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| Good to Great | Jim Collins | Very interesting read about companies that went from good companies to great companies in terms of market performance. Emphasized getting the "right people on the bus" and getting the wrong people off. Also, stay focused, and get better one step at a time as a team. |
| Alpha Project Managers | Andy Crowe | Very good read about a study that shows what makes the best project managers. I saw Andy speak and was very impressed. It turns out that the best project managers are those that plan and execute great communication throughout the project. |
| How Life Imitates Chess | Gary Kasparov | Very interesting. I saw Gary on TV and had to get his book. Aside from the tremendous talent, drive, and relentless pursuit of excellence obvious in the world's best, there is advice for everyone. It is all about always improving your position in time and material. |
| Richard Bolles | What Color Is Your Parachute | A classic, very inspiring, very friendly read. The best information on how to job hunt or make a career change. Encouraging and real. |
| Freedomnonics: Why the Free Market Works and Other Half-Baked Theories Don't | John Lott jr. | Interesting ideas along with some cause and effects that you normally don't thik about. |
| Team of Rivals | Doris Kearns Goodwin | This was my first book on Lincoln. Excellent portrayal of Lincoln as well as the men in his cabinet. You come away with a strong admiration for Lincoln and an understanding that no one else was right for the times. |
| The PMP Exam: How to Pass on Your First Try | Andy Crowe, PMP | One of two books I used for preparation for the PMP exam. Indeed, I did pass on my first try and was confident going into the exam. A well organized book. |
| Head First PMP | Jennifer Greene & Andrew Stellman | Uses the standard "head first" approach. Did a good job on establishing the mental framework for hanging all of the project management knowledge needed for the exam. This was my orientation book which I followed with Andy Crowe's book. Between the two I was well prepared for the exam. |
| The Hard Truth About Soft Skills | Peggy Klaus | Definately a subject that a technologists and other knowledge workers need to cover on a regular basis. The subtitle is "workplace lessons smart people wish they'd learned sooner" and I can personally vouch for that. Peggy does a good job of illuminating this territory in an easy read. However, it is not an in-depth guide in the hard work of behavoir change. |
| Outliers - The Story of Success | Malcom Gladwell | Interesting and fast read as have been Malcom's other books. In this one, he exams what really happened to make Bill Gates and others a huge success. Being born at the right time is one big factor as well as the opportunity, the work, and the mind-set to take advantage of the opportunity. Smarts and genius are all over-rated in America's myth of the self-made individual. |
| The Black Swan | Nassim Nicholas Taleb | Wow! A must read. Wonder why the pros could not forsee the financial crisis and were blind to fatal assumptions about the stability of the system? Explained here. Scary. This blindness, nay, madness, also applies to proponents of man-made global warming whose faith is in models rather than reality. |
