Bob's Books

Why this book: I teach Business Communications in the Master of Science in Global Leadership program at the University of San Diego.  I met Joe Sweeney  a couple of times when he was speaking for The Honor Foundation, really liked him and read his book. I have assigned it as required reading in my USD class for the section we do on networking.

Summary in 3 Sentences:  Joe Sweeney shares how he has used the philosophy and approaches in this book to help him make not just contacts, but friends all over the country. He describes networking as primarily an opportunity to deliberately meet and help others, to enrich their lives, establish credibility, and thereby earn and win their trust.    He offers advice for how to navigate awkward networking situations, how to avoid creating awkward networking situations oneself, and offers advice to those looking for a job, trying to find their way in new communities, as well as how quality networking can and should cross racial and gender boundaries.

My Impressions:  This book is  fun read and full of great stories.  Joe Sweeney’s enthusiasm for the topic, for meeting people, for making a positive difference in their lives, for sharing the joy and opportunities of a positive networking philosophy are contagious.  He recognizes that he may be blessed with an unusually upbeat and outgoing personality, so adapts his philosophy for those who may not be as sure of themselves socially in classic networking situations.  He has a separate chapter on networking styles for different personalities, and how to adapt one’s networking to the personality of those one meets and wants to interact with.  Lots of advice about asking the right questions and listening.    He offers great advice to anyone.

There is a separate chapter advocating networking outside one’s racial, ethnic or social group, a separate chapter on the special consideration women have in their networking efforts, and a chapter on networking in the world of social media (though this chapter is bit dated – having been written in 2010.)

The introduction and first chapters, and the final chapters entitled “The Master Networkers,” and “Networking Will Enhance Your Life” sum up Joe Sweeney’s philosophy on networking as a means of building bridges, making friends, helping people and becoming a resource in one’s community -and with that, the best things will come your way.

Like a lot of business books, it has a very handy summary of key points at the end of each chapter, which facilitates reviewing the key points of the book.

Networking is a Contact Sport is more than about networking. It is also espouses a philosophy of life -how to live well in a community.  And Joe Sweeney lives what he preaches.  He is definitely a giver, and it has served him well.

The below quotes give you a sense of for the book. My students in MSGL without exception have found this book very useful, and a joy to read.

NOTABLE QUOTES (with page numbers from the 2010 hardcover edition)

Networking is not about figuring out how to use business contacts for your personal gain. People can smell an agenda from one hundred paces, and if you strike up a loaded conversation with someone you barely know with the end goal of developing some sort of business relationship that lines your pockets, you’ll burn a bridge and never build a meaningful relation with that person.  12

I see networking in an entirely different light. I view networking as an opportunity to give, not to get, a way to make myself available to friends and contacts without any expectation of  reciprocity.  12

One day you’ll have to transition from the struggle for success to a quest for significance. 12

Touch triumphs over technology every time.  The hunger for human contact is universal and eminently more satisfying.  …I like people.  I like their stories. I like the contacts.   15

The main thing I’ve found in life is that success – and failure – leaves clues.  I’ve studied successful people, and they invariably have one thing in common: they saw themselves involved in something bigger than themselves.  19

Networking starts with introductions.  I love introducing myself – not because I think I’m anything special – but because I’ve learned the value of connecting with others.  31

I enjoy being on a first-name basis with breakfast waitresses, office janitors, and the guys at the street corner hot dog stands.  Treating these folks with respect is not only the right thing to do – because I’m treating them the way I would want to be treated – but I’ve learned that the people you meet while moving up the ladder will be the same people waiting for you if you ever have to make your way down the ladder. 31

Networking is like cultivating a garden: nothing will ever bloom if you don’t take time to water and weed, to give plants the proper amount of attention .  32

Good networking is also about being a good listener because if you wait long enough, people will leave clues about how things are really going with their lives.  32

Networking is about acting with confidence and exuding a self-assurance that you belong and are comfortable in your own skin.  33

Act like you belong, no matter where you are… a quiet assurance that you belong in the room – people will be attracted to you.  34

Talk to them like you would with your next door neighbor.  34

Good networking begins with the ability to start and carry on a good conversation…the ability to engage in small talk speaks well of you – and leads to engrossing exchanges that deepen a relation ship…staying engaged as an active listener is hard work, but well worth the effort. 41

The art of good conversation is very much like playing a game of backyard catch.  After you utter something, you’re tossing the ball of conversation to the other person, meaning it’s his or her true to say something.  43

It’s easier for me to be an active listener if I’m the one asking the questions.  45

…anything work-related, plus the always reliable kids, sports, and weather, are safe places to start a conversation.  46

When you attend a party, reception, or networking opportunity, act sas if you’re the host. Take time to introduce people to each other. Make sure others are having a good time.  Those at the party will gravitate toward you because they want to be near the “host.” 51

No matter what style or trick works for you, become good at learning names.  Never forget that one of the most impressive things you can do to become a good networker is to remember someone’s name.  51

The 5/10/15 program is basically an organized system that provides a structure and personal accountability.

• 5 means that I try to have five “meetings or “encounters” a day.
• 10 means I send out ten letters or pieces of correspondence on corporate or personal stationary , every single day.
• 15 means I make a minimum of fifteen phone calls a day

(Bob’s note:  This is a bit ambitious for me.  I have recommended to my students that they start with a 3-5-8 program and when that’s working, move to 5-10-15)

The difference between Networking and Not Working is one letter. 69

The only job security you’ll ever have is the faith and confidence you have in your abilities.  72

CEO’s and Presidents who pounded the table are now pounding the pavement.  78

Business is not about managing money; it’s about managing relationships and personalities.  91

Personality “types:”  Captain, Social Director, Steward, Navigator.  92-93

Networking from scratch:  Befriend everyone in your organization, volunteer for your company’s committees, eat lunch with others, work out with others.

Networking is a place you go to give, not to get.133

What matters is how you take the initiative to approach others, how you introduce yourself, how you listen carefully to discover shared interest or goals, and how you use your shared interest or shared values as the basis for sustaining a new relationship. 135

…something I call PFE – or Pay Forward Enterprises.  I got the idea for PFE after seeing the movie Pay It Forward a decade ago…”Paying it forward” meant the recipient of a favor does a favor for a third party rather than paying the favor back.  220

While we all agree that networking helps your businesses and advances our career, what gets overlooked far too often is that networking supplies you with a rich set of experiences, expands your contacts, and provides the framework for living a life of significance.  221

Joe Sweeney concludes Networking is a Contact Sport with the following summary of the key points he makes, but without the great stories he tells to make these points: 225-226

1. Relationships make the world go round
2. No matter where you are, keep an eye out for networking opportunities.
3. When you’re attending a mixer of social event, be intentional about meeting the right people, but don’t hand out business cards unless asked to do so.
4. Networking 101 is working the the 5/10/15 program, which means five meetings or encounters, ten letters or pieces of correspondence, and fifteen phone calls a day – which could result in five”engagements” or business making opportunities.
5. If you’re unemployed, remember that who you know is often more important that what you know. This is the time to let everyone you know know that you need a job.
6. Knowing what personality type you are can help you understand how you network best and how best to network with others.
7. Don’t fly solo through life. Ask someone – or several close friends – to be your wingman. Everyone needs a confidant.
8. If you’re new to a community, look for ways to get connected with others by coaching youth sports, volunteering with civic groups, signing up for the PTA, or joining a church. Identify what your passions are and do something that you’re passionate about.
9. Everyone needs a BWAG – a Big, Wild, Audacious Goal.  What’s yours?
10. If you’re a member of a minority group, learn the language of business. Networking can break down racial barriers.
11. Understand the differences in how men and women network.
12. Social networking on the Internet through platforms like Facebook and Twitter extend your outreach, but keep in mind that email messages and voicemails will never replace face-to-face contact and looking someone in the eye.
13. Find a mentor early in your career and become a mentor later in your career. One of the emails that gets forwarded around the Internet is the “Charles Schultz Philosophy,” even though the late creator of the Peanuts cartoon strip never said those words. Still the point was a good one. If you were asked to name the most recent Best Actor Oscar winner, or the last Super Bowl or World Series victor, or the last Dancing with the Stars champions, you probably couldn’t do it. No one remembers the headlines of yesterday very long.  But…
14. ….if you were asked to name the teacher who impacted your life the most, or the friend who helped you through a difficult time, or five people you’d enjoy spending time with, those are the people who’ve made a substantial difference in your life.  They aren’t lauded by Hollywood or given a ticker-tape parade down Broadway, but those were the people and mentors who cared about you and enriched your life.

