It used to be that there were entrepreneurs, and then the rest of us who were happy to help others achieve their goals and somehow find our own in the process. That’s changed. Many people are pursuing their own business ideas, and catching up on ideas and knowledge to help them run that business. For those that work for others, they too sense that stability is not what it used to be, and might be mentally preparing for the next step – whether they decide to take it, or it’s decided for them.

Here’s a book that can help people on either side of the fence. Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha’s The Start-Up of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and Transform Your Career. It begins with the premise that there actually are not two sides of the fence, that all humans are entrepreneurs. Each of us have the will to create and survive.

Why the start up of you? When you start a company, you make decisions in an information-poor, time-compressed, resource-constrained environment. There are no guarantees or safety nets, so you take on a certain amount of risk. The competition is changing; the market is changing. The conditions in which entrepreneurs start and grow companies are the conditions we all now live in when fashioning a career. Whether you’re working toward a promotion or simply trying to hold on to your job – you never know what’s going to happen next. Information is limited. Resources are tight. Competition is fierce. The world is changing. This means you need to be adapting all the time. And if you fail to adapt, no one – not your employer, not the government – is going to catch you when you fall.

Some will recognize co-author Reid Hoffman as the co-founder of LinkedIn, a social network for professionals to share their work histories, skills, education, and career goals. It’s clear that Hoffman knows of the world he speaks of, and understands the changes that have occurred as people try to position themselves and their skills within an increasingly competitive pool of opportunities.

And some might say that this has always been the case. It’s always been challenging to get a job, to stand out in the crowd, to have one’s unique and individual talent be seen as valuable. As true as that is, what this book clearly points out is what has changed, is the movement away from labor, the movement back toward ourselves as creative beings and survivors. When one focuses on these attributes, on themselves, they develop their skills and unique talents in a stronger way, rather than looking at which opportunities are available, and attempting to fit themselves within that. The result is more control over one’s destiny, and the ability to discover opportunities based on their strengths and interests as opposed to taking the best option available.

This is a great book to help anyone on this path, currently employed, or not. It’s filled with information on creating competitive advantage, strengthening your network, generating opportunities, better understanding risk, and becoming more successful on your own terms.

In a serendipitous turn of events, a copy of Have a Nice Conflict landed on my desk the same day that I happened to watch a current episode of Sesame Street with my son that features Mother Goose and her struggle to write a new rhyme because she had run out of conflicts to inspire her. As with all Sesame Street skits, there is a lesson to be learned. Conflict happens, and while the drama of a good conflict can be sensational (or rhyme-spirational), it’s important to learn how to work through them to maintain good relationships between friends.

It struck me that day that while we are taught from an early age how to deal with conflict–everything from a friend breaking a toy to handling the playground bully–it’s not an easy thing to master. Whether we are 6 or 46. So it is that we still very much need books like Have a Nice Conflict. Few people are really good at dealing with conflict. Possibly because conflict comes in all shapes and sizes. And even if you are someone who handles conflict well, you may be dealing with a friend or coworker who does not. Because conflict is, at it’s roots, emotional, and as with most things, emotions often get in the way of logical resolution.

In Have a Nice Conflict, the authors, Tim Scudder, Michael Patterson, and Kent Mitchell of Personal Strengths USA, tell the story of John Doyle, a sales manager who was going places until his interpersonal style–described in the book as abrasive, which worked well in making sales deals but not so well internally–begins to work against him. When his team starts to abandon ship, and he is turned down for a promotion, Doyle is encouraged to see a “conflict doctor” named Mac.

As you may have guessed from the above description Have a Nice Conflict is a business fable. “Although this tale is pure fiction, the situations were inspired by our real-world experiences in personal and organizational development–and life in general.” Underlying Doyle’s story are “the practical ideas of relationship awareness theory” with the goal of not only resolving workplace conflict, but also enabling people to “reduce the amount of conflict you experience in your life.”

The story begins with John Doyle having a very bad day. Not only is he passed over for promotion, but his top sales representative has surprisingly resigned. John had already had one of his top performers leave several months earlier, and on that same very bad day, he found out that he, John Doyle, was the prime reason that person had left. He learns from a respected customer that “the lifeblood of any organization is people. Our lives in general are all about people. You got conflict in your life? You’re choking off your blood supply.” That same customer also hands John a business card that reads, “Have a Nice Conflict” and includes a phone number.

Enter Dr. Mac who will act as guru to John Doyle as he learns a lot about improving his people skills.

