Tips

This week I finished: A Faith Undefeated, about Corrie ten Boom: I learned about Corrie ten Boom from Edith Eger's The Choice. Eger only mentioned ten Boom's name. Corrie ten Boom was a Dutch woman who lived with her family in Haarlem, Holland. The family ran a watchmaking and repair store that had operated over a century. They were devout Christians and when the Nazis took over, they helped Jews by hiding them in their house and helping them escape. They were betrayed. They were imprisoned and sent to concentration camps. Her father died soon, though Corrie didn't learn until after the war. She and her sister were imprisoned and enslaved for years. Her sister died in December 1944. Corrie was released twelve days later,…

This week I finished: Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power, by Jon Meacham: I'd been seeing lately how much the pattern today of Saying all the right things about freedom, liberty, and values we support Saying others should act by those values, in fact all of society But not living by those values ourselves Even though we could Claiming, against clear, incontrovertible evidence, that we can't repeats how Thomas Jefferson lived. Today, people recognize his flaws. We wish that on slavery he had acted differently. We wish he had, as a politician, acted more to end slavery. We wish he had freed his slaves. We recognize that his personal actions caused internal conflict that inhibited him from acting politically. If I was going to talk…

This week I finished: The Choice: Embrace the Possible, by Dr. Edith Eger: At one point listening to this book, I started feeling choked up. Tears started welling up in my eyes. I asked myself, "When has a book made me cry?" "Has a book ever led me to cry?" I continued to ask myself. As the book continued, I started full-on bawling at the experience of the author, how she made her greatest struggles useful for herself, and how she is sharing them to help all of us use our struggles to reach the greatest pinnacles, to reach our potentials. Note: this is not a self-help book, though you can use it that way. When I talk about her struggles, they include being imprisoned…

This week I finished: Inspire: The Universal Path for Leading Yourself and Others, by Adam Galinsky: Adam teaches leadership at Columbia Business School, where I learned there were classes in leadership and took them. In them, I learned that I could learn social and emotional skills. I eventually wrote a book on leadership, Leadership Step by Step, with a chapter called Inspire. I also recently met Adam in person at an event with a bunch of people from his department. How could I not read this book? Adam is a social psychologist. This book is engaging and compelling because it has a lot of stories, including many from his personal life, despite being mostly about research and how to act on it. He did a…

This week I finished: The Way Home: Tales From a Life Without Technology, by Mark Boyle: I learned of Mark Boyle probably years ago and I think watched his TEDx talk. Recently a guest suggested I connect with an Australian woman, Jo Nemeth, who is living with no money. I connected with Jo, which led to engaging conversations. Jo describes Mark as a hero, which prompted me to read this book. I also want to read his first book The Moneyless Man, but the library had this one first. I found this book engaging, enlightening, fun, and sometimes playful. It's been too long since I read Walden and Civil Disobedience, which rank among the most influential books I've read. This one is in their league.…

This week I finished: The Male Brain, by Louann Brizendine: I heard of Brizendine's first book The Female Brain, but the library had The Male Brain, so I got it instead. Reading it was satisfying, learning about differences between the male brain and what I hear more about, which is our commonalities. There seems to be a mainstream outrage that claims that the male brain and body are considered normal and women's are considered unusual, so not studied. I grew up with my parents having female-centered works like Ms. magazine and Our Bodies Ourselves, but no equivalent for males. Men's magazines in the 1970s meant pornography. Most of my life, focusing on gender meant "smashing the patriarchy," so it was refreshing to learn about specifically…

This week I finished: Racism: A Very Short Introduction, by Ali Rattansi: This book follows up last month's The Myth of Race. I've read a lot about slavery, abolitionism, Nazism, what people call race, and related topics but haven't read scholarly books about the history of racism. Racism seems just a part of human society, like marriage and school. In principle I knew it had to have started at some time, since our ancestors before leaving Africa likely didn't practice it. These two books trace it to Europe around the Inquisition. The two books overlapped enough that I believe I started to get a feel for the historical patterns they described. It's disheartening to see how involved some significant historical figures were. I knew about…