Why this book: Recommended by Susan Chamberlain with whom I was hiking on the All American Leadership Expedition with NOLS.  Susan mentioned this book when I shared with her that I’d recently read The Iliad.

Summary in 3 sentences:  This novel is built around the scene in The Iliad in which King Priam of Troy sneaks into the camp of the Greeks (Achaeans) to ransom his son Hector’s body.  The book gives the reader a brief look at the events in The Iliad that led to Ransom‘s main story –  Hector’s death at the hands of Achilles, the mourning in the chambers of King Priam and his wife/Hector’s mother Hecuba, and Priam’s unlikely decision to visit the camp of the Achaeans to ransom his son’s body. It concludes with Malouf’s interpretation of the famous scene in which Priam begs Achilles to return Hector’s body to be buried with all appropriate honor and religious ritual, and then he and Achilles share their mutual grief at the loss of those closest to them in that war.

My Impressions:  This is a short book, more a novella than a novel, and it is powerful and beautifully written. Malouf is also a poet and that is evident in his writing.

The book begins with Patroclus’ decision to stand in for Achilles in battle with the Trojans and his death in battle at the hands of Hector, the leader and hero of the Trojans.   Then Achilles is distraught at the death of his closest friend Patroclus.  His grief turns to remorse and guilt for letting Patroclus stand in for him, and then rage and fury as he seeks and gets revenge, challenging and defeating Hector in battle, then desecrating his body by dragging his corpse around the walls of Troy – an outrage even by the standards of that time. These events are outlined in The Iliad, and set the stage for the rest of this story that Malouf so skillfully imagines and shares..

He takes us inside the court of King Priam of Troy and we are with Priam as he shares his grief with Hecuba, his wife and the mother of Hector.  We meet a Priam’s other sons – brothers and half brothers to Hector, the princes of Troy, who are in a sense anti-heroes to Hector’s heroism.   They are the “perfumed princes” of Priam’s court – not fighting themselves as Hector did.  We also meet Paris – one of Hector’s brothers, a warrior himself, but very flawed, his own self-indulgence a primary cause of the war itself.  We are reminded of the decadence of the court in Versailles in France – dandies, and self-indulgent royalty with little concern for anything other than their own pleasure, comfort, and power.   Hector was the shining star of Priam’s sons and of course they all resented him for it.

Priam is consumed with guilt for all that he did not do as a father to Hector, and feels that he can redeem himself to his hero son by retrieving his body from Achilles and giving him a proper burial, thus freeing his spirit to join his ancestors in the underworld world.

Hecuba and his sons seek to dissuade Priam from his crazy idea – the King of Troy going into the camp of the Achaeans to meet and bargain with Hector’s killer – a man they observed as a maniac, dragging Hector’s body round and round the walls of Troy.   But Priam is adamant.

Priam departs the walls of Troy disguised as a beggar with a cart full of ransom hidden under a blanket, and makes the trip to the camp of the Achaeans.  An interesting part of the story is Priam’s relationship with his cart driver -a poor commoner at the opposite end of the social hierarchy from Priam.  Priam is quietly impressed with this man’s simple courage and dignity, as the two travel together and quietly try to converse. They have their own “adventures” during this trip away from Troy, in which the King is dependent for his own survival on the practical skills of his cart driver.

Through luck they reach and enter the camp of the Achaeans, and we see camp and the world of Achilles through Priam’s eyes.  At this point in the war, the Trojans have the upper hand, but Priam senses that the Trojan cause is doomed.

Eventually we get to the powerful and emotional meeting between Priam and Achilles described in conclusion to The Iliad.  In Ransom, Malouf gives this scene greater depth and a richer context.

In this short book Malouf retells one of the great stories from one of the great books of the Western Canon. He breathes life into these mythological characters and we can identify with their grief and distress.  He beautifully touches many topics – grief at the loss of a close friend or of a son, a father’s guilt, family tensions in how to move forward, uncontrolled rage leading to poor and irrevocable decisions, the gulf between the elites and commoners, shared grief between enemies, and the the absurdity of war, .

Why this book: Selected by my literature reading group because of its focus on AI – a topic many of us are interested in.

Summary in 4 sentences: The story takes place about 150 years in the future, and follows three main and several supporting characters from very different social groups in a dystopian world that Mason predicts will evolve out of current movements to integrate biological humans with computers and artificial intelligence.   Several of the characters have memory implants that  can access the internet, and as we follow them in the story, we see the power and the challenges of this new capability.  As the story evolves, we meet a “business leader” who is seeking to  consolidate immense power through a very powerful network of AI servers.  The memory implant of one of our main characters is key to his ambitions, and the book evolves into a struggle between the business leader and our female protagonist for control of the world’s most powerful AI.

My Impressions: This is a complex and different book – not easy to get into, nor easy to follow.  But it poses some interesting questions about the direction our culture and civilization may be heading, as capabilities of Artificial Intelligence increase at rates we can hardly imagine.   The writing style is a bit cold and impersonal, and the characters are not particularly well developed nor easy to connect or empathize with.  But the story itself, and its vision of the future force the reader to confront possible implications of current developments in AI.    Some of these developments are exciting, but many are of concern.

Throughout the book, I was asking myself, “Is the world that Void Star describes credible?”   I believe so –  to a certain degree.  And at the conclusion of the book I was left with a lot more questions than answers about the world Mason was envisioning.

The story is set in the un-determined time in the future – sometime in 22^nd  or perhaps 23rd century (I figure about 150 years from now) – envisioning a future when great power is very much a function of control over Artificial Intelligence servers and the systems they control.  At this point, the human race has already begun the transition of merging human biological and computer power with cyborg-like computer chips implanted in the brains of those few individuals with the connections and money to afford them.   Early steps in this direction are already happening in the labs of some of our most advanced research institutes. Void Star takes the implications of these developments in a direction that many believe is indeed where we are heading.

The memory implants that Void Star  envisions can network with other AI  systems and even other humans, through wireless or even ethernet connections, and if one has one of these memory implants, one’s personal memories and essentially one’s identity, can be hacked and even stolen digitally.  In this world, as it increasingly is in ours today, privacy is a function of the security of networks, but  today’s privacy challenges and concerns pale in comparison to those in the world of Void Star.

We follow three main characters in Void Star, as the book builds to a major AI event in the future which affects the entire world. The chapters are short, and often rather cryptic.  Each chapter deals with one of the three main characters, and the chapters alternate between these three. This stylistic tool made it difficult for me to follow, and even to get to know each of the characters.  The characters are very different and their lives are separate and unconnected, though as we expect, they do eventually converge, but in ways I’m not certain I understood, much less could explain.

In following the lives of these three characters we get glimpses of the world Mason envisions a century or two into the future.   There are some predictable changes and improvements, such as faster transportation, the ubiquity of self-driving cars, and easy access to the “cloud” of information. Global warming has caused the oceans to rise to where today’s great coastal cities are flooded. New York City, Singapore, and many others resemble Venice as networks of canals, and many coastal cities have been abandoned.   For those who can afford it, advances in biomedicine have dramatically extended not only the years one can expect to live, but also the years of productive, youthful energy and working life.   As the well-off classes have taken advantage of these advances in technology,  health, and computational power, the gulf between the haves and have-nots in the world has widened, to where the privileged live in walled cities, and the poor and underprivileged are consigned to certain neighborhoods or territories where they live in violent and unregulated anarchy.