What happens next is best left between the covers of this book, a book that not only tells a fast-paced and genial story, but also includes such unique additions as John’s Notebook, Dr. Mac’s Statement of Philosophy, and the Character Assessment Results (lots of helpful graphs and graphics) that explain the Strength Deployment Inventory assessment that the authors know so well.

If conflict has you tied in knots, Have a Good Conflict is certain to help you understand the motives, behaviors and perceptions of the people involved and how they change when conflict rears its head. Perhaps it won’t be resolved as quickly as those in nursery rhymes, but certainly this book will lead you closer to a happy ending.

In a time when unemployment is high, energy prices are on the rise, and quality food grows scarce, it’s very nice to read a book like Abundance: Why the Future Will Be Much Better Than You Think. In some ways, this new book by Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler seems too good to be true. But upon opening the cover, it’s clear that there are ideas within that aren’t just intended to raise hype (and false hope).

There are four forces the authors identify that are closing the gap on high privilege and, well, the rest of us: Exponential technologies, the DIY innovator, the Technophilanthropist, and the Rising Billion. These forces, the author’s say, will solve our biggest problems – problems we have faced since the dawn of humanity.

“…for the first time in history, our capabilites have begun to catch up to our ambitions. Humanity is now entering a period of radical transformation in which technology has the potential to significantly raise the basic standards of living for every man, woman, and child on the planet.”

From water, education, rights, and more, the authors explain how technology and the work developing it will expand not only how our economy and business will change, but how we as individuals will within this new system.

Part technology, part business, and part politics, this is a book that might inspire entrepreneurs to focus on specific positive trends, and make us all stop and think about how we might contribute with our own business.  It will be interesting to watch the conversations that come out of this book, and of course, to see some of the actual steps toward making abundance a reality.

And as the authors describe in detail early in the book, the first step toward understanding how to make it possible is to understand that it actually is possible.

From the authors of Where Does the Money Go?: Your Guided Tour to the Federal Budget Crisis and Who Turned Out the Lights?: Your Guided Tour to the Energy Crisis, comes a new book about an issue of grave national importance that has touched most of our lives recently, and will be central to the political debate this election year.

In Where Did the Jobs Go—And How Do We Get Them Back?: Your Guided Tour to America’s Employment Crisis, being released tomorrow by William Morrow & Company, Scott Bittle and Jean Johnson have provided a thoroughly researched, easy-to-read analysis of the jobs situation in America—minus the hyperbole, political posturing, and invective that’s been thrown around the public debates and airwaves recently and is certain to increase in the coming months. As the authors explain in the book’s preface, they wrote this book as “a guide for citizens, not offering advice for investors, entrepreneurs, or job hunters.” In that sense it’s not a proper business book per se, but it can help each of us see the overall jobs picture and business environment more clearly.

The situation is difficult in both its human cost and economic complexity, but Bittle and Johnson try to keep the mood light, cleverly peppering in anecdotes from popular culture sources such as TV shows Friends and Seinfeld, the 1950s movie Dragnet, the musical career of Elvis, and more to explain the economic theories and principles their book needs to address the jobs issue thoroughly. And so the book is able to tackle frightening statistics and daunting questions without losing the lay reader or terrifying the nightly news watcher. They’re also able to look at these issues without becoming embroiled in the partisan debate that so often dominates the discussion on the cable news networks, though they don’t shy away from the more complicated and complex issues. It is because the issues are complex and complicated and so rarely conform to either a conservative or liberal narrative that they’re able to do so. The fundamental and hotly debated issue of whether the employment crisis is cyclical or structural, for instance, in which the business and political implications are so huge, isn’t clear—or if it is, it’s clearly not one-sided.

Chapters 5 through 11, the section of the book entitled “Inquiring Minds Want to Know,” tackles the most contentious debate going—that of austerity versus stimulus. The authors rightly point out that stimulus has become unpopular, partly because most Americans tend to equate the word stimulus with the Troubled Asset Relief Program (or TARP) that bailed out the big banks and the auto companies. (TARP was not, in fact, part of the stimulus, but an emergency measure to recapitalize the banks in an effort to keep the crisis on Wall Street from spilling over into the larger, “real” economy. The stimulus actually included measures that are overwhelmingly popular—tax breaks, aid to state and local governments, and help for the unemployed. Conversely, cutting the deficit, or austerity, is more popular in theory but the measures it calls for—raising taxes and cutting popular programs like Social Security and Medicare—are wildly unpopular.)

