1 comments about Man With No Name: Turn Lemons into Lemonade.

1. I was honored to hear a talk by this gentle, humorous man 7/15/98 at the INTA Conference in Arizona. He genuinely bubbles with enthusiasm and positive energy. It was a joy to read this book and learn how he turns events around to his satisfaction, depending solely upon God. Two of his powerful statements are, "Failure is Someone Else's Opinion of the Outcome of a Situation," and "Power Is In Being, Not in Doing." Wally Amos depends, he says, on spiritual laws that work - he doesn't have to understand them - they just work. He tells us how to benefit from adversity and of the many relationship problems that occur and how to handle them. I enjoyed every minute reading this book and highly recommend it.

2 comments about Kingdom: The Story of the Hunt Family of Texas.

1. A rags to riches story about one of the more powerful families in Texas. Arizona Slim was originally from Illinois. He hopped around the country trying his hand at various things (including college). One thing he was good at was gambling and speculation. He speculated in land and then oil leases. His gambling contributed and funded the speculations in land and oil leases. His spectatular success in the oil fields of Texas and Arkansas led to his becoming the richest man in the world. He was also married to two women at the same time. His political beliefs were far right and based on the amount of money a man owned (cashocracy). His son blew a large portion of his inheritance on trying to corner the silver market. Last I heard, he was in bankruptcy.
   
   This is a great story about a rich family. I was surprised at the story of this family. Tuccille writes his book as if it were a novel, but it is all true. This is a very nice read.



2. I had little knowledge of the Hunt Family, but I was able to relate to the times and events the book covered. It intermingled many events in our past and supported some theories about Kennedy's death. I felt it made me question the material goals we set for ourselves. I also realized no matter what we achieve materially the greatest needs or wishes in life cannot be corrected.

1 comments about Bush Pilot With a Briefcase: The Incredible Story of Aviation Pioneer Grant McConachie.

1. This book is a tribute to the man who single-handedly shaped the face of Canadian avation, written by a long-time friend. Through a series of anecdotes depicting the adventures and misadventures of the former president of Canadian Pacific Airlines, Keith is able to paint a vivid picture of this charismatic, lovable man, while maintaining the legend that surrounds him. Well worth anyone's time; a great mixture of adventure and humour.

1 comments about Sotheby's: Bidding for Class.

1. Excellent book. Piles of facts, sharp analysis. One can learn more about art market from the book than from years of studies. Apart from it - pleasant reading.

2 comments about Whole Life, Looking Back While Looking Ahead.

1. This is a humorous yet philosophical memoir covering over thirty years in the insurance profession. The author has tried his hand at several different positions, as an agent, a manager, and many home office management positions, and every stop is described with clever wit and humor. I really enjoyed reading this book, and could definitely relate to his experiences and insights. I think anyone who's considering this profession or has been involved in it for any amount of time should read this book!



2. This is definitely NOT a typical business book! It doesn't contain any of the usual cliches or how-to-sell bromides found in most others;instead, it's a funny book about the insurance industry that is informative as well. This book reveals a lot about a business that I knew very little about, yet it reads like a memoir. Not to sound trite, but I got to some parts and couldn't put the book down until I finished! I laughed out loud at some of the experiences he has had through the years, and I think that anyone who has been in the business for any amount of time will really appreciate the insights. I loved the quotes at the beginning of each chapter, which are very appropriate for the content and fun. This really was an enjoyable book!

5 comments about Car That Could:, The: The Inside Story of GM's Revolutionary Electric Vehicle.

1. The dream of the electrical vehicle was first inspired by the success of the sunraycer, a vehicle capable of 41 mph and able to traverse the US on five gallons of gas. EV technology faced two signicant barriers: the DC to AC inverter and the 100,000 mile battery life. AC motors were lighter and but the electricity had to be chopped or inverted. Alan Cocconi had built a inverter for his SunRaycer and also designed and built regenerative braking. At Aerovironment, Brooks used the Sunraycer power design and built an EV with a more power inverter and AC motors and battery pack. Cocconi built two inverters which each powered a 50 kilowatt motor.
   
   The GM impact prototype solved both of these problems. Alec Brooks was assigned to study Paul MacCready in the offices of AeroVironment and his efficient motors. MacCready had built an Electric Vehicle prototype for GM - with its streaming lines; the initial idea was too make the rear wheel base shorter than the front creating a tapering effect. The car was to be built from aluminum rather than steel. The Impact had a fiber glass body.
   
   It was Baker's job to bring the EV car to market. Baker reluctantly took the task, a task he dreaded because of early failure with the electrovette.
   
