Tag Archives: Simon and Schuster
Heath Brothers to Distribute New Business Book
Chip and Dan Heath are publishing their first book in 4 1/2 years. We have
featured their previous books at the First Friday Book Synopsis in Dallas, which are Made to Stick (Random House, 2007), Switch (Crown, 2010), and Decisive (Crown, 2013). I use Made to Stick as a required book in my MBA Business Communication course at the University of Dallas. Randy Mayeux has delivered a workshop around the principles of Decisive, that we have facilitated for several companies.
This book is called The Power of Moments: Why Certain Moments Have Extraordinary Impact (Simon & Schuster), and will be released on October 3, 2017.
Here is a description of their new book, from an e-Mail that I received from them today:
In this book, the Heath Brothers explore why certain brief experiences can jolt us and elevate us and change us—and how we can learn to create such extraordinary moments in our life and work.
While human lives are endlessly variable, our most memorable positive moments are dominated by four elements: elevation, insight, pride, and connection. If we embrace these elements, we can conjure more moments that matter. What if a teacher could design a lesson that he knew his students would remember 20 years later? What if a manager knew how to create an experience that would delight customers? What if you had a better sense of how to create memories that matter for your children?
This book delves into some fascinating mysteries of experience: Why we tend to remember the best or worst moment of an experience, as well as the last moment, and forget the rest. Why “we feel most comfortable when things are certain, but we feel most alive when they’re not.” And why our most cherished memories are clustered into a brief period during our youth.
Readers discover how brief experiences can change lives, such as the experiment in which two strangers meet in a room, and forty-five minutes later, they leave as best friends. (What happens in that time?) Or the tale of the world’s youngest female billionaire, who credits her resilience to something her father asked the family at the dinner table. (What was that simple question?)
Many of the defining moments in our lives are the result of accident or luck—but why would we leave our most meaningful, memorable moments to chance when we can create them? The Power of Moments shows us how to be the author of richer experiences.
Maxwell’s Newest Places No Limits on You
John Maxwell, one of the most frequently read and quoted authors on 
leadership, has hit the best-seller list with his next entry. His book, No Limits: Blow the Cap Off Your Capacity (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2017) debuted on the Wall Street Journal business books best-seller list at #7 this week (March 18-19, p. C10).
Here is a summary of the book, as it appears on Amazon.com:
“We often treat the word capacity as if it were a natural law of limitation. Unfortunately, most of us are much more comfortable defining what we perceive as off limits rather than what’s really possible. Could it be that many of us have failed to expand our potential because we have allowed what we perceive as capacity to define us? What if our limits are not really our limits?
“In his newest book, John Maxwell identifies 17 core capacities. Some of these are abilities we all already possess, such as energy, creativity and leadership. Others are aspects of our lives controlled by our choices, like our attitudes, character, and intentionality. Maxwell examines each of these capacities, and provides clear and actionable advice on how you can increase your potential in each. He will guide you on how to identify, grow, and apply your critical capacities. Once you’ve blown the “cap” off your capacities, you’ll find yourself more successful–and fulfilled–in your daily life.“
Although we have presented some of Maxwell’s books for clients at private events, we have never featured any of his works at the First Friday Book Synopsis in Dallas.
My opinion is that this book is short-lived on the best-seller lists, and will likely not materialize in our short list of books to present at our event. Only time will tell, so keep watching our website for developments.
5 Days to New Ideas: Key Image
On Friday, June 3, I present the best-selling book, Sprint: Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2016) at the First Friday Book Synopsis at the Park City Club in Dallas.
The authors are Jake Knapp, John Zeratsky, and Braden Kowitz. All are associated with Google Ventures.
For more information or to register for the book synopsis, click HERE.
This image represents the activity the authors discuss for each of the five days:
It is the cornerstone of the book, with sections that detail activities for each day.
SPRINT Authors Have Diverse Backgrounds
On Friday, June 3, I present the best-selling book, Sprint: Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2016) at the First Friday Book Synopsis at the Park City Club in Dallas.
To obtain information and register, click HERE.
Here is a brief biography of each of the three authors, as presented from the book’s website. I am sure you will agree that their backgrounds are quite diverse.
Jake Knapp created the Google Ventures sprint process and has run more than a hundred 
sprints with startups such as 23andme, Slack, Nest, and Foundation Medicine. Previously, Jake worked at Google, leading sprints for everything from Gmail to Google X. He is currently among the world’s tallest designers.
John Zeratsky has designed mobile apps, medical reports, and a daily newspaper (among other things). Before joining Google Ventures, he was a design lead at YouTube and an early employee of FeedBurner, which Google acquired in 2007. John writes about design and productivity for Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, and Wired. He studied journalism at the University of Wisconsin.
Braden Kowitz founded the Google Ventures design team in 2009 and pioneered the role 
of “design partner” at a venture capital firm. He has advised close to two hundred startups on product design, hiring, and team culture. Before joining Google Ventures, Braden led design for several Google products, including Gmail, Google Apps for Business, Google Spreadsheets, and Google Trends.
