I finished this week: Carmaggeddon, by Daniel Knowles: I bought a cheap used car after getting my first license at 15 years old. The experience led me to never own a car again. I knew that choice would force many later life decisions The summer after high school, when I was 16, a friend and I rode our bikes from Philadelphia to Bar Harbor, Maine and back. A couple years later I started volunteering for bike advocacy. I think I know a fair amount about cars and how designing cities, nations, and cultures prioritizing them (and planes) over other forms of transportation undermines community, health, resilience, and so on. I could have sworn I've read this book before. It comprehensively covers what I've learned over…

This week I finished: Life, by Keith Richards: I'd meant to read this book since seeing it on shelves a few years ago. Bruce Springsteen's memoir prompted me. As with Springsteen, Richards' experience after connecting with the guitar resonated with me most---discovering the art, the craft, self-expression, awareness, connecting with other musicians listening to their recordings, meeting other musicians in person, and so on. I don't think I'm flattering myself to say I'm connecting with them as artists developing something nobody has seen before but knowing that the world will love it, that they crave it. My book Leadership Step by Step identifies leadership as a performance art where we express ourselves to evoke emotion in our audiences and to change them in ways they…

This week I finished: Born to Run, by Bruce Springsteen: Growing up in Philadelphia, across the river from New Jersey, Bruce was always big. I loved this book, which I listened to, Bruce himself reading it. The first third recounted his doing what it took. He struggled to buy his first guitar for $18. He slept on floors, figured out how to play. He played what gigs he could. He had a vision of greatness. He didn't need other people's permission. I doubt anyone else imagined anything he envisioned. He didn't just work blindly. He looked inside himself. He wouldn't accept halfway. Given my situation of nearly everyone othering me ("a phenomenon in which some individuals or groups are defined and labeled as not fitting…

This week I couldn't use the computer much so read more than usual, including two long books and one hard-to-read one. I finished: The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America, by Richard Rothstein: I confess I recorded my podcast episode with Richard before reading the book, initially motivated by my mom's sharing (on her and my podcast episodes) about growing up in a mostly black ghetto that had been a working class neighborhood before we moved there. She talked about redlining and how government policy grew and sometimes created racial differences in wealth and income. Richard's book comprehensively and definitively covers the issue. It's infuriating in many ways: How does American culture and our educational system not make this…