The Ebooks Review

Editorial Reviews

Review
“What makes this book [Raising the Bar] worth reading is that he’s [Gary Erickson] as honest about his mistakes as his successes.” (Newsweek, October 4, 2004)

“What makes this book [Raising the Bar] worth reading is that he s [Gary Erickson] as honest about his mistakes as his successes.” (Newsweek, October 4, 2004)

Review
“Gary Erickson realizes that businesses have tremendous power to harm or protect the natural world, our common home. I applaud the efforts of Gary and Clif Bar to develop business practices that promote an ethic of global responsibility.”
–Mikhail S. Gorbachev, chairman, Green Cross International

“Gary Erickson believes that doing good and doing business should go hand in hand. Raising the Bar tells the inspiring story of a scrappy company’s battle to stay privately owned and to better its people, the community, and the planet in the process.”
–Ben Cohen, cofounder, Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream, and president, TrueMajority.org

“This is a beautiful book about courage, commitment, integrity, and vision. It is also a story that reminds us that one person does make a difference by leading the way through the inspiration of the heart.”
–Julia Butterfly Hill, author, The Legacy of Luna

“Gary Erickson’s story is sheer inspiration. Reading it makes you want to ride a bike up a high mountain, dust off your musical instrument and join a jazz band, or launch an outrageous company. This is a life manual masquerading as a business book.”
–David Batstone, author, Saving the Corporate Soul

“In Raising the Bar, Gary Erickson’s incredible journey raises our expectations of corporate America and most importantly our hope for a better world.”
–Jeanne Rizzo, R.N., executive director, The Breast Cancer Fund

“My son Gary’s awesome true Clif Bar story, as told in this book, brings tears to my eyes, sends chills up my spine, and gives joy to my heart.”
–Clifford Erickson

“I can relate to a guy who’s faced a few challenges on a bike. Reading about Gary’s adventures in the mountains, on his bike, and with Clif Bar inspires me. Gary understands the meaning of adventure in life and business.”
–Tyler Hamilton, professional cyclist

“Whether I’ve been climbing or just visiting with Gary, he motivates me to consider what’s possible. He has a powerful dreaming mind and a kind of vision to make our world a better place. It’s awesome to see Gary and the people at Clif Bar turn their business into a way of life.”
–Ron Kauk, climber

Order Raising the Bar: Integrity and Passion in Life and Business: The Story of Clif Bar & Co.: Gary Erickson, Lois Lorentzen form Amazon.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
When President Eisenhower famously warned against the military-industrial complex, he largely meant the Department of Defense–funded programs of the RAND Corporation. Abella (coauthor, Shadow Enemies: Hitler’s Secret Terrorist Plot Against the United States) presents a sometimes dry but thorough account of this think-tank, which he asserts not only played a key role in the U.S.’s biggest foreign misadventures in Vietnam and Iraq but also, through its development of rational choice theory, has affected every aspect of our lives, not necessarily for the better. Abella, working with the cooperation of the usually secretive organization, details RAND’S history, from analyst Herman Kahn’s energetic support of a virtually unrestrained nuclear arms buildup to the organization’s role in sparking America’s involvement in Vietnam and the current war in Iraq. But even more, Abella says, RAND theorists’ notion that self-interest, rather than collective interests like religion, governs human behavior has influenced every aspect of our society, from health care to tax policy. The RAND Corporation continues today—as brilliant, controversial and, in Abella’s view, amoral as ever—with the complicity of all Americans. If we look in the mirror, Abella concludes, we will see that RAND is every one of us. The question is, what are we going to do about it? 8 pages of b&w photos. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review
A crisp history of the world’s most influential think tank, which the Soviet publication Pravda once called the “academy of science and death.”

