The 80/20 Manager by Richard Koch

Richard Koch is an author and former business consultant who has emphasized the Pareto Rule, which he has branded the 80/20 principle, as a basis for personal improvement, management and organizational development. In The 80/20 Manager, he particularly focuses on managers in businesses.

The basic principle is that 80 percent of the results are produced by 20 percent of the inputs. For instance, a great majority of a company’s profits will result from a few of its customers and products. Similarly, 80 percent of the problems are caused by 20 percent of the constraints. A manager can be more productive by focusing his time and energy on the few things that really matter for producing big results and not wasting it on the many other things that don’t have much effect.

Koch identifies ten types of managers who make use of the 80/20 principle. He has a chapter on each type showing how they find and focus on the vital few things the produce big results. An individual manager is unlikely to operate in all these realms equally. Use the principle and find the one or two types that are likely to produce the best results for you and your organization  and concentrate on developing those skills. As you advance, you may add new or more advanced management strategies if they have the potential to work for you.

The book is a bit uneven in the description of these types of managers. In some cases, Koch provided definite strategies or skills, specific ideas or actions, and examples from the experiences of managers. In others, some ideas are presented, but less concretely.

I found some things in this book that resonated with me. These were areas where I already have talent or skill that is particularly valuable in my work. It makes sense that these are areas where I can get the best results by moving from good to excellent while also requiring the least effort. Perhaps that is the best value of Koch’s discussion of the types of manager; it breaks a broad concept down into more discrete, understandable pieces that give you something to hold onto and a place to start.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss

Koch, Richard. The 80/20 Manager: The Secret to Working Less and Achieving More. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2013.

The Frackers by Gregory Zuckerman

The United States experienced a major change in energy in the 2000s. Prior to the boom in oil and natural gas production, the nation was concerned  with declining production—oil production peaked in 1970—increasing demand and increasing reliance on foreign oil. New technology, particularly horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, have made previously challenging sources of oil and gas economically feasible to access. The result is increased energy supply, lower prices for natural gas, and less reliance on foreign sources.

 The story of this turnaround is not founded on government policies or one of the massive energy companies. These energy resources from shales and other difficult rocks have been made available by players who started out as small time wildcatters and landmen. They took the risk on developing difficult resources in the United States and developing the technologies that made them economically feasible. As politicians wrung their hands and big companies sought greener pasture oversees, these men held onto hope and kept digging until they found solutions.

 Gregory Zuckerman recounts the story of some of these men and the businesses they built in The Frackers. This is a book of business journalism. That is more interesting than it may sound. It is a story with some drama as players face ups and downs that sometimes lead to ruin and sometimes to outrageous wealth. It has had a significant impact on the American economy as well.

 It may be a uniquely American story, too. The United States is one of the very few countries in which individuals own the rights to the minerals, including oil and gas, that are under their land. This meant people could try even when it seemed they were likely to lose, and have little interference in their losses. A few of them lost and lost until they won and won big.

 Zuckerman acknowledges concerns related to fracking. He finds that the environmental concerns have been somewhat overblow, and that it can be done safely if appropriate measure are taken, though that hasn’t always been the case. Appropriate environmental regulation can protect human health and the environmental while continuing to give us access to these energy sources.

 Another concern is that low energy prices may reduce the impetus for developing alternative and renewable energy. This is still the best long-term option. Zuckerman finds some hope in the story of the frackers though. Their belief and persistence resulted in big changes, but it took time. The developers of the next generation energy sources may have their breakthrough, too, in the next couple of decades if they keep at it.

 If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Contents Under Pressure by Sylvia F. Munson

 Zuckerman, Gregory. The Frackers: The Outrageous Inside Story of the New Billionaire Wildcatters. New York: Portfolio/Penguin, 2013.

Living Low Carb y Johnny Bowden

If you are overweight and having trouble losing the extra pounds (or keeping them off), there is a good chance that carbohydrates are your problem. In Living Low Carb, nutritionist Johnny Bowden describes the link between carbohydrates, insulin and fat storage. (I previously summarized this relationship in my review of Why We Get Fat by Gary Taubes.)

 Bowden lays this information out very thoroughly in a way that will be accessible to most readers. What he adds is a lot of information on how to implement a low-carb diet that works for you.

 One way he does this is by reviewing 23 diet books and programs. Not all are strictly low-carb, but all limit carbs more than the typical American diet, and Bowden feels they are good blueprints for generally healthy eating. He rates most of the programs highly. The book has been through several editions, so he has weeded out the lesser programs.

 Part of his review of each is his ideas about who might benefit most from the program. Everyone is different, especially in their lifestyles. An otherwise sound program that is a poor fit for your life and personality is going to fail. Bowden’s advice will help you had off a false start.

