Title: The Motley Fool's What to Do With Your Money Now

by Rupe | Jan 16, 2005 | Not So Recent Reads

Author: David and Tom Gardner
Date: 16-Jan-05

From the Wall Street investment banker to the single working mom, from the Silicon Valley venture capitalist to the Main Street small business owner, from the baby boomer fast approaching retirement to the unemployed 20-something software engineer, everyone wants to know the same thing: What should I do with my money now?
In their trademark amusing style, David and Tom Gardner answer this critical question and recommend steps listeners can take to survive economic uncertainty, secure their personal finances, and fortify their portfolios. The Gardners offer a snapshot view of the business and money world in early 2002. They take us through the rise and fall of the American markets and economy, offer lessons to act upon now, and provide a look ahead to the future with some timely and perhaps more timeless thoughts on the right perspective to take as an investor and businessperson.

No matter what life stage you are in or your level of investing expertise, The Motley Fool’s What to Do With Your Money Now has important investment advice for you.

My Thoughts:

Title: The Millionaire Course

by Rupe | Jan 16, 2005 | Not So Recent Reads

Author: Marc Allen
Date: 16-Jan-2005

The Millionaire Course offers a vast array of powerful principles, truths, and exercises that will lead inevitably to a career and life path that feeds your soul. The lessons within are filled with advice and practical suggestions that are simple, clear, and easy to follow. You’ll discover that you can improve the quality of life, and in the process improve the quality of the world around you.

My Thoughts: A few bright spots, but by and large not a good read. Sort regret buying this.

Title: Work Less, Make More

by Rupe | Dec 21, 2004 | Not So Recent Reads

Author: Jennifer White
Date: 21-Dec-04

If you’re tired of holding your breath, waiting for exactly the right moment to arrive before you can start living the life you really want, wondering when it will be safe for you to stop working so hard and feeling stressed out, burnt out, and generally dissatisfied with life, this audiobook is for you.
It’s time to stop waiting and start living. As renowned success coach Jennifer White proves in this amazing book, you can have it all: more time, more money, and more fun on your own terms, starting today!

Based on White’s popular courses and seminars through which she has helped thousands of people nationwide live more fulfilling and productive lives, Work Less, Make More is an easy-to-follow 10-step program for overcoming your fears, unblocking your passions, channeling your energies, and managing your time more efficiently.

My Thoughts: Didn’t really enjoy this book too much. It had some limited success making a few points here and there, but for the most part didn’t do too great a job. I didn’t feel like I could work less and make more after reading it.

Title: Financial Freedom

by Rupe | Dec 21, 2004 | Not So Recent Reads

Author: Suze Orman
Date: 14-Dec-04

This practical, systematic approach to financial freedom is divided into three parts. The first one takes us back to our most formative experiences with money. We do this in order to break free of financial worries and take control of our feelings about money. The next part contains the Must Dos, the Laws of Money. We’ll find out about trusts and wills, credit card debt, saving for retirement, the insurance we should and shouldn’t have, and much more. In the third part, we learn the true secrets of the money cycle and realize that we cannot measure our self-worth by our net worth.

My Thoughts: Sort of ok. I like Suze, but this book became rather repetitive really quickly. Had some good points that stuck out though.

Title: Economics in One Lesson

by Rupe | Nov 27, 2004 | Not So Recent Reads

Author: Heny Hazlitt
Date: 27-Nov-04

Called by H.L. Mencken, “one of the few economists in history who could really write,” Henry Hazlitt achieved lasting fame for his brilliant but concise work. In it, he explains basic truths about economics and the economic fallacies responsible for unemployment, inflation, high taxes, and recession. Covering considerable ground, Hazlitt illustrates the destructive effects of taxes, rent and price controls, inflation, trade restrictions, and minimum wage laws. And, he writes about key classical liberal thinkers like John Locke, Adam Smith, Thomas Jefferson, John Stuart Mill, Alexis de Tocqueville, and Herbert Spencer.

My thoughts: Really great read. Very insightful, even though it was written several years ago – in fact before I was born.

