$25.95
Customize It
Hardcover
310 pages
ISBN 9781591842194 Published Sept. 2008
Portfolio
See all formats
Tweet
Posted March 5, 2009 8:46 a.m. by dylan
In Business Imprints - 800 CEO Read Blog
Portfolio publisher Adrian Zackheim posted a year in review from that house's perspective on Monday that stands out as a beacon of hope amidst all the publishing gloom of late. (As you all probably know, Portfolio is the publisher of The 100 Best.) Adrian sums up 2008 as follows:
I'm going to simply list the books Mr. Zackheim referenced among the highlights of last year, just to give you a sampling of Portfolio's outstanding 2008 catalog.Despite reduced store traffic through the year, Portfolio reported topline sales growth of 22% and gross margin growth of more than 50%. Nearly half of our new titles achieved margin target in the year of publication. We placed two books on the printed New York Times bestseller list, and several more on the extended Times list, the Wall Street Journal list, the BusinessWeek list, and other bestseller compilations.
Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (And Stick You With the Bill) by David Cay Johnston The Go-Giver: A Little Story About A Powerful Business Idea by Bob Burg and John David Mann The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures by Dan Roam The Ten Commandments for Business Failure by Donald Keough The World is Curved: Hidden Dangers to the Global Economy by David M. Smick It's Not About the Coffee: Leadership Principles from a Life at Starbucks by Howard Behar with Janet Goldstein Reality Check: The Irreverent Guide to Outsmarting, Outmanaging, and Outmarketing Your Competition by Guy Kawasaki Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us by Seth Godin Inside Steve's Brain by Leander Kahney Talent is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else by Geoff Colvin, Billion Dollar Lessons: What You Can Learn from the Most Inexcusable Business Failures of the Last 25 Years by Paul B. Carroll and Chunka Mui
If you'd like to know more about Portfolio's 2008 and what makes these titles such highlights, head on over to Adrian Zackheim's original post.
We can only hope that The 100 Best helps make 2009 a repeat performance.
Reviewing Reviews: Part II
Posted Sept. 26, 2008 11:45 a.m. by dylan
In Uncategorized - 800 CEO Read Blog
I have a few more links for you all before I leave for the weekend. There are only two actual reviews among them, but it's the end of the day on a Friday afternoon, and I had to name this post something.
First up, BusinessWeek's Jessica Scanlon penned an interesting profile of the incomparable Seth Godin--maketing guru, friend of the company, and the man who just today taught me the difference between Stephen R. Covey and Stephen M.R. Covey. I still can't believe I didn't figure that one out on my own.
In case you missed it earlier this week, Daniel Akst wrote this glowing review of Billion Dollar Lessons in The Wall Street Journal. Ankst writes:
Billion-Dollar Lessons is an insightful and crisply written book, one that offers wisely chosen and well- narrated case studies but also good advice, such as urging companies to appoint an in-house "devil's advocate" to challenge the unhealthy unanimity that accompanies many major decisions.
Guy Kawasaki (Art of the Start) has also interviewed one of the book's coauthors, Chunka Mui, over at the American Express Open Forum blog. Two brilliant human beings in conversation... how could that not be worth your time?
Chris Erikson of The New York Post recently sat down with the author of The 4-Hour Work Week, Timothy Ferris, and got this job description from him:
I view my job these days as a sort of professional experimentalist. I experiment with things I think are interesting, including investing, and then report my findings, generally through the blog.
Sounds like a sweet gig. You can read the entire interview here.
For the second time today, I came across a reference to "Big Brother" in a review. This time, it was in the Economist's review of Planet Google, and the language is remarkably similar to Roger Lowenstein's review of The Numerati I linked to earlier today:
From books to health records and videos, from your friendships to your click patterns and physical location, Google wants to know. To some people this sounds uplifting, with promises of free access to knowledge and help in managing our daily lives. To others, it smacks of another Big Brother, no less frightening than its totalitarian ancestors for being in the private sector.
Finally, we have an opinion piece on the magic trick that is the American Dollar by James Grant. He is author of Mr. Market Miscalculates: The Bubble Years and Beyond, being published by Axios Press in November. His is one of many books due out this Fall on the financial crisis and its causes. Next week, we'll take a closer look at some books that are already out on the topic and turn our eyes to some of the upcoming titles.
Have a great weekend everyone!
Book Review Roundup
Posted Sept. 16, 2008 6:36 a.m. by dylan
In Book Reviews - 800 CEO Read Blog
We haven't taken a look at what books the big business magazines have been covering for awhile, in part because the coverage has been kind of slim. The Economist has covered some really, really, interesting looking books, but seems to have taken a hiatus from business books.
Even BusinessWeek is reviewing business books with a bent toward the larger picture rather than your more typical business book. Susan Berfield recently reviewed pollster John Zogby's The Way We'll Be:The John Zogby Report on the Transformation of the American Dream, calling it "provocative but occasianally maddening." Although she believes "Zogby comes across as a serious man with his finger reliably on the pulse of the U.S. public," she doesn't agree with all of his assessments. Namely this quote from the book:
The people who are losing their jobs are adjusting. They're altering their ambitions . . . to bring them in line with the realities of their lives.
And, this one, concerning the growing disparity between the rich and poor:
Rather than boil with resentment that some have so much when others have so little, most Americans seem to accept the billionaires among us and even empathize with the problems that come with having too much of everything.
In effectively simple response, Berfield writes "We do?" However, due to the fact that Zogby has done polling for such corporate clients as Coca-Cola, IBM, and Microsoft, there are bound to be significant insights for entrepreneurs on the changing demographics of this country, and I know a few folks in the office were looking forward to checking that out.
Christopher Farrell's review
Adam Aston's review in the September 22nd issue is given two pages, probably because he reviews Thomas Friedman's Hot, Flat and Crowded. He hilariously writes of the book that "if Fareed Zakaria and Al Gore met and co-authored a long-winded book, this would be it," but lavishes great praise on the book throughout, even suggesting sections of it if you're not going to read the entire thing. Many of you are going to read this book regardless, but for those of you on the fence, Aston's review might be persuasive.
Getting into your more traditional business book, Inc.'s "skimmer's guide" this month is to Billion-Dollar Lessons: What You Can Learn from the Most Inexcusable Business Failures of the Last 25 Years by Paul Carroll and Chunka Mui, and contains this summary:
The backstory: Mui is co-author of Unleashing the Killer App, among the best books about the business implications of technology. He and Carroll worked together at a consulting firm. If Killer App is Mui's Paradiso -- a celebration of the bold and innovative--this new book is his Inferno--an indictment of the bold and chowderheaded.
And, although they don't post book reviews online, Jia Lynn Yang also wrote briefly and positively of Billion Dollar Lessons in Fortune's September 1 issue, and Daniel Okrent reviewed Randall Stross's Planet Google in the issue of September 15, writing:
Though Stross's eyes occasionally pop at the wonders being concocted in the Googlian halls, this isn't a fan book; he's as insightful on the company's failures (the oafishly naive start of it's book-scanning operation, the financial swamp of its video efforts) as he is on its triumphs.
I'd just like to say that "the oafishly naive start of it's book-scanning operation" gave more than a few people in the book publishing industry prematurely gray hairs. That's just how intimidating the force that Okrent describes as "the 21st century's most notable company/employer/verb" has so quickly become.