The comments in parentheses above are my own. The authors don’t delve too deeply into political opinion, but stick instead to Dragnet Joe Friday’s “just the fact ma’am” approach. In the “Inquiring Minds Want to Know Section,” they ask seven questions: Would Balancing the Budget Create Jobs?; Would Cutting Taxes Help Create Jobs?; Would Cutting Bureaucracy Help Create Jobs?; Would Reviving Manufacturing Help Create Jobs?; Would Improving Education Help Create Jobs?; Would a Major Infrastructure Project Help Create Jobs? and; Would Closing the Gap Between Rich and Poor Help Create Jobs? You may think you know the “facts ma’am” answers to most of these questions. I know I did, and I know I was surprised by some of them and conclusions I came to afterward.

The book then moves on to the larger and longer-term effects of globalization, technology, immigration, and the aging of the baby-boomers. And sticking to it’s nonpartisan approach, the “Fourteen Big Ideas for Creating More and Better Jobs” at the end of the book are all over the partisan map, including everything from rolling back environmental regulations to keep energy costs low to supporting the union movement and getting business out of the health insurance business.

There was a really great book by Nicholas Wapshott put out late last year by W.W. Norton & Company entitled Keynes Hayek: The Clash That Defined Modern Economics (I plan on reviewing it here soon). In it, Wapshott details how the economic debate between intervention and unfettered markets that has become so rancorous in this country and around the Western world began. Where Did the Jobs Go—And How Do We Get Them Back?: Your Guided Tour to America’s Employment Crisis details how the various sides of that debate could conceivably find a compromise, at least in the near term and with regards to the single issue of job creation.

It’s that time of year again. We’ve compiled all the great books, ideas, and activities that 800-CEO-READ was involved in over the past year and published them in our annual In the Books publication.

As the intro states:

“At 800-CEO-READ, we don’t come to work everyday just to sell business books. We go to work to try to improve the way business is done.”

This publication is the clearest example of that. Featuring the winners, shortlist, and candidates from the 2011 Business Book Awards, ChangeThis highlights, 8cr events and activities, 100 Best book updates, Author interviews from our blog, and various Jack Covert Selects reviews (as well as some photos from our annual croquet tournament…), this year’s In the Books is another useful (and nice looking!) guide put together by Dylan Schleicher of 800-CEO-READ and Joy Panos Stauber of Stauber Design Studio.

If you’d like a physical copy, send me a note at jon (a) 800ceoread (dot) com and introduce yourself.

GROW: How to Change the Narrative of Business by Jim Stengel

“The business case for brand ideals is not altruism. It’s self-interest and mutual interest. In addition to its wider positive impact, a devotion to brand ideals will do more for your own business and career than any other factor. Maximum business growth and high ideals are not incompatible. They’re inseparable.”

Transcendent Leadership: How to Lead Anyone, Anywhere, Anytime
by Les McKeown

“What if each successive leadership role brought out more of what makes you you, rather than asking you to compromise your core values, bury your deepest wishes, hold ransom your dreams? Having coached and advised hundreds of leaders, I know this isn’t a pipe dream.”

Shift & Reset by Brian Reich

“There are lots of excuses for not making real, demonstrable changes in the way we live, work, and how we interact as individuals and engage in groups/communities. I have heard them all. I have used many of them myself. But they are bullshit. All excuses are.”

It Really is As Simple As ABC: What Leaders Can Learn from Masterful Orators of the Past by Matt Eventoff

“Millions of meetings and presentations occur daily. Each of these presentations is meant to drive ‘someone’ to do ‘something.’ And what do the vast majority of [them] have in common? Unfortunately, they usually fail to get anyone to do anything.”

Make Social Media Sell—Now by Jeff Molander

“The ‘social media revolution’ is over-hyped nonsense. The real business opportunity is to become more relevant and meaningful to customers in ways that create sales.”

The 800-CEO-READ AUTHOR POW WOW
January 13-15, 2013
Austin, TX

**REGISTER EARLY AND SAVE**

NOW THROUGH APRIL 1: $1000
April 1 – October 1: $1250
October through event: $1500

REGISTER HERE!

The Author Pow Wow will not only provide you with all the knowledge you need to do what works, but will also connect you to the people who can help you in the process. During an intimate and intensive two days, authors, soon-to-be authors, publishers, publicists, marketers, agents, speaking experts, social media strategists, and business people who have great ideas to share, gather, listen, converse, and leave more informed and better at what they do. Knowledge and insight are gained, partnerships form, deals get made, and connections are built that lead to possibilities never before imagined.