Title: The Book of Investing Wisdom

by Rupe | Nov 27, 2004 | Not So Recent Reads

Author: Warren Buffet, Jim Rogers and More
Date: 27-Nov-04

Listen to writings by Warren Buffet, Peter Lynch, George Soros, and other leading figures of finance. In their own words, these legends of Wall Street share their best investment ideas and advice. The Book of Investing Wisdom offers unique insights into how these professionals and others achieved financial success through intelligent investing. It will inspire and motivate everyone from the professional money manager to the do-it-yourself investor to the business student.
This program includes:

My Thoughts: Ok read. A few points here and there, but I probably wouldn’t recommend it.

Title: Who Needs God

by Rupe | Oct 20, 2004 | Not So Recent Reads

Author: Harold S. Kushner
Date: 20-Oct-04

In today’s high-pressure world the odds are that you may feel overwhelmed, dissatisfied or unable to cope with unforeseen problems in your life. Harold Kushner’s challenging philosophy has brought inspiration to millions, and now he tells you how to live with more confidence and hope no matter what challenges you face in life. Whether you have no religious background or feel uncomfortable with the one you do have, whether you want to question your beliefs or develop your own relationship with God, Rabbi Kushner helps you understand how a spiritual commitment can make a real, practical difference in your life – and how you can find more meaning and live better today!

My Thoughts: Okay read. Didn’t really live up to the title. Not much substance here . Wouldn’t really recommend.

Title: When Bad Things Happen to Good People

by Rupe | Oct 20, 2004 | Not So Recent Reads

Author: Harold S. Kushner
Date: 20-Oct-04

As a young theology student, Harold Kushner puzzled over the Book of Job. As a small-town rabbi he counseled other people through pain and grief. But not until he learned that his three-year-old son, Aaron, would die in his early teens of a rare disease, did he confront one of life’s most difficult questions: Where do we find the resources to cope when tragedy strikes?
“I knew that one day I would write this book,” says Rabbi Kushner. “I would write it out of my own need to put into words some of the most important things I have come to believe and know. And I would write it to help other people who might one day find themselves in a similar predicament. I am fundamentally a religious man who has been hurt by life, and I wanted to write a book that could be given to the person who has been hurt by life, and who knows in his heart that if there is justice in the world, he deserved better…If you are such a person, if you want to believe in God’s goodness and fairness but find it hard because of the things that have happened to you and to people you care about, and if this audio helps you do that, then I will have succeeded in distilling some blessing out of Aaron’s pain and tears.”

My Thoughts: Ok read. Does give a pretty good perspective on viewing human suffering.

Title: Hegemony or Survial

by Rupe | Sep 23, 2004 | Not So Recent Reads

Author: Noam Chomsky
Date: 23-Sep-04

For more than half a century, the United States has been pursuing a grand imperial strategy with the aim of staking out the globe. Our leaders have shown themselves willing, as in the Cuban missile crisis, to follow the dream of dominance no matter how high the risks. Now the Bush administration is intensifying this process, driving us toward the final frontiers of imperial control, toward a choice between the prerogatives of power and a livable Earth. Noam Chomsky investigates how we came to this moment, what kind of peril we find ourselves in and why our rulers are willing to jeopardize the future of our species.
Lucid, rigorous and thoroughly documented, Hegemony or Survival is Chomsky’s most urgent and sweeping work in years. Certain to spark widespread debate, it is a definitive statement from one of the world’s most influential political thinkers.

My Thoughts: Readl good book. A must read for the historically curious and for those who want a deeper understanding of what going on in the world right now. I really recommend this book.

Title: America

by Rupe | Sep 23, 2004 | Not So Recent Reads

Author: Jon Stewart
Date: 23 Sep-04

Jon Stewart, host of the Emmy and Peabody Award-winning The Daily Show, and his coterie of patriots deliver a hilarious look at American government.
Termed a “political king-maker” by Newsweek, and “the Dan Rather of infotainment” by Vanity Fair, Jon Stewart, along with the writers of The Daily Show, combines his riotous wit and razor-sharp insight in this hilarious book.

American-style democracy is the world’s most beloved form of government, which explains why so many other nations are eager for us to impose it on them. But what is American democracy?

In America (The Audiobook), Jon Stewart and The Daily Show writing staff offer their insights into our unique system of government, dissecting its institutions, explaining its history and processes, and exploring the reasons why concepts like “one man, one vote”, “government by the people”, and “every vote counts” have become such popular urban myths.

