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I don’t read Newsweek as much as I used to. When it came in the mail for Dad, with U.S. News, I was all over it. But without the print form laying around, the magazine vanished off my reading list.
Thankfully, in today’s world of content discovery (your friends and aggregators bring it to you), I discovered “Fifty Books For Our Times“. It’s an excellent list, but for our purposes there are some items I want to show you. These books may be potential additions to the Social Publishing MBA.
The book captions in quotations are from the Newsweek article. I have also linked the headlines to their respective Amazon pages if you would like to pick up the books before I get to them. All book purchases from this site support #AMHF
The New Biographical Dictionary of Film
“If you don’t argue with Thomson on just about every other page, then you aren’t paying attention. In a world where film criticism is dying, Thomson make a case for it-eloquently and adamantly.”
Senator Joe McCarthy
“An elegant short-form primer on the machinery of Washington’s morality-and a timely reminder of what happens when demagogues gain access to what Rovere calls “the dark places of the American mind.”
Benjamin Franklin
“A model biography: pithy, wise, and-despite its brevity-complete. Franklin emerges as a quintessential hero of his time, and ours.”
Disrupting Class
“The Harvard Business School professor who introduced the idea of disruptive innovation in The Innovator’s Dilemma applies the same principles to education, with provocative results.”
Predictably Irrational
“Overturns the notion that we weigh pros and cons logically. Read it to understand why we obey honor codes-and other irrational behaviors.”
The Big Switch
“You’ve heard of “cloud computing,” but let’s be honest, you really don’t know what it means. Or why it’s going to change everything.”
City: Rediscovering The Center
“Using years of painstaking research, Whyte proved that the way to make a city work lies in the details-the width of a park bench, the height of a subway step.”
Why Did These Books Make My Potential Social Publishing MBA Reading List?
Speculation on my part based on the Newsweek captions. I will read and review each book here to let you know if they make the cut.
1. City: If you buy into The Tipping Point by Malcom Gladwell, like I do, you’ll know little changes can make a big difference.
Since Gladwell’s work can usually be short on data, City seems to be a nice case study to illuminate The Tipping Point.
2. The Big Switch: The cloud is coming, but sadly, I don’t know enough about it other than “I use the cloud for just about everything”. I can’t teach you about something I don’t fully know myself.
3. Predictably Irrational: How people make decisions directly ties into our desire to get people to read our content. This is the only book on the list that seems like a no-brainer.
4. Disrupting Class: For my purposes, I want to be able to “teach” the Social MBA program through seminars, speaking, and classes. So I am always reading about teaching techniques and how to improve upon them. That is why I reviewed “My Life On The Tenure Track” by James M. Lang.
5. Benjamin Franklin: Biographies are staples of any program for a good reason: We can learn more by studying what successful people have done. I loved the Einstein biography by Walter Isaacson that came out a few years ago, so I hope the Franklin bio is just as good so I can recommend both to you.
6. McCarthy: Studying how McCarthy put Americans into a state of fear is important for both historic reasons (we’d like to prevent that from happening again) and as a lesson on what happens when too few people control and create information is important. Remember. Social publishing. We’re about collobaration, so let’s learn what not to do. I can think of few better examples of what not to do than Joe McCarthy.
7. New Biographical Dictionary: We’re moving into an age of editors and filters. So you may hear people crap on the critics today, but we’re all becomming critics and editors. It will be interesting to read another case for critics and perhaps use it to help defend the theory that we’re all critics and editors.
Take a look at the Books For Our Times list and let me know if I left any off that should be considered for the Social Publishing MBA.
