Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin
Revisiting the HOPE that Obama's election inspired may not be the ideal recipe for emotional well-being post the recent Massachusetts Senate loss, and the dimming prospects for health care reform due to Republican filibustering. Don't worry - take the plunge. If you though (like I did) that you know basically all their is to know about the 2008 presidential race than you are in for a pleasant surprise. These reporters, writing at the "in-between' area between reporting and history, give us the inside and unvarnished scoop.
This is a story about the people, not policies. The flawed, the ambitious, the crazy, the mean, the brilliant, and the dim-witted. Candidates are like all of us, except more so in everything. You will have renewed faith in Obama's abilities, renewed thankfulness that the election did not go to any of the other candidates, and a renewed wonder that anyone would be willing to ever run for president.
I think Hilary actually comes off quite well in the book (her campaign not so much). So I'm going to predict here that in 2012 Hilary and Biden will swap jobs, and that Hilary will be elected to the top gig in 2016.
How did someone as basically solid as McCain pick someone so obviously unqualified for (any) high office as Palin? (The answer….desperation). The chapters on Palin are hilarious - worth the read alone. On the other hand the reporting on John Edwards and his wife (and mistress etc. etc.) is just depressing.
An instant classic.
Grade: A-
Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel H. Pink
Drive got trashed by the Economist - you should read it and make your own judgements.
Drive falls squarely in the "strengths" literature - a field I know best from the work of Marcus Buckingham. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Buckingham The basic premise is familiar. Traditional management strategies of incentives and sanction (rewards and sticks) are at best ineffective and at worst counter-productive in motivating performance. Effect motivation needs to be intrinsic. People need to do work that is meaningful, and they need be given both autonomy and responsibility for their jobs. Workplaces (and educational environments) are best set-up to focus on results rather than means. People will perform well if their job (or education's) matches their strengths (passions) - efforts by management to focus on and correct weaknesses are bound to fail.
Personally, I find this philosophy both correct and liberating. Drive is a book that I hope is read and discussed in both higher ed. and in other workplaces.
Grade: B+
Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town by Nick Reding
Methland should be read as a companion piece to Caught in the Middle: America's Heartland in the Age of Globalism - the micro results of the macro trends that have decimated once thriving agricultural and manufacturing towns in the midwest. As Reding tells the story, meth is a symptom of a larger economic and social story rather than a cause. True, meth addiction and the meth economy feeds the beast of social decline and dysfunction, but the roots of meth's rise as the working class drug of choice, and the states inability to deal with either the producers or the addicts is structural. Reding's reporting strategy is personal and visual. We meet the people on all sides of the meth epidemic as full drawn and realized personalities. Anyone who reads Methland will have a hard time thinking about crystal addiction, manufacture or distribution as one only of personal failure.
Grade: B+
Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan by Jake Adelstein
I like the idea of Tokyo Vice better than the actual book. The set-up is great. American guy (my age) goes to college in Japan and stays on to join the countries biggest newspaper as a crime reporter. In the process he illuminates aspects of Japanese culture and society that have been previously hidden to non-Japanese, including (but not limited to), the Japanese newspaper culture, and the Japanese crime culture, the Japanese strip club / prostitution / vice culture. The problem is that this book would have been much better as a novel than a piece of non-fiction. Adelstein, I'm guessing, was simply too constricted by real life (namely a real life spouse and children) to either get really dirty and go native in the Tokyo vice scene, or to tell about it if he did indeed descend into the moral darkness. What is interesting about the story, and precisely the part that Adelstein hints at but always seems to shy away from, is the raunch, sin, violence and sex. We really don't think the story of a Japanese crime boss getting a liver transplant stateside is all that interesting. What is fascinating is seeing a gaijin penetrate, and succumb, to the temptations of hookers, strippers, drugs, booze, thugs, and story telling that should be a Tokyo vice reporters life. We want to know more about the underside of Japan from a perspective (American, male) that we can relate.
