Andrew Wilkinson is building an investment firm called tiny. His team is moving quickly on acquisitions to make them seller-friendly, then leaving management teams in place and staying out of their way. | learn more
What’s the next innovation that will change the world? It could be any one or more of these. | learn more
“You get somebody sick in Chicago, it’s a $200 fine,” Geller says. “You park too close to a restaurant, it’s $1,000. Those restaurants’ profits are more important than public health? The city of Chicago has said, ‘We’re going to protect brick-and-mortars.’ Why is it that this particular thing needs to be protected? It’s farcical. It’s so outrageous.” | learn more
Maps are lying to you. I still remember when it sunk in that our typical world map is one big lie. When a tour guide in Colombia told us that the country is bigger than Texas and California combined, I didn’t believe him. Google quickly confirmed that I was wrong. | learn more
Clayton Christensen applies his innovation framework to the education industry, an effective monopoly that’s resistant to true disruption. With examples galore, he builds a case for how we can expect disruptive innovation to change mass market education. While his timing may have been off, his roadmap still seems practical. (View on Amazon)
Okay so this one is a tiny bit self help-y, but really not so much. The author’s (Clayton Christensen of The Innovator’s Dilemma fame) premise is that his class at Harvard Business School had the best of intentions and the future looked bright, but as time went on more and more of them ended up living unhappy lives despite all sorts of professional success. So he applies lessons from his…
Imagine if you and your brother worked together. Then imagine if you worked together in the government. Keep going - one of you is Secretary of State and the other is Director of the CIA. That’s the Dulles brothers. Together, they overthrew governments, ran secret paramilitary campaigns, and influenced the lives of millions of people around the world - not always for the better. (View on Amazon)
Anthony Bourdain’s autobiographical story about “coming up” in the world of kitchens and cooking. He narrates the book himself, which I really enjoyed because he delivers his writing with so much authenticity as well as clarify. If you like food, and have a high level of tolerance for profanity-laced stories about cooking intermixed with drugs, this one’s for you. (View on Amazon)
This author makes a case for the idea that mindfulness/meditation has tangible benefits, backing it up with studies and wrapping it around the story of Siddhartha and the foundation of Buddhism. The studies are, by the author’s own admission, fairly “early” with small sample sizes and less than ideal control groups in many cases. Despite all of that, there’s something to be said for the early data showing that mindfulness…
The story starts 70,000 years ago and takes you through the cognitive revolution, the agricultural revolution, and all of the revolutions since then. It starts out with a strong “anthropology” focus, giving insights (and the author’s opinions) into evolutionary traits we’ve developed. The latter half is fairly modern, and offers many views on how our society has evolved and where it’s headed. (View on Amazon)