Off to India this afternoon. Back on the 18th. Hope my Delhi hotel has decent Web connection, even if not DSL. Going to accompany my wife, Susan Sargent, on a sourcing trip. (Glad you asked. Her new book, The Comfort of Color: Inspire. Transform. Create., is off to a good start. Always delighted to find an excuse, any excuse to “give it a hyperlink”!) Also going on a side trip to Bangalore to the Nerve Center of Infosys … see my earlier, glowing Blogs on them.)
As you may recall, the New York Times ran a recent biz travel piece on me, which underscored how long I spent selecting books for trips. For the amused or interested, I include a semi-final reading list for this trip:
Non-fiction: The Americanization of Ben Franklin, by Gordon Wood; Authentic Happiness, by Martin Seligman; Learned Optimism, also by Martin Seligman; Mullahs, Merchants, and Militants: The Economic Collapse of the Arab World, by Stephen Glain; The Wisdom of Crowds, James Surowiecki; Free Your Breath, Free Your Life, by Dennis Lewis (previously blogged); The Rise of the Creative Class, Richard Florida; The Achieving Society, David McClelland (a 1961 classic, on why some people-nations strive for high achievement, and some don’t); Full House, Stephen Jay Gould (see Steve Yastrow’s and my comments on the recent Barry Bonds blog); The Beak of the Finch, Jonathan Weiner (a masterpiece on evolutionary theory and adaptivity); Certain to Win: The Strategy of John Boyd, Applied to Business, Chet Richards.
Fiction: The Peregrine Spy, Edmund Murray; The Dogs of Riga, Henning Mankell; Birds of a Feather, Jacqueline Winspear; The Hamilton Case, Michelle de Kretser; The Laments, George Hagen; Shanghai Station, Bartle Bull; The Dante Club, Matthew Pearl; In Times of Siege, Githa Hariharan. (A few of these will be painfully weeded out in the next 4 hours.)