The Manhattan Project proved to the military during World War II the efficacy of assistance from independent civilian scientists. Seeking to maintain that link and understanding the need to cope with peacetime threats to national security, Air Force hot shots, including the legendary Generals Henry Harley “Hap” Arnold and Curtis LeMay, helped to found RAND (for “research and development”). Throughout the next half-century, RAND’s intellectual gunslingers–its researchers and advisors have won 27 Nobel Prizes–expanded their role and helped set large portions of America’s military and political agenda. RAND’s detractors accuse the corporation of subordinating morality to the achievement of U.S. government policy, of operating wholly without conscience and of practically inventing the Cold War. Los Angeles Times contributor and novelist Abella (Final Acts, 2000, etc.) takes a swipe at the problematic implications for the country of RAND’s seeming amorality, but he deals far more successfully with the corporation’s history, particularly the early years, and the procession of larger-than-life personalities who passed through RAND’s portals and who influenced the nation’s thinking far more than any single policy paper the institute produced. RAND’s luminaries have included the brilliant mathematician John von Neumann, thermonuclear war expert (and model for Dr. Strangelove) Herman Kahn, national-security expert and Cold War strategist Albert Wohlstetter, Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers, and even the humorist Leo Rosten. Its theorists have contributed to our everyday lexicon such words and phrases as “fail-safe,” “doomsday machine,” “systems analysis,” “futurology,” “zero-sum game” and “prisoner’s dilemma.” How many enemy factories can we destroy with the kind of aircraft we possess? After a nuclear exchange, would the living truly envy the dead? Paid to think the unthinkable, RAND’s analysts and their mission come off here as simultaneously marvelous and horrible.

As good a look as we’re likely to get about an organization where, Ellsberg notwithstanding, keeping secrets is second nature. — Kirkus Reviews

Order Soldiers of Reason: The RAND Corporation and the Rise of the American Empire: Alex Abella form Amazon.

Editorial Reviews

In publications such as BusinessWeek and Fast Company, the media have celebrated Whirlpool’s transformation into a leading-edge innovator and Nancy Tennant Snyder’s role as chief innovation officer. Ten years after this remarkable transformation, Unleashing Innovation tells the inside story of one of the most successful innovation turnarounds in American history. Nancy Tennant Snyder and coauthor Deborah L. Duarte reveal how Whirlpool undertook one of the largest change efforts in corporate history and show how innovation was embedded throughout the company, which ultimately lead to bottom-line results.

From the Inside Flap

Unleashing Innovation

In 1999, Whirlpool was undergoing a company-wide reorganization to meet the demands of the post-globalization marketplace. To succeed in executing their transformative Brand-Focused Value-Creation strategy, Whirlpool needed to be both operationally excellent and innovative.

In publications such as BusinessWeek and Fast Company, the media have celebrated Whirlpool’s transformation into a leading-edge innovator and Nancy Tennant Snyder’s role as chief innovation officer. Ten years after this remarkable transformation, Unleashing Innovation tells the inside story of one of the most successful innovation turnarounds in American history. Nancy Tennant Snyder and coauthor Deborah L. Duarte reveal how Whirlpool undertook one of the largest change efforts in corporate history and show how innovation was embedded throughout the company, which ultimately led to bottom-line results.

Unleashing Innovation is filled with illustrative examples from Whirlpool and Whirlpool’s cutting-edge brands including Jenn-Air, Bauknecht, KitchenAid, and Brastemp. Snyder and Duarte reveal the inner workings of Whirlpool’s innovation machine, a framework that creates consistent and profitable innovation by involving all of Whirlpool’s employees, and they debunk the myth that innovation comes only from the geniuses at the top. Rather than a cookie-cutter “how to” manual, Unleashing Innovation shows what happens when an organization creates a machine that involves everyone and fosters an environment that puts the emphasis on “learning and creating, dreaming, the mythology of heroes, and the spirit of winning.” Unleashing Innovation shows how the engine of its innovation can be adapted to run in any business of any size and captures the steps the company took along the way, the key learnings, the tools used, the challenging setbacks, and the critical successes.

Order Unleashing Innovation: How Whirlpool Transformed an Industry: Nancy Tennant Snyder, Deborah L. Duarte form Amazon.

