Northeast. It is the type of place with the type of people that all of us would like to find. Where no one is a stranger for long and people are willing to lend a helping hand. ...
Written by John Huddy and narrated by Stefan Rudnicki, “Storming Las Vegas” is about Jose Vigoa and the robberies that he an his crew committed in Las Vegas. I really enjoyed this book and even went on extra walks just to have more time to listen to it. It is a true-crime drama with all of the elements of a Hollywood action flick. The author spends a great deal of time taking us through the preparations of each robbery, the lives of the victims, and the aftermath. ...
Michael Palin of Monty Python fame has done a number of shows for the BBC and this book is based on one of those series. From the publisher: “In the autumn of 1988, Michael Palin set out from the Reform Club with an ambitious plan: to circumnavigate the world, following the route taken by Jules Verne’s fictional hero Phileas Fogg 115 years earlier. ...
What an amazing book. Bill Bryson manages to cover enough of the world’s history to make it really feel like you have learned a little something about everything. From the publisher: “Bill Bryson has been an enormously popular author both for his travel books and for his books on the English language. Now, this beloved comic genius turns his attention to science. Although he doesn’t know anything about the subject (at first), he is eager to learn, and takes information that he gets from the world’s leading experts and explains it to us in a way that makes it exciting and relevant. Even the most pointy-headed, obscure scientist succumbs to the affable Bryson’s good nature, and reveals how he or she figures things out. Showing us how scientists get from observations to ideas and theories is Bryson’s aim, and he succeeds brilliantly. It is an adventure of the mind, as exciting as any of Bryson’s terrestrial journeys.” ...
I really liked this book. The author Jim Collins and his team research findings uncovered 5 steps that many companies follow on their path of decline. Full of examples, the book does a great job disseminating their findings in an easy to understand way. A fun note, if you listen to this audio book at 2x speed the author sounds a lot like a young William Shatner, which also helped to hold my attention. ...
This book is a part of O’Reilly’s 97 Things series where individuals contribute short entries to a wiki, which are then edited, from which 97 items are selected for a book. I found this book on the shelf at Fry’s and after paging through it a bit decided buying it and having a hard copy to let others borrow was worth the cover price as opposed to reading it online. The series is different from most books as the entire contents are available to read for free at https://programmer.97things.oreilly.com/ ...