The Witty Lizard

Ramblings of a grilling, drinking, black flag hoisting father and philosophical eclectic.

The Witty Lizard - Ramblings of a grilling, drinking, black flag hoisting father and philosophical eclectic.

Category Archives: Books

Book Geek

In the last six weeks, I have read four books. I have always loved to read but technology has redoubled that feeling. My new iPad and the Kindle app have me waiting for the next book. I mean what’s better than instant download and the ability to start the next book as soon as I finish the last one?

20120809-165110.jpg

20120809-165126.jpg

20120809-165139.jpg

20120809-165147.jpg

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All outstanding reads for slightly different reasons.

World War Z is interesting in the fact that it is written as a collection of interviews with survivors. It makes the book slightly choppy, but it’s a unique take by including first hand accounts from different regions and points of view spanning the globe.

The Road is amazing in its vivid description of a world in ruins. However, it’s a little hard to read because there are only two characters. There is also very little discussion of what happened, no time line. Only vague references to the man’s life before whatever cataclysm the befell the planet. Given that, it is an amazingly written book with deep, dark visions of a grotesque world.

Abe Lincoln: Vampire Hunter simply makes me intrigued. It’s an incredible mix of history and horror. As historical fiction goes,it is very well written. Pact with facts and intermingled with vampire horror, this one was a big hit with me.

The Heroin Diaries struck numerous chords for me. While I do not profess to be a rock star, nor do I claim to have every sunk as deep as Nikki Sixx did, I can say the book resonated with me in a profound way. It was interesting that he wrote exclusively from his old journals and that really brought the demons to life. Holy shit… Well done.

So there is the run down on my reading list this summer. I will continue to update as I add new books to my iPad…. What should I read next?

Under the Black Flag

I just finished reading Under the Black Flag: The Romance and the Reality of Life Among the Pirates by David Cordingly. It is a very well researched and written volume about the golden age of piracy.

I am a huge fan of pirates. The idea of the rogue on the high seas has intrigued me for many years. One of the things that I really enjoyed about this book is that Cordingly makes sure to vividly point to the inherent brutality in their profession and the fact that these were nothing more than criminals operating on the oceans. He uses first person accounts from actual victims to illustrate and to drive home this point. He references romance and reality in the subtitle of this book. And that is the dichotomy of these brigands.

In 2012, pirates have long been romanticized, thought of as swashbuckling heroes living a life of adventure on their own terms. However the reality is quite different. From Bartholomew Roberts crushing the skull of a crewman to Edward Low cutting off a merchantman’s lips, pirates were by and large a violent, even sadistic, group of criminals. This is a truly enlightening book for me in that regard. I have always know these were men operating outside the law, but they have always held my fascination.

The reason for my interest in pirates and piracy is because of the nature of the culture within their unique world. This was a world of men who banded together for a common purpose, albeit an illegal one, and established a functional democracy aboard ship. They disciplined themselves and despite the sometimes barbaric nature of their business, they always found a way to work together. This was popular sovereignty at its finest. The social contract exemplified. The last bastion of pure democracy in the Socratic tradition.

While these men make for great literature and movies, they are not to be loved and aspired to. They were criminals and sometimes barbarians. However, the articles that were drawn up, the teamwork, the self-discipline and the functional democracy they created for themselves definitely should be our overreaching goal in society, on teams and in the workplace. Cordingly’s book is an excellence read and I highly recommend it to anyone seriously interested in pirates and their exploits in the first half of the 18th century.

Friday Five

Today, books that have intrigued/helped/motivated me….

  1. Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t, by Jim Collins
  2. The Art of War, by Sun Tzu
  3. Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson and the Opening of the American West, by Stephen E Ambrose
  4. The Genius: How Bill Walsh Reinvented Football and Created an NFL Dynasty, by David Harris
  5. The 48 Laws of Power, by Robert Greene

Good to Great is a great look into the working of companies. Don’t take it as a business book though. Its idea apply to any organization. Why do groups, teams and companies succeed? The two things that really stand out to me are the ideas of ‘First Who, Then What’ and the ‘Hedgehog Concept’. The first one is so simple I went all face palm on myself. It says, ‘Get the right people on the bus and then figure out where you’re going’. Or, don’t fit the people to the system, fit the system to the people. The ‘Hedgehog Concept’ asks three questions… What makes you money? What can you be the best in the world at? What lights your fire? Really a powerful read, still makes me think everyday.