Editorial Reviews

Review
“Heavily footed and studded with graphs and charts, this insider’s view of one of the world’s leading manufacturers is somewhat academic in tone yet has enough anecdotes to make it interesting.” (Library Journal, May 15, 2008)

Extreme Toyota offers the first real, comprehensive inside look at what makes one of the world?s best companies run. With unprecedented access to the inner working of Toyota, the authors spent six years researching the company, interviewing hundreds of executives and employees, and discovering the company’s secret of success. What they uncovered will surprise you and change the way you think about business. Simultaneously rigidly traditional and seriously innovative, it is precisely those internal contradictions that make the company so successful and admired.

Order Extreme Toyota: Radical Contradictions That Drive Success at the World’s Best Manufacturer: Emi Osono, Norihiko Shimizu, Hirotaka Takeuchi form Amazon.

Editorial Reviews

What’s the solution to the world’s growing energy problem?

PERFECT POWER

Electric usage is rising. Fuel costs are rocketing. Blackouts are happening more frequently. Why? Because our electrical power system–built on a vast network of resources including nuclear energy, natural gas, water, and coal–has become woefully outdated, increasingly expensive, and dangerously fragile. We need to change the current system, and we need to do it now.

Written by business visionary and former Motorola chairman Robert Galvin, Perfect Power shows us how to create a “perfect” system that can deliver power where needed, at an astonishing reliability standard of 99.9999999 percent. By super-charging the “Six Sigma” concepts that Galvin developed as the founder and CEO at Motorola, we can

• Meet the energy reliability and quality needs of the Digital Age
• Generate new goods and services that create jobs, empower consumers, and lower energy cost
• Eliminate wasteful spending on our electrical infrastructure that can be used for peak power needs
• Facilitate local, regional, and, ultimately, national energy independence
• Fundamentally reduce the impact of energy on the environment
• Invest in the microgrid revolution

Energy providers and policy makers will reinvent today’s centralized power systems and integrate them with new, efficient “microgrids.” Investors and entrepreneurs will spot tomorrow’s hottest technologies. Consumers will demand change from “the powers that be.” And environmentalists will take advantage of cleaner, greener energy sources available.

We have the power to fulfill our energy needs, fix our old systems, forge ahead with new ideas, and fuel our dreams. It’s Perfect Power.

From the Back Cover

The Book That Will Revolutionize and Electrify Our Energy Crisis

From Robert Galvin, Motorola’s visionary leader and legendary former CEO, and Kurt Yeager, former CEO of the Electric Power Research Institute, comes a powerful wake-up call for the entire energy industry. A must-read for investors, entrepreneurs, homeowners, and environmentalists, Perfect Power offers bold new solutions, investments, and job opportunities that address the biggest energy problems we face today, including how to

• Meet the rising demands for more electricity
• Create “Perfect Power” that will withstand hurricanes, blackouts, terrorism, and technical malfunctions
• Implement clean, “green” alternatives by tapping the smart microgrid revolution
• Live “off the grid” and become energy self-sufficient
• Identify and invest in exciting new companies and technologies

“Reinventing our nation’s electric supply system is at the heart of solving our climate change and energy security problems. This book underscores the urgency of modernizing our grid and our business models to meet this challenge for our future generations.”
—James E. Rogers, Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer, Duke Energy

Order PERFECT POWER: How the Microgrid Revolution Will Unleash Cleaner, Greener, More Abundant Energy: Robert Galvin, Kurt Yeager form Amazon.

Editorial Reviews

Ask consumers and users what names they associate with the multibillion dollar personal computer market, and they will answer IBM, Apple, Tandy, or Lotus. The more knowledgable of them will add the likes of Microsoft, Ashton-Tate, Compaq, and Borland. But no one will say Xerox. Fifteen years after it invented personal computing, Xerox still means “copy.”

Fumbling the Future tells how one of America’s leading corporations invented the technology for one of the fastest-growing products of recent times, then miscalculated and mishandled the opportunity to fully exploit it. It is a classic story of how innovation can fare within large corporate structures, the real-life odyssey of what can happen to an idea as it travels from inspiration to implementation.