Hosted since 2005 by 800-CEO-READ at various locations in Chicago, Milwaukee, and Austin, this year we’ll return to sunny Austin, TX, and the historic Driskill Hotel. More info on panels and presentations forthcoming, but expect a broad overview of perspectives from key people in the industry.

Don’t just take our word about what a great event this is. Read what authors Chris Guillebeau and Sally Hogshead had to say:

“Why go to an 8CR Pow-Wow? Simply put: there’s no other event like it. Where else can you talk book strategy with other authors, receive direct input from publishers, and – but wait, there’s more – meet the folks who run the world’s best business book distributorship? The gang in Milwaukee puts on a good show… make the time to attend!” – Chris Guillebeau, (author of The Art of Non-Conformity)

“My first year attending the 800-CEO-READ Author Pow Wow, I met the agents who changed the course of my career. The next year, I met the team who helped me launch and promote my next book, Fascinate. Last year, I gained the very specific insights that are helping to catapult my business in new ways. This event isn’t just about authoring business books– this is the must-attend conference for anyone dedicated to big ideas, high expectations, and long-lasting results.” – Sally Hogshead (author of Fascinate)

Cost includes event sessions, buffet breakfast and lunch served on each day of the event, plus a special group dinner outing.

Hope to see you at the event!

Presented by 800-CEO-READ.

Sponsored by:

Cave Henricks Communications, Greenleaf Book Group, and Shelton Interactive.

On one hand, this book is not our usual thing. On the other hand, nothing can move forward if our health isn’t in order. So, it’s completely worth pointing out Dr. David B. Agus’ new book, The End of Illness.

The provocative title certainly draws our attention, and we might be expecting a “to-do list” of things we’ve heard before. Certainly, there are some universal truths in here that we’ve heard all our lives (the question is, are we adhering to them?), but also, there are more than a few discoveries in here that might surprise us, about the medical industry, about science, about food, about vitamins (don’t take them?), and about the prevention of a variety of illnesses.

Here are some questions I sent Dr. Agus in reaction to reading it:

Why do you advise individuals to take more control over their own health concerns – isn’t that risky?

Dr. Agus: I advise people to team with their doctor.  Download the personal health questionnaire from www.theendofillness.com and bring all of this information with you to your doctor.  This team approach will yield benefits!

What are some reasons why we need to be more active in maintaining our health more than any other generation?

Dr. Agus: We now have a tremendous knowledge bank on preventive medicine, and I want everyone to use it!  While it is hard to reverse or cure disease like cancer, heart disease or neurodegenerative disease, the data on prevention are real and achievable for all of us.

What are some of the health disadvantages to office work and how might we improve them?

Dr. Agus: The big disadvantage is that you have to sit at a desk normally all day.  Figure out a way to move around.  When someone is coming to meet with you, it is a great sign of respect to have them go on a walk with you and talk, instead of sitting at your desk.  Try and get up and walk around every 20 minutes or so if you can.

How might we be more certain that we’re eating healthy?

Dr. Agus: Eating healthy shouldn’t be complex.  The details are in The End of Illness, but in brief:

1.       Regular schedule
2.       Know where your food is from
3.       Moderation
4.       Variety
5.       Fresh foods
6.       Stay away from processed foods, vitamins and supplements

Is the end of illness really possible?

Dr. Agus: I believe presently (with the current state of science and medicine) we can delay illness to the ninth decade of life.  As to the future, who knows!!! I am optimistic. . .

—

This is a highly interesting book written in a sensible, well-thought out and researched method. None of it shocks the reader into adopting a new lifestyle that seems freakish, yet the simple reality presented here is a logic that very few of us are likely completely in tune with.

You want to be a better manager and leader? You want to create a successful company? You want to work in smarter ways than you have before? Then start with this book, start with your health, and the rest will follow.

We’re thrilled (seriously!) to post an excerpt from Robert Harris (best selling author of Fatherland, Pompeii, and The Ghost Writer, which was made into a movie with Ewan McGregor and Pierce Brosnan, and many others) to showcase his new novel

The Fear Index may not be our typical fare, but the novel appeals to us for many reasons: a master storyteller, the drama of hedge fund trading, a really creepy old book–Darwin in this case–, lots of money, and lots of thrills. To start the adventure, read below!

***

The Fear Index
Robert Harris
Knopf | Hardcover | January, 2012 | $25.95 | 978-0-307-95793-1

Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge, and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow. -Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (1818)

Dr. Alexander Hoffmann sat by the fire in his study in Geneva, a half-smoked cigar lying cold in the ashtray beside him, an anglepoise lamp pulled low over his shoulder, turning the pages of a first edition of The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals by Charles Darwin. The Victorian grandfather clock in the hall was striking midnight but Hoffmann did not hear it. Nor did he notice that the fire was almost out. All his formidable powers of attention were directed onto his book.

