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Business Books

Over the years, I've managed to geek out and read all of the following books (and more that I've not posted for one reason or another). To go and buy yourself a copy, click the link. I've stripped away all the star rating stuff except for the ***** 5 star red rating, which means that the book was remarkable.

Book Reviews/Reports
These are not really book reports - rather they are notes I made while reading these books so that I didn't have to go back and re-read them. Not really cliff notes, more like "Marc notes."

July 2007 - December 2007

  • Street Fighter Marketing - Slutsky
  • Freakonomics
  • The Dip - Godin
  • Stumbling on Happiness
  • Six Months off
  • The 4-Hour Workweek

April 2007 - June 2007

  • Everything is Miscellaneous
  • Don't Think Pink 
  • Don't Make Me Think! (again!)

January 2007 - March 2007

  • Citizen Marketer ***** - Wonderful primer on what's happening right now with social networking, new business models and user generated content. Very timely and easy to read book.
  • How to be a Marketing Superstar - *** - Fox - I re-read this to brush up on a few things before starting my new job at The IRC.

October 2006 - December 2006

July 2006 - September 2006

  • The Ultimate Question -**** Driving Good Profits & True Growth - Reichheld Book Report/Blog Post
  • Your Marketing Sucks *** Didn't really get into this one all that much to be honest.
  • Synthetic Worlds - Castranova **** - Great overview & insights into virtual worlds like WoW and Second Life.
  • The Origin of Brands - ***** - Reis - terrific marketing book that blows up convergence in favor of divergence. - Book Report/Blog Post

April 2006 - June 2006

  • Robin Hood Marketing - *** - Book Report
  • The Singularity Is Near - Kurzweil - **** - I liked this just as much as The Age of Spiritual Machines, but felt even more lost in some of the science. Mindboggling stuff here, but the book is very dense and was hard to get through at times. Read more at http://www.kurzweilai.net/index.html?flash=1.
  • The Age of Spiritual Machines - Kurzweil - ***** - Visit my Singularity Lens on Squidoo. I loved this book and the vision of it's author.

January 2006 - March 2006

  • Life is a Series of Presentations - **** - Jeary - www.tonyjeary.com- Loved the first part of this book - terrific presentation strategies.

August 2005 - December 2005

  • The One Thing You Need to Know... - **** - Very good book that gave me some solid ideas and action items - especially reinforcing the point that success comes from doing LESS of what you don't like to do.
  • The Search- Battelle - ***** - Phenomenal, amazing book.
  • The Big Moo - Godin - **** - Terrific collection, especially the Tom Peter Rant!
  • Raving Fans - Blanchard - **** - Book Report
  • Bzzmarketing - Hughes - **** - A great book - filled with terrific word of mouth examples. I heard Mark present at the WOMMA conference and he was insightful and consistent with his book!
  • ReImagine - Peters - **** - This is maybe the hardest book to get through on my shelf - the way I use it is to leave it on my desk and randomly pick it up and grab a few nuggets each week. I've copied and passed along more passages from this book than from any other.
  • The Other Half of Change - *** - Well written book with some great ideas on how to create change in the workplace. This was a BzzAgent book and was worth the tim on the plane reading it.

January 2005 -July 2005

  • It's Your Ship - Abrashoff *** - Book Report
  • Execution - *** - While I thought it was an important book, I guess I had heard so much of it already from a past boss it seemed like a re-tread.

October 2004 - December 2004

  • Don't Make Me Think - Krug ***** - Great reminder on what to do, and what not to do when building web sites.
  • Blink - **** - Gladwell.
  • The First 90 Days - **** - Great common sense book with some terrific tidbits about alignment, strategy and people. I took a ton of notes but have no time for a "book report."
  • Moneyball - Lewis - ***** - Yes, the hype is real - this book is outstanding. I read it during a flight to San Diego (and back) and talked about it with 3 strangers and ended up giving the book to someone. Great, great read. While this is a book about baseball management, many, many of the lessons apply to any/every business.
  • The 8th Habit - Covey - **** - I'm a big fan of the 7 Habits, and I thought this book was fantastic and business/leadership oriented.
  • Project '04 - **** - Tom Peters is terrific - his newest book is like a collection of poems and anectodets that got me totally jacked up about work and my projects. Thanks Tom!
  • Art of the Start - *** - Rules for Revolutionaries changed almost all of my perceptions about the business world. This book, while solid, didn't really light my fire as I hoped it would Perhaps that's because unlike when I read Rules, I'm not starting a company. This book functions more as a reference book for me - a place to quicky get energized and renewed about a particular topic.
  • QBQ! - *** - A quick, solid read about taking personal responsibility. I liked this book, it reminded me of that "Cheese" book from a year or so ago that was so popular.

July 2004 - September 2004

  • Good to Great - **** - Pretty fantastic book. I should REALLY write up some book reports but am too damn busy getting my flywheel turning to bother!

January 2004 - June 2004

  • Jump Start Your Business Brain - Doug Hall - **** - amazing. This book is so hard to read though because it forces you to stop and think, and think, and think. Then it forces you apply the concepts you've thought about. This is more of a workbook than a read it straight through book.
  • How to Become a Marketing Superstar - Jeff Fox - *** - a lot of re-hased concepts in this book (similar to "How to Become a Rainmaker"), but I did get a few good nuggets out of the book. Classifying your customers into quadrants was a key point - find those "not okay" customers and drop 'em quick.
  • How to Make Big Money in Your Own Small Business - Jeff Fox - ***- A lot of re-hased info as in "Marketing Superstar" in this one. Not as eye opening as "Rainmaker" - money was better spent on the "Marketing Superstar" book.
  • Free Prize Inside ***** - Seth Godin Book Report
  • The Bootstrappers Bible - Seth Godin Book Report

July 2003 - December 2003

  • Jump Start Your Brain - ***** Doug Hall - phenomenal book, Hall talks about facing your fear dragons and presents a technique to track and measure yourself which is an interesting experiment that perhaps I'll post one day.
  • The Maverick Mindset - ***** Doug Hall - terrific book cut from the same cloth as Rules for Revolutionaries!
  • Asking - primarilty a recap, but a decent overview of basic sales in a non-profit framework.

January 2003 - June 2003

2002

2001