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An indispensable guide for entrepreneurs

A review of The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses, by Eric Ries

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Bloomberg reports that 8 out of 10 new businesses fail within the first 18 months — and most big, established companies have trouble generating truly innovative new products. So, the process of introducing innovation to the market is pretty…

A review of Suspicion, by Joseph Finder

@@@@@ (5 out of 5)

How good is Suspicion? Let me put it this way: for the first time in a great while, I literally couldn’t put the book down — I HAD to know who was doing what to whom!

Danny Goodman is writing a biography of Jay Gould, the archetypal 19th century Robber Baron, when he crosses paths with Tom Galvin, an extremely wealthy investment manager,…

Join me in a Google Hangout

You are invited to join me and Erik Simanis of Cornell University, in a Google Hangout tomorrow, Monday, June 9. We will discuss how to turn an idea into a business that can help lift people living on $2 a day or less out of poverty.

The Google Hangout, entitled “The Business Model Behind the Bright Idea,” will be hosted on Business Fights Poverty, the world’s largest community of professionals…

A soldier’s-eye view of the war in Iraq

A review of Combat and Other Shenanigans: Tales of the Absurd From a Deployment to Iraq, by Piers Platt

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Here’s a memoir of one soldier’s year of service in Iraq that masquerades as a light-weight tale, crammed with humor. Though the book is funny at times, hilarious even, and the author’s voice reflects little of the tragic reality of that misbegotten conflict, it’s revealing…

Another brilliant tale from Jo Nesbo

A review of Phantom, by Jo Nesbo

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Here’s what’s in store for you if you read Phantom or any other of Jo Nesbo’s engrossing Harry Hole novels:

maddening suspense;

several confusing plots and subplots that collide and intersect with abandon and only make sense as the end approaches;

an alcoholic, self-hating detective (Harry) who is perversely attractive because he’s so bloody…

8 great books about Africa

The big English newspaper The Telegraph publishes lists of the “best” books in many categories. One is the “10 Best Novels About Africa.” (It’s a great list, featuring both celebrated authors such as V.S. Naipaul, Nadine Gordimer, Doris Lessing, Naguib Mahfouz, and J. M. Coetzee; familiar contemporary names such as Alexander McCall Smith and Barbara Kingsolver; and African writers less well known…

A masterful detective story

A review of Field of Prey, by John Sandford

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Lucas Davenport’s talented investigative crew at the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (“others investigate bad guys, we apprehend them”) is dispersed throughout the country when all hell breaks loose with the discovery of a long-forgotten cistern containing the bones of more than a dozen murder victims. As the Bureau’s…

Amazon’s latest outrage

I suspect you don’t feel any better about censorship than I do. So, the chances are you would agree with me that the latest monopolistic move by Amazon is inexcusable and deserves to be squelched — hard, and quickly.

A story in today’s New York Times tells the tale, and a sad one it is. In order to squeeze more revenue out of publishers, Amazon is now simply making it difficult, or even…

Jewish history in dribs and drabs

A review of The Story of the Jews: Finding the Words, 1000 BC – 1492 AD, by Simon Schama

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Can you think of any ethnic group that has been more closely studied than the Jews? I can’t. Thousands upon thousands of books have been written about Jews and Judaism; more than 53,000 are listed on Amazon alone — surely a small fraction of the total works produced over the three millennia…

Dublin in the 50s: murder and the Church

A review of Elegy for April, by Benjamin Black

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Many of the very best mysteries are profoundly political. In digging deeply into what makes their characters tick, the writers locate the roots of their class origins and the wounds inflicted on them by their families, their neighbors, and society at large.

Not convinced? Think about the sociology underlying Elizabeth George’s…

She speaks truth to power

A review of A Fighting Chance, by Elizabeth Warren

@@@@@ (5 out of 5)

Finally — a leading Democrat who understands that elections are won or lost on the basis of personal values. The same person whose gifted leadership led to the creation of the new federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that’s beginning to level the playing field between the public and the Wall Street banks.

Here is…

A legal thriller full of surprises

A review of The Ophelia Cut, by John Lescroart

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I have a question for you if you love courtroom dramas.

What is it that keeps you coming back for more? 

Is it the sheer tension and suspense? The brilliance of the litigators? The clash of personalities in the courtroom? The opportunity to guess which way the jury will go? The potential for surprises?

If questions along those lines…

Do you love animals more than people?

A review of Eating Animals, by Jonathan Safran Foer@@@@ (4 out of 5)I am not now, nor have I ever been, a vegetarian. However, living as I do in Berkeley, California, from time to time I find myself in the minority at dinners and potlucks. So, as you might imagine, over the years I’ve come to hear most of the arguments against eating animals. 

One thing has always puzzled me about the torrent of…

Niccolo Machiavelli, private eye

A review of The Malice of Fortune, by Michael Ennis

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If you’ve read The Prince, you probably think you know the work of Niccolo Machiavelli. Chances are, you think of him — as I always did — as the Renaissance figure who lionized a lying, cheating, brutal scoundrel as the ideal political and military leader. Having read The Malice of Fortune, I know better now.

This historical…

Who has written the most books?

You’re gonna love this.

Once upon a time, back in the distant reaches of the twentieth century—well, actually it was 1984—one of my clients assigned me to ghostwrite a fundraising letter that Isaac Asimov had agreed to sign. I approached the task with some trepidation, both because I knew Asimov’s reputation as a prolific author and because I had actually met the man once and knew how prickly he…

Innovation: Look beyond Silicon Valley

Today the popular website Virgin Disruptors, one of Richard Branson’s innumerable activities, posted the following article of mine under the title “Innovation — Look beyond Silicon Valley.” I had answered the challenging question, “Have entrepreneurs lost the will to innovate?”

Innovation is alive and well among entrepreneurs—but not so much where you’d expect.

Take Silicon Valley, for example—a…