2019 Top Ten-ish Book Recommendations

Non-Fiction

Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World - General Stanley McChrystal

Ever wonder why a low level analyst like Chelsea Manning was able to access hundreds of thousands of classified documents? Or how ISIS was able to resist the combined might of the US Military for so long? Or how the military changed their rules of engagement to adapt? The answers, as it turns out, are all related. General McChrystal writes a powerful account of how chain of commands and top down structures prevent teamwork through silos. A team of teams is different.

The Imposter Cure: Escape The Mind-Trap of Imposter Syndrome - Dr. Jessamy Hibberd

Have you ever felt like you were a giant fake and you're just waiting for everyone around you to figure you out? If you haven't heard of imposter syndrome, it's real, and it's killing you. It's a lot more common than you think, but the good news is that almost everyone who becomes an expert in any field will start to experience this same feeling, precisely because you realize how much there is that you don't know. While ignorance is bliss, knowledge is stressful. Learning to overcome imposter syndrome will mean becoming a more effective person in almost every aspect of your life.

Turn The Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers Into Leaders by Captain L. David Marquet

In the Navy, there is this phenomenon of superstar Captains. They would lift their crews up to do extraordinary things. But when they leave, those same crews would start to underperform. Captain Marquet had an idea to create a different kind of crew. What if he could be the kind of leader that created a culture of excellence that survived after he left. This book is the story of how he did exactly that, and how you can learn to do the same thing in your organization.

Chaos: Making a New Science by James Gleick

Chaos theory is hard. Or put more bluntly, impossibly insane. But Gleick succeeds in telling the story of Chaos theory by making it approachable. This isn't an explanation of chaos by itself...it's a history of how chaos theory became possible through the unlikely group of people that created it without a plan or organzation and against the natural order of academia that tried to stop it from happening. As I think about the technology we take for granted today, I wonder if information technology or data science would be possible without the work that was done on chaos 50 years ago. That alone would make it worth reading, but Gleick does the work of making it beautiful to experience.

Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think by Steven Kotler and Peter Diamandis

Thanks to Rick Howard at Palo Alto Networks for recommending this book. If you've read Stephen Covey's Seven Habits, you'll probably remember his advice that to be highly effective, you need to move from being in a scarcity mindset to having an abundance mindset. But it's hard to adopt that abundance mindset because you really have to believe that resources or budget really are abundant. That's what this book is designed to do. Everything from computing power, to electriticty, to knowledge itself appears to be on an exponential curve towards abundance. Those curves are hard to see, because as a species we've only ever experienced scarcity. To be prepared for the future, we need to be ready to embrace a different culture: an abundant one.

Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyou

There are a lot of inspirational books on my list about leaders or businesses who do things right. After feeling inspired for a few minutes, I always get this feeling that we still have a long way to go to get where these other organizatuions are at. And then there is Theranos. You may have watched the HBO movie adaptation of this book, but you haven't heard the whole story. You will probably be deeply horrified that something could go so wrong. You'll probably ask yourself how it could have happened. And I think the answer is that it could happen more easily than you think. But then you'll be thankful you work where you are because it won't have been as bad as Theranos.

Fiction

The Quantum Magician (Book 1) and The Quantum Garden (Book 2) of The Quantum Evolution series by Derek Kunsken

I picked this up after months of Amazon hounding me with ads...I was expecting a hard scifi space opera. And it was that, but it was also a sort of Oceans 11 in space. You had me at Oceans 11 in space. The main character is a genetically engineered human built, not for war, but to experience the quantum world directly. And luckily for all of us, he throws his future as a scientist away to become a damn good con artist. There's a third book in this trilogy coming...hopefully soon!

Murderbot Series by Martha Wells

Stop what you're doing and go read this book. Murderbot is one of the most entertaining reads in SciFi in awhile. Since it's a robot, Murderbot doesn't have a gender so it's hard to talk about it without trying to personify with using he/she. But Murderbot is self aware...and perhaps too self aware to the point of being just as self-conscious as any introverted IT nerd you've ever met. It just happens to become self-aware in the midst of a crime that challenges it to go beyond it's programming to become a detective. Just don't get it talking about it's favorite soap operas.

Kings of the Wyld and Bloody Rose, aka The Band series by Nicholas Eames

"We're getting the band back together..." has been a solid trope ever since the Blues Brothers. But Eames has a new take on the old cliche: instead of a guitar, they use real axes. And instead of a horde of fans, their band fights hordes of monsters. If you've seen Wil Wheaton's "Save the Owl Bear" t-shirts, he's referencing these books. Can't get enough, hoping for a new installment in the series soon.