Among the topics:

– Ancient Rome: The First Republicans
– The Founding Fathers: Young, Gifted, and White
– The President: King of Democracy
– The Supreme Court: 18 Legs, Four Tits, One Mission
– Running for Office: What Are You Thinking?
– The Media: Can It Be Stopped?
– The Future of Democracy: The Constitutional Robocracy and You!

This program contains explicit language.

My Thoughts: Pretty witty. Really liked it a lot. Well recommended.

Title: Mind Wide Open

by Rupe | Aug 18, 2004 | Not So Recent Reads

Author: Steven Johnson
Date: 18-Aug-2005

Brilliantly exploring today’s cutting edge brain research, Mind Wide Open allows readers to understand themselves and the people in their lives as never before. Using a mix of experiential reportage, personal storytelling, and fresh scientific discovery, Steven Johnson describes how the brain works and how its systems connect to the day-to-day realities of individual lives.
Johnson embarks on this path as his own test subject, participating in a battery of tests and experiments in search of a modern answer to the oldest of questions: who am I? He explores how we “read” other people, how the brain processes frightening events, what the neurochemistry is behind love and sex, how our brain teems with powerful chemicals closely related to recreational drugs, why music moves us to tears, and where our breakthrough ideas come from.

Johnson suggests that learning about the brain’s mechanics can widen one’s self-awareness as powerfully as any therapy, meditation or drug. To read Mind Wide Open is to rethink family histories, individual fates, and the very nature of the self.

My Thoughts: Kinda got lost in this one. Between the word Modernity and Self, I wasn’t sure what the central thesis was leading me.

Title: American Soldier

by Rupe | Aug 18, 2004 | Not So Recent Reads

Author: General Tommy Franks
Date: 18-Aug-2004

Few individuals have the chance to contribute so much of themselves to the American story as General Tommy Franks. In American Soldier, he captures it all.
The Commander in Chief of the United States Central Command from July 2000 through July 2003, General Tommy Franks made history leading American and Coalition forces to victory in Afghanistan and Iraq, the decisive battles that launched the war on terrorism.

General Franks retraces his journey from a small-town boyhood through a lifetime of military service, including his heroic tour as an Artillery officer in Vietnam, where he was wounded three times.

Drawing on military records declassified for this book, Franks offers the first true insider’s account of the war on terrorism. He puts you in the Operations Center for the launch of Operation Enduring Freedom just weeks after 9/11, capturing its uncertain early days and the historic victory that followed.

When President Bush focused world attention on the threat of Iraq, Franks seized the moment to implement a bold new vision of joint warfare in planning Operation Iraqi Freedom. Rejecting Desert Storm-style massive troop deployment in favor of flexibility and speed, Franks was questioned by the defense establishment, including Secretary of State Colin Powell. Yet his vision was proven on the ground: Within three weeks, Baghdad had fallen.

Franks describes the covert diplomacy that helped secure international cooperation for the war, and speaks frankly of intelligence shortcomings that endangered our troops, and of the credible WMD threats that influenced every planning decision. He offers an unvarnished portrait of the “disruptive and divisive” Washington bureaucracy, and a candid assessment of the war’s aftermath. Yet in the end, as American Soldier demonstrates, the battles in Afghanistan and Iraq remain heroic victories, wars of liberation won by troops whose valor was “unequalled by anything in the annals of war.”

My Thoughts: Pretty good read. Would recommend for the military minded.

Title: How to Talk to Anyone

by Rupe | Jul 22, 2004 | Not So Recent Reads

Author: Leil Lowndes
Date: 22-Jul-04

You’ve admired successful people who seem to have it all, seen them chatting confidently at parties and being listened to in business meetings. They’re the ones with the best jobs, nicest parties, and most interesting friends.
But they’re not necessarily smarter than you or even better looking. What it comes down to is their more skillful way of communicating with other people. Now How to Talk to Anyone reveals the secrets of successful communication. With Leil Lowndes’s easy and effective techniques, you will discover how to become a master communicator in life, love, and business.

