JCL Blog

Book Review: Home Game by Michael Lewis

I have liked Michael Lewis ever since Liar's Poker, and he did not disappoint in the New New Thing either. Moneyball is still on my list. I just finished "Home Game" and it was great. It is an easy one or two night read as long as you don't stop too often and read passages to your spouse like I found myself doing.

The opening story set at a resort pool in Bermuda was so hilarious that we (unintentionally) woke up the kids even though we were trying to keep a lid on it. I admire writers who can tell the funny stories and also just lay out the unflattering stuff too.

Micheal Lewis has quite a talent. I am so glad he did not get sucked into wall street all those years ago.

Here is a link to the book on Amazon

Book Review: Work Hard. Be Nice. by Jay Mathews

This lively and easy read about two Teach for America teachers who go way beyond their two year commitment and well above the call of duty to change lives is an inspiration for anyone who has been exposed to public schools in the US. The stories about overcoming amazing resistance by students, parents, other teachers, and administrators to give kids a chance of success are a delight to read and at the same time a reminder of how daunting the job of education reform is.

Their creation, the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP), is a combination of teaching methods, parent involvement, longer school hours and calendar, and incredible passion by the teachers. Some of their ideas are cool, but the passion part really impacted me. These guys really put themselves into their work -- absolutely immersed. Yes they are smart, but the 24 X 7 commitment to success and refusal to accept failure is what I think made the difference.

Now over 20,000 kids are enrolled in KIPP schools across the country.

Bill Gates posted a great review of this book on Monday.

Here is a link to the book on Amazon

Book Review: Too Big to Fail by Andrew Ross Sorkin

It took a while but I finally finished Too Big to Fail. This is a big book about the 2008 financial melt down and bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers.  The author does an amazing job of taking us through events in 2008 that we have already heard so much about. He makes the book work by recreating the conversations between the players in such a lifelike way that you feel you are there. Sure he did a great deal of research -- but part of me has to think there was a fair amount of artistic license taken. Even so I highly recommend the book and I have a much better understanding of our financial system and these events from reading it.
Key take aways:
  • When you hear "That will never happen" -- look out! Ten years earlier the geniuses at Long Term Capital Management were saying that about interest rates, and this time it was real estate. Who knows what it will be next time, but when the markets start to think that naturally occurring cycles are no longer occurring naturally -- go to cash fast.
  • Henry Paulson is not as bad a guy as I thought. The then Treasury Secretary was on the top of my list of corrupt people before reading the book and by the end I came to the conclusion that he was not such a bad guy. Even so we would be fools to think his bias towards Goldman Sachs was completely neutralized -- clearly his being there helped that firm.
  • Goldman Sachs is a truly remarkable firm -- not so much remarkable as in good but remarkably good at what they do. And what they do is take care of themselves. Their tradition of sending their retired leaders to Washington is pretty smart. They were also smart enough to see the water draining out of the system and made repeated significant efforts to protect themselves -- both by using their influence and raising mountains of capital.
  • Street fighters like Dick Fuld of Lehman Brothers are not well equipped to make it through a catastrophe like this credit crisis. His major weakness was his long string of successes fighting against everyone and prevailing. It left him with no friends and no way to see the truth in what was happening.
  • The people in the government are at a distinct disadvantage. The smartest ones have ties to their former firms so they can't really be trusted to look out for the public and the ones without wall street experience don't really know what is going on.
Here are some other reviews of the book.
In the end the point of the title comes out. The only way we are going to solve the many problems of our financial industry is to figure out how to make sure no one is Too Big to Fail. The author does not address that in the book.
Another good book in this vein is When Genius Failed.

Book Review: Googled by Ken Auletta

A hastily written but fact filled book about the disruption Google is enabling in the media industry. The author takes full advantage of his deep connections in the media business and the people cited in the book would make quite a rolodex. Published in 2009 it covers through the fall of 2009 with pretty good depth of both the challenges Google presents to its competitors and the challenges Google faces itself. As anyone would do on Monday morning, the author has a habit of making decisions in the past seem obviously brilliant or not so -- when in fact they must have been more complicated at the time.

Key take aways:
  • The main groups impacted by Google are the big ad agencies, content providers from newspapers to movie makers, platform owners from Microsoft to Amazon to eBay, and just emerging -- the carriers. 
  • Google considers itself the most customer focussed company on the planet and considers its customers to be the web user - not the advertiser. Google will lose the trust of the customer if it ever reverses these relationships. 
  • Google has 150 products and only one makes it any money. 
  • Google thinks YouTube is its next big thing. 
  • Google is inspired by the inefficiency of the sales process and believes that through better process engineering it can lower or eliminate the inefficiency of sales. It wants to be the salesforce for any large industry.  

Links to other pretty good reviews of this book:


I think it is worth the time to read it.  The line that sticks with me is turning analog dollars into digital dimes.  You can find the book on Amazon.com by clicking this link.