Books to Read – April 2011
It’s a day late, but here is my April list of must-reads. There are only two this month, but both are excellent.
War by Sebastian Junger
I don’t know where to begin with this book. It is one of the best books I have ever read. This is the first book by Sebastian Junger I have read, and as a result I am reading the rest of them. Junger deploys with an army unit at the point of the spear in Afghanistan, the Korengal Valley. It is the one of the the harshest terrains in the entire country, on the border with Pakistan. Junger spends a year with the unit, giving providing stories of camaraderie, tragedy, triumph and everything in between. The stories of the operations are so vivid that I felt like I could hear the bullets ripping past my own head. Junger does a great job of leaving any social commentary about the propriety of the war aside. Instead he chooses to focus on the operation of a group of elite soldiers in extremely harsh conditions, fighting an enemy that seems to never run out of fighters willing to die. One of the most interesting threads through the book is that the men he is deployed with don’t care about anything except each other. They don’t worry about the politics of the war. It is both the rush and loyalty that only combat can create that they live for. They crave the battles and despise the downtime. When asked if it bothers them to kill their enemies, the answer is a simple one: If we don’t kill them, they will kill us. It’s not personal. It’s survival. Read this book. It’s not a glamorization of either point of view on the war. I can promise you, however, that you will buy every soldier you meet out in public a drink from here on (if you don’t already).
The Thank You Economy by Gary Vaynerchuck
Gary Vaynerchuck is the kind of guy you want to hang around. I don’t know him personally, but if you watch his Daily Grape videos or his old Wine Library TV shows, you know what I mean. This guy has so much energy and passion for what he does and what he believes that you want to be a part of the action. I really liked this book and plan to write a full review of it in a different article. I like it because Gary does a great job of laying out how customer relationships are going to change over the next five years. And, unlike a lot of business book authors, you can see proof of his belief every day. He is highly interactive in his approach to the use of social media and is the poster boy for how to build a brand. The central theme of this book is that you must treat every customer interaction ( Twitter, Facebook, in person, over the phone ) with equal importance because you simply don’t know who is important anymore. Hint: It’s not who you think it is. It has some of the same, somewhat tired, reviews of companies like Zappos, but other than that I found a lot to take out of the book. Like I said, I think this book deserves a bit more detailed treatment.
Happy reading!