One Hundred Word Book Reviews

Seth Godin: Tribes

2008-12-11T20:51:00.003+09:00

Seth Godin wants you to use the Internet to communicate your passion to others.

As the pace of change increases, the "rush from stability" combines with new technology to present everybody with opportunities for leadership, but the fear of failure inhibits people from acting differently.

The book is a loose collection of anecdotes about creating and leading "tribes" in a world of new technology. A tribe is a group that shares strongly held beliefs or aims and forms around a leader.

The essence of leadership is a willingness to fail and to lead people further than they have ever been.

Key Quotations

"Today's market place rewards heretics." (p. 11).

"Being charismatic doesn't make you a leader. Being a leader makes you charismatic. (p. 127)

Seth Godin

Seth Godin (born July 10, 1960) is an American author of business books. Godin popularized the topic of permission marketing and set up the website, Squidoo.com.

Links

Squidoo.com

Robert Greene: The 48 Laws of Power

2008-04-06T22:00:00.007+09:00

Robert Greene has written a book in the tradition of Machiavelli. He illustrates his "laws" with historical examples of what happens when they are followed or transgressed. Each chapter concludes with a section discussing the reversal of the law. The book is charmingly laid out with the main narrative flanked by fables, anecdotes and maxims.

But a question arises: Is Greene's rhetorical display of candour to be taken at face value, or are the "laws" themselves merely playful inventions of a fertile mind that has found a lucrative publishing niche?

Key Quotations

An emotional response to a situation is the single greatest barrier to power, a mistake that will cost you a lot more than any temporary satisfaction you might gain by expressing your feelings.
Like Janus, the double-faced Roman deity and guardian of all gates and doorways, you must be able to look in both directions at once, the better to handle danger from wherever it comes.
Deception is a developed art of civilization and the most potent weapon in the game of power.

Robert R. Greene

Born in Los Angeles in May 14, 1959, Greene attended the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he received a degree in classical studies. He has worked in New York City as an editor and writer for several magazines, including Esquire, and in Hollywood as a story developer and writer. He lived for years in London, Paris, and Barcelona. In 1995 Greene was involved in the planning and creation of the art school Fabrica outside Venice, Italy. (Source: Wikipedia)

Links

PowerSeductionAndWar.com

W. F. & E. S. Friedman: The Shakespearian Ciphers Examined

2008-01-23T17:38:00.000+09:00

Is there a secret cypher buried in the First Folio edition of Shakespeare's plays, or hidden on his epitaph? If
such a cypher exist, does it show that Bacon wrote the plays?

The rules governing cyphers must be unambiguous, the solution grammatically and semantically coherent. Two cryptanalysts working independently should reach identical answers.

In 1955 two professional cryptographers, William and Elizabeth Friedman, subjected the "cyphers" and "secret sigilli" to scientific testing and proved them false.

Elizabeth Wells Gallup thought Shakespeare's first folio concealed Bacon's bilateral cypher, but her results were subjective, her premises fallacious.

Other patent absurdities are patiently debunked.

Key Quotations

Taking a page from an ordinary school edition of Julius Caesar, we produced our own message, a good outspoken one: Dear Reader: Theodore Roosevelt is the true author of this play but I, Bacon, stole it from him and have the credit. Friedman can prove that this is so by this cock-eyed cypher invented by Doctor C. (p. 162-3) [This passage debunks Dr. Cunningham's cryptographic theory by applying it's method and producing the above "message".]
With each successive letter deciphered she had a choice - limited but definite - of possibilities; and so, as she went on, there would be a kind of collaboration between the decipherer and the text, each influencing the other. Hence perhaps the curious maundering wordy character of the extracted messages, very like the communications of the spirit world: with some sense but no real mind behind them, just a sort of drifting intention, taking occasional sudden whimsical turns when the text momentarily mastered the decipherer. (p. 264)
...one may well wonder if reasoned argument is going to carry much weight with investigators who are so constantly moved by the providential ordering of the merely coincidental. (p. 284)

W. G. & E. S. Friedman
W. G. Friedman (1891-1969) was a US Army cryptologist who ran the research division of the SIS in the 1930s, and similar services into the 1950s. His team, led by Frank Rowlett, broke Japan's PURPLE cipher, thus disclosing Japanese diplomatic secrets in World War II.