More than anything, Fumbling the Future is a tale of human beings whose talents, hopes, fears, habits, and prejudices determine the fate of our largest organizations and of our best ideas. In an era in which technological creativity and economic change are so critical to the competitiveness of the American economy, Fumbling the Future is a parable for our times.

–This text refers to the

Paperback
edition.

Order Fumbling the Future: How Xerox Invented Then Ignored the First Personal Computer: Douglas K. Smith, Robert C. Alexander form Amazon.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
The world’s water supply is fast falling prey to corporate desire for the bottom line, the authors argue (Barlow chairs Council of Canadians, a public advocacy group; Clarke is the director of the Polaris Institute of Canada). Indeed, “the human race has taken water for granted and massively misjudged the capacity of the earth’s water systems to recover from our carelessness,” the authors write. Even if that’s a hard statement to prove, the authors marshal an impressive amount of evidence that corporate profits are increasingly drinking up precious water resources. In some countries, water has already been privatized, leading to higher rates of consumption and depleted resources. And in other places, poorer residents actually pay more for water than their richer neighbors. In the meantime, Pepsi and Coke’s sales of bottled water are taking water away from municipal supplies. The authors cogently argue that water a basic necessity should be treated differently from other commodities and not placed into private hands. In the end, their argument becomes a screed against the power that multinationals wield in our economically liberalizing world: in free trade treaties, they argue, governments effectively yield control over water rights to corporations, with harmful consequences for both economic parity and nature. The authors are vague about what the average person can do to help stave off this crisis, but those concerned about the environment and about the costs of economic globalization will find much to get riled up about in this book.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
This well-researched book provides a sobering, in-depth look at the growing scarcity of fresh water and the increasing privatization and corporate control of this nonrenewable resource. Barlow, national volunteer chair of the Council of Canadians, and Clarke, director of the Polaris Institute of Canada and chair of the committee on corporations for the International Forum on Globalization, describe how transnational corporations (Bechtel, Vivendi, et al.) through their water subsidiaries are making water a growth industry for the 21st century. The authors criticize mandatory privatization of water services as a condition of debt rescheduling and proposed international trade agreements for negatively impacting public ownership of water, public-sector water services, and governmental authority to regulate. Although the investigative reporting is similar to that in Marq de Villiers’s Water and Jeffrey Rothfeder’s Every Drop for Sale, the authors’ sophisticated economic analysis of water as a scarce commodity distinguishes this book from the other two. The concluding chapters set forth goals, principles for safeguarding the world’s water, and steps for water security in more detail than de Villiers’s water strategies. The proposals for corrective legislation, lobbying, and citizen environmental action make this book a highly recommended purchase for public and academic libraries. Margaret Aycock, Gulf Coast Environmental Lib., Beaumont, TX
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Order Blue Gold: The Fight to Stop the Corporate Theft of the World’s Water: Maude Barlow, Tony Clarke form Amazon.

Editorial Reviews

A recent Fortune poll cited General Electric Company as America’s most admired company. Much of the credit went to Jack Welch, GE’s chief executive for the past 17 years. During his tenure, GE’s revenues and profits have grown enormously. Its share price has soared, making GE the world’s most valuable company. And the key to GE’s success, according to Jack Welch and the GE Way, is Welch’s fanatical devotion to a personal philosophy of leadership. Author Robert Slater has made a growth industry of his own out of Welch, penning two previous books on him, The New GE in 1992 and Get Better or Get Beaten! two years later. The same territory was plowed in 1993 by Noel M. Tichy and Stratford Sherman in Control Your Destiny or Someone Else Will.

