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-Alan Blume
All posts with the tag 'Business Book Review'
My 2011 Reading List In Retrospect, Shall We Call It “Dark Unbroken Amazonian Hornet’s Nests with Coke”?
Posted on December 17th, 2011 by Alan Blume
As an early adopter of the original Kindle, and the new and improved Kindle Fire, I find it faster, easier and more convenient to read. As noted in blogs of days gone by, I try to read a mix of books from business topics to inspirational stories to those offering rewards merely from an entertainment perspective. I like to read at least a book a month, I read 15 this year, a dozen of which are listed below, in no particular order.
- The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey, Millard, Candice
- 50 Ways To Love Your Startup, Mancinelli, Bruce
- Mountains Beyond Mountains, Kidder, Tracy
- Dark Tide: The Great Molasses Flood of 1919, Puleo, Stephen
- Google Places Success, Towland, Chris
- Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption, Hillenbrand, Laura
- The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, Franklin, Benjamin
- The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, Larsson, Stieg
- The Coke Machine, The Dirty Truth Behind the World’s Favorite Soft Drink, Blanding, Michael
- The Secret Life of Houdini, The Making of America’s First Superhero, Kalush, William and Sloman, Lary
- A Splendid Exchange, How Trade Shaped the World, Bernstein, William
- Sell More & Work Less, Web Selling Techniques Everyone Should Use, A. Blume, J. Scranton, M. Lauducci, A.J. Blume
These books range from truly inspirational stories of triumph over hardship (Unbroken and River of Doubt for example) to small business best practices (50 Ways to Love Your Startup). Some were fast and easy reads like The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, while others like Franklin’s autobiography and Houdini’s life offered granular detail amidst historic context. Dark Tide and Unbroken fall under their own unique category as in, “are you kidding me – do these things really happen”? And my most recent read arguably falls into the same genre, with Roosevelt’s (of the Bull Moose variety) journey through the Amazon. The book I spent the most time reading this year, was the book which I was writing this year. With the assistance of three colleagues, we put the finishing touches on Sell More & Work Less, Web Selling Techniques Everyone Should Use this past week and hope to see it finally hit the virtual Amazon book shelves in January. Writing and publishing requires multiple read through cycles, and I expect the final cycle to happen this month. Sell More & Work Less is just over half the number of words when compared to my first book, Your Virtual Success, but the reading cycles were certainly comparable. The latter was over 60,000 words while the former, a more succinct “web selling tips book”, is only 35,000 words.
My recently purchased Kindle Fire helped me rip through The River of Doubt, the crisp text and improved user interface makes it really fast and easy to read (at least for this user). These days, I find both reading and writing enlightening and cathartic and wished that I read more when I was younger, compelling me to think of the famous Shaw quote, “youth is wasted on the young”. Will the day come that most of youths will be using Electronic Reading devices? And upon such a day will that help them read and assimilate more information? Only time will tell, then again technology may be an enabler, but it isn’t necessarily a motivator.
Three of these books were gifts (The Coke Machine, The Secret Life of Houdini and A Splendid Exchange) of the “paper” variety, the rest were downloaded to my Kindle. I can recommend all of the books on this list, though my favorites were Unbroken, River of Doubt and Dark Tide). And it is with obvious prejudice that the last item is even included on the list. As my years progress, I’m gaining momentum with writing and hope to publish another book around the end of 2012, then a novel in 2013 or 2014. The novel would be a departure for me as most of my works have been in the business genre. It’s a challenge I look forward to, mundane in comparison to the challenges faced in Unbroken or River of Doubt (or Mountain’s Beyond Mountains), but a challenge nonetheless. Sell More & Work Less will be available in January.
$20 Per Gallon: How the Inevitable Rise in the Price of Gasoline Will Change Our Lives for the Better – Book Review
Posted on April 10th, 2010 by Alan Blume
$20 Per Gallon: How the Inevitable Rise in the Price of Gasoline Will Change Our Lives for the Better by Christopher Steiner is a fascinating read as the author predicts in a somewhat linear price centric manner what the future will look like with rapidly rising oil prices. Like most predictive works, there are some things which seem plausible and are firmly rooted in a reasonably assumptive view of the future, and others that require a huge leap of faith and do not seem to pass my litmus test of an evolving world with technology to match. His basic premise, the inevitable depletion of oil reserves and incremental rise in gas prices seems very likely. After all, there are many scenarios in which the cost of gas can and will rise. Oil is a limited resource and production capacity actually peaked many years ago. Hurricanes can impact offshore rigs and cause prices to rise. Problems in the Middle East, which these days seem relatively certain, can cause a significant jump at any time. China and India, on the precipice of massively increased consumption is another major factor. Surely, there is a compelling case for significant price increases, which in turn, would create a cascading impact across our current lifestyles. But how would that impact manifest itself on our lifestyles?
Steiner takes the reader chapter by chapter, illustrating the changes to our lives as gas increases incrementally from current levels to $20 per gallon. He offers some fascinating prognostication including the demographic shift from suburban to urban living, changes in purchase habits, travel habits, consumption and of course driving. He also examines some very interesting innovations in fuel conservation evolution. Some of his conjecture is quite thought provoking, but in a few cases, some fundamental questions of mine remained unanswered.
For example, there are two key factors that are not truly addressed in $20 Per Gallon. First, the author presupposes that there will be no cost effective replacement for oil before gas hits $20 a Gallon, if ever. He argues that oil is so cheap, there is no alternative that could provide for this cost effective replacement. I’m not ready to buy into that argument; I believe that a combination of greed and technology (is that contemporary capitalism?) can still provide a viable solution. How about a chicken in every pot and wind turbine on every roof campaign slogan? Perhaps America will become home to 300 million consumer based wind turbines that power up each and every efficient electric vehicle, eliminating automobile gas consumption. This may sound far-fetched today, but clearly we have seen some impressive gains in this arena. Secondly, and more applicable to my ongoing theme, is the extremely positive impact of virtual business on energy consumption. Imagine the reduction in consumption if half of the current workforce worked from home instead of commuting to an office. The reduction in energy consumption would be staggering. Combine this new commuting behavior with solar, wind, hydro and emerging green technologies, and we could see a dramatic change in consumption. Will this happen overnight? No, but it certainly could happen before we see gas hit $20 a gallon. Nonetheless, $20 Per Gallon is an interesting and fun read. I particularly enjoyed Steiner’s outlook on Walmart! There are many interesting winners and losers in Steiner’s rising price scenarios, and I can certainly recommend $20 Per Gallon as a winner. And yes, I did read it on a Kindle.