E. S. Friedman (1892-1980) was a Shakespeare enthusiast, cryptanalyst, and pioneer in U.S. cryptology who introduced her husband to the field. After working for the U.S. Navy she moved to the U.S. Treasury Department's Bureau of Prohibition and Bureau of Customs where she successfully broke the increasingly sophisticated cyphers of numerous international smuggling and drug running rings.

Links

David Hurley
100-Word-Book-Reviews.com

William Shakespeare: Romeo And Juliet

2008-01-07T23:28:00.000+09:00

Romeo is lovesick for Rosaline until Mercutio persuades him to gatecrash their enemy, Capulet's, party. Romeo promptly falls for Capulet's daughter, Juliet, scales a wall approaches Juliet's balcony and is well met by moonlight. A conniving Friar secretly marries them the morning after.

Romeo intervenes in a swordfight, inadvertantly causing Mercutio to be killed by Juliet's cousin. He avenges Mercutio's death. Juliet is upset, Romeo banished.

Juliet feigns death rather than (unlawfully) marry Paris, her father's choice. All suppose her dead, including Romeo, who kills Paris outside, himself inside the tomb. Juliet revives, plucks Romeo's dagger and perishes beside Romeo.

Key Quotations

True, I talk of dreams,
Which are the children of an idle brain,
Begot of nothing but vain fantasy,
Which is as thin of substance as the air
And more inconstant than the wind, who woos
Even now the frozen bosom of the north
And, being anger'd, puffs away from thence
Turning his side to the dew-dropping south. (Mercutio)
With love's light wings I did o'erperch these walls,
For stony limits cannot hold love out,
And what love can do, that dares love attempt. (Romeo)
My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
My love as deep: the more I give to thee
The more I have, for both are infinite. (Juliet)

William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

Born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, as a young man he moved to London where he worked as an actor, writer, and part owner of the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men, a theatre company.

His surviving works consist of 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and several shorter poems. His plays are performed more often than any other playwrite's and include comedies, tragedies, histories, and genre-crunching tragi-comedies and romances.

John Bunyan: The Pilgrim's Progress (Part The First)

2007-12-04T16:24:00.000+09:00

Bunyan wrote his vivid Protestant allegory while imprisoned for unlicenced preaching. Christian, encumbered by sin, flees the City of Destruction for the straight and narrow road to the Celestial City.

Passing through much tribulation, Christian encounters sloughs, valleys, hills and meadows. His sins fall from his back at Calvary, his friend Faithful is martyred at Vanity Fair. With his new friend Hopeful, he negotiates an English landscape undergoing enclosure; they are cast into Doubting Castle for trespassing upon Giant Despair's land.

The characters Christian meets represent types of Christian virtue, worldly carnality, or spiritual experiences that edify, entice or terrify.

Key Quotations

I saw then in my dream, so far as this Valley reached, there was on the right hand a very deep Ditch: That Ditch is it, into which the blind have led the blind in all ages, and have both there miserably perished. Again, behold, on the left hand, there was a very dangerous Quag, into which, if even a good man falls, he finds no bottom for his foot to stand on: Into that Quag King David once did fall, and had, no doubt, therein been smothered, had not he that is able plucked him out.
What a Fool, quoth he, am I, thus to lie in a stinking dungeon, when I may as well walk at liberty? I have a key in my bosom, called Promise, that will I am persuaded open any lock in Doubting Castle.
Then I saw that there was a Way to Hell, even from the Gates of Heaven, as well as from the City of Destruction.

John Bunyan (1628-1688)
Born near Bedford, the son of a tinker, Bunyan served in the parliamentary army during the Civil War. He became an enthusiastic believer and was received into the Baptist church in Bedford by immersion in the River Great Ouse in 1653. He was imprisoned in 1660 for preaching without a licence and wrote Pilgrim's Progress while in prison.