Combining the latest research with Leil’s trademark wit and warm-hearted observations of human foibles, How to Talk to Anyone shows you how to make an unforgettable entrance and meet the people you want to meet; sound like an insider in any crowd, no matter how little you have in common; use body language to captivate audiences of all sizes; work a party the way a politician works a room; and always come across confident, credible, and charismatic wherever you are.

My Thoughts: Okay read. Nothing earth shattering here – just a good read.

Title: My Life

by Rupe | Jul 22, 2004 | Not So Recent Reads

Author: Bill Clinton
Date: 22-Jul-04

President Bill Clinton’s My Life is the strikingly candid portrait of a global leader who decided early in life to devote his intellectual and political gifts to serving the public.
It shows us the progress of a remarkable American, who made the unlikely journey from Hope, Arkansas, to the White House.

President Clinton’s audiobook is also the most concretely detailed, most nuanced account of a presidency ever written, encompassing not only the high points and crises but the way the presidency actually works.

It is the gripping account of a president under concerted and unrelenting assault orchestrated by his enemies on the Far Right and how he survived and prevailed.

It is a treasury of moments caught alive, among them:

– The roller-coaster ride of the 1992 campaign
– The extraordinarily frank exchanges with Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole
– The cost, both public and private, of the scandal that threatened the presidency

Here is the life of a great national and international figure, revealed with all his talents and contradictions, told openly, directly, in his own signature style.

My Thoughts: A great read. I, like many, have been a great follower of the former president. I can’t get enough of this dude. He is the greatest of my generation (period!)

Title: The Wisdom of Crowds

by Rupe | Jun 19, 2004 | Not So Recent Reads

Author: James Surowiecki
Date: 19-June-2004

In this endlessly fascinating book, New Yorker columnist James Surowiecki explores a deceptively simple idea that has profound implications: large groups of people are smarter than an elite few, no matter how brilliant. Groups are better at solving problems, fostering innovation, coming to wise decisions, even predicting the future.
This seemingly counterintuitive notion has endless and major ramifications for how businesses operate, how knowledge is advanced, how economies are (or should be) organized and how we live our daily lives. With seemingly boundless erudition and in delightfully clear prose, Surowiecki ranges across fields as diverse as popular culture, psychology, economic behaviorism, artificial intelligence, military history, and political theory to show just how this principle operates in the real world.

Despite the sophistication of his arguments, Surowiecki presents them in a wonderfully entertaining manner. The examples he uses are all down-to-earth, surprising, and fun to ponder. Why is the line in which you’re standing always the longest? Why is it that you can buy a screw anywhere in the world and it will fit a bolt bought ten-thousand miles away? Why is network television so awful? If you had to meet someone in Paris on a specific day but had no way of contacting them, when and where would you meet? Why are there traffic jams? What’s the best way to win money on a game show? Why, when you walk into a convenience store at 2:00 A.M. to buy a quart of orange juice, is it there waiting for you? What do Hollywood mafia movies have to teach us about why corporations exist?

The Wisdom of Crowds is a brilliant but accessible biography of an idea, one with important lessons for how we live our lives, select our leaders, conduct our business, and think about our world.

My Thoughts: Like this read. Some of the premise require a bit to absorb, but by and large it is a pretty good write – would definitely recommend.

Title: Nietzsche in 90 Minutes

by Rupe | Jun 19, 2004 | Not So Recent Reads

Author: Paul Strathern
Date: 19-June-04

With Friedrich Nietzsche, philosophy was dangerous not only for philosophers but for everyone. Nietzsche ended up going mad, but his ideas presaged a collective madness that had horrific consequences in Europe in the early 1900s. Though his philosophy is more one of aphorisms and insights than a system, it is brilliant, persuasive, and incisive. His major concept is the will to power, which he saw as the basic impulse for all our acts. Christianity he saw as a subtle perversion of this concept, thus Nietzsche’s famous pronouncement, “God is dead.”
In Nietzsche in 90 Minutes, Paul Strathern offers a concise, expert account of Nietzsche’s life and ideas and explains their influence on man’s struggle to understand his existence in the world.