   Lead Acid batteries were a problem, but they were cheap and they worked. Lead acid batteries needed water replenishment; engineers tried to devise methods and these batteries could not be 100% discharged and recharged for a 1,000 cycles. Heat and cold affect the electrical output of the battery. The batteries weighted about 900 pounds. Nickle Metal Hydrid was proven but not used immediately; Baker didn't want any delays; Baker needed to get the EV quality to production status: heater, air conditioner, radio, and suspension system.
   
   The impact could accelerate from 0-60 seconds in 7.9 seconds reaching a speed of 75 mph; it could travel 124 miles at 55 mph and in city reach 300 mile range.



2. This is a great book. The author follows the tangled story of how GM developed the first production electric car... but he went to press just a year or two before GM sent it to the crusher. See the documentary Who Killed the Electric Car? for the sad end to this story.
   
   For contrast, google for the on-line copy of "The Prius That Shook the World". While Schnayerson was following GM he was totally unaware of the development of the Toyota Prius. Like Shnayerson's book, the Prius book takes the development of a new car from a clean sheet of paper to production. From reading both, Toyota seems to have much longer term plans and much less in-fighting. GM changed it's mind with every new CEO.
   
   By coincidence, neither book has a single photo in it (aside from the cover) and lots of personalities. But from 2007 looking back the Prius story has a much happier ending.



3. The book "The Car That Could" tells the story of GM's EV1 much better than the film "Who Killed the Electric Car?". The book tells the story of the EV1's birth. That is of course a more hopeful story than the EV1's death, which the film covers. And that fact alone makes a big difference in the impact of the story that is told.
   
   But there is another difference. "The Car That Could" tells the inside story of how the EV1 came to be. People within GM make a huge effort to give birth to the car. This was no sham attempt to live up to the California Air Resources Board mandate to put electric cars on the road. GM clearly had its technical and marketing people do their best work. And they did build a great little car, a car that could.
   
   As we know now, though, GM's EV1 did not live very long. The passion of those who put their money down to lease the cars could not make up for the fact that they were few in number. When the California Air Resources Board's mandate went away, that spelled doom for the EV1.
   
   No new EV1s were made. Those that had been made were crushed. A sad end for the car that could.
   
   But though the film "Who Killed the Electric Car" implies that GM killed the EV1, the reasons for its death were more complex than that. And the real story of its death has not, I think, been told. Certainly not as well, and with so much insight, as the story of its birth.
   
   But the story of the electric car has not ended. And there may be some hope for a happy ending. Recently GM's CEO Rick Wagoner has said that he regrets the decision to kill the EV1. And GM promises to come out soon with a new series hybrid electric car. That may put GM back into competition with Toyota and Honda, and their parallel hybrid cars. If so, maybe we will see another, more successful version of a GM car that could.
   
   Michael Shnayerson did a great job researching and writing about the birth of the EV1. Many of the insights written into the book will help those thinking about electric cars today.
   
   So in my mind, "The Car That Could" should be required reading for anyone who wants to participate in the electric vehicle industry. Copies are hard to find now. But if you are interested in electric cars, find a copy and read it. "The Car That Could" makes the must-read list; "Who Killed the Electric Car?" does not.



4. This is a fascinating inside story about the development of electric cars in the early '90s.
   
   GM unveiled a prototype electric car in 1990 and conveyed the message to California (and other states) that they could develop such a vehicle for consumer use. California shortly thereafter adopted standards requiring the top 7 car manufacturers to sell emission free vehicles totalling 2% of sales in 1998, increasing to 5% in 2001, then 10% in 2003.
   
   GM proceeded to lose enormous sums of money in the early 1990s. But they still worked to develop the electric car for two reasons. One was to be able to meet the California standards. The other was hoping they would be ahead of the curve and make money on the new technology.
   
   But many technical issues needed to be resolved to bring the car to market, the biggest being batteries. Developing batteries capable of providing adequate storage capacity for a reasonable amount of driving was (and remains) a monumental problem.
   
   At the same time GM was developing a marketable electric car, they (along with Ford, Chrysler, and Big Oil) lobbied hard to eliminate the emission free mandates, claiming the technology and consumer demand wasn't there. What did GM want to happen? It seems that they didn't really know, in part because they were bleeding money.
   
   California blinked in the 4th quarter of 1995 and eliminated the mandate. Then, in January 1996 GM unveiled the EV1, a 2 seat electric sports car.
   
   For a follow-up on the "success" of the EV1 and other EVs, I recommend the movie "Who killed the Electric Car?". Disturbing.



5. Shnayerson tells the story up to when the GM Impact was introduced. The film "Who Killed the Electric Car?" got me interested in electric cars. The GM Impact (EV1) was the most successful modern electric car, but it disappeared into the crushers shortly after its introduction.
   
