Stanley McChrystal was in the U.S. Army for thirty-four years. He was the commander of the Joint Special Operations Task Force in Iraq, trying to defeat Al Qaeda. No small task. His goal was to defeat an agile, de-centralized enemy with all the hulking resources of a bureaucratic, top-down military machine.
Read MoreAuthors of great books know it takes a certain amount of smarts on the reader’s end to be picking up a book in the first place. The great ones don’t start at the very beginning of time—explaining all the background details in order—for no reason. It needs to be less “classroom lecture” and more “guided historical monument tour.”
Read MoreIn most respects, it was everything a bookstore should and could be. As a book publisher, I took the whole experiment as a personal challenge to improve the quality and veracity of books that people want to read. Here were my biggest nine impressions after spending an hour at the newest bookstore in Chicago.
Read MoreOur goal should be to buy the things we buy at a great value. That doesn’t mean cheap, necessarily. It just means the price is below what you’d expect to pay based on what you get out of it. We’ll call this efficient spending. And, yep, you guessed it…
Read MoreIn the 1940s, a division inside Lockheed eventually came to be known as the “Skunk Works.” It was in this hulky warehouse just off the main runway at the Burbank Airport where the coolest 21st Century Airplanes were dreamed up, prototyped, and made—midway through the 20th Century.
Read MoreLove Does made me believe I was already great friends with the author. Like if I knocked on Bob’s door, he’d invite me in for coffee and we’d talk about the stuff old friends talk about.
Read MoreThe reality for every author is that writing a book is hard work. And the best way to tackle hard work is with a plan. Here are six cures for the inevitability of writer’s block.
Read MoreA good interior design is almost never the reason someone decides to buy a book. But, a bad interior design may be why a certain book doesn’t get finished.
Read MoreIf you want to understand the pre-Depression 1920’s, the lifestyle of old money, and the prevailing belief in the fountain of youth—The Great Gatsby will be your best textbook. You can sound smart and cultured and you won’t even have to read 400 pages.
Read MoreEvery publisher worth their weight in dust jackets has a system for deciding what to publish. They usually look something like these three “buckets”:
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