More Library Books

I went to the library today to return a few books and as usual I left with six more.

• The Wild Trees: A Story of Passion and Daring by Richard Preston
• The Opposable Mind: How Successful Leaders Win Through Integrative Thinking by Roger Martin
• If at First You Don’t Succeed . . . The Eight Patterns of Highly Effective Entrepreneurs by Brent Bowers
• Founders at Work: Stories of Startup’s Early Days by Jessica Livingston
• The Art of Project Management by Scott Berkun
• Persuasive Business Proposals: Writing to Win More Customers, Clients, and Contracts by Tom Sant

Yup, after a three month hiatus, I’ve gotten back into reading business books.

I plan on skimming the last two books — they seem more like how-to / reference books than like books worth reading for their literary value (click here to read the table of contents for The Art of Project Management and click here to read the table of contents for Persuasive Business Proposals and you’ll see what I mean). Though Persuasive Business Proposals does seem like it’ll have some practical advice.

The first book, The Wild Trees, is by the author of The Hot Zone: A Terrifying True Story (click here to read an excerpt of this dramatic true story of an Ebola virus outbreak in a Northern Virginia laboratory), one of my favorite books growing up. The Wild Trees is about the California Redwood Forest (with trees taller than 350 feet and some of them thousands of years old) and the primeval kingdom of plants and animals that only a handful of people have ever seen. Click here to read an excerpt or check out the author’s website for more.

As for the remaining middle three, The Opposable Mind was published by the Harvard Business School Press (for what that’s worth), the author of If at First You Don’t Succeed (click here to read an excerpt) was the New York Times small business editor, and Founders at Work tells the story of startups like Firefox, TiVo, WebTV, Craigslist, Hotmail, Adobe, and others.

Of those, The Opposable Mind seems the most interesting — with research from psychologists and profiles of several companies that have been successful in utilizing integrative thinking — including Four Season Hotels, Procter & Gamble, and Red Hat.