In this book, Slater draws extensively on Welch’s own words to deliver his now familiar message: keep it simple; face reality; embrace change; fight bureaucracy. Bromides these may be, but Slater’s account of Welch’s fierce efforts to lead a global, multifarious organization of 270,000 people does inspire admiration, even if it does not enable emulation. The book provides fresh insights into GE’s shift toward service businesses, as with its takeover and transformation of NBC. Most timely are Welch’s closing thoughts on trends in the global economy. Jack Welch and the GE Way is a must for the legions of “Welch-heads” out there and for anyone else interested in this brilliant leader’s perspective on the future of business. –Barry Mitzman

From Publishers Weekly
Slater has written two previous books on General Electric chairman and CEO Jack Welch (The New GE, 1992; Get Better or Get Beaten!, 1994), so readers might wonder whether hard-driving Welch, stoic pioneer of downsizing, has anything new to add. Slater does not disappoint in this conversationally written, solid manual that, despite its promotional hype and adulatory tone, distills Welch’s business philosophy?an amalgam of Zen-like axioms, bromides and tough-minded pragmatism?in a way that will reward managers at all levels who seek to create a learning environment and transform learning into action. Companies would do well to heed Welch’s advice on how to foster an open-ended, informal work atmosphere that will encourage employees to speak out, breaking down the walls of hostility between managers and subordinates. Interweaving snippets of interviews with Welch, Slater (biographer of investor George Soros) competently traces GE’s transition from manufacturing to a service-oriented enterprise, its takeover and turnaround of NBC, its expansion into financial services and overseas markets. Editor, Jeffrey Krames; agent, Chris Calhoun at Sterling Lord Literistic.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Order Jack Welch & The G.E. Way: Management Insights and Leadership Secrets of the Legendary CEO: Robert Slater form Amazon.

Editorial Reviews

Social phenomena happen, and the historians follow. So it goes with Google, the latest star shooting through the universe of trend-setting businesses. This company has even entered our popular lexicon: as many note, “Google” has moved beyond noun to verb, becoming an action which most tech-savvy citizens at the turn of the twenty-first century recognize and in fact do, on a daily basis. It’s this wide societal impact that fascinated authors David Vise and Mark Malseed, who came to the book with well-established reputations in investigative reporting. Vise authored the bestselling The Bureau and the Mole, and Malseed contributed significantly to two Bob Woodward books, Bush at War and Plan of Attack. The kind of voluminous research and behind-the-scenes insight in which both writers specialize, and on which their earlier books rested, comes through in The Google Story.

The strength of the book comes from its command of many small details, and its focus on the human side of the Google story, as opposed to the merely academic one. Some may prefer a dryer, more analytic approach to Google’s impact on the Internet, like The Search or books that tilt more heavily towards bits and bytes on the spectrum between technology and business, like The Singularity is Near. Those wanting to understand the motivations and personal growth of founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin and CEO Eric Schmidt, however, will enjoy this book. Vise and Malseed interviewed over 150 people, including numerous Google employees, Wall Street analysts, Stanford professors, venture capitalists, even Larry Page’s Cub Scout leader, and their comprehensiveness shows.

As the narrative unfolds, readers learn how Google grew out of the intellectually fertile and not particularly directed friendship between Page and Brin; how the founders attempted to peddle early versions of their search technology to different Silicon Valley firms for $1 million; how Larry and Sergey celebrated their first investor’s check with breakfast at Burger King; how the pair initially housed their company in a Palo Alto office, then eventually moved to a futuristic campus dubbed the “Googleplex”; how the company found its financial footing through keyword-targeted Web ads; how various products like Google News, Froogle, and others were cooked up by an inventive staff; how Brin and Page proved their mettle as tough businessmen through negotiations with AOL Europe and their controversial IPO process, among other instances; and how the company’s vision for itself continues to grow, such as geographic expansion to China and cooperation with Craig Venter on the Human Genome Project.