Woodward’s Secret Man Reveals the True Story of “Deep Throat”
I interrupted my reading of John Dean’s new book, The Nixon Defense, to tackle a 2005 best-seller by Bob Woodward of The Washington Post.
Woodward, as you know, met with a character named “Deep Throat” in a parking garage during the Watergate saga. Before he died, at age 91, Mark Felt identified himself in a Vanity Fair article as “Deep Throat.” Felt was # 2, but he never made it to the top of the FBI, a position he greatly coveted. You can read the article, published on July 1, 2005 by clicking here.
This book is entitled The Secret Man: The Story of Watergate’s Deep Throat (New York: Simon and Schuster), and includes a “reporter’s assessment” by Carl Bernstein.
Although I am reading this nine years late, and had to purchase it through third-party sellers as it is out of print, I find the story intriguing and revealing. I particularly enjoy the corroboration of Woodward’s recollections with the factual Nixon recordings, his own notes and memos, and FBI file reports.
Perhaps more than anything else, I am moved by the personal reactions that Woodward had before, during, and after these sessions with Felt. And, the fact that while Felt could no longer remember others in that era, he could still remember Woodward.
To be clear, Dean obviously held Felt in great contempt. In his new book, he calls him highly manipulative. I don’t think Woodward would disagree with that assessment. Felt gave Woodward what he wanted to give him, in his own way, on his own terms, and sometimes, not at all. Felt was often very early, very late, or even a no-show for the scheduled parking garage meetings with Woodward.
I will go back and finish the Dean book now. I think I am better prepared as a reader having made this quick diversion.
By the way, these are two pictures of Mark Felt. The one on the left is from his FBI days. The one on the right is from the day he announced himself as “Deep Throat” for the Vanity Fair article.
Naomi Klein’s Provocative Best-Seller on Capitalism and Climate
Last week, Simon and Schuster published a provocative new business book that flew to the # 3 spot in the best-seller list revealed in the 9/27/2014 edition of the Wall Street Journal.
The book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. Climate, written by Naomi Klein, is a certain selection for one of us at the First Friday Book Synopsis in Dallas. Watch our web site for the exact month we will present this one.
Who is Naomi Klein? She was educated at the University of Toronto, and is known as a social activist due to her criticism of corporate globalization and her candid political analyses. She is only 44 years old, and became well known in business circles with her 2007 New York Times best-seller, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (New York: Picador). In that book, she argued that those who wish to implement unpopular free market policies do so by taking advantage of particular societal segments following major disasters, including political, economic, military, or natural varieties. Her analysis was that when a society experiences a major ‘shock,’ a widespread desire for a rapid and decisive response to correct the situation follows. In the light of that desire for swift action, unethical and unscrupulous individuals have opportunities to implement policies that are self-serving and illegitimate. The shock doctrine allows such responses, including manufactured policy changes, to go into immediate effect.
You can read an interview published on September 25, 2014, on Slate.com, about her new book, by clicking here. Note that the bottom of the interview contains two important corrections.
In This Changes Everything, Klein argues that the climate crisis provides a challenge for us to abandon free-market thinking, restructure the global economy, and rethink current political systems.
This descriptive paragraph about the book comes from Amazon.com: “Climate change isn’t just another issue to be neatly filed between taxes and health care. It’s an alarm that calls us to fix an economic system that is already failing us in many ways. Klein meticulously builds the case for how massively reducing our greenhouse emissions is our best chance to simultaneously reduce gaping inequalities, re-imagine our broken democracies, and rebuild our gutted local economies. She exposes the ideological desperation of the climate-change deniers, the messianic delusions of the would-be geoengineers, and the tragic defeatism of too many mainstream green initiatives. And she demonstrates precisely why the market has not—and cannot—fix the climate crisis but will instead make things worse, with ever more extreme and ecologically damaging extraction methods, accompanied by rampant disaster capitalism.“
And, later on the same site, “Klein argues that the changes to our relationship with nature and one another that are required to respond to the climate crisis humanely should not be viewed as grim penance, but rather as a kind of gift—a catalyst to transform broken economic and cultural priorities and to heal long-festering historical wounds. And she documents the inspiring movements that have already begun this process: communities that are not just refusing to be sites of further fossil fuel extraction but are building the next, regeneration-based economies right now.”
You can bet this book will produce many stimulating conversations. Watch the major editorial pages of national business magazines and newspaper sections. I am sure that some will include personal attacks on her own credibility. Time will tell what is actually true.
Remember that we do not select books to present at the First Friday Book Synopsis that we agree with. And, we don’t try to get you to agree with the books we select. We are merely reporters – transferring the information in an objective manner from the author to our audience.
But, when we do this one, I would sure like to stand in the hallway to listen to our attendees talk about it.