Grade: B
Revisiting the HOPE that Obama's election inspired may not be the ideal recipe for emotional well-being post the recent Massachusetts Senate loss, and the dimming prospects for health care reform due to Republican filibustering. Don't worry - take the plunge. If you though (like I did) that you know basically all their is to know about the 2008 presidential race than you are in for a pleasant surprise. These reporters, writing at the "in-between' area between reporting and history, give us the inside and unvarnished scoop.
This is a story about the people, not policies. The flawed, the ambitious, the crazy, the mean, the brilliant, and the dim-witted. Candidates are like all of us, except more so in everything. You will have renewed faith in Obama's abilities, renewed thankfulness that the election did not go to any of the other candidates, and a renewed wonder that anyone would be willing to ever run for president.
I think Hilary actually comes off quite well in the book (her campaign not so much). So I'm going to predict here that in 2012 Hilary and Biden will swap jobs, and that Hilary will be elected to the top gig in 2016.
How did someone as basically solid as McCain pick someone so obviously unqualified for (any) high office as Palin? (The answer….desperation). The chapters on Palin are hilarious - worth the read alone. On the other hand the reporting on John Edwards and his wife (and mistress etc. etc.) is just depressing.
An instant classic.
Grade: A-
Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel H. Pink
Drive got trashed by the Economist - you should read it and make your own judgements.
Drive falls squarely in the "strengths" literature - a field I know best from the work of Marcus Buckingham. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Buckingham The basic premise is familiar. Traditional management strategies of incentives and sanction (rewards and sticks) are at best ineffective and at worst counter-productive in motivating performance. Effect motivation needs to be intrinsic. People need to do work that is meaningful, and they need be given both autonomy and responsibility for their jobs. Workplaces (and educational environments) are best set-up to focus on results rather than means. People will perform well if their job (or education's) matches their strengths (passions) - efforts by management to focus on and correct weaknesses are bound to fail.
Personally, I find this philosophy both correct and liberating. Drive is a book that I hope is read and discussed in both higher ed. and in other workplaces.
Grade: B+
Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town by Nick Reding
Methland should be read as a companion piece to Caught in the Middle: America's Heartland in the Age of Globalism - the micro results of the macro trends that have decimated once thriving agricultural and manufacturing towns in the midwest. As Reding tells the story, meth is a symptom of a larger economic and social story rather than a cause. True, meth addiction and the meth economy feeds the beast of social decline and dysfunction, but the roots of meth's rise as the working class drug of choice, and the states inability to deal with either the producers or the addicts is structural. Reding's reporting strategy is personal and visual. We meet the people on all sides of the meth epidemic as full drawn and realized personalities. Anyone who reads Methland will have a hard time thinking about crystal addiction, manufacture or distribution as one only of personal failure.
Grade: B+
Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan by Jake Adelstein
I like the idea of Tokyo Vice better than the actual book. The set-up is great. American guy (my age) goes to college in Japan and stays on to join the countries biggest newspaper as a crime reporter. In the process he illuminates aspects of Japanese culture and society that have been previously hidden to non-Japanese, including (but not limited to), the Japanese newspaper culture, and the Japanese crime culture, the Japanese strip club / prostitution / vice culture. The problem is that this book would have been much better as a novel than a piece of non-fiction. Adelstein, I'm guessing, was simply too constricted by real life (namely a real life spouse and children) to either get really dirty and go native in the Tokyo vice scene, or to tell about it if he did indeed descend into the moral darkness. What is interesting about the story, and precisely the part that Adelstein hints at but always seems to shy away from, is the raunch, sin, violence and sex. We really don't think the story of a Japanese crime boss getting a liver transplant stateside is all that interesting. What is fascinating is seeing a gaijin penetrate, and succumb, to the temptations of hookers, strippers, drugs, booze, thugs, and story telling that should be a Tokyo vice reporters life. We want to know more about the underside of Japan from a perspective (American, male) that we can relate.
Grade: B
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