I did however regularly see what I considered  “anachronisms” – experiences and features in that world that are familiar to us in the early 21^stcentury, but which I can hardly imagine in this dystopia he describes in the 22^nd or 23^rd century.  For example, everyone is focussed on their phones.  The laptop is the main connector to the web.  WiFi is not always available.  At the end, one character’s daughter runs off with a guy to help run a car rental agency near the airport.  These seem to be convenient markers for the 21^st century reader to feel like we understand at least some of the experience of our characters.  There are many such anachronisms in the book, which I found amusing, and wondered if they were a joke, or perhaps reflected a lack of imagination, or perhaps an unwillingness to envision in greater detail this future world.

One concept I found fascinating is how in this AI-centric world, one’s identity is very much tied to one’s memory, and with an implanted chip, memory can be recorded, shared, downloaded, even stolen.  Our main character had two sources for her memories – her biological memory and her computer chip memory and her conscious awareness could go back and forth.  We also saw characters who internalized the memories of others.  This idea of merging different people’s identities by merging their memories is fascinating.

Also one’s mortality is also tied to memory.  If all of one’s memories – feelings, impressions, insights can be retained when the body dies, is one really dead?  This is a question Mason leaves hanging at the end, as he insinuates that self-awareness – consciousness – can continue with this intact memory that is retained after the body no longer exists.

As the book culminates, I indeed got confused as to what was “real” and what was someone’s imagination, or what was virtual reality or enhanced reality, generated by an AI.  It reminded me of some of the “magical realism” novels I’ve read, such as One Hundred Years of Solitude by Garcia Marquez, or The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman.

The issue/question of our mortality is a sub theme throughout the book.  Several of the characters have dramatically extended their lives and their youthful capabilities – looking, acting, functioning like people decades or even a century younger than their chronological age.    As the book concludes one of our characters seems to have defeated death from biological causes, but is paranoid about dying as a result of an accident or at the hands of a sinister force.  Rather than enjoying this everlasting biological life, this character lives in fear, and assumes no risk of accident or malevolence that might end their eternal life.

I also wonder whether one of the scenes at the conclusion of the book was a metaphor for a choice humans have to make – to continue down the path of increasing mathematical predictability of humans by merging us more with computers, or giving precedence to our irrational, “human” sides – heart, feeling, fear, joy, emotions.  There were only a few glimpses of such ultimately non-rational, human sides of our characters in this book.

Mason hardly mentions the role of the state in regulating AI or any of the challenges of this future world.  I wonder if this omission is intentional –  pointing to the continued weakening of governments as regulatory powers in the face of increasing power of private entities, especially those with access to great computer power and powerful AIs.

For a different view of how current trends may turn out, I listened to a podcast discussion between Sam Harris and Kevin Kelly in which Kevin Kelly shared a more positive vision of the future than Mason does in Void Star. Kelly envisions a global “organism” – a super-connection between people and their computers.  We struggle to imagine what this would be like – but Kelly reminds us that not long ago, we couldn’t imagine our current global economy or the development of extensive and global on-line shopping. Kelly calls this future interconnected phenomenon a “super-organism.”   He believes that there will be multitudes – thousands and millions of AIs in this super network.

Void Star is a challenging book – not an easy read, but it definitely stretches the imagination of the reader.  One has to be ready for that challenge before undertaking the challenge of reading this book. But if you’re ready for it, it can be very rewarding.

Why this book: Selected by my literature reading group, based on a strong recommendation from a friend of mine, and its Pulitzer Prize for fiction, 2016. My literature group is on a roll with great Pulitzer Prize-winning fiction.

Summary in 3 Sentences:  Written in the first person, from the perspective of the very intelligent and observant aide-de-camp of a Vietnamese General, it begins with the chaos surrounding the fall of Saigon, and then moves to arriving in the US as refugees and beginning a new life. But our protagonist is  all the time an agent for the communist regime, with divided loyalties –  to his mentor, the General, his friends and those who support him in the US, as well as to his commitment to the ideals of the communist revolution and his masters who remained in Vietnam.  This book is much more than a spy novel – it is  an insightful and biting look at both US and Vietnamese culture, about split identity, conflicting values, about loyalty and fanaticism, duty and friendship, violence and redemption, and concludes with a surprise that opens the door to a great discussion – what just happened?

My Impressions:  This book deserves its accolades.  I can’t think of any modern writing that has impressed me more.  At the bottom of this review, I offer a number of insights, expressions and turns of phrase that impressed me with their originality.

The beginning of the book is set in the chaos, and panic of the final days of Saigon, and we experience some of the desperation and sense of betrayal that people felt who had supported and fought with the US but were left behind, often to be tortured and slaughtered, by the victors in that war.  The first person account is remarkable – the language is remarkable, the sense of chaos is remarkable.

Soon we are in the United States and we experience the disorientation of the refugee for whom the world has changed, the rules have changed, and his/her own sense of identity and possibilities have changed.  The earth is figuratively moving beneath their feet as they struggle to find their balance. Naturally the refugees stick together and support each other, and also revert to practices that are inappropriate to our culture -like killing people who you believe have betrayed you.

A number of times throughout the book, we are led to believe that the story we are reading is being written or related to a commandant – someone who has control over our protagonist, who is telling his story.   These references to an authority are intermittent and not explained – until the end of the book.

The protagonist openly and unashamedly shares his challenges as a single man dealing with a healthy sexual appetite and attraction to women, but not often finding fulfillment of this biological drive.  Heterosexual men will be able to relate to much of what he shares of his private thoughts and activities, which will make some women uncomfortable or even incredulous.  This is not a key part of the story, but so much of what the author shares in the book is about the human, and not just the Vietnamese experience.  We men are not used to such candor in literature about such things – and I found his honesty both amusing and refreshing.

What I found most fascinating about the book was the author’s descriptions of American culture – his amazing, almost poetic use of metaphor and language.  These perspectives are from an intelligent and articulate observer, and his insights were sharp and on target Yes – more negative than positive, but these insights were from a disenfranchised refugee struggling to find his way.

He explores the dark side of human nature – and there are some disturbingly violent scenes in the book – which help him make the point of how depraved, violent and insensitive to suffering people can become when narrowly focused on their own goals. Cultures can become that way too – as we clearly see in both Vietnamese and American cultures.

There is also a whole section of the book in which he becomes an advisor to a movie based on Apocalypse Now – based on Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.  It is a scathing while at the same time admiring critique of Hollywood and Francis Ford Coppola.

There are so many sub-themes in this book, it is hard to list them.  The book is very much about cultural and personal identity – their many layers and how they are inter-twined – and can even be in tension with each other.  The value of loyalty is also a key theme  – to causes, to countries, to friends and family, to values and principles and also, how these loyalties can be in conflict with each other.   The book actually begins with our protagonist expressing the challenge of being able to see complex issues from (at least) two sides.  He (and his loyalty) seems always to be torn between the multiple perspectives on an issue -each of which he understood, and for which he had sympathy.

The ending of the book is a surprise – and it is intense.  I will not spoil it for anyone who intends to read the book, but let me simply say that our protagonist does return to Vietnam.  And at that point the identity issue takes a turn in a very different direction. It becomes less about an insightful and articulate refugee seeking to find his place in both his Vietnamese community and American culture, but more about his human identity, beyond the various masks he had worn to that point.  More about ultimate values and purposes.

The Sympathizer is a very powerful book.  It offers biting satire of American culture, while also offering poignant insights about the experience of state-less and disenfranchised refugees living in America, about how suffering can open the door to a greater truth that transcends so much of what preoccupies most people in their daily lives.  A worthy recipient of the Pulitzer.

Notable quotes – page numbers refer to the Grove press paper back edition of 2015.  Some of these impressed me for their insights, others simply for their very clever and colorful use of language and metaphor or analogy.