Other notable works include Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, and The Holy War.
Wikipedia

Stephen R. Covey: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

2007-11-04T23:41:00.000+09:00

Stephen Covey's bestseller discusses how to integrate seven basic principles of effective living into your basic character to improve your performance from the inside out.

The principles are: Be proactive; begin with the end in Mind; put first things first; think win-win; seek first to understand; synergize; sharpen the saw.

Covey uses a computing metaphor to emphasise that "you are the programmer" of your own thoughts. By setting a mission statement, goals and roles for yourself, and seeking greater interdependence, you will, he argues, become a more effective person.

Key Quotations

Between stimulus and response, man has the freedom to choose.
Our behaviour is a function of our decisions, not our conditions.
...you simply can't think efficiency with people. You think effectiveness with people, efficiency with things.

Stephen R. Covey
Born October 24, 1932 in Salt Lake City, Utah. His latest book is The 8th habit, published in 2004. Covey lives with his wife Sandra, and their family in Provo, Utah, home to Brigham Young University where Dr. Covey taught prior to the publication of his best selling book. He is a father of nine and a grandfather of forty-seven; he received the Fatherhood Award from the National Fatherhood Initiative in 2003.

Links

David Hurley
100-Word-Book-Reviews.com

Hermann Knell: To Destroy A City

2007-10-15T15:20:00.000+09:00

Hermann Knell was nineteen when his city was destroyed in an air-raid in March 1945. Knell wonders why Würzburg was destroyed beyond any military necessity. Why was strategic bombing pursued beyond all humane considerations?

German Zeppelins bombed London and Paris in World War One. The British found aerial bombing a convenient method of controlling rebellious natives. But during World War Two strategic bombing escalated in destructive scale and was used as an indiscriminate method of attacking the civilian population of the enemy.

Knell devoted his life to researching the history and consequences of strategic bombing. This book is the result.

Key Quotations

There is a psychological need to forget, and a moral obligation to remember.
But by looking at the mass graves and the rubble of my hometown I felt that the leaders responsible for the bombing war should also be made accountable. I decided then and there that I would dig into this bombing. I knew little about it then and all its implications but I was going to study it, and as history is normally written by the victors, I as a vanquished would put down what I thought about it.
In the years immediately after 1945 I was ready to prove that there was a criminal who got away. But as the years have passed, so has my pain and the loss has passed into history. So has Air Chief Marshall Sir Arthur Harris. I now want to know why it all happened. What were the reasons behind it? I might wish to judge, but I cannot and do not wish to condemn. The case is too complex.

Herman Knell b. 1926, Würzburg, Germany. Emigrated to Canada after the Second World War and became an engineer. Lives in West Vancouver, British Columbia.

Kay McSpadden: Notes from a Classroom

2007-09-20T00:36:00.000+09:00

As a culture, we often root for the underdog. We love to see teachers motivate students whose every word and gesture reek of defiance. After the initial, yet brief, breaking-in period, movie star teachers cleverly inspire every student to overcome years of poverty and intellectual neglect and to out-achieve their privileged, suburban counterparts. In her compilation of essays, Notes from a Classroom, Kay McSpadden has teaching days that fit the Hollywood bill, and days that would wind up on the editing room floor. She lets us in on it all, thus inspiring, frustrating, motivating, captivating, challenging and teaching us.

Key Quotations

But this is the real world, and I don't know why some students from horrible backgrounds and with overwhelming odds against them prevail and why others crumble. If I did, then I might be less at a loss for what to do for the angry girls and boys that come into my classroom.
When they read their poems to the class, I learn again that I love teaching. It can be a hard lesson to hold on to some days. But it is the lesson that keeps me steady, that sends me back into the classroom every year.
Fortunately - or perhaps unfortunately - I am a hard headed skeptic who has always preferred testing things for myself, so I didn't quit after that very first difficult year. I did indeed have disrespectful, indifferent students, but I also had many more students who were willing to learn and willing to teach me how to teach them. Teaching was very hard, but it was also great fun.

Kay McSpadden writes op-ed columns for the Charlotte Observer and has been teaching high school English in rural South Carolina for 30 years.