He knew it had been published in London in 1872 by John Murray & Co. in an edition of seven thousand copies, printed in two runs. He knew also that the second run had introduced a misprint-”htat”-on page 208. As the volume in his hands contained no such error, he presumed it must have come from the first run, thus greatly increasing its value. He turned it round and inspected the spine. The binding was in the original green cloth with gilt lettering, the spine-ends only slightly frayed. It was what was known in the book trade as “a fine copy,” worth perhaps $15,000. He had found it waiting for him when he returned home from his office that evening, as soon as the New York markets had closed, a little after ten o’clock. Yet the strange thing was, even though he collected scientific first editions and had browsed the book online and had in fact been meaning to buy it, he had not actually ordered it.

His immediate thought had been that it must have come from his wife, but she had denied it. He had refused to believe her at first, following her around the kitchen as she set the table, holding out the book for her inspection.

“You’re really telling me you didn’t buy it for me?”

“Yes, Alex. Sorry. It wasn’t me. What can I say? Perhaps you have a secret admirer.”

“You are totally sure about this? It’s not our anniversary or anything? I haven’t forgotten to give you something?”

“For God’s sake, I didn’t buy it, okay?”

It had come with no message apart from a Dutch bookseller’s slip: “Rosengaarden & Nijenhuise, Antiquarian Scientific & Medical Books. Established 1911. Prinsengracht 227, 1016 HN Amsterdam, The Netherlands.” Hoffmann had pressed the pedal on the waste bin and retrieved the bubble wrap and thick brown paper. The parcel was correctly addressed, with a printed label: “Dr. Alex- ander Hoffmann, Villa Clairmont, 79 Chemin de Ruth, 1223 Cologny, Geneva, Switzerland.” It had been dispatched by courier from Amsterdam the previous day.

After they had eaten their supper-a fish pie and green salad prepared by the housekeeper before she went home-Gabrielle had stayed in the kitchen to make a few anxious last-minute phone calls about her exhibition the next day, while Hoffmann had retreated to his study clutching the mysterious book. An hour later, when she put her head round the door to tell him she was going up to bed, he was still reading.

She said, “Try not to be too late, darling. I’ll wait up for you.”

He did not reply. She paused in the doorway and considered him for a moment. He still looked young for forty-two, and had always been more handsome than he realised-a quality she found attractive in a man as well as rare. It was not that he was modest, she had come to realise. On the contrary: he was supremely indifferent to anything that did not engage him intellectually, a trait that had earned him a reputation among her friends for being downright bloody rude-and she quite liked that as well. His preternaturally boyish American face was bent over the book, his spectacles pushed up and resting on the top of his thick head of light brown hair; catching the firelight, the lenses seemed to flash a warning look back at her. She knew better than to try to interrupt him. She sighed and went upstairs.

Hoffmann had known for years that The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals was one of the first books to be published with photographs, but he had never actually seen them before. Monochrome plates depicted Victorian artists’ models and inmates of the Surrey Lunatic Asylum in various states of emotion-grief, despair, joy, defiance, terror-for this was meant to be a study of Homo sapiens as animal, with an animal’s instinctive responses, stripped of the mask of social graces. Born far enough into the age of science to be photographed, their misaligned eyes and skewed teeth nonetheless gave them the look of crafty, superstitious peasants from the Middle Ages. They reminded Hoffmann of a childish nightmare-of grown-ups from an old-fashioned book of fairy tales who might come and steal you from your bed in the night and carry you off into the woods.

And there was another thing that unsettled him. The bookseller’s slip had been inserted into the pages devoted to the emotion of fear, as if the sender specifically intended to draw them to his attention:

The frightened man at first stands like a statue motionless or breathless, or crouches down as if instinctively to escape observation. The heart beats quickly and violently, so that it palpitates or knocks against the ribs . . .

Hoffmann had a habit when he was thinking of cocking his head to one side and gazing into the middle distance, and he did so now. Was this a coincidence? Yes, he reasoned, it must be. On the other hand, the physiological effects of fear were so directly relevant to VIXAL-4, the project he was presently involved in, that it did strike him as peculiarly pointed. And yet VIXAL-4 was highly secret, known only to his research team, and although he took care to pay them well-$250,000 was the starting salary, with much more on offer in bonuses-it was surely unlikely any of them would have spent $15,000 on an anonymous gift. One person who certainly could afford it, who knew all about the project and who would have seen the joke of it-if that was what this was: an expensive joke-was his business partner, Hugo Quarry, and Hoffmann, without even thinking about the hour, rang him.