My Thoughts:

Title: The Da Vinci Code

by Rupe | May 20, 2004 | Not So Recent Reads

Author: Dan Brown
Date: 20 May 2004

While in Paris on business, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon receives an urgent late-night phone call. The elderly curator of the Louvre has been murdered inside the museum, a baffling cipher found near the body. As Langdon and gifted French cryptologist, Sophie Neveu, sort through the bizarre riddle, they are stunned to discover a trail of clues hidden in the works of Da Vinci – clues visible for all to see and yet ingeniously disguised by the painter.
The stakes are raised when Langdon uncovers a startling link: the late curator was involved in the Priory of Sion – an actual secret society whose members included Sir Isaac Newton, Botticelli, Victor Hugo, and Da Vinci, among others. Langdon suspects they are on the hunt for a breathtaking historical secret, one that has proven through the centuries to be as enlightening as it is dangerous. In a frantic race through Paris, and beyond, Langdon and Neveu find themselves matching wits with a faceless powerbroker who appears to anticipate their every move. Unless they can decipher the labyrinthine puzzle, the Priory’s secret – and an explosive ancient truth -will be lost forever.

My Thoughts: Pretty interesting read. Got a bit unwieldly at times, but by and large good read.

Title: Does America Need a Foreign Policy?

by Rupe | May 20, 2004 | Not So Recent Reads

Author: Henry Kissinger
Date: 20-May-04

In this timely, thoughtful, and important audiobook, America’s most famous diplomatist explains why we urgently need a new and coherent foreign policy and what our foreign policy goals should be in the post-Cold War era.
Dr. Kissinger focuses his attention on such hot spots as Vladimir Putin’s Russia, the new China, the globalized economy, and the demand for humanitarian intervention, and he challenges Americans to understand that our foreign policy must be built upon America’s permanent national interests.

Kissinger shares his deep insights into the foreign policy problems and opportunities that confront the United States today, including: the challenge to conventional diplomacy posed by globalization; the challenge of modernizing China; the impact of Russia’s precipitous decline from superpower status; the growing estrangement between the United States and Europe; the questions that arise from making “humanitarian intervention” a part of the “new diplomacy”; and the prospect that America’s transformation into the one remaining superpower and global leader may unite countries against presumed imperial ambitions.

Does America Need a Foreign Policy? provides a crystalline assessment of how the United States’ ascendancy as the world’s dominant presence in the 20th century may be effectively reconciled with the urgent need in the 21st century to achieve a bold new world order. Dr. Kissinger lays out a compelling and comprehensively drawn vision for American policy in the approaching decades.

My Thoughts: Really staggered through this book. Substance wise, I really wasn’t feeling it too much. Maybe a second read might help; but given the timeliness of the topic, I am not sure. Sort of recommended.

Title: Against All Enemies

by Rupe | May 17, 2004 | Not So Recent Reads

Author: Richard A. Clarke
Date: 17-May-04

The real war on terror has happened largely behind closed doors, run by the White House, drawing on secret intelligence and operations around the world. There is no man who knows more about it than Richard Clarke, the former Counterterrorism Czar for both George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, the man who has led our efforts against al Qaeda and all other terrorist enemies for years, serving under seven presidents and in the White House for George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush, until he resigned in March 2003. He has had a front-row seat at every major battle in this war, from the first World Trade Center bombing, to 9/11, to Afghanistan, to Iraq.
Clarke knows the secret stories of Bill Clinton’s great victories (shutting down anti-U.S. terrorism sponsored by Iran and Iraq) and his great frustrations (failing to kill Osama Bin Laden despite many attempts). When President Bush took office, Clarke was ready to present him with a master plan to roll back and destroy al Qaeda, yet the president did not grant a briefing for months. His aides had little interest in Osama Bin Laden, preferring to talk about Saddam Hussein at every turn. Clarke knows why we failed to shut down terrorist financing within our borders prior to 2001.

After ignoring existing plans to attack al Qaeda when he first took office, George Bush made disastrous decisions when he finally did pay attention. Thanks to the determined, even conspiratorial views of Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, and Bush, we went after the wrong enemy.

The charges Clarke levels against the current administration must be taken seriously by every American, Democrat or Republican. Our security depends upon it.

My Thoughts: Great book from an insider. Really got a clear and candid look behind the scenes of the White house apparatus leading up to and after the events of 9-11-2001. A must read.