What has it been, 3000 years? No matter when it was written, The Art of War is still the preeminent book written on strategy and conflict resolution (warfare). I read it at least twice a year and so should you.

What’s not to love about the story of the opening of the American west? Undaunted Courage is a history of the Lewis and Clark expedition based on their journals. There has never been a better historian sitting behind a keyboard than Ambrose in my estimation. Google a list of his titles and you’ll understand. This book is my favorite because I love the exploration and pure discovery of the whole endeavor, no white man had seen the places and things they did. The personal nature of the journals makes it very human, not something typically said of history books.

The Genius is wonderful and I did a long write-up on it here, no point in rehashing. Let’s just say I learned a lot and Bill Walsh is a BAMF.

Greene’s book The 48 Laws of Power is kind of a cross between Good to Great and The Art of War. It takes the questions about what make people and groups great and using historical examples provides 48 laws that make people powerful. Some are nice, neat and polite. Many are decidedly not, similar to parts of Sun Tzu’s work. Really cool thoughts on what takes people to the top as well as what brings them down. The examples show that Greene isn’t just spouting his theories but has facts to back them up.

 

 

The Genius

William Ernest Walsh has suddenly risen to hero status in my pantheon of great football coaches. Mount Rushmore in my opinion consists of Mouse, Mike, Vince, and now Bill. Maverick, innovator, intelligent, odd, even crazy are words that have been used to describe all of them. Successful, out of the box thinkers are people I admire. People have called me most the things on that list.

Walsh is interesting to me because I really had no idea that he was a member of the crew. I just finished reading The Genius, a biography of Walsh by David Harris. The book truly opened my eyes and changed my opinion of the man called the Genius. I grew up during the dynasty of the 49ers in the eighties which obviously shaped my thoughts on Walsh.

I always thought of Walsh as an old stuffy guy, never really paying much attention to him or his team except to wish they would lose at some point. Of course, I wasn’t a football coach then. Nor did I appreciate the subtleties of leading a group all headed in a singular direction. After reading this book I have a new-found respect for Walsh, his vision, his struggles, and his place on the list of truly great football coaches.

It can be difficult for a 12-year-old to get past the white hair, professor look that Walsh was working. I just thought of him as another old guy who coached in the NFL. I have always thought that NFL coaches are all cut from the same cloth, boring and predictable, and I still do, but I digress. Turns out that is not the case here. Yes Walsh was old in the 80s, well to a 12-year-old anyway. But that was because the 49ers head coaching job was his first time in the big chair on the professional level. He didn’t even get the opportunity until he was almost 50. But when he did, he turned pro football on its collective ear.

Never before had the NFL seen a team that threw the ball that many times or with such success. He had a plan and implemented it without hesitation. He threw the ball when they said he couldn’t. He dropped players and remade the roster almost yearly until he found the right mix of talent and personalities.

Bold, brilliant, and creative.

But haunted. The dichotomy of Walsh was apparently striking. Singular of purpose, bold, and unafraid marked his life inside football. However, outside, he was troubled, hunted, scared even. Afraid of failure and disappointment he left the game to early do to the pressure finally burning him out.

An outstanding book, anyone interested in football, leadership, or biographies should read this book. I really enjoyed it and could relate to both his football/leadership philosophies and the insecurities that ultimately wore him down. This book reenforced several of my thoughts on how to build a football program. It also brought to my consciousness a man who I knew about but had never really thought about.

I’m glad I read this book. Bill Walsh is a man who I greatly admire and belongs in the group of great football minds and innovators. It appears that I am late to this party, the moniker “Genius” doesn’t just appear out of the ether. He is without a doubt included in my particular version of the coaching Mount Rushmore.

Read this book, it’s wonderful.

My Weekend

I spent the weekend with my kids which is always awesome. It wasn’t very exciting but just watching TV and talking is good times in my opinion. My boy started drivers ed and that’s cool for this daddy, although, him driving cold be a tad scary.

Most of the time I wasn’t messing with my kids, I was reading this book:

Bill Walsh was indeed amazing and deserving of the moniker the Genius. I am about 80% done with the book and will post a full review when I finish. Suffice to say it has already made it to my top ten list.

It was a pretty good weekend. Now I am perusing recipes to decide what to cook this week, I am almost done with my current book and need to figure out what to read next. I guess basically I’m in a transition period, like this whole period of my life.