Linchpin_ Are You Indispensable_ - Seth Godin [104]
breakthrough at the time.
Stone Age Economics, by Marshall Sahlins
Despite the clever title, this is actually a book about how primitive cultures worked. One
key takeaway is that hunter-gatherers were the idle rich. They worked about three hours a
day and spent the rest of the day lolling about.
Life Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take It Back, by Douglas
Rushkoff
Doug is at the cutting edge of recognizing the collision between corporate values and
human values. Most of this book is fairly pessimistic, and it argues that money has
pushed people apart from each other. Harking back to Hyde's The Gift his point is that
barter and community exchange do more than create commerce.
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, by Max Weber
Largely misunderstood, hard to read, and in some ways incorrect, it is still considered a
giant achievement in sociology. Weber tries to understand the relationship between
religious and commercial values, particularly as they led to the success of the United
States.
The Communist Manifesto, by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
This book isn't about what you think it's about. And it's certainly not about the USSR.
The key argument here is that small experiments in communism don't work, because they
are corrupted by the temptation to defect and engage in trade with neighbors that exploit
their workers (so you can benefit). Only worldwide revolution and grabbed power by
farmers and factory workers can upend the unfair bargain that kings and capitalists have
put in place. At one profound level they are right: as long as the workers don't own the
means of production, the exchange will be inherently unfair. A lot of what they
pessimistically predicted has occurred to the workers at the bottom of the ladder.
The Wealth of Nations, by Adam Smith
There may be a reason to read this entire book, but if there is, it eludes me. The
CliffsNotes are sufficient.
The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart, by
Bill Bishop
Bill's key argument is that people choose to move to neighborhoods that vote and think
the way they do. This is a logical outgrowth of the theories in The Lonely Crowd.
The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It's Transforming Work, Leisure,
Community and Everyday Life, by Richard Florida
Richard has been in the forefront of doing scholarly work on how the workers who do
own the means of production are changing our economy. Their decisions--from where
they live to what they do--change the art created in our system and thus our lives as well.
The Trap: Selling Out to Stay Afloat in Winner-Take-All America, by Daniel Brook
A stunning indictment, very well researched, that shows how badly commodity workers
are being hammered. If you're average, you're toast.
On Education
Weapons of Mass Instruction, by John Taylor Gatto
John Taylor Gatto is spitting mad, and no wonder. He has seen the worst our schools can
do. He understands the history and is a victim of the bureaucracy. I wish every school
board member, administrator, teacher, and parent could read a ten-page excerpt from this
book. It's important.
Schooling in Capitalist America, by Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis
Thirty years old and loaded with accurate predictions about the future (and facts about
our past).
Learning to Labor: How Working-Class Kids Get Working-Class Jobs, by Paul Willis
Ethnographic research from the 1970s that makes and proves a startling thesis: the very
structure of school ends up establishing the "us and them" mentality that alienates most
students from authority and sets them up to be unhappy wage slaves instead of productive
leaders.
On Programming and Productivity
The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering, by Frederick P. Brooks,
Jr.
Simple, useful analysis of a very complex topic, a new one for our age.
Software Project Survival Guide, by Steve McConnell
Steve's insights into thrashing are worth the entire price of his book.
Joel on Software,