I like economics. I like finance. I like business. I (somewhat) like politics. So why wouldn’t I like this book?

I’ll tell you why: the content is interesting but the delivery put me to sleep. This book weighed in just shy of 600 pages. This would have been a great book if it had been half that size. As it turned out, the book was so fact filled with details that are important to a lifelong economist but largely irrelevant to the average Joe that it made the book very hard to read. I enjoy these things yet found myself having to reread some sections for understanding and others because I realized I had dazed out and had no idea what I just read.

I didn’t finish this book for two reasons:

1. By the time I got to the end it was obvious that the predictions and plans laid out were irrelevant. The housing bubble had burst already and the thoughts contained in the latter chapters no longer mattered.

2. I was bored with it.

If you are interested in finance, economics, business, or politics this may be an interesting book for you. I don’t have a high tolerance for this writing style but your mileage may vary. The price has dropped significantly lately so even if it ends up being a dust catcher, perhaps it is worth investigating.

This was a great book. If you have been in software for a significant time you are likely to have picked up many of these habits already, assuming you have been around experienced engineers who have helped you cultivate your software capabilities. It is chock full of useful information that every engineer should know. While this is a sure career improver for new engineers it has information that could easily be digested and used by even the most experienced programmer.

Seminal book. Buy it.

Ironically, this book is 128 pages long.  While it probably could have been shorter, there are a number of stories and anecdotes that help to illustrate the points Frank is putting forward.

If you have taken any courses, gone to any seminars, or read any books about public speaking there will be parts of this that are not new to you. If you have a broadcasting or journalism background you will likely find nothing new to you. However, if you don’t fall into one of these categories you will find yourself learning the essential parts of any communication and how to effectively hook your audience in order to deliver the rest of your message. The 30 second message isn’t meant to convey all the information at once – only enough to make your audience want more, which you will then happily deliver.

All in all, this book was worth the time it took to read. The concepts within are simple, yet effective. Buy it.

For the most part, this is a rehash of most of the concepts found in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. If you have read that book already then you already know most of what you will learn in Principle Centered Leadership. However there are a couple new/newly spun things, most notable of which is the abundance mentality. This is the concept that there are two types of people in this world: abundance thinkers and scarcity thinkers. Scarcity thinkers are always competing for limited resources and approach everything with a win/lose mentality. Abundance thinkers understand that resources, positions, and opportunities are not really scarce but are abundant and approach everything with a win/win mentality.

If you haven’t read The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People then Principle Centered Leadership is a decent read and will help give a different perspective on the business world and life in general. However, if you have already read The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People I would recommend foregoing the reading of this book and instead reading up on the abundance mentality theory.

I’m not a huge fan of Covey’s writing style. I can’t pin it down but there is something about it that makes it hard for me to stay focused on the book. If you have read Covey before and have had trouble staying engaged, this book will be no exception. If you read Covey before and loved it, this book will likely be right up your alley.

I have been doing web development for a long time now and have played around with CSS quite a bit over the years. I can get a lot done with it but have always found that there were certain points that I would get to and just spin my wheels. When I change one property, something else stopped working. When I fixed the something else, the original change broke again. After reading this book I now understand why.

The first handful of chapters go over the way CSS works, its structure, and how browsers go about rendering it. An extremely important part of this is the explanation of hierarchies and relationships between elements. These chapters also focus on the different types of major elements, block and inline, and go into details about how each work. The remaining chapters go over things like how to achieve different layouts and effects and how to create reusable components. In addition to examples in the book there are a number of libraries that can be downloaded from the book’s website that will allow you to quickly recreate any effects in the book with minimal duplication of code.

If you have never heard about or touched CSS, buy this book. If you have just a little bit of web experience and want to learn more about CSS, buy this book. If you have a fair amount of web and CSS experience, consider buying this book. If you don’t know everything about CSS but are very comfortable using it, this is likely not the book for you.

This was a good book. It starts out by talking about the questions President Clinton had to answer during the Monica Lewinsky scandal and reviewed some rather tough questions he had to field during that time. The book then expanded to cover a formula for answering questions, tough or otherwise. Through reviewing a number of presidential debates and interviews the book gives plenty of examples of how and how not to handle various types of questions.

If you have ever taken a course in effective/strong/great presentations then much of this information will likely be review, as the concepts are not new. However, if you have not taken such a course the information contained within these pages truly is helpful in any situation where you must answer questions from anyone. As such, I would recommend this book to anyone who will ever be in a situation where they must handle Q&A. While this book is geared towards the CEO actively pursuing an IPO, it is written in such a way that it is relevant to anyone who would be in a presentation situation.

As with many leadership books, this one breaks the art of leadership down into a number of categories. In particular, this book defines the effectiveness of leadership as being the sum of visionary mission, decisiveness, application of mutual reward theory, effective communication, and power of influence, multiplied by a positive attitude. It goes on to explain in detail what each of these mean, how it can best be applied, and the different aspects of each. I found mutual reward theory to be particularly enlightening as I had yet to hear about this theory.

All in all, it is a good book and a rather quick read. While none of the content will revolutionize your career by itself, the information contained in these pages should help anyone identify where they can change to help bring their leadership to the next level.

I recently finished these:
Confronting Reality: Doing What Matters to Get Things Right
The Life of Pi
In the Line of Fire: How to Handle Tough Questions…When It Counts
I Am Legend

I am currently reading these:
The Peopleware Papers: Notes on the Human Side of Software
Principle-centered Leadership
Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction

I have these lying in wait:
Java Concurrency in Practice
The Algorithm Design Manual
A Beginner’s Guide to Discrete Mathematics
The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World

I plan on buying these but want to finish what I have first:
Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In
The Toyota Way
Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering (Agile Software Development)
Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams