Book Reviews
Shakespeare: The Biography Peter Ackroyd Nan A. Talese/Doubleday (October 2005) “Shakespeare is the only biographer of Shakespeare.” Ralph Waldo Emerson” Peter Ackroyd suggests that Emerson’s remark “is one of those rare cases whose work is singularly important and influential, yet…
Read MorePoverty Abolitionists: Faith, Activism, and Hope for Difficult Times David Beckmann Bloomsbury Academic May (2026) “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” Margaret Mead…
Read MoreData Inspired: Building an Organizational Culture for Inquiry and Lasting Transformation Sebastian Wernicke Georgetown University Press (June 2026) “The essence of strategy is choosing what NOT to do.” Michael Porter: In Data Inspired, Sebastian Wernicke achieves three separate but related,…
Read MoreSuperteams: The Science and Secrets of High-Performing Teams Ron Friedman Simon & Schuster (June 2026) No team can be “super” unless its members excel in communication, cooperation, and (especially) collaboration As I began to read Superteams, I was again reminded…
Read MoreMarket Engineering: Because Markets Don’t Build Themselves Bruce Cleveland Silicon Valley Press (June 2026) How to create or recreate a market with sustainable competitive advantages How does Bruce Cleveland define market engineering? He suggests that the term seems to be…
Read MoreMaybe It’s Me: Looking Inward to Create Real Change Through Conscious Choices Erika Alessandrini Amplify Publishing (May 2026) “We have met the enemy and he is us.” Pogo the Possum Everyone encounters important questions to answer and serious problems to…
Read MoreHow Change Really Works: Seven Science-Based Principles for Transforming Your Organization Julia Dhar, Kristy Ellmer, and Philip Jameson Harvard Business Review Press (May (2026) How to overcome “the ideology of comfort and the tyranny of custom” Years ago, I asked…
Read MoreI Am Not a Robot: My Year Using AI to Do (Almost) Everything Joanna Stern Harper/An Imprint of HarperCollins (May 2026) Here is “a reported and lived life” for one year, “not generated AI text.” Joanna Stern formulated a vow…
Read MoreThe Mission Generation: Reclaim Your Purpose, Rewrite Success, and Rebuild Our Future Arun Gupta and Thomas Fewer Wiley (May 2026) Financial success and social purpose are NOT mutuallly exclusive; they’re interdependent. In a previously published book, Venture Meets Mission (January 2024), …
Read MoreThe World of Christopher Marlowe David Riggs Henry Holt and Company (2004) “Our first great poetic dramatist and a defiant rebel against all social norms.” Stanley Wells Over the years, I have read or re-read several biographies of William Shakespeare (1564-1616),…
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