This week I finished: Pattern Breakers: Why Some Start-ups Change the Future, by Mike Maples Jr and Peter Ziebelman: I borrowed this book after hearing Mike speak about it. In parts, I felt he spoke to me about my work: starting a company can revolutionize a field, but doesn't have to, even in Silicon Valley. Many ventures simply provide a service in a system it doesn't change. By contrast, some projects overturn industries. They're different. This book doesn't claim to say anything new in this regard. It's helping people who do such things feel comfortable in the face of everyone disbelieving and causing friction at every turn. They focus in for-profit ventures and mine is non-profit, so there was a cultural difference, but I've started…

This week I finished: The Myth of Race: The Troubling Persistence of an Unscientific Idea, by Robert Wald Sussman: Wow! What a fascinating book on the history of the concepts of race (by more than one definition of the term) and the practice of racism. Sussman was an anthropologist and academic, which are the lenses he mostly looks through. He defines what he means by race and racism, describes some of today's understandings, misunderstandings, and practices around these concepts and practices, then tells their appearance and development in history. He traces the start of the practice to the Inquisition in Spain: the first time people in power defined a group of people as lesser through intrinsic properties they could never change. In that case, the…

This week I finished: Discipline Is Destiny: The Power of Self-Control, by Ryan Holiday: Like Courage is Calling, Holiday recalls virtues largely abandoned these days with diverse historical examples. It makes sense to practice them, yet we don't. I don't think I'm flattering myself to say I believe I practice discipline, approaching a quarter-million burpees without missing a day in over a decade among other sidchas. I think I also practice courage as he describes it, going against global culture by practicing values like those expressed by do unto others as you would have them do unto you, live and let live, leave it better than you found it, and love your neighbor as yourself. It's hard and takes courage and discipline to practice those…

This week I finished: Matewan: In college, a teammate on the ultimate Frisbee team was a graduate student in the film school and cited this movie as one of his favorites. I watched it a long time ago and re-watched it this week. I found it compelling as a movie. Having taken acting classes, I thought about how much fun an actor could have playing the bad guys since they were so over-the-top. I don't know much of the history the movie plays out in. Now I'm learning about the coal wars and the growth of unions then. I was probably motivated to watch it again in part from finishing Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States. This Changes Everything, by Naomi Klein: I…

This week I finished: Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class, by Rob Henderson: I saw Rob Henderson speak about this book in person and met him briefly. I confess I didn't know much about the book before learning about the event, but other attendees shared how much the book meant to them. It also sounded like it resonated with some experiences of my childhood. His sounds more troubled and chaotic than mine. I'm not glad he experienced what he did, but since it happened, I'm glad someone shared as openly as he did. It feels reassuring to know I'm not alone, or even that I had it that bad. After a rough childhood, he ended up at the top of the…

This week I finished: Courage Is Calling: Fortune Favors the Brave (The Stoic Virtues Series), by Ryan Holiday: This book spoke to me about what I'm doing with living by a different culture than nearly everyone around me. I hadn't considered myself courageous. I'm just living by my values. For that matter, I'm living by the values everyone who values Do unto others as you would have them do unto you Leave it better than you found it Live and let live Love your neighbor as yourself I also hadn't considered those compromising on those values to get along with mainstream culture cowardly, but the book makes it clear that's what's happening. This book recalls another time, when people took more responsibility, spoke more clearly,…

This week I finished: Judgment at Nuremberg, directed by Stanley Kramer: A friend recommended this movie, I think because I've been talking about how there aren't in our environmental situation the "bad guys" everyone thinks. There aren't "good guys" either. We're in a system that nobody deliberately created. My book traces the origins of how our system started from people doing things nobody could have expected to lead here. We today continue acting what seems right. The results seem more clear, which you might say should make our choices more obvious, but the inertia to keep doing what we're doing is greater. This movie represents the trials of people who followed the Nazi party to various levels of complicity or support. The context of judging…