Like the company it profiles, The Google Story is a bit of a wild ride, and fun, too. Its first appendix lists 23 “tips” which readers can use to get more utility out of Google. The second contains the intelligence test which Google Research offers to prospective job applicants, and shows the sometimes zany methods of this most unusual business. Through it all, Vise and Malseed synthesize a variety of fascinating anecdotes and speculation about Google, and readers seeking a first draft of the history of the company will enjoy an easy read. –Peter Han

From Publishers Weekly
If Google’s splashy IPO and skyrocketing stock haven’t revived the dotcom sector, they have certainly revived the dotcom hype industry, judging by this adulatory history of the Internet search engine. Billionaire founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, their countercultural rectitude imbibed straight from the Burning Man festival, are brilliant visionaries dedicated to putting all information at mankind’s fingertips and “genuinely nice people” who “didn’t care about getting rich.” Their company motto, “Don’t Be Evil,” is not just PR boilerplate rendered in fantasy-gaming rhetoric, but a deeply-pondered organizing principle. Washington Post reporter Vise, author of The Bureau and the Mole, and researcher Malseed give a serviceable rundown of the company’s rise from grad-student project to web juggernaut, its innovative technology and targeted advertising system, its savvy deal-making and its inevitable battles with Microsoft. But while they raise the occasional quibble about controversial company policies, they generally allow Google’s image of idealism to overshadow the reality of a corporate leviathan. Worse, the bloated text feels like the product of an overly broad web search: anything with keyword Google-executives’ speeches, seminar talks, informal Q and A sessions with students, company press releases, legal documents, SEC filings, even the company chef’s fried chicken recipe-comes up, excerpted at inordinate and rambling length, drowning insight in a flood of information.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Order The Google Story: David A. Vise, Mark Malseed form Amazon.

Editorial Reviews

In his bestselling 1995 call to arms, When Corporations Rule the World, David C. Korten first attempted to raise public consciousness about the potentially disastrous consequences of economic globalization and the expansion of corporate power. Now, in his provocative new work, The Post-Corporate World: Life After Capitalism, he goes further by defining these dual ills as a collective cancer that will ultimately destroy the larger society upon which they actually depend for survival.

Containment of this cancer, Korten suggests, is a wholly inadequate remedy. Rather, a “curative regime”–consisting of measures aimed at “virtually eliminating the institution of the limited liability for-profit public corporation as we know it”–is necessary to save us from an otherwise inevitable fate. The book opens with Korten’s downbeat view of capitalism infecting “democracy, markets and life itself.” Its following three sections are much more optimistic, however, as he focuses on ways both individuals and the community can reorganize their institutional and policy choices to “eliminate the economic pathology that plagues us and create truly democratic, market-based, life-centered societies.” Only by intentionally building this radical new post-corporate world, he boldly proposes, will a sustainable community be created that truly meets our future needs. –Howard Rothman

From Publishers Weekly
“In the 1980s capitalism triumphed over communism. In the 1990s it triumphed over democracy and the market economy.” So begins The Post-Corporate World: Life After Capitalism, the latest salvo from David C. Korten (When Corporations Rule the World). In four sections of three or four chapters each, Korten lays out how it happened and what we can do about it, using model communities that have already begun to “treat money as a facilitator, not the purpose, of our economic lives.” 25,000 first printing. (Berrett-Koehler and Kumarian, co-publishers, $27.95 300p ISBN 1-57675-051-5; Mar.) Can the Net really foster, as in Bill Gates’s phrase, “friction-free capitalism”? How about “robust direct democracy”? In Digital Capitalism: Networking the Global Marketing System, Dan Schiller, professor of communications at UC-San Diego, turns a skeptic’s eye to the screen. After reviewing how Internet technology differs from previous forms of telecommunication (and how a “Neoliberal” agenda drove its development), Schiller examines its ever-closer ties with commerce and prognostications for educational revolution. His conclusion: “Digital capitalism has strengthened, rather than banished, the ago-old scourges of the market system: inequality and domination.” (MIT, $29.95 320p ISBN 0-262-19417-1; Apr.) Oxford professor of politics John Gray has been an acknowledged influence on Margaret Thatcher, and his writings were appropriated by Britain’s New Right. It was thus astonishing to U.K. readers that, in False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism, Gray does an about-face and argues against a market untethered to cultural foundations within particular societies. Updated with a chapter on the controversy it sparked on its U.K. release, the American version further stresses the all-too-apparent instability of global markets. (New Press, $25 272p ISBN 1-56584-521-8; Apr.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Order The Post-Corporate World: Life After Capitalism: David C Korten form Amazon.