Review: Beth Donofrio, September 16th 2007.

Kishore Mahbubani: Can Asians Think?

2007-09-13T00:38:00.000+09:00

"Can Asians Think?” asks Mahbubani. If they can, what were they doing during the European Renaissance and the Enlightenment? Not much, it seems.

But now, following Japan's example, a new self-confidence is emerging as Asians consider how their societies have developed in recent years. American fashions prevail amongst the poor, but educated Asians are turning to their own cultures for identity and inspiration.

Meanwhile, western democracies are disengaging from the Third World, despite the need for engagement, if only to dampen mass immigration into Europe.

Western nations often demand democratisation when they should first emphasise economic development and globalization.

Key Quotations

The most painful thing that happened to Asia was not the physical but the mental colonization. Many Asians… began to believe that Asians were inferior to the Europeans. Only this could explain how a few thousand British could control a few hundred million people in South Asia.
Educational excellence is an essential prerequisite for cultural confidence. To put it plainly, many Asians have realized that their minds are not inferior. Most Westerners cannot appreciate the change, because they can never directly feel the sense of inferiority many Asians experienced until recently. (p. 24)

In the eyes of the North African population, the Mediterranean, which once divided civilizations, has become a mere pond. What human being would not cross a pond if thereby he could improve his livelihood?

Kishore Mahbubani

Mahbubani.net - Kishore Mahbubani's official website.
Wikipedia's Mahbubani page.
Interview with KM in the May/June 2007 issue of International Educator magazine.
Chiron the Centaur: Mahbubani review.

Shigeyoshi Matsumae: Materialism in Search of a Soul

2007-08-10T12:49:00.000+09:00

Matsumae argues that since historical materialism is based on Newtonian science, modern science renders Marxism redundant.

Relativity, probability and uncertainty have replaced nineteenth century determinism. Were he alive today, Marx would have accepted the change and adapted his system to accommodate it.

Matsumae shows how Western science suffered under the hostility of the church during "the age of faith". Then faith gave way to doubt. Materialism backed by scientific progress came to dominate European thought and ushered in "The Age of Determinism". In its turn, materialistic determinism has been replaced by scientific indeterminism and a renewed appreciation of things spiritual.

Key Quotations

Materialism was rooted firmly in the science of the time, and this gave an impressive weight of logical development to Marx's historical dialectics. With the dawn of a new era, with new conceptions of the world accompanying new advances in science, the apparently unshakable foundations of materialism and historical dialectics were swept away. (p. 105)
...the universe cannot admit of material representation, and the reason, I think, is that it has become a mental concept. (p. 124)

Shigeyoshi Matsumae (1901-1991)

Biography

Graham Greene: The Lawless Roads

2007-08-09T15:46:00.000+09:00

"The Lawless Roads" are neither!

Nowhere is any lawlessness perpetrated against the protagonist, nor does he describe anything akin to a road; it is all potholes at best. He navigates his "lawless" journey via boat, airplane, or donkey.

Greene observes: "Like the characters in Chekhov they have no reserves - you learn the most intimate secrets." I have to agree: Only in Mexico!

For Greene, Mexico was all "disappointment and despair"; understandable, as hismission was to reveal the catastrophic opposition to the Church in the Mexican province of Chiapas. But time heals all. Catholicism is alive and well there today.

(Edited by D. H. from a longer review by Roland Petrov.)

Key Quotations

I began to believe in heaven because I believed in hell. (p. 14)
The platitudes of age are often the main discoveries of youth. (p. 24)
Like most Mexican things it was a bit fake. (p. 143)

Graham Greene (1904-1991)

Downloadable Audiobooks on Mexico

History of the Conquest of Mexico - by W. H. Prescott
The World's Political Hotspots: Mexico - by Joseph Stromberg

David Peace: The Damned Utd

2007-06-19T12:26:00.000+09:00

David Peace recreates Brian Clough's disastrous forty-four day management of Leeds United.

Interwoven with the main plot is the story of Clough's successes, assisted by Peter Taylor, as manager of Hartlepools and Derby County.