“Hello, Alex. How’s it going?” If Quarry saw anything strange in being disturbed just after midnight, his perfect manners would never have permitted him to show it. Besides, he was accustomed to the ways of Hoffmann, “the mad professor,” as he called him-and called him it to his face as well as behind his back, it being part of his charm always to speak to everyone in the same way, public or private.

Hoffmann, still reading the description of fear, said distractedly, “Oh, hi. Did you just buy me a book?”

“I don’t think so, old friend. Why? Was I supposed to?”

“Someone’s just sent me a Darwin first edition and I don’t know who.”

“Sounds pretty valuable.”

“It is. I thought, because you know how important Darwin is to VIXAL, it might be you.”

“‘Fraid not. Could it be a client? A thank-you gift and they’ve forgotten to include a card? Lord knows, Alex, we’ve made them enough money.”

“Yeah, well. Maybe. Okay. Sorry to bother you.”

“Don’t worry. See you in the morning. Big day tomorrow. In fact, it’s already tomorrow. You ought to be in bed by now.”

“Sure. On my way. Night.”

As fear rises to an extreme pitch, the dreadful scream of terror is heard. Great beads of sweat stand on the skin. All the muscles of the body are relaxed. Utter prostration soon follows, and the mental powers fail. The intestines are affected. The sphincter muscles cease to act, and no longer retain the contents of the body . . .

Hoffmann held the volume to his nose and inhaled. A compound of leather and library dust and cigar smoke, so sharp he could taste it, with a faint hint of something chemical-y;formaldehyde, perhaps, or coal gas. It put him in mind of a nineteenth-century laboratory or lecture theatre, and for an instant he saw Bunsen burners on wooden benches, flasks of acid and the skeleton of an ape. He reinserted the bookseller’s slip to mark the page and carefully closed the book. Then he carried it over to the shelves and with two fingers gently made room for it between a first edition of On the Origin of Species, which he had bought at auction at Sotheby’s in New York for $125,000, and a leather-bound copy of The Descent of Man that had once belonged to T. H. Huxley.

Later, he would try to remember the exact sequence of what he did next. He consulted the Bloomberg terminal on his desk for the final prices in the United States: the Dow Jones, the S&P 500 and the NASDAQ had all ended down. He had an email exchange with Susumu Takahashi, the duty dealer in charge of execution on VIXAL-4 overnight, who reported that everything was functioning smoothly, and reminded him that the Tokyo Stock Exchange would reopen in less than two hours’ time following the annual three-day Golden Week holiday. It would certainly open down, to catch up with what had been a week of falling prices in Europe and the United States. And there was one other thing: VIXAL was proposing to short another three million shares in Procter & Gamble at $62 a share, which would bring their overall position up to six million-a big trade: would Hoffmann approve it? Hoffmann emailed “OK,” threw away his unfinished cigar, put a fine-meshed metal guard in front of the fireplace and switched off the study lights. In the hall he checked to see that the front door was locked and then set the burglar alarm with its four-digit code: 1729. (The numerals came from an exchange between the mathematicians G. H. Hardy and S. I. Ramanujan in 1920, when Hardy went in a taxi cab with that number to visit his dying colleague in hospital and complained it was “a rather dull number,” to which Ramanujan responded: “No, Hardy! No, Hardy! It is a very interesting number. It is the smallest number expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways.”) He left just one lamp lit downstairs-of that he was sure-then climbed the curved white marble staircase to the bathroom. He took off his spectacles, undressed, washed, brushed his teeth and put on a pair of blue silk pyjamas. He set the alarm on his mobile for six thirty, registering as he did so that the time was then twenty past twelve.

In the bedroom he was surprised to find Gabrielle still awake, lying on her back on the counterpane in a black silk kimono. A scented candle flickered on the dressing table; otherwise the room was in darkness. Her hands were clasped behind her head, her elbows sharply pointed away from her, her legs crossed at the knee. One slim white foot, the toenails painted dark red, was making impatient circles in the fragrant air.

“Oh God,” he said. “I’d forgotten the date.”

“Don’t worry.” She untied her belt and parted the silk, then held out her arms to him. “I never forget it.”