Nothing, the General muttered, is ever so expensive as what is offered for free. 4

Even if they found themselves in Heaven, our country men would find occasion to remark that it was not as warm as Hell. 24

America, land of supermarkets and superhighways, of supersonic jets and Superman, of super carriers and the Super Bowl!…although every country thought itself superior in its own way, was there ever a country that coined so many “super” terms from the general bank of its narcissism, was not only super-confident but also truly super-powerful, that would not be satisfied until it locked every nation of the world into a full nelson and made it cry Uncle Sam? 29

I had an abiding respect for the professionalism of career prostitutes, who wore their dishonesty more openly than lawyers, both of whom bill by the hour.  37

(referring to a government bureaucrat:) A mid-ranking apparatchik in the Ministry of the Interior, he was neither too tall nor too short, too thin nor too wide, too pale nor too dark, too smart nor too dumb. Some species of sub-undersecretary, he probably had neither dreams nor nightmares, his own interior as hollow as his office.  p 42

(referring to the picture of Diem being shot) Its subtext was as subtle as Al Capone: Do not fuck with the Untied States of America. 46

He had an elaborate Oriental rug on his wall, in lieu, I suppose, of an actual Oriental.  62

…he reclined in an overstuffed leather club chair that enfolded him like the generous lap of a black mammy.  I was equally enveloped in the chair’s twin, sucked backward by the slope and softness of the leather, my arms on the rests like Lincoln on his memorial throne.  p 63

So it was that we soaped ourselves in sadness and we rinsed ourselves with hope. 71

I had been resigned to the consolation of man’s best friend, i.e., self pleasure, and certainly did not possess the wherewithal to consort with prostitutes. 76

…He swallowed his pill of Catholicism seriously. He  was more embarrassed and discreet about sex than about things I thought more difficult, like killing people, which pretty much defined the history of Catholicism, where sex of the homo, hetero, or pedaristic variety supposedly never happened, hidden underneath the Vatican’s cassocks.  …It’s hypocrisy that stinks, not sex.  77

This seed of sexual rebellion one day matured into my political revolution, disregarding all my father’s sermons about how onanism inevitably led to blindness, hairy palms, and impotence (he forgot to mention subversion.)  If I was going to Hell, so be it! Having made my peace with sinning against myself, sometimes on an hourly basis, it was only due time before I sinned with others.  78

Like a shark who must keep swimming to live, a politician – which was what the General had become – had to keep his lips constantly moving.  90

So the list went, a fair percentage collecting both welfare and dust, moldering in the stale air of subsidized apartments as their testes shriveled day by day, consumed by the metastasizing cancer called assimilation and susceptible to the hypochondria of exile. 91

…his honorable grandfather was insufferable, as most men of utter conviction are.  93

…The need to defend God, country, honor, ideology, or comrades – even if, in the last instance, all he really is protecting is that most tender part of himself, the hidden, wrinkled purse carried by every man. 98

Hardly any male travel writer, journalist, or casual observer of our country life could restrain himself from writing about the young girls who rode their bicycles to and from school in those fluttering white ao dai, butterflies that every Western man dreamed of pinning to his collection.  114

Madam would sit (her daughter) down and …lecture her on the importance of maintaining her virginity and of cultivating the “three Submissions and Four Virtues” – a phrase that calls to mind the title of a highbrow erotic novel.  The mere mention of her endangered or putatively lost virginity provided ample wood for the cookstove of my imagination, a fire I stoked in the privacy of my room.   115

Hollywood’s high priests understood innately the observation of Milton’s Satan, that it was better to rule in Hell than to serve in Heaven, better to be a villain, loser, or anti-hero than a virtuous extra, as long as one commanded the bright lights of center stage.  134

Most actors spent more time with their masks off than on, whereas in my case, it was the reverse.  136

….the land where the pursuit of happiness was guaranteed in writing…a guarantee to be allowed to pursue the jackpot of happiness?  Merely an opportunity to buy a lottery ticket?  Someone would surely win millions, but millions would surely pay for it.   142-43

Isn’t it funny that in a society that values freedom above all things, things that are free are not valued?  146

(referring to landing in the Philippines) …(I was) mugged by the full force humidity of a tropical climate.  It’s like getting licked from throat to balls by my dog every time I go outside…149

Some of us confidently declared that all high-end fashion models did was have sex with each other.  If we were high-end fashion models, so the reasoning went, with whom would we rather have sex, men like us or women like them?  160

…his fate was sealed with superglue.  165

The look in his eyes…which I assumed to be some saintly mix of exotic pain and painful ecstasy.  171

Hollywood functioned as the launcher of the intercontinental ballistic missile of Americanization.  172

…the hours dribbled away like saliva from a mental patient’s mouth…184

…that warm, sweet glow of affordable blended scotch really did help, as comforting as a homely wife who understands her man’s every need. 185

I laugh, even though inside me the little dog of my soul was sitting at attention, nose and ears turned to the wind…185

I was finally left with nothing but myself and my thoughts, devious cabdrivers that took me where I did not want to go.   186

They (most Americans) believe in a universe of divine justice where the human race is guilty of sin, but they also believe in a secular justice where human beings are presumed innocent.  You can’t have both. You know how Americans deal with it? They pretend they are eternally innocent no matter how many times they lose their innocence. The problem is that those who insist on their innocence believe anything they do is just.  At least we who believe in our own guilt know what dark things we can do.  190

But amnesia was as American as apple pie, and it was much preferred by Americans over both humble pie and the fraught foods of foreign intruders.  195

Resentment was an antidote to gloominess, as it was for sadness, melancholy, despair etc.  199

…his paisley tie as fat as Elvis Presley 200

…lying was a skill and a habit not easily forgotten.  This was true also for the representative, whose kindred tricky spirit I recognized.  In negotiations, as in interrogations, a lie was not only acceptable but also expected.  203

We would all be in Hell if convicted for our thoughts.  205

I had hit him where it hurt, in the solar plexus of his conscience, where everyone who was an idealist was vulnerable.  Disarming an idealist was easy. One only needed to ask why the idealist was not on the front line of the particular battle he had chosen.   215

Army surplus C-rations, which looked almost exactly the same entering the human body as they did exiting it.  221

Napoleon said men will die for bits of ribbon pinned to thier chests, but the General understands that even more men will die for a man who remembered their names, as he did theirs…all anyone ever wants is to be recognized and remembered. 222

Life is a suicide mission.  222

Usually Bon used words like a sniper, but this was a spray of machine-gun fire 223

If something is worth dying for, then you’ve got a reason to live….they now had something to live for if not to die for…

That was the subversive’s dilemma. Rather than flaunt ourselves in the sexually dubious costumes of superheroes, we hid beneath cloaks of invisibility .  225

Wars never die, I said. They just go to sleep.  225

…the bottle of scotch. Like me, it was half empty and half full.  231

After love, was sadness not the most common noun in our lyrical repertoire? Did we salivate for sadness, or had we only learned to enjoy what we were forced to eat?  These questions required either Camus, or cognac, and as Camus was not available I ordered cognac. 234

The hardest thing to do in talking to a woman was taking the first step, but the most important thing to do was not to think….being rejected was better than not having the chance to be rejected at all. Thus it was that I approached girls, and now women, with such Zen negation of all doubt and fear that Buddha would approve.  239

My first three principles in talking to a woman: do not ask permission; do not say hello; and do not let her speak first.  240

While I was critical of many things when it came to so-called Western civilization, cleavage was not one of them.  241

Principle Five: statements, not questions were less likely to lead to no.  242

What makes us human is that we’re the only creatures on this planet that can fuck ourselves. 245

Americans saw unhappiness as a moral failure and thought crime.  254

We were the greatest anthropologists ever of the American people, which the American people never know, because our field notes were written in our own language in letters and postcards dispatched to our countries of origin.  258

I wanted to replicate the oldest dialectic of all with her, the thesis of Adam and the antithesis of Eve that led to the synthesis of us, the rotten apple of humanity, fallen so far from God’s tree.  269

I thought with regret about all the things I would miss about America: the TV dinner; air-conditioning; a well-regulted traffic system that people actually followed;…..(and this paragraph goes on for nearly half a page listing things he would miss about America) 280