 He provides a lot of advice that will be helpful for any low-carb diet you may pursue. In addition to the books reviewed, he provides a lot of other references. Some of these are cookbooks. I think this is great. If you want to eat differently, you need ideas about what to eat. I intend to check out some of the cookbooks he recommends.

 Bowden pulls his information from a lot of nutrition and medical research, but his style is conversational and easy to understand. Readers can expect to be informed about carbohydrates and how they affect our bodies and health, especially related to weight., without being overwhelmed by technical terminology and figures.

 Bowden, Johnny. Living Low Carb: Controlled-Carbohydrate Eating for Long-Term Weight Loss. New York: Sterling, 2013.

The Boom by Russell Gold

The great expansion of natural gas wells that was brought about by new technologies—directional drilling and hydraulic fracturing (fracking)—in the last few decades has meant that a lot more people are physically closer to the energy industry. In 2013, more than 15 million Americans lived within a mile of a fracked well. Journalist Russell Gold has a personal connection to this change in the energy landscape; his parents own property in Pennsylvania that they leased out for natural gas drilling.

In his book, The Boom, Gold explores the history of the oil and gas industry, and the development of key technologies, that led to the present abundance of natural gas. This interesting and long history energy exploration and development has attracted colorful characters.

The natural gas boom has also created opportunities and challenges. For one thing, fracked wells can produce a lot more natural gas and get it from rock formations that were previously considered too impermeable to economically give up the gas they stored. Now we get gas from these rocks and the natural gas supply that once seemed limited now seems enourmous, and prices for natural gas have dropped in response.

In addition, natural gas produces less carbon dioxide and other pollutants than burning of other fuels such as coal. Even though the U.S. has not participated in international carbon-control protocols, the growth of natural gas as a fuel, replacing other energy sources, has made the U.S. one of the few countries to come close to meeting goals for carbon reduction.

Even so, natural gas is a fossil fuel that carries some of the problems of its cousins. For instance, natural gas is mostly methane, which is a powerful greenhouse gas. Releases of methane reduce some of the gains made by switching from coal or other less clean-burning fuels to gas. Cheap gas also makes alternative energy sources such as solar or wind less economically attractive, which may delay the development of these resources.

Gold seems to balance these issues. Natural gas is a superior fuel to coal from the perspective of air quality and climate change. It is probably also necessary to use natural gas as a bridge to solar and wind as a way to provide stability as these naturally variable energy sources, along with the energy storage needed to make them truly feasible, are improved. Other problems with gas, such as potential threats to water quality, can be mitigated with existing technology, better rules and careful management.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Contents Under Pressure by Sylvia F. Munson

The Power Makers by Maury Klein

Gold, Russell. The Boom: How Fracking Ignited the American Energy Revolution and Changed the World. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014.

Naked Statistics by Charles Wheelan

Statistics provides of us with a power set of tools for describing things in our world and making inferences about them. They can also rely on math and logic that seems counterintuitive and they are subject to other pitfalls. Economist Charles Wheelan provides and accessible introduction into how we can use, misuse and abuse statistics in Naked Statistics.

Data is everywhere. In my life time, the falling prices and increased interconnectivity of computers have massively increased the collection of data. It can be overwhelming. At the same time, my experience as an engineer and government employee have left me frustrated with lack of data on some issue and wonder what inferences I might draw and how much I can rely on them.  Statistics provides us tools for dealing with these issues.

For instance, statistics provides us a way to summarize lots of data with a simple number such as an average (many people are familiar with sports statistics that summarize a performance of a play or team over a game, season or even a whole career). Statistics can help us find trends and estimate how much various factors may be contributing toward those trends. Even in the case where there is little data, statistics can help us evaluate the reliability of your conclusions (statistics can’t prove something definitively, but it can quantify how likely you are to be wrong).

“Statistics cannot prove anything with certainty.”-Charles Wheelan, Naked Statistics

Though he doesn’t delve too deeply into the mathematics of statistics, he shows that the math is often the easy part. Getting good data, designing experiments, constructing reasonable hypotheses, and avoiding bias present many stumbling blocks that can turn statistics into nonsense.

Not only that, people can take advantage of the weaknesses of statistics to provide persuasive support for wrong conclusions. Not everyone throwing around statistics intends to deceive, but a few do. A few just make mistakes, too. Wheelan describes many of the common mistakes people make while using statistics. This can help people new (or not new to statistics) avoid them. Possibly more important, it can help users of statistics recognize possible problems in how the statistics they use are developed or interpreted.

“Statistics cannot be any smarter than the people who use them.”-Charles Wheelan, Naked Statistics

This is not a statistics textbook. Wheelan does not delve into the details, but he does provide intuitive explanations of the concepts and simple examples. A student of statistics might find this book helpful in getting over some of the conceptual hurdles that may get in the way of understanding the rest of the material.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Chance by Amir Aczel

The Drunkard’s Walk by Leonard Mlodinow

Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner

The Numbers Game by Michael Blastland & Andrew Dilnot

The Numerati by Stephen Baker

The Unfinished Game by Keith Devlin 

Wheelan, Charles. Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread from Data. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2013.

