By Denis Campbell
If you’re stuck for something, you know amazon can deliver the right gift in 48-hours in time for Christmas. There are three books out there that are must reads this holiday season – Outliers, The Snowball and Angler.
Outliers was written by Malcom Gladwell. Gladwell first emerged on the scene a few years back with his breakthrough book The Tipping Point, a fabulous look at what it is that causes something to “tip” into broader consciousness and become wildly successful. In Outliers he looks at the attributes of highly successful people in many fields and comes to the conclusion that those who achieve excellence in a certain area, work or bank a minimum of 10,000 hours of relentlessly precise practice to achieve their goals. He looks at how people are placed in positions to gain an edge and how the most successful amongst us use it to their advantage.
The second on this list is the authorised biography of Warren Buffet called The Snowball and The Business of Life. The only person who will likely emerge from this current economic malaise in great shape, Buffet openly shares his secrets and lessons on life viewed through the prism of his hand-picked biographer, Alice Schroeder. Schroeder captures the man in every possible moment. She was instructed at the beginning, “if given two versions of any story about me, you are to use the least flattering.” Her reply in interviews was one of great satisfaction when he read the finished manuscript and changed not a single word. I have not enjoyed a biography as much as this one in quite some time. You get a true unblemished history and picture of the man who still lives in the modest Nebraska home he bought 50 years ago and runs his vast empire from a tiny old office with the same business partner all these years.
Finally a book that will bring nightmares to all and is a must read is Pulitzer Prize winning author Barton Gellman’s Angler, the Shadow Presidency of Dick Cheney. Gellman had extraordinary access to write this book and was last seen headed into the witness protection program. It tells the story of how Dick Cheney became the most powerful man in Washington because he did not care and was not running to ever become President. His abuses of the Government Printing Office and what we are now learning about his role in the torture of foreign prisoners are chilling. What is most frightening is the degree to which he does not care what anyone thinks of him. That he had the gall to say the Obama Administration will like and benefit from what we did to the Executive is chilling.