Derby and Leeds were major rivals in the mid-seventies; their managers, Clough and Revie, bitter adversaries, so Clough's becoming manager of Leeds was inconceivable - until it happened. Revie's curses preface each part of the novel.

The lively narrative style convincingly catches Clough's coarse eloquence.

The plot converges on the events of 1974, Clough's sacking by Derby and Leeds, his careless interim management of Brighton.

Key Quotations

For hours, hours and hours, I run and I shout, but no one speaks and no one passes, no one passes until I finally get the ball and am about to turn, about to turn to my left with the ball on my right foot, on my right foot when someone puts me on my arse -
Flat on my arse like a sack of spuds, moaning and groaning in the mud. (p. 22)

'Gentlemen, I might as well tell you now. You lot may have won all the domestic honours there are and some of the European ones but, as far as I am concerned, the first thing you can do for me is to chuck all your medals and all your caps and all your pots and all your pans into the biggest fucking dustbin you can find, because you've never won any of them fairly. You've done it all by bloody cheating.' (p. 29)

David Peace (b. 1967)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Peace

Joseph Conrad: Almayer's Folly

2007-05-28T12:20:00.000+09:00

Almayer marries the adopted Malay child of his patron Captain Lingard and runs his trading post in Sambir, Borneo. Almayer builds a large trading house (his "folly") in anticipation of wealth. His marriage loveless, Almayer's affections are invested in his beautiful daughter Nina, who, returning from her European education, elopes with Dain, a Malay prince Almayer had hoped would help him find Lingard's treasure. Deprived of his daughter and his dreams of wealth, Almayer languishes, despairs and dies.

For any middle-aged European man who lives in Asia, has a daughter and struggles for success, Conrad's first novel is terrifying.

Key Quotations

Dain Maroola, dazzled by the unexpected vision, forgot the confused Almayer, forgot his brig, his escort staring in open-mouthed admiration, the object of his visit and all things else, in his overpowering desire to prolong the contemplation of so much loveliness met so suddenly in such an unlikely place - as he thought. (p. 55)

"Between you and my mother there never was any love. When I returned to Sambir I found the place which I thought would be a peaceful refuge for my heart, filled with weariness and hatred - and mutual contempt. I have listened to your voice and to her voice. Then I saw that you could not understand me; for was I not part of that woman?"

He took possession of the new ruin, and in the undying folly of his heart set himself to wait in anxiety and pain for that forgetfulness which was so slow to come.

Joseph Conrad (1857-1924)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Conrad
Download Conrad's autobiography, A Personal Record
Download Almayer's Folly
Almayer's Folly Digital Audiobook

Napoleon Hill: Think and Grow Rich

2007-05-19T20:36:00.000+09:00

Challenged by Andrew Carnegie to discover the secrets of wealth, Napoleon Hill spent twenty years interviewing five hundred wealthy men and distilling their revelations into thirteen principles of money making described in Think and Grow Rich, a book that made him rich and famous.

Necessary qualities are Desire, Faith, Decision, Persistence. Brain power, auto-suggestion, imagination, the subconscious mind and the sixth sense must be developed and sexual energy must be harnessed. Also necessary are specialized knowledge, detailed planning and a "Master Mind" team.

Hill's vigorous style is direct and engaging; his anedotes of famous and less famous successes inspiring.

Key Quotations

Every failure brings with it the seed of an equivalent success. (p.47)
There are no limitations to the mind except those we acknowledge: both poverty and riches are the offspring of thought. (p. 94)
A quitter never wins - and - a winner never quits. (p. 151)

Napoleon Hill (1883-1970)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon_Hill

Downloadable Audio Books

Leisure Audio Books - Self Help

George Steiner: The Death of Tragedy

2007-04-26T19:55:00.000+09:00

For Steiner, tragic drama is a uniquely western achievement. In Judaism, sin causes disaster; to the Greek disaster lies beyond reason or justice.

Elizabethan tragedy coincided with the loss of early Renaissance optimism. Yet after Racine, tragedy was in decline with the rise of the bourgeoise and its love of happy endings.

