Tony Pittarese
Interesting ideas in the later chapters. Some interesting thoughts on the changing imperatives in education.
A worthwhile read to learn more about the life and business dealings of M.S. Hershey. Nothing especially riveting in the narrative.
An interesting read that I found myself mostly agreeing with. There were a few places where I felt the author came to a particular conclusion because it fit the narrative better than other alternatives. This book is well worth reading.
Generally love Bugliosi books, but this book adds nothing new or of great interest to the JFK assassination narrative
This is a very worthwhile book to read for those working in higher education. I did feel as if the author took a big detour midway through the book when he talked extensively about technology. While he eventually circles back and situated this in the overall discussion, it did not seem to merit the extensive discussion in this presentation. What was a bit prescient was Alexander's discussion of the potential impact of a pandemic on higher education prior to COVID-19 being on anyone's radar. The last one-third of the book was more of what I expected the overall presentation, so all's well that ends well.
This is not a “light reading” book, but the way the content is broken up (since it is a collection of speeches) makes it easy to read this book in pieces over time. After reading the first few speeches, I almost gave up on the book since I didn't find the subject matter particularly interesting. I persisted, though, and found that about half-way through the book I was genuinely interested and enjoying the presentation.
It is amazing to note the many things Drucker saw far ahead of his time. What I found particularly useful was his observation–made almost 2 decades ago–that a problem with enterprise information systems is that they tell you everything you might want to know about the inside of your company, but nothing at all about things external. Although the speeches were made well before the creation of Twitter, Facebook, or the like, his speech caused me for the first time to see real value in activities such as sentiment analysis which attempts to bring external points of view into an organization.
A solid presentation. Not much here that is new or unique, but it does package things into a useful narrative about personal impact and leadership. A good, quick read.
Great ideas on the value of building effective work teams and using them to drive organizational change. The power of productive disagreement as a part of effective leadership is highlighted.
Really enjoyed this book. The conclusion felt a bit rushed, but it provided an interesting perspective on the two authors profiled. Highly recommend.
I listened to an abridged copy of the book, so it was very brief. There were some great ideas here. More amplification (such as I suspect is contained in the full book) would have improved the presentation.
Did not enjoy this one at all. Given that the characters are predominantly writers, it seems that Grisham might be trying to show readers a bit of that world. I kept waiting for something interesting to happen. Or a plot twist. Or any kind of drama at all. There was none. Simple story with little of note that happens. I enjoy Grisham, but this one seemed like it was written to fulfill a contract. (Something one of the characters in the book joked about–which seemed like it might have been a bit of hidden messaging by Grisham.)
I enjoyed this book, but the structure was weird. As opposed to one continuous story throughout the book, there actually are several events that were presented one after the other.
Exceptional book. Starts slow, and I almost set it aside for a later read. Once it picked up steam, though, it was tremendous. I listened to this as an audio book, and I may need to pick it up in print in a couple of years to re-read and highlight the insights.
I should begin by saying that I am not a coffee drinker, so I feel like I related less to the content of this book in light of that. Overall the book was interesting, but not very fulfilling or a book I would recommend widely for others. Much of the book read like something you would see in a company's annual report. There was a lot of self-congratulatory talk. Whenever anything problematic was discussed, it was always presented in the context of ‘what we learned from this minor misstep.' The book did not come across as a candid discussion, and I felt like I learned very little about the true environment of the company or its leader. Seemed like a typical ‘knight rides in on a horse and solves everyone's problems” kind of book, and I didn't find that fulfilling at all.
This book is obviously very old, having been published in 1963. Nonetheless, there are several sections of the book that are highly relevant in contemporary business. The discussion of centralized vs. decentralized operations and how Alfred Sloan established used various committees to guide corporate decision making is interesting. Even the sections that dealt with unions, collective bargaining, and incentive programs are interesting to explore GM's philosophy of dealing with workers at this point in their organization. I wouldn't recommend this go to the top of anyone's reading list, but for someone who wants to get a sense of big business in the U.S. in mid-1990's this book is a must read.
Interesting read. The discussion of how some CS algorithms mirror behaviors seen in nature and how some CS algorithms have influenced solutions in a non-CS context was interested. In some cases material seemed to be there as filler (a general discussion of an algorithm without really explaining how it had anything to do with non-CS things), and in a few cases things were stated in a way that was oversimplified (given the context). All in all, a good, light read.
There are parts of this book that I did not prefer (some of the language), but I expect that it would be fairly realistic dialog for these characters in the era in which this was set. The character study here is fascinating. It was not a light read, but was very worthwhile.