This week I finished: Platoon, directed by Oliver Stone: Let me give you context to what prompted me to watch this movie after so long. I don't remember when I first watched it. Before learning about sustainability, I thought technology would solve our problems. Mainly I thought fusion would, but along the way nuclear, solar, and wind seemed promising. As I learned more about each, I learned that they didn't work. Moreover, they accelerated the problems we hoped they would solve, like pollution, extraction, and depletion, as well as political problems like coercion and inequality. I prefer health, safety, security, liberty, freedom, community, and things like that, so I learned one by one that they wouldn't work. While creating slides for a presentation, thinking of…

This week I finished: Waste Wars, by Alexander Clapp: I can't recommend this book enough. I came across it by reading an Op-Ed piece by the author in the New York Times: The Story You’ve Been Told About Recycling Is a Lie. That piece begins: In the closing years of the Cold War, something strange started to happen. Much of the West’s trash stopped heading to the nearest landfill and instead started crossing national borders and traversing oceans. The stuff people tossed away and probably never thought about again — dirty yogurt cups, old Coke bottles — became some of the most redistributed objects on the planet, typically winding up thousands of miles away. It was a bewildering process, one that began with the export…

This week I finished: The First Emancipator: Slavery, Religion, and the Quiet Revolution of Robert, by Andrew Levy: I wrote earlier on the article Levy expanded into this book. Carter plays a big role in my book. Levy describes him as the anti-Thomas Jefferson and the document he freed his slaves with as the anti-Declaration of Independence. Beyond the biographical parts, Levy asks why Carter appears so little in our history despite his superlative achievement of the American who freed the most slaves he owned that his absence requires explanation. This book's conclusion explores the reasons. These reasons tell us about our culture today and our values. Most of us won't be comfortable with the reasons since they speak of our excusing our living inconsistently…

This week I finished: Transformer: Transitioning as a World-Record Powerlifter, directed by Michael Del Monte, starring Janae Marie Kroczaleski: Wow! A fascinating and illuminating documentary in two ways. First, it showed the struggle of someone with two competing inner drives. One is to develop huge muscles and compete in bodybuilding. The other is to be a woman, though born a man. This movie revealed the struggles of navigating society and some family while including the joys and support of other family. It showed the inner conflict that these desires create in our world. I've known plenty of people who don't consider themselves male or female, yet this movie revealed a story and situation beyond what I'd seen, with more clarity. The interactions with mother and…

This week I finished: Nuclear Revolution: Powering the Next Generation, by podcast guest Jack Spencer. I also watched his presentation on the book and panel at Heritage and followed up with the film he recommended in that presentation, Powering America, by the Heritage Foundation, where Jack works. Through our conversations on my podcast, especially doing the Spodek Method, and (coming soon, just recorded) on his, plus all the interactions that come with scheduling, Jack and I have become friends. If you've listened to our conversations, you know that we're planning to go fishing together. I haven't eaten fish since 1990 and don't expect to restart, but Jack predicts I'll at least still love the experience. I agree with much of his view. Competitive markets can…

This week I finished: The Anti-Jefferson: Why Robert Carter III Freed His Slaves (And Why We Couldn't Care Less), by Andrew Levy: This piece was a journal article in the spring 2001 issue of The American Scholar. Robert Carter III plays a major role in Sustainability Simplified as a contrast to Jefferson, Washington, and their peers who spoke of freedom but did not free their slaves. Carter freed all his slaves during his lifetime. His slaveholding neighbors disliked him for it. He was "extreme" in his time. I consider him as a role model for being called "extreme" in my time. Future generations will consider it obvious how most people today are violating their own values and how their rationalizations and justifications carry no more…