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Making the American Body by Jonathan Black

In Making the American Body, journalist Jonathan Black explores the history of health and fitness from aerobics to Zumba. Promotion of physical fitness goes back to the founding of the United States; Black notes that Benjamin Franklin praised the use of dumbbells. Franklin was known to be a fan of swimming, too. It began to gain some momentum in the middle 1800s when German immigrants brought the gymnasium (they called it a Turnverein) to the U.S.

I was draw to the book because it has a touch of Missouriana in the person of Bernarr Macfadden, self-proclaimed “Father of Physical Culture.” Macfadden had a classic story of the early bodybuilder. He was a sick, weak kid from the Ozarks who was transformed into a paragon of masculine pulchritude by his commitment to weight training, healthy eating and clean living. Unlike some of his contemporaries, Macfadden believed clean living included an active sex life and he campaigned against prudery. His magazines, headed by Physical Culture, featured photographs of nearly naked men and women in swimsuits.

Fitness promotion is a small world, and many of its leading figures are connected. Macfadden organized a contest (probably fixed) that crowned Charles Atlas the “World’s Most Beautiful Man.” Atlas’ ads in pulp magazines and comic books are probably some of the most well-known ever, especially the bully of the beach ad. The story of this ad, told in comics form, is based on a real event in Atlas’ life when he was shamed by a muscular life guard for his scrawny form and weakness while on a date at the beach.

Macfadden and many others were inspired by Prussian strongman Sandow. They saw him at the Chicago Columbian Exposition, where his show was produced by Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr.

California became a focus of health and fitness trend that would spread across the country. Santa Monica’s Muscle Beach was a place for weight lifters and gymnasts to have fun and show off. Steve Reeves, known for playing Hercules in several films, was a product of Muscle Beach. Jack LaLanne, another wimpy kid transformed, opened gyms, brought workouts to television, and encouraged women to exercise and do strength training.

Other trends gained popularity, especially fitness focused on cardiovascular health. This brought into popular culture Dr. Kenneth Cooper, a physician to astronauts whose 1968 book Aerobics launched an industry. That industry provided a career for Richard Simmons and a second career for Jane Fonda, who was the first to emphasize exercise as a way for women to lose weight (though this was an unspoken appeal long before the 1970s). Bodybuilding made a comeback, though, especially fueled by the popularity of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

I’m not especially interested in the health and fitness industry, but I found this book to be very interesting. It provides a historical context for many of the health and fitness trends that are still part of American culture.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

American Nerd by Benjamin Nugent

Empires of Light by Jill Jonnes

The Fifth Heart by Dan Simmons

The Power Makers by Maury Klein

The Relaxation Response by Herbert Benson with Miriam Z. Klipper

The Ten-Cent Plague by David Hajdu

Black, Jonathan. Making the American Body: The Remarkable Saga of the Men and Women Whose Feats, Feuds, and Passions Shaped Fitness History. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2013.

The Girls of Atomic City by Denise Kiernan

World War II was a time when secrecy was often a necessary part of security. The secrecy surrounding the development to of the atomic bomb was particularly thick. Since that veil was lifted, Las Alamos, Nevada, has become strongly associated with the bomb, as it should be. However, there were other locations critical to the project. Denis Kiernan discusses one of them, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, in her book The Girls of Atomic City.

The Clinton Engineer Works was part of the Manhattan Project. Its purpose was the enrichment of uranium to supply the research, development and construction of an atomic weapon. When it was built, the Army took over thousands of acres of farmland in Tennessee, displacing the residents. Oak Ridge did not exist before the project.

As the title suggests, Kiernan focuses on the role of women at the Clinton Engineer Works, as the area was known when it was a military reservation. The book draws on her interviews with women who worked at the site; the experiences of nine particular women serve as guideposts for the story. These women served in a variety of roles: statistician, chemist, inspector, equipment operator, nurse, secretary, and janitor. Some became wives and mothers as well during the war years. It was an interesting time when there was space for women in science, technology and manufacturing, but not a lot.

Kiernan reaches outside of Oak Ridge to mention other notable women who played a part. German physicist Lise Meitner coined the term nuclear fission; she had Jewish ancestors and fled to Sweden as the Nazis came to power in her homeland. Earlier, Ida Noddack was the first to suggest that the atomic nucleus could split, an idea that was initially rejected by many scientists studying radioactivity and the inner workings of the atom.