Your problem isn’t that you think too much; your problem is letting everyone know what you’re thinking.  281

We plucked off the leeches adhering to us with the stubbornness of bad memories. 304

The entire forest shimmered with the antics of death the comedian, and life the straight man, a duo that would never break up.  To live was to be haunted by the inevitably of one’s own decay, and to be dead was to be haunted by the memory of living.   305

Well, I said, gathering the tattered coat of my wits about me, I believe the unexamined life is not worth living.  311

I had developed feline feelings of both dependency and resentment.  317

What my time in the cave taught me was that the ultimate life and death struggle is with ourselves.  321

Eating (my mother’s) portion, I swallowed not just the food but the salt and pepper of love and anger, spices stronger and harsher than the sugar of sympathy.  327

I understand nothing! – Then you have understood almost everything, the voice said.  333

Certain things can be learned only through the feeling of excruciation.  335

Don’t you see how everything in need of confession is already known?  You indeed did nothing.  That is the crime that you must acknowledge and to which you must confess. 337

…a Cold War chess match played in air-conditioned rooms by white men wearing suits and lies.  361

What was it that I got?  The joke.  Nothing was the punch line, and if part of me was rather hurt at being punched – by nothing, no less! – the other part of me thought it was hilarious.  370

What had I intuited at last? Namely this: while nothing is more precious than independence and freedom, nothing is also more precious than independence and freedom.  375

Why This Book:  I had heard several years ago that this was a well-done personal story by a SEAL – which included a lot of humility – not often found in books SEALs write about themselves.  I lead a volunteer reading group for young men in the SEAL Basic Training Command’s Pre Training, Recovery and Rehabilitation (PTRR) phase, who are preparing to begin and go thru SEAL training.  We selected this book based on its reputation – I hadn’t read it yet – so that was enough motivation to finally get to it!

Summary in 4 Sentences: This is Jay Redman’s personal story of his journey to become a SEAL veteran, beginning with a brief look at his childhood, his journey to get into the SEAL Teams, his wild-man, undisciplined years as a cocky young SEAL enlisted man and then officer, and then his experiences in combat, both in Afghanistan and Iraq. What makes this book particularly compelling is that he shares how his cockiness and arrogance, and his lack of self-awareness cost him his reputation with his team mates, and nearly got him kicked out of the SEAL Teams.  He writes painfully and openly about his mistakes, his bad attitude, his long fight to better understand and take responsibility for being ostracized and then finally the long and difficult work it took to repair his reputation and regain the confidence of his SEAL brothers.  Jay was then severely wounded in Iraq and the last quarter of the book is about his long and painful recovery, with dozens of surgeries, how he depended on the love and support of his wife and family, and finally how he’s found a new, post-SEAL Team career to continue serving his country.

My Impressions:  Jay tells his story with candor and humility and it is very well done.  People often ask me to recommend a SEAL book for them to read, and The Trident is one of two that I recommend (the other is Fearless by Eric Blehm.)  Jay tells the story of being a young man who, to put it gently, was a bit too proud of himself and about what he’d accomplished, a bit too entitled and self-assured.  To put it less gently, he was  arrogant, cocky, and immature, and was angry, bitter and accusative when things didn’t go his way.

But it is a story of redemption.  When a pattern of bad behavior and poor decisions cost him the trust of his teammates, and he was about to be kicked out of the SEAL Teams, he was given a second, and then a third chance, and he finally began to accept responsibility – personal responsibility – for the “bad luck,” for the people out to get him, for the opportunities that didn’t come his way.  And with that acceptance of responsibility, with patience, hard work, humility, and good judgment, he was able over time to earn back the trust of his teammates.

The book begins dramatically with him lying severely wounded on the battlefield in Iraq, the battle raging around him, but with Jay in a daze and realizing that he was about to die.  He fought it, but as he was slowly bleeding out, he tried to stay focused on staying alive, but it was so hard, and it felt so easy to let go.  As he felt himself being pulled away,  one of his teammates taking care of him screamed at him to hang on, that the helicopter was just a few minutes out. This screaming and from his insistent teammate fortified Jay’s resolve – he knew that if he could get to the surgery unit, he would probably survive, but then he felt that gentle pull again, and how tempting it was to let go. And then the yelling again from his team mate.  It is a powerful story of a near-death experience.  Obviously he made it the battlefield ER – just in time.

Then the book goes back to what got Jay to that point, briefly outlining his childhood, how he got into the Navy and then became a SEAL and his crazy times as a young and irresponsible SEAL operator.  He did well enough to be recommended for the Seaman-to-Admiral program and was in college when 9-11 attacks occurred.  He wanted to leave college and go to war with his buddies, but his Commanding Officer talked him out of that – telling him that this war would go on long enough – he’d get his chance.

Then came the most difficult part of the book to read, as Jay outlines his series of mistakes, and his immature actions and lack of responsibility.  I wanted to crawl into the book and ring his neck!  But eventually he figured it out, when a couple of senior officers saw potential in him and gave him a second and then a third chance.  One of those officers was the same officer who told him to stay in school.

Then the story becomes inspiring, as Jay patiently and with maturity slowly does everything right to win back the trust of his team mates. He was a full-fledged and impressive member of his team, leading troops in battle when he got shot. And his teammates stood by him – and saved his life.

The last part of the book is about his fight to recover.  It has required amazing resilience. Literally dozens of surgeries.  Here the book really becomes a love story – as his wife Erica was a saint and indeed saved him from descending into despair, with her constant loyalty and support.

The rest of the story, which takes place after the book was written, I know from people who have known and worked with Jay in recent years.  He has provided heroic support to the families of SEALs wounded and killed in action and he continues to serve the SEAL community and other veterans.  The reputation he worked so hard to repair, continues to grow.

Great book, great story, by a man who has seen the depths of emotional and physical pain, and hung in there to come back – stronger than ever.

Why this book:  I recently began hearing or reading references to this book – and I’d never heard of it.  So I did a bit of research, was intrigued, and  pressed my literature reading group to select it – noting that though it is la bit longer (630 pages) than our normal selection, it was time to again read a book of substance.  Indeed Angle of Repose had won the Pulitzer Prize for literature in 1972 and was ranked one of the top 100 novels in the English language in the 20th century.

Summary in 3 Sentences: The “story” is of a wheelchair-bound retired history professor researching and writing a biography of his   grandmother who had raised him, based on  her letters to her close friend back east after moving to the west in the 1870s with her new husband, the history professor’s grandfather.  It is fascinating that Stegner used as the model for the fictional grandmother a real woman, Mary Hallock Foote, whose letters he had obtained from her family, and from which he quoted liberally – so Angle of Repose is indeed part biography of the experiences of a real “gentlewoman” and her family, who lived in some very untamed and not-yet-civilized circumstances in the West.  But the story is also about the history professor and his impressions of what he learns about his grandparents, his guesses and assumptions about what is left out of the letters and what all that might mean to him, dealing with his own challenges in 1970.

My Impressions: I loved this book.   I keep reflecting on it, and how and why it had such an impact on me.  This is part of what I believe makes Angle of Repose truly great literature.   A very well developed writing style, and a very creative approach to weaving stories of courage and resilience, cultural change, love, marriage, anger and forgiveness, into a story that opens the door to understanding how American culture evolved.  It moves from the the refined center of Brahmin culture in upper class New York City, to the raw and unrefined version of American culture that was emerging in the American West in the late 19th century.  The book is presented in 9 parts and as such, it is a 9 course feast.  Like a great meal, it starts out a bit slow, and then builds in momentum, with each course adding to the last, each course bringing a new dimension and new depth to the meal.   But unlike a great meal, it does not climax toward the end and finish on a soft note with a satisfied sigh and a sweet dish “dessert” as an epilogue. The  momentum in Angle of Repose builds right up to the last chapter and the last page.