The Romantics blamed man's misery not on Fate but on archaic social structures. Their optimistic redemptive mythology was inimical to tragedy.

Rationalism marks the death of tragedy, breaking man's sense of continuity with a divine realm. Novels present the new ideology to a private middle class audience.

Key Quotations

To the Jew there is a marvellous continuity between knowledge and action; to the Greek an ironic abyss. The legend of Oedipus, in which the Greek sense of tragic unreason is so grimly rendered, served that great Jewish poet Freud as an emblem of rational insight and redemption through healing. (p. 7)

Having repudiated classic notions of evil in man, Victor Hugo and his contemporaries replaced the tragic by the contingent. (p. 164)

The classic leads to a dead past. The metaphysics of Christianity and Marxism are anti-tragic. That, in essence, is the dilemma of modern tragedy. (p. 324)

George Steiner (b. 1929)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Steiner
Larry A. Brown: Tragedy After Aristotle

Matsuo Basho: The Narrow Road to Oku

2007-04-23T14:34:00.000+09:00

In 1689 the poet Basho wrote his famous fifth travel diary describing his spring and summer journey with Sora, his companion, into the northern hinterland of Japan. The narrative is studded with haiku commemorative of things seen or felt, of the blossoming moment in nature and society, the joys and discomforts encountered.

The peaks of clouds
Have crumbled into fragments -
The moonlit mountain.

Plagued by fleas and lice,
I hear the horses staling
Right by my pillow.

Printed on high grade paper, this edition is translated by Donald Keene and beautifully illustrated with colourful paper cut-outs by Miyata Masayuki.

Key Quotations

The months and the days are travellers of eternity. The years that come and go are also voyagers. Those who float away their lives on ships or who grow old leading horses are forever journeying, and their homes are wherever their travels take them. (p. 19)

Matuso Basho (1644-1694)

http://www.uoregon.edu/~kohl/basho/life.html

Miyata Masayuki (1926-1997)

http://www.miyatamasayuki-kiri-e.jp

Donald Keene (b. 1922)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Keene

Patrick Leigh Fermor: A Time of Gifts

2007-04-12T14:00:00.000+09:00

In December 1933 Patrick Leigh Fermor, aged eighteen, set out to walk from Rotterdam to Istanbul. This volume ends at the Danube and is compelling recovery of a middle-aged writer's youthful zest and engaging curiosity.

Handsome, charming, erudite, blessed with a gift for languages and inspired by a Latin anthology, Fermor was befriended by many whose hospitality weakened his resolve to "sleep in hayricks... shelter in barns... and only consort with peasants and tramps". Entertained by a string of eccentric, elegant, educated and aristocratic hosts, he gained an insight into a world soon to be utterly destroyed by war.

Key Quotations

I wanted to think, write, stay or move on at my own speed and unencumbered, to gaze at things with a changed eye and listen to new tongues that were untainted by a single familiar word. (p. 13)

Patrick Leigh Fermor (b. 1915)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Leigh_Fermor

Eric Hoffer: The Ordeal of Change

2007-04-04T13:52:00.000+09:00

Where opportunities abound change releases energies, breeding confidence in self-reliant men. Without opportunities and self-reliance people turn to faith, pride, unity, Hoffer argues.

Hoffer attributes the ferment of the West since the Renaissance to the intellectual's hunger for recognition. Intellectuals, given authority, plan, guide and manage; to them it seems absurd that autonomous individuals would be addicted to work, yet work provides the easiest path to self-esteem.

Paradoxically, rapid modernization requires imitation, not indivualism.

Man is playful; crises induce him to turn his toys to serious use. Man is born unfinished; finishing himself he refashions his world.

Key Quotations

Where there is the necessary skill to move mountains there is no need for the faith that moves mountains. (p. 4)

Where things have not changed at all, there is the least likelihood of revolution. (p. 6)

One cannot help thinking that were the Moslem missionary to combine his religious preaching with technical know-how - Islamization with industrialization - the spread of Islam might again become phenomenal. (p. 19)

Eric Hoffer (1902-1983)