   His story is that of a dedicated crew inside GM working against budget cuts and management changes to make the car. It is a good read.
   
   A shortcoming is that there are so many major characters-- A new one on each page in some chapters. One is Ken Baker, who runs through the whole narrative, as do Roger Smith (yes, that Roger) and Robert Stempel, one a former GM Chairman.
   
   Another major character doesn't appear until chapter 20: Stan Ovshinsky. The 12 pages describe his career and the Ovonic 12-volt NiMH battery, and the test on the track at Mesa, Arizona, where his batteries powered the test Impact EV 201 miles on a single charge.
   
   All of these 100+ GM execs and engineers were heart-and-soul dedicated to making the EV succeed. One cannot read this book and feel that GM was against the electric car. Shnayerson is an outsider, and was in no way a mouthpiece for GM or an industry apologist. When he tells of GM execs moving their families to Lansing or to Troy so they can work more on the Impact, you get a strong feeling that GM wanted this car to happen. GM sunk a few billion dollars in it.
   
   I could have done with fewer pages of office drama and a new character on every other page, all of whom "exuded midwestern charm," and less about whether so-and-so was "on the fast track to a senior vice-presidency."
   
   I would have preferred line drawings of new assemblies, for example, regenerative brakes-- a first by GM. I wanted more technical details! Cut a couple dozen pages of drama and give us line drawings! For example, in one of the few technical discussions; Setting a standard for EV chargers, page 223, after 3 years and $10 million, GM accepted Hughes's inductive 220 volt charger. Ford stayed with the basic prong-and-socket conductive charger. I wanted a line drawing of each, a photo of each, a short description of each.
   
   Shnayerson gives an objective account of politics, noting the reelection of California Governor Pete Wilson in 1994, and Republicans unseating Democrat governors, and Republicans making huge gains in Congress in Nov 1994-- as a factor in reducing the auto industry's motivation to push the EV. That political revolution is missing in explaining the death of the EV in California in "Who Killed the Electric Car?" where the government villians are made out to be Bush, Cheney, and Rice. Shnayerson suggests that a Republican sweep in 1994 may have been the bigger factor, with a repudiation of 25 years of environmental legislation.
   
   We humans may be incapable of analyzing economic factors, but we always emphasize political factors. This mental shortcoming has to do with the Availability Bias, from cognitive psychology: We overestimate factors easy to imagine or remember (like political figures we don't like) and ignore factors difficult to imagine or remember (like anything to do with economics). So when GM cuts funding in 1992 for the Impact, everyone, like director Chris Paine of "Who Killed the Electric Car?" screams out that there is a giant conspiracy by bad guys in Oil, but few recognize that when a company has a loss of a billion dollars, they need to cut back somewhere.
   
   Shnayerson spends only a few pages on Japanese electric cars: All four major Japanese carmakers had cars to show at the Anaheim California December 1994-- EV Symposium 12. Mazda had an EV Miata. In France, residents were paying for the privilege of test driving 50 Peugeot-Citroen ZX and 105 model prototypes. If Big Oil, Autos, and the U.S. Gov killed the GM EV, who killed the French and Japanese EVs? Which brings up the Big Red Cars in Southern California.
   
   Did Standard Oil and GM and B. F. Goodrich destroy Henry Huntington's Pacific Electric, the world's best electric car system, with its more than 1000 miles of standard gauge track? Or rather than a giant conspiracy, is the fault in the hands of my mother and father and thousands like them who destroyed the Pacific Electric-- they purchased a shiny new 1949 Nash, instead of spending that money on tickets to ride the Red Cars. We blame the "greedy" oil companies, but we don't think about tens of thousands of Southern Californians ready to buy that status symbol, their own auto, after years of rationing during and after World War II.

5 comments about Proudly Serving My Corporate Masters: What I Learned in Ten Years as a Microsoft Programmer.

1. Barr acknowledges some well-known Microsoft idiosyncrasies, such as the overemphasis on puzzle-like tests during interviewing and the management affection (not so unusual among software management) for crazy long hours by programmers (apparently independent of results). However, all in all, who stays at Microsoft for 10 years and then has so much good to say but a die-hard? If you want to know everything you never wanted to know about API's and why your next release of a Windows release may have hundreds of API incompatibilties, this book may help you. I suspect an outsider could have written as "inside" a book on mattters of substance. It's not clear Barr has burned any bridges with Microsoft by what is revealed in this book: was that ever his intent? The title seems intended at face value.



2. I thought this was a great "trip down memory lane" in regards to the birth of the PC and Microsoft. Adam does a great job of providing history and context of the era.
   