The characters in the story are people I could relate to in today’s terms – and their world  was comprehensible to me as not fundamentally different from my own, though very different on the surface.  Though much of it takes place in the American West of the 1870s and 1880s, Angle of Repose does not describe the world of cowboys and Indians that many of us grew up with on television or in movies – it describes a world more familiar to us.  Technological advances have certainly made a difference: Communication was slow and uncertain.  Travel was long and complicated.   There were dangers and health issues, and uncertainties which our society and science have since significantly mitigated.  But the old saw that “people are people”  is very evident here.  These are Americans, and the challenges, the disappointments, the drives and impulses that are very familiar to me are very much a part of the lives of the people in this world of 140-150 years ago.

The various environments in which Angle of Repose takes place are part of what makes this book fascinating, and Stegner’s wonderful writing makes them real and almost palpable, allowing the reader to experience and almost sense them.  From the world of Milton, NY,  and genteel New York City in which the book starts, to a mining camp in New Almaden (near San Jose), California, then to Santa Cruz, California, then Leadville, Colorado, then Michoacan, Mexico, then Boise, Idaho, and finally to a farm in Grass Valley in Northern California in 1970 (yes 1970 -which is the time and place in which the fictional author of the biography is writing)  we come to know our characters, their thoughts, concerns, their lives.

The “jewels in the crown” of this novel are the characters and how Stegner develops them.  These are no simple two-dimensional characters – each is a complex human being, with strengths weaknesses, palpable emotions, flawed, yet strong.  None of them got what they really wanted in life – none of them had their dreams fulfilled. Yet by and large, they refused to be victims, and carried on with courage and determination to make the best of what they had.

Stegner uses an unusual literary device to describe and develop his characters.  The novel is written in first person by an author researching the life of his grandmother, with the intent of publishing it as a biography.  We get to know the main characters through the eyes of one of their descendants, seeking to uncover facts about their lives to better understand them, their motivations, their disappointments, who they were.   He struggles with gaps in what he is able to ascertain from the evidence he has, so he adds his own conjecture and judgments, and in so doing we get to know the character of the fictional researcher writing the biography of his grandmother.

The perspective and life of our narrator, that researcher biographer, is a key part of Angle of Repose.   This researcher narrator is clearly a version of Stegner himself, since Stegner was using essentially the same real letters as his fictional character to create the story.   The narrator of Angle of Repose is clearly sharing much of Stegner’s own perspective on the historical characters whose lives he is recounting, as well as on the world of 1970 in which he lives.

In writing the book,  Stegner argued that the main characters in the historical narrative – Susan and Oliver Ward – though built largely on the real-life characters Mary Hallock Foote and Arthur De Wint Foote in the letters he was quoting, are indeed fictional.  We learn in the introduction that Stegner made clear that as a fiction writer, he used his creative license to create experiences and aspects of the characters in Angle of Repose that were not reflected in the actual letters upon which he based his story; he bent and shaped the historical characters and their experiences to fit the fictional story he sought to tell. We also learn in the introduction, that some of the actual ancestors of the Foote family accused Stegner in his story of Susan and Oliver Ward, of plagiarizing the lives of Mary and Arthur Foote, since he had based so much of Angle of Repose on  their real stories and personal letters.  It is an interesting aspect of this book.

Let me briefly add here that Jackson Benson’s  introduction to the book, written in 2000, provides a great context for understanding Stegner, his style, why and how he wrote the book. It also explains some of the controversy around the relationship between the fictional characters in the book, and the historical characters on whom they are based.

So much is fascinating about this book.  But I will simply provide a brief synopsis of my impressions of the 3 main characters in Angle of Repose.

Susan Ward– Since we get to know the story of the Ward family almost exclusively through Susan Ward’s letters to her girlhood friend Augusta, it is Susan we get to know best.  She is the central character of the narrative that takes place in the 1870s and 1880s.  She was a well-educated and thoughtful young Quaker woman of her time, and grew up aspiring to a life of engaging and charming conversation in the well-appointed parlors of the upper class homes in New York City.  Her very close girl-hood friend Augusta indeed did marry into that life-style, and throughout the book, we sense Susan’s envy of Augusta, as well as her desire to convince Augusta that Susan continued to maintain her standards of civility and culture, even in places as uncivilized as the mining camps of  New Almaden, Ca, and Leadville, Colorado.  She always wanted to be welcomed and easily fit into that world of which she dreamed and to which she aspired to return.

Susan was very much a product of Victorian morality and sensibilities, and had always sought to emulate the civility and gentility in the world of the English upper classes that she had experienced as a young woman in New York. She marries the engineer Oliver Ward with the intention of going west to follow his “career” for a few years, and then return to the New York with fascinating tales about life in America’s outback.  For indeed this is what the upper classes of England did in her day – live for a few years in the uncivilized colonies, then return to their cultured roots with tales of life among the barbarians and savages.  Susan never was able to fulfill her dream of returning to that life of comfort in well-heeled society.   She did return to New York from time to time, but only for short visits.  Though her lifelong dream was never fulfilled, over time, she did indeed evolve to becoming more adventurous herself, quietly and unconsciously adopting some of the values of the world in which she lived, and began to truly value the hardiness and resilience she had acquired.

It is easy to ridicule Susan from our 21st century perspective – her Victorian morality, her occasional snobbery and pretensions to upper class gentility.  But she was courageous and resilient and sought wherever she went to make the best of where she found herself.  Her struggles with her Stoic husband Oliver, who was very much in love with her and who did what he could to cater to her refined needs, is a constant sub-theme of the book.  While some may find her narrow in her prejudices and lacking the courage to truly stand up for what she wanted, I think that is an overly harsh judgment of a woman raised in the Victorian era.  She is in many ways a tragic figure, but faced her circumstance with courage and resilience, and was stronger and more positive than most men or women I know. This complexity of character is an important part of what makes her such fascinating character.

Oliver Ward– We only know Oliver through what Susan says of him in her letters and through a few reminiscences and comments of our narrator, who remembers his grandfather from when he was a young boy.  Oliver Ward is a very intelligent and honorable man, a man of great integrity and humility, conscientious and hard working, capable of great love and friendship. He is clearly an admirable character. And he is also a tragic one, since those virtues also made him vulnerable to opportunists and scalawags, and more than once he was a victim of betrayal, corruption and perfidy, which leads to sadness, disappointment and heart-ache both for him and for Susan and their family.  It is frustrating to see this good and innocent man miss opportunities, to see him be manipulated and his trust and good nature taken advantage of by selfish and unscrupulous opportunists.  At the same time, his virtues also brought him great friends, trust, support and other opportunities.  He too is a complex character who it is easy to love and admire, while also finding him frustrating.

Lyman Ward– is the biographer and narrator of this book, and it is through his eyes and voice that we get to know the world of Susan and Oliver Ward.   As he tells the story of his grandparents,  we also get to know him and his world.  The perspective of the book goes back and forth from lives of his grandparents in the 1870s and 80s, to 1970, when he is writing their biography.   From his insights and comments on the lives and circumstances of his grandparents, we also get insights into his character and values.  But we also watch him deal with being painfully confined to a wheel chair, unable turn his head, unable to do for himself much of what most of us take for granted in our own lives. He needs others to prepare his meals, to bathe him, to prepare him for bed, to get him dressed in the morning.  He is curious and conscientious about exploring the lives of his grandparents, but he is also angry and opinionated about his own life and times.   He is not at all shy about sharing his thoughts about the 60s culture in California and what he believes it is doing to America.   He is indeed something of a curmudgeon – a very intelligent and articulate one, and his sarcasm and cynicism are often amusing while also well informed and insightful.

I hope I have left no doubt that I truly loved this book and highly recommend it – but like all great literature, it is not a quick, light read. But it is very much worth the time and effort.

A few quotes that I thought I’d share, (page numbers from the 2014 Vintage paperback edition.)