***

Excerpted from The Fear Index by Robert Harris. Copyright (c) 2012 by Robert Harris. Excerpted by permission of Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

➻ Umair Haque, author of The New Capitalist Manifesto released by Harvard Business School Press last year, recently asked Is America a Failing State? It’s a dramatic, possibly even hyperbolic question to ask, but one that has become increasingly common as most registered voters say the US is in decline, and don’t believe their children’s standard of living will match their own. Haque looks for solutions:

Perhaps the most vital question is this: what can we do to reverse the decline? The remedy I’ve heard being whispered in the back-slapping corridors of power is what the hoary old wonks call “good governance”—accountability, transparency, and the like, neatly pushing us right back to the status quo ante. But I’d like to challenge that simplistic remedy. After all, what got us there is what got us here. Instead, decline’s moonshot might just be pioneering fundamentally better ways of living, working, and playing; an economy that elevates human potential to a higher apex.

He goes on to suggest five reasons “to reimagine what we want from ‘recovery.’”

1. You can’t have accountability without working accounts.
2. Industrial output is not a human outcome.
3. Transparency doesn’t mean much to the blind.
4. “Value” depends on what counts as “harm.”
5. Philosophy isn’t a luxury—it’s a necessity.

For an explanation of each of principles, head over to the original post. He ends his post with a dose of realism, and call to introspection and action.

[T]hough I fist-poundingly believe we can, the fact is, I don’t know if we will turn our fate around. But I do know we probably can’t do it without the courage, wisdom, and determination to look it unflinchingly in the eye.

I also believe we can, and hope we will.

➻ But in a post about Learning leadership from Congress, Seth Godin reinforces the popular skepticism. Venting a bit of frustration over the SOPA/PIPA debate, Seth offers a reverse career guide based on the example set by those “representing us” in Washington.

When did we lose Congress? Not just in terms of losing our respect for just about everyone there (one of the least respected careers in the USA) but in the sense that they no longer even pretend to represent our interests or act as we would act if given the chance?

I’m not so much angry as saddened that it has come to this.

When planning your career, avoid these pitfalls, behaviors evidenced by many elected officials:

• In all things, look for money first. Listen to people with money, respond to people with money, justify your actions around money. Worth noting that 47% of those in Congress (House and Senate) are millionaires—an even greater percentage than those that are lawyers.
• Embrace the fact that you don’t know what you’re talking about. Aspire to run systems you don’t understand.
• Compromise over the important issues, but dig in and fight forever over trivia.
• Along those lines: focus obsessively on the short run. Even though you are virtually assured of re-election, define the long term as “before the next election.”
• Take months off from your day job (with pay) to actively campaign for a better job.
• Blame the system, the other side and your predecessors for the fact that you are not taking brave, independent action.
• Avoid developing independent thought and analysis. Focus on parroting the work of lobbyists and the party line.
• When given the choice between being on television or doing hard work, pick television.
• When a difficult problem shows up, duck
• Try mightily to outlast passionate resistance by quietly ignoring it and waiting for it to go away.

[...] At least they’ve left us a useful career guide about what not to do in the real world.

So I guess it’s left up to us to do two things: begin enacting the change we want to see in ourselves, and try to stop electing idiots.

➻ But SOPA has been stopped for now. The clearest bit of thinking on why that is so important, I think, is Cory Doctorow’s Lockdown: The Coming War On General-Purpose Computing, in which he envisions the loss of the current copyright wars leading to a world in which governments and big business are able to surveil and even control our actions through the technology we use.

Human rights activists have raised alarms over U-EFI, the new PC bootloader, which restricts your computer so it only runs “signed” operating systems, noting that repressive governments will likely withhold signatures from operating systems unless they allow for covert surveillance operations.

On the network side, attempts to make a network that can’t be used for copyright infringement always converge with the surveillance measures that we know from repressive governments. Consider SOPA, the U.S. Stop Online Piracy Act, which bans innocuous tools such as DNSSec—a security suite that authenticates domain name information— because they might be used to defeat DNS blocking measures. It blocks Tor, an online anonymity tool sponsored by the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory and used by dissidents in oppressive regimes, because it can be used to circumvent IP blocking measures.

In fact, the Motion Picture Association of America, a SOPA proponent, circulated a memo citing research that SOPA might work because it uses the same measures as are used in Syria, China, and Uzbekistan. It argued that because these measures are effective in those countries, they would work in America, too!

It may seem like SOPA is the endgame in a long fight over copyright and the Internet, and it may seem that if we defeat SOPA, we’ll be well on our way to securing the freedom of PCs and networks. But as I said at the beginning of this talk, this isn’t about copyright.

