Author: Michael Corbett

I’m pretty leary of any book written by a TV show host, especially the host of a show called Extra’s Mansions and Millionaires. But, Find It, Fix It, Flip It! seems to avoid a lot of the cliches that make many real estate books unbearable to read. There isn’t much talk of “achieving your dreams” or “gaining the financial freedom you deserve”, though it is a real estate investing book, so there is a certain amount of the pre-requisite motivational speaker talk.

One thing I particularly liked while flipping through the book was the idea of adding value to the house before reselling it. Adding upgrades and making improvements that people want and will actually pay for. The whole idea of adding value seems entirely lost to a large portion of the real estate industry, as any southern California home buyer can attest.

Overall the book is refreshingly different from most real estate books in that it focuses on taking something, making it better and then selling it for a profit, while giving useful tactical tips along the way. There are even before and after pictures of properties the author has flipped to show the types of change that can be made.

I didn’t find much good content about the book online, but I did find some basic reviews.

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Author: Douglas Rushkoff

The first line of Get Back in the Box pretty much sums up the book. “There is no Next Big Thing. In fact, the more things seem to change, the better opportunity you have to stay the same.”

Rushkoff, who is a writer of ten-or-so bestsellers, explains throughout this book that the best way to innovate is to focus on your core competencies, create an innovation conducive work environment, and focus on your customers needs. Pretty straight-forward, but very insightful into the way to do this and full of all sorts of examples. Th interview by Kris Krug in the review snippets is great as well.

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Author: Barbara Weltman

Being that it’s tax season and I’m assuming that many, like myself, have not yet finished this yearly nightmare. So, I decided to find some help for my tax system ignorant self. This book goes through every conceivable tax break that you could receive. The layout and explanation of each deduction and break is very “non-accountant” and each one has the following short sections.

• Benefit
• Conditions
• Planning Tip
• Pitfall
• Where to Claim the Benefit/deduction

And sometimes an example is included on the more abstract ideas. Overall it seems very useful and hopefully will make my return a bit more than it has in years past.

See the review snippets for some articles on tax breaks

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Author: John Battelle

I have to admit that I am a bit of a google-phile. I like a lot of their products and a lot of the way they do business, so my overview may seem a bit positively biased. The book isn’t just a biography of the rise of Google though. It is more an examination of search, how it has changed our culture and uses Google (obviously) as the rat to study.

Battelle introduces a term he calls “Database of Intentions, which is the sum total of all queries that pour into search engines daily, revealing the intricacies and idiosyncrasies of our culture.” It is obvious in the book that Battelle is more interested in search in an anthropological sense more than Google itself, though a lion’s share of the book is focused on Google. He has a great blog about search that can be found here.

You can also get it on audiobook here.

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Author: John Perkins

The subject of this book is the thing John Grisham novels are made of. An economic planner for an international consulting firm persuades developing countries to enter into deals that make American companies rich. Somehow the NSA ties into all this as well, which I don’t exactly understand how, but I guess that’s an incentive to read it. After years of being an “economic hit man”, Perkins leaves his former life and writes his expose, despite bribes and threatenings.

I can already see major studio execs salivating over the story, corporate corruption, governmental cover-up and a lone soul that tells his story despite threatening phone calls and blown up mailboxes. Anyways it sounds like an interesting read, even if it doesn’t provide much business knowledge.

In the review snippets is a link to an interview between the author and democracynow.org as well as a statement from the State Department about the book. Intriguing stuff.

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Author: Jeffrey L. Cruikshank

Today’s entry is brought by Brian from freemacblog.com and freemacware.com. Since he read the book, I figured it would be better to have him be the reviewer instead of me. Everything below is his review. Thanks Brian.

I am a fan of Apple Computer products. They make make computing easy and more productive. But not only are the products unique, but the company itself is run in a unique way as well. In fact, I believe that their “insanely great” products are a direct extension of the decisions they make in the business division of 1 Infinite Loop. This book explains those unique decisions. Both the good and the bad.

More than just a history book, “The Apple Way” offers “12 Management Lessons From The World’s Most Innovative Company.” With topics ranging from the love/hate relationship with Mac User Groups to why Apple has an edge over Microsoft because they control the hardware AND the software of their products.

In all, this book addresses the history and business side of Apple and not so much the technology side. In it’s most basic reading, you learn the four rules.

• Make the customer king
• Make the product king
• Break the marketing mold
• Build the learning organization

And how Apple did them right…and wrong.

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Author: 37signals

This is one of the best books on software design I have ever read. Though not necessarily the appropriate approach for all types of software design, it provides tons of great insight into how to efficiently and effectively build web applications. In the words of the 37signals “Anyone working on a web app — including entrepreneurs, designers, programmers, executives, or marketers — will find value and inspiration in this book.”

37signals is a web application software that has a refreshingly fresh take on software design. Instead of packing their products full of features, they keep them simple and easy-to-use, which in turn makes them more useful. I personally use a few of their products and wouldn’t ever switch back to previous solutions. The book even follows their simple mantra, it is easy to read without all the extra fluff that so many authors can’t seem to avoid.

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Author: Dave Kansas

It seems like the Wall Street Journal Complete Money and Investing Guidebook was meant for novice/beginner investors. It plows through lots of terminology, explaining a lot of the ideas and terms that those of us who majored in say, humanities or communications (like me) missed out on. Flipping through this at Barnes and Noble, I found a lot of ideas that I had heard of but didn’t necessarily know much about,as well as seemingly straight-forward and jargon-free explanations.
I’m planning an starting to do more investing and this seems like it is going to be a good reference guide to help ward of shady brokers and financial planners (in the remote chance I use one) as well as help me do a lot of the research and decision-making myself.

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Author:James Surowiecki

Eric Schmidt from Google recommended this book in the “mistakenly” published powerpoint presentation slide notes from Google’s Analyst Day a couple of weeks ago. I had heard of it, but didn’t know much about it, so I did a little research and it seems like James Surowiecki, a writer for the New Yorker, has some great evidence (or maybe just ideas) about trusting the masses.

Surowiecki goes over types of crowd wisdom, types of crowd wisdom, and failures of crowd intelligence and how when certain factors combine, the wisdom of the crowd is much more accurate than the wisdom of individuals, even experts. One of the stories he uses to illustrate this is a study done in the 19th century by a British Anthropologist named Francis Galton. In the study he took an ox to a county fair and had people guess its weight. He also had cattle ranchers and farmer (experts) guess the weight. The general public as a whole did much better at guessing the weight than the so-called experts.

In the review snippets there is a link to Wikipedia’s entry for the book, which goes over these and other topics in a bit more detail. Also, from what I can tell, Wisdom of Crowds reads a lot like a Malcolm Gladwell book.

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Author: Vickie L. Milazzo

I found this book browsing through Amazon’s entrepreneurship best sellers. I was immediatley impressed with the quality of Vickie L. Milazzo’s blog entries. they were insightful and inspiring, without being too gender specific. I researched a bit about her company, Medical-Legal Consulting Institute Inc., and based on her experience, this book should be an interesting read, no matter your gender.

Here’s a list of the ten strengths covered in the book.

• Ignite your inner fire with passion to reach exciting, new levels of growth
• Harness your intuitive vision to attain an audacious future
• Use the power of engagement to achieve big things
• Flex your feminine agility and stretch further than ever before
• Intensify your genius for accelerated achievement
• Live with uncompromising integrity to attract authentic success
• Energize your performance with endurance
• Apply the Feminine Force of enterprise to excel at being the CEO of your life
• Reclaim your life energy through renewal
• Activate female fusion by partnering with other women to attain the impossible

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