Lyman Ward: There  was no reason Oliver Ward should not have been, except character. Pioneer or not, resource-raider or not, afflicted or not with the frontier faith that exploitation is development, and development is good, he was simply an honest man. His gift was not for money-making and the main chance. He was a a builder, not a raider. He trusted people (Grandmother thought too much), he was loved by animals and children and liked by men, he had an uncomplicated ambition to leave the world a little better for his passage through it, and his notion of to better it was to develop it for human use.            p 206

Lyman Ward:  I wonder if ever again Americans can have that experience of returning to a home place so intimately known, profoundly felt, deeply loved and absolutely submitted to?  It is not quite true that you can never go home again. I have done it, coming back here. But it gets less likely.  We have had too many divorces, we have consumed too much transportation, we have lived too shallowly in too many places.        p 303

Lyman Ward: What she resisted was being the wife of a failure and a woman with no home.  p 303

Lyman Ward: She came before the emancipation of women, and she herself was emancipated only partly….  The impulse and the talent were there, without either inspiring models or full opportunity.  A sort of Isabel Archer existed half-acknowledged in Grandmother, a spirit fresh, independent, adventurous, not really prudish in spite of the gentility. There was an ambitious women under the Quaker modesty and genteel conventions.   The light foot was for more than dancing, the bright eye for more than flirtations, the womanliness for more than mute submission to husband and hearth.                               p 350

Lyman Ward: One of the charming things about nineteenth-century America was its cultural patriotism – not jingoism, just patriotism, the feeling that no matter how colorful, exotic, and cultivated other countries might be, there  was no place so ultimately right, so morally sound, so in tune with the hopeful future as the USA. p 352

Lyman Ward: As a practitioner of hindsight, I know that Grandfather was trying to do, by personal initiative and with the financial resources of a small and struggling corporation, what only the immense power of the federal government ultimately proved able to do. That does not mean he was foolish or mistaken.  He was premature. His clock was set on pioneer time.  He met trains that had not yet arrived, he waited on platforms that hadn’t yet been built, beside tracks that might never be laid. Like many other Western pioneer, he had heard the clock of history strike, and counted the strokes wrong.  p 423

Lyman Ward: They were in no race for wealth…they were makers and doers, they wanted to take a piece of wilderness and turn it into a home for a civilization.  I suppose they were wrong – their whole civilization was wrong – but they were the antithesis of mean or greedy. Given the choice, any one of them would have chosen poverty, with the success of their projects, over wealth and its failure.  p 427

Lyman Ward: We have only switched prohibitions and hypocrisies with them.  We blink pain and death, they blinked nudity and human sex, or rather, talk about sex.  They deplored violations of the marriage bond and believed in the responsibilities of the unitary family and thought female virginity before marriage a guarantee of these, or at least a proper start.  But wild boys and young bachelors they winked at because they must, and both wandering husbands and unfaithful wives they understood, and girls who “got in trouble” they pitied as much as they censured. They could tell a good woman from a bad one, which is more than I can do any more.   p 498

Susan Ward: He is so good a man I want to weep, and what makes me want to weep most of all is my failure of faith in him. For I cannot help it.   p 537

Oliver Ward: But this general business of trusting people, I don’t know. I doubt if I can change. I believe in trusting people, do you see?  At least till they prove they can’t be trusted. What kind of life is it when you can’t?  p 551

Why this book: I was about to leave with a number of friends to do an 8 day bicycle tour of Burgundy, France, one of the worlds most famous wine regions.  My wife handed me this book and suggested I read it to learn more about the region I would be traveling through.  So I did.  And I’m glad I did.

Summary in 3 sentences: Germany had always recognized France as the world leader in cultivating and distilling fine wine, and when Germany occupied France at the outset of World War II, one of their many objectives was to control and exploit the French wine industry, plunder their stockpiles of great wine and champagne, and subordinate France’s legendary wine industry to the goals of the Third Reich. This book outlines how Germany sought to brutally fulfill that goal, the damage they did, as well as how the extensive network of French grape growers and distillers, from small farmers to the great houses and brokerage firms sought to and with some success thwarted Nazi efforts. There is much in the book about the large scale participation by those in the wine industry in the Resistance, but also addresses the uncomfortable issue of collaboration of some in the French wine industry with the Nazis and the Vichy government, and how it all turned out in the end.

My Impressions: Wine and War is meant to be a quick fun read for those interested in the topic – specific to France and World War II.  Though it is well researched and lists sources at the end, it is not meant to be an academic treatment of the subject.  It tells the story, with some history and background, largely through vignettes and stories of individuals wine growers and leaders in the wine industry who experienced and suffered the trauma of Nazi occupation, primarily in the Bordeaux, Burgundy, and Champagne regions of France.   The book would be more meaningful to someone who is already a wine connoisseur than it was for me, for whom wine is either red or white, tastes good or doesn’t.  But I learned a lot about wine, its history,  and the processes and challenges of creating fine wine with varying nuances that I didn’t know before. I know have a greater appreciation not only for the role of wine in World War II, but also for the art of selecting just the right wine to go with different types of food, and the art of the sommelier.

The individual stories were most interesting.  The book includes stories of grape farmers  who at great personal risk hid Jews and downed allied pilots from the Nazis, stories of the sons of these farmers who were conscripted into the German Army (from Alsace Lorraine) or were conscripted to work in factories in Germany. I read about leaders in the communities in the wine growing regions who through deception and subterfuge placated their new German bosses while also protecting the long term interests of the wine growers and distillers in the region.

Wine and War includes a lot about how many of those engaged in France’s wine industry supported the French Resistance during the war.  Their resistance to Nazi leadership and policies took many forms, from conducting sabotage operations, to less aggressive acts of non-support to Nazi programs, to passive resistance, to providing the Wehrmacht with poor quality wine in bottles with the highest quality labels.  The participation in Resistance operations increased  after they realized that the Vichy French government of Marshall Petain was not going to protect them from Nazi plundering and exploitation.  By 1943-44 the wine industry was broadly complicit in Resistance operations, which resulted in harsh reprisals by the SS and the Wehrmacht.

But the authors also give credit to some of the Germans who were sent by the Nazi regime to oversee the plundering and subordination of France’s wine industry. The Nazi regime sent experienced German wine merchants to France to be responsible for carrying out Third Reich orders regarding wine in France – and these key leaders were called “Weinfuhrer.”  In several cases, these Weinfuhrer had long standing family ties to the French wine growers and distillers in the regions assigned to them, and had a great appreciation for the history, traditions and quality of wine making in France.   Some of them insisted that Wehrmacht soldiers and other functionaries refrain from stealing and active sabotaging of French property, and that French wine makers be respected.   They walked a fine line between protecting their old friends and a tradition they respected, while also placating their Nazi bosses in Germany.   These Weinfuhrer recognized the imperative of protecting the traditions and quality of French wine, and of protecting their own relationships and credibility with those with whom they’d want to do business after the war.

The authors also shared the story of how, as the Allies were closing in on Paris toward the end of the war, the acting Mayor of Paris prevailed upon the German General von Choltitz, an old-school Prussian military officer, to not comply with Hitler’s direct order to destroy Paris upon withdrawing.  Against all his military training, he disobeyed Hitler’s order, and thereby preserved for humanity the integrity and beauty of much of Paris.  And then we read of his return visit to Paris 15 years after the war,  to the city he could have significantly destroyed, but which because of his insubordination, remains one of the great cities of the world.  It is an incredible story.

The villages I rode through on my bike tour of Burgundy that were mentioned in Wine and War as playing a role – greater or smaller – in the battle between the French and the Nazi regime over French wine:  Close de Vougeot, Santenay,  Chassagney Montrachet, Vezelay, Avallon, Saulieu, Nuits St-Geores, Laxe Corton, Auxerre, and the city of Beaune where we finished our tour, and which was and is a key city in Burgundy’s history.

Why this book: My current boss with whom I’m in a reading group at work, strongly recommended it.  He said it has a lot of relevance to some of the character and culture issues we are having in the SEAL Teams, and that it is a fun and provocative read,  so we took it on.