The copyright wars are just the beta version of a long coming war on computation. The entertainment industry is just the first belligerents to take up arms, and we tend to think of them as particularly successful. After all, here is SOPA, trembling on the verge of passage, ready to break the Internet on a fundamental level—all in the name of preserving Top 40 music, reality TV shows, and Ashton Kutcher movies.

The truly scary thought in all of this is the possibility that Ashton Kutcher movies might be preserved to haunt future generations. But it seems my apocalyptic imagination isn’t big enough. It might be even worse than that.

This stuff matters because we’ve spent the last decade sending our best players out to fight what we thought was the final boss at the end of the game, but it turns out it’s just been an end-level guardian. The stakes are only going to get higher.

As a member of the Walkman generation, I have made peace with the fact that I will require a hearing aid long before I die. It won’t be a hearing aid, though; it will really be a computer. So when I get into a car—a computer that I put my body into—with my hearing aid—a computer I put inside my body—I want to know that these technologies are not designed to keep secrets from me, or to prevent me from terminating processes on them that work against my interests.

Last year, the Lower Merion School District, in a middle-class, affluent suburb of Philadelphia, found itself in a great deal of trouble. It was caught distributing, to its students, rootkitted laptops that allowed remote covert surveillance through the computer’s camera and network connection. They photographed students thousands of times, at home and at school, awake and asleep, dressed and naked. Meanwhile, the latest generation of lawful intercept technology can covertly operate cameras, microphones, and GPS tranceivers on PCs, tablets, and mobile devices.

The questions swirling around the issues of piracy, privacy, public access, policy and philosophy are not simple, but a reasoned debate and rational (even if imperfect and evolving) approach should be able to inform the efforts to address each. Subtract the rational debate and throw in a heavy dose of lobbying and money, and you begin to get some frightening proposals and efforts.

➻ If that doesn’t scare you, perhaps Eben Moglen can do the trick. Adrianne Jeffries relates a conversation In Which Eben Moglen Like, Legit Yells at [Her] for Having Facebook, and suggests that participating in social media as it’s currently constructed puts us “in a situation in which you are more heavily surveilled than the KGB or Stasi or Securitate or any other secret police ever surveilled anybody.” In an article in The New York Times about Decentralizing the Internet So Big Brother Can’t Find You, he clarifies his position a bit:

Social networking has changed the balance of political power, he said, “but everything we know about technology tells us that the current forms of social network communication, despite their enormous current value for politics, are also intensely dangerous to use. They are too centralized; they are too vulnerable to state retaliation and control.”

In January, investors were said to have put a value of about $50 billion on Facebook, the social network founded by Mark Zuckerberg. If revolutions for freedom rest on the shoulders of Facebook, Mr. Moglen said, the revolutionaries will have to count on individuals who have huge stakes in keeping the powerful happy.

“It is not hard, when everybody is just in one big database controlled by Mr. Zuckerberg, to decapitate a revolution by sending an order to Mr. Zuckerberg that he cannot afford to refuse,” Mr. Moglen said.

But Moglen isn’t just complaining. He is working with a team of developers to develop solutions and alternatives:

In response to Mr. Moglen’s call for help, a group of developers working in a free operating system called Debian have started to organize Freedom Box software. Four students from New York University who heard a talk by Mr. Moglen last year have been building a decentralized social network called Diaspora.

Mr. Moglen said that if he could raise “slightly north of $500,000,” Freedom Box 1.0 would be ready in one year.

“We should make this far better for the people trying to make change than for the people trying to make oppression,” Mr. Moglen said. “Being connected works.”

According to a recent Co.Design Infographic Of The Day: All About The 2012 Facebook IPO, 1 in 10 humans on Earth currently uses Facebook.

Moglen hasn’t convinced me to get off Facebook (or perhaps more accurately, my wife has convinced me to stay), but he raises legitimate issues. We wouldn’t without question provide most of the information we give up online every day to a government ostensibly elected by us. Why are we so willing to give it up for what essentially amounts to marketing espionage by a company we have no control over. As Douglas Rushkoff says, We’re Are Not Facebook’s Customers, we’re are the product. I believe that there may be value in that to us, to help the companies we purchase from understand what we desire and demand as consumers, but there may be dangers in it as well. We have to be mindful of how we use that technology and how it uses us. We have to use it to engage in citizenship as heartily as we use it to engage in consumerism, and we have to demand more in both roles.

➻ It’s not Freedom Day quite yet, but perhaps one day it will be.

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photos by Kat Berger

photos by Kat Berger

photos by Kat Berger

photos by Kat Berger

photos by Kat Berger

photos by Kat Berger