   Although the text was long and often would stray from the intended topic, the extra info was pertinent and interesting.
   
   This was a great read for someone who grew up with the PC and Microsoft.



3. Adam Barr writes well. I found myself agreeing with several of his analyses: esp. his dissection of MSFT's evangelistic activities and his keen understanding of the api-itis that afflicts MSFT products today.

   The book is in four parts. The first is a look at MSFT hiring and interview processes, which is followed by a description of his time at Softimage (which includes a brilliant dissection of type-1 through type-4 demos), then a long and meandering recounting of his early involvement with computers and then an equally meandering final part which is a compilation of his observations about MSFT and the industry in general. I found the first two interesting enough to read, but found the final two not as compelling. He completely mis-understands the point about middleware and Java (see Lou Gerstner's book "Who said elephants can't dance?" for a different definition of middleware and business strategy). Perhaps his narrow, unappealing and unfocussed second half meanders so much because he didn't take his chances to widen his own career within MSFT as a manager or PM.

   Like Adam with his interviewees, I agonized over whether or not I should give this book a "four" or a "three" star rating :). Ultimately, I had to go with the lower rating because as a developer, I was hoping to read about what "he" had actually "learnt as a developer" when I picked up the book. Unfortunately, while he talks about a whole lot of things (such as the importance of testing for product quality, and the importance of programmers getting a 'life' as they mature, the contributions of MSFT to the open source movement, etc. etc.) he doesn't at all talk about what he worked on, what was exciting and new about NT code he may have contributed to, or how methodologies and practices changed while he was there. Maybe MSFT prevents people from talking about such stuff, but by cutting out such professionally interesting bits, the book becomes a "missed opportunity" (esp. since Adam is a self described "systems guy"). Perhaps he really was writing only for the non-programmer crowd (but I doubt it).




4. don't bother buying this book.

   For me, it was a bummer, too much ado about hiring practices, and the author does not escape his bias after having worked for Microsoft 10 years.

   There are too many inaccuracies, like Microsoft has won the database wars, Microsoft has won the networking wars, Windows NT is "clearly superior to Linux", etc, etc.....




5. I enjoyed the early pages of the book, highlighting the workings of Microsoft, but felt the author could have provided more insight into what it was like working with his team and working for B.Gates. I thought the book ended strangely. I read it cover to cover in less than 24 hrs.

2 comments about Builders: Herman and George R. Brown (Kenneth E. Montague Series in Oil and Business History).

1. Much of what I had read on Brown & Root had been written in relation to the ties between the company and Dick Cheney but having had the chance to read this examination of its founders, I was quite surprised. First I was pleased that the authors did an excellent job of detailing the brothers and their company from the beginning to end without political or popular slant. The details of their early roadwork on through the first World War when they began a national player was extremely enjoyable. It was also interesting to learn of the brothers personality traits and hear the details behind some of their more memorable local deals such as the complicated structuring of the land deal which led to the construction of Johnson Space Center.
   
   This is indeed a top notch book written in a calm and easy flowing manner which make it a pleasure to read.



2. This is the story of Herman and George Brown and the engineering and construction firm, Brown & Root, they founded. From humble origins in Central Texas building roads with a team of mules to much larger projects such as damns, military installations, ship building, offshore platforms and industrial plants. The book is not about the history of Brown and Root, but rather focuses on the lives of both brothers and their political and philanthropic activities. The book shows the relationship between the brothers and an up and coming Congressman from Texas in the 1930's, Lyndon Johnson. The book chronciles the parallel rise of both the Brown brothers' company and Lyndon Johnson in the national and international scene. The book shows the Brown brothers as movers and shakers in Houston politics and how they helped shape the growing city in the 1940's and 50's. A good book for anyone interested in construction as well as the history and poltics of Texas.

1 comments about Bold Entrepreneur: A Life of James B. Duke.

1. Bold Entrepreneur: A Life Of James B. Duke by Robert F. Duren (Emeritus Professor of History, Duke University) is the scholarly biography of the prominent businessman who created the globe-spanning British-American Tobacco Company at the turn of the twentieth century. Robert Duke's labors, loves, and legacy are all deftly chartered in this meticulously researched and impeccably presented portrait, which unflinchingly presents the good with the bad.

1 comments about Can't Take It With You: The Art of Making and Giving Money.

1. What an incredible story! What an incredible life! What an incredible contribution to society! What an incredible man! Certainly, Mr. Cullman can say he has "lived" his life and it's not over yet. This book is a must read for the up and coming entreprenuer, the social philanthropist and those sitting on thousands, millions and even billions they, nor their families or generations to come could ever spend. I salute Mr. Cullman for creating the path and not following a trail in his generosity, philosophy and business acumen.