The growth of families in a place designed solely for one purpose suggested a result that had not been considered when the Army started to build the Clinton Engineer Works. Oak Ridge was becoming a community and it eventually became an incorporated city (in 1958 by a vote of the residents after federal and state laws opened the opportunity). Though the population dropped dramatically from its war-time peak, Oak Ridge remained a center for research in nuclear energy and the peace-time use of radioactive materials as it transitioned to civilian control. Today the Oak Ridge National Laboratory continues research in energy and computing. The city of Oak Ridge continues as well, still connected to its past as a unique factory town, but in many way a city like any other.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Hedy's Folly by Richard Rhodes

IBM and the Holocaust by Edwin Black

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

Planck by Brandon R. Brown

The Powerhouse by Steve Levine

The Secret History of Wonder Woman by Jill Lepore

Six Easy Pieces by Richard Feynman

The Supergirls by Mike Madrid

Kiernan, Denise. The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II. 2013. New York Touchstone: 2014.

Seduction of the Innocent by Max Allan Collins

Max Allan Collins takes the name of his book, Seduction of the Innocent, from the title of a notorious book by psychologist Frederic Wertham. The original was anti-comics propaganda that falsely linked comic book reading to juvenile delinquency. Collins’ novel is a pulpy crime story in which a stand-in for Wertham is murdered.

Fans of comics or pulp culture will find a lot to enjoy in this book. There are many ways to experience the frisson of recognition because many of the characters are based—to varying degrees—on real-life comic book artists, writers and publishers from the 1950s, when Wertham’s screed was published. Even the senate hearings headed by Estes Kefauver are featured in the course of the book.

The real Wertham was not murdered. Collins is careful not to make his stand-in too repulsive He acknowledges that Wertham did a lot of good work, even if his research tying comics to youth crime was bad.

The tone of the book is often silly, as you might expect from a tongue-in-cheek fictionalization of silver age comics publishing. It is still hardboiled, so there is plenty of sex and violence to go around.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon

The Astounding, the Amazing, and the Unknown by Paul Malmont

The Big Con by David W. Maurer

The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril by Paul Malmont

The Hunter adapted by Darwyn Cook

In Memory Yet Green by Isaac Asimov

Men of Tomorrow by Gerard Jones

Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett

Suggestible You by Erik Vance

The Ten-Cent Plague by David Hajdu

Will Eisner’s The Spirit by Darwin Cook

Collins, Max Allan. Seduction of the Innocent. London: Hard Case Crime, 2013.

The Society for Useful Knowledge by Jonathan Lyons

Colonial America was a place that demanded much of settlers. While many appreciated the value of book learning, many came to America because of their strong opinions about a particular book, their new home required them to focus on practical knowledge for developing land, repairing hard-to-get goods and getting the most out of one’s one labor. In The Society for Useful Knowledge, Jonathan Lyons explores this emphasis on utility and its influence on colonial science and the revolutionary generation.

Ben Franklin is the most significant figure discussed by Lyon. He developed an appreciation early in life for the value of skilled labor, he was a printer himself, and he maintained this even as he became America’s most famous scientist and the new nation’s representative in Europe. Franklin’s influence in the American scientific community was huge even though he spent years in Europe; his connections to European scientists were part of the reason for his influence at home.

Franklin and his compatriots saw a great value in encouraging and disseminating useful information in science and engineering, especially if it might increase the productivity of American agriculture and manufacturing. Franklin founded one of the earliest scientific societies in the colonies and it eventually had many imitators. He also supported the establishment of what eventually became the University of Pennsylvania, though he broke with the other organizers when his emphasis on utility conflicted with their desire to provide an education focused on classical languages in the European mold.

Though Franklin was not trying to establish institutions that would lead to the revolution, he and many who worked with him did it anyway. Franklin and his Quaker neighbors preferred education in useful knowledge and trades. Many colonial scientists were self-taught and learned on their farms and workshops. They saw little value in the classical education popular in Europe that distinguished the aristocracy and upper class from others, but did little in their minds to suit a person for a role of value in the community. Americans needed to get stuff done and they didn’t care much about a person’s pedigree. This opened up opportunities for people of low social status to grow in wealth and influence. (Even in Europe, amateur scientists from many classes were common and it especially leveled the social ground around England’s coffeehouses.)

Franklin’s circle of mechanics and part-time scientists influenced the generation that followed them. Franklin’s personal reputation allowed him to be a leader in that generation who became the founders of the United States. The emphasis on practicality and experience, with the accompanying devaluing of ancient authorities in dead languages, influenced American political thought as well as its science, technology and education. The connections he made as a postmaster and scientific communicator also formed a model for the political influencers of his time.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Common Sense by Thomas Paine

46 Pages by Scott Liell

Newton and the Counterfeiter by Thomas Levenson

Lyons, Jonathan. The Society for Useful Knowledge: How Benjamin Franklin and His Friends Brought the Enlightenment to America. New York: Bloomsbury, 2013.