Summary in 3 sentences. Sean Avery was one of the “bad boys” in the NHL from 2001 – 2015, known as an intimidator, brawler,  and master “agitator” – an unofficial hockey term for a trash talker whose job it is to anger and get into the heads and upset the games of the opposing team.  He describes his life from growing up in a small town in Canada to his debut in the NHL, how he built his reputation as an aggressive player, agitator and someone who some loved, but many hated, through his trades from the Detroit Red Wings to the LA Kings to the New York Rangers, to the Dallas Stars, and finally back to the Rangers. Much of his story  is about his personal life, his “escapades” in various celebrity circles, heavy drinking, partying, his women, his fun and successes, but also his disappointments both on and off the ice, ending in his love affair and marriage, and the beginning of his post-hockey career.

My impressions:  I liked the book, and with some reservations, I liked Sean Avery as he presents himself in this book. Several of my friends who read it couldn’t stand him.  I’m always a bit skeptical of self-promotional memoirs (aren’t all memoirs to one degree or another self promotional?) since I’ve read a couple whereby I walked away with a very positive impression of the author,  but people who knew the author screamed BULLSHIT!  Matt Bissonette and Eric Greitens are two who come to mind.  That said, I did enjoy getting into the head of a clearly high-energy young professional athlete living the  dream or many young men –  being a professional sports star and celebrity, the fame, the money, the jet set, the women.  Opportunities for a lot of fun and adventure, as well opportunities for excess and self-destruction.  Avery took advantage of both.   The period of his memoir is between approximately his 18th and 32nd years of age, so a lot of energy, passion, ambition, a fair amount of immaturity and a lot of wild and crazy guy stuff.

Yeah, he is self-centered, and doesn’t take full responsibility for some of his bad breaks.  He is not at his best when playing the victim, and can be overly aggressive and cocky with attitude.  That said, there was also much to like about him. When we had our discussion about this book where I work with the Navy SEALs, the one member of our group who had not been a SEAL had no time for what he regarded as his completely unreflective narcissism and ambition, and one of the retired SEAL Captains, though acknowledging his very strong work ethic and team loyalty, did not believe those qualities outweighed the head aches his off-work aggressive behavior would cause.  I and the other SEAL Captain were more willing to give his positive attributes a chance, though both of us insisted he would need a very strong Chief Petty Officer to keep him in line.

What I liked about the guy Sean Avery portrays himself to be: He is clearly mentally tough and resilient.  He kept bouncing back when things weren’t going his way.  He is clearly very willing to work harder than most to be better and stay better than most.  He was ambitious and seemed truly anxious to be a contributing member of his team – that drove him and I liked that. He is clearly bold and aggressive, and seemed to care for his team mates – there were a couple of poignant stories when he was outraged that his coach or management didn’t take care of the individual players, treating them as tools to their own ends.  As he tells the stories of his several romances, he is generous toward the women after the break ups and seems to take much of the responsibility for the relationship not working out.  He makes sure we know that he had lots of casual sex partners, and other than that women were drawn to him, he doesn’t say much about that – one hopes that he similarly treated them with respect and that the enjoyment was mutual.  I was impressed with how he courted the love of his life – and current wife “Super-Model” Hillary Rhoda – slowly, becoming friends first, in what seemed to me to be a patient, classy way.  At the end of the book, he took a very unpopular stand for gay rights, and worked for Vogue magazine, much to the surprise and against the dominant culture of the NHL and at some cost to his macho reputation.

What bothered me about Sean Avery was that indeed he seemed more selfish and self-centered than he was aware – his decisions were often primarily about him and his short term aims. During the NHL strike, he needed work, and his agent was able to get him work playing professionally in Finland. He played a few games with his new Finnish team and apparently with no warning, and no sense of bad faith,  simply got on an airplane and left to return to America.  It seemed that playing hockey without the glamour, the privileges and spotlight of the NHL just didn’t suit him.   I’m sure the Finns weren’t impressed. I wasn’t.  I was surprised to see how viciously he attacked a player who fell in love with his wife’s sister, given that Avery had fallen in love with his close friend’s fiancé.  He often showed impulsive, immature and selfish behavior .  To his credit, he did express regret in the book – but I wasn’t sure it was because of the principle he violated or the harm it caused others, or the regret was primarily for the difficulties his behavior caused him.   As an “agitator” I wondered sometimes if there was any line he wouldn’t cross in harassing his opponents, if he thought it would help his team win. Some of what he did and said was way over the line to me, and apparently to many in the NHL as well.  Did he enjoy the spotlight of being the famous bad boy too much?

While I saw indicators of maturity and taking responsibility for things not going his way, Avery also shows an aggressive angry streak that he often didn’t control well and which made him a liability to himself and his teams.

He is an interesting character.  In Ice Capades he gives us the version of himself that he wants to share with the public – which says a lot about his values and who he is. He tries to be somewhat humble, but is not at all averse to tooting his own horn regarding his successes on and off the ice. But, he also wants to share some of his insights and the beginnings of wisdom that he has gained along the way to others it might help.

Reading what other say about him in the on-line press, it is clear that there is more to his angry and aggressive dark side than he shares in his book.  It is not unusual for ambitious and aggressive men (or women) to be generous to their friends and supporters, and vicious to their enemies, and we see that side of Sean Avery in Ice Capades. But occasionally we see him being aggressive and antagonizing others – just because he can, and can expect to get away with it.

To his credit, he has picked fights on the ice with some who he knew were bigger and stronger than he, and he expected to be pummeled for his insults and taunting – and he was, always fighting back, though often throwing the first punch.

Could better leadership and mentorship have made a difference?  One thing upon which  we all agreed in our discussion was that he needed strong leadership and he usually didn’t get it.  That strong Chief Petty Officer wasn’t around to guide, mentor, and hold him accountable.   He had some strong mentors, but the book never mentions anyone giving him advice or guidance to temper his behavior.  He was a small guy from a small town with a giant will to succeed and overcome his handicaps – he was very driven which has it’s pluses and liabilities.

This was very much unlike most of the books I read. It made an impression on me and I recommend it. It offers insights into the fast lane of celebrity life – those who move in circles with the rich and famous – from the perspective of a scared, but tough, ambitious and cocky young man in his 20s.

Why this book: I read Ill Met by Moonlight by the same author, and I really liked the man and loved his writing style.  I did some research and found that this book is his account of what he did for the remainder of WWII, as a member of the British SOE (Special Operations Executive) in Crete, Greece, Macedonia, and Thailand.  I was not disappointed.

Summary in 3 Sentences:  After the author’s successful abduction of General Kreipe from Crete described in Ill Met by Moonlight, he was sent back to Crete to continue working with Cretan partisans to harass and interdict Nazi forces on the Island.  He was happy there and loved his Cretan fighters but was recalled to Cairo and sent to work with Greek partisans in the mountains of Macedonia fighting the Nazis. Though they had some successes, this was a less-than-satisfying experience for a number of reasons, and as the German forces were withdrawing toward the end of the war, he was recalled again, and this time was sent with two other SOE comrades to parachute into Thailand (then called Siam), to work with the Siamese partisans fighting the Japanese and ultimately to negotiate their surrender, prevent atrocities against allied prisoners,  and assert the authority of the Allies to help restore order in a country that had been occupied by the Japanese for five years.

My Impressions:  If you liked Ill Met by Moonlight because you liked the man who told the story, and the manner in which he told it, you will also like A War of Shadows. This book is not the story behind a single uniquely successful special operation, and is not filled with danger, amazing resourcefulness and close calls.  But it is the same man, with the same sensibilities, the same clear and engaging writing style, telling about how he spent the rest of the war, sharing his observations, frustrations, and perspectives in less glamorous circumstances, operating with little support in remote areas.  The voice of Billy Moss in this book is less enthusiastic, less aggressive, sadder but wiser, than in Ill Met.

Whereas Ill Met by Moonlight was his diary as a young  idealistic and hard charging officer, new to special operations and loving his work, A War of Shadows is written after the war, and one can sense an air of disillusion and disenchantment after seeing so much death, suffering and the absurdities of war.  Though still a disciplined and competent officer, he and his SOE partners are at the mercy of incompetent staffs, decisions they get no voice in, and the vagaries of war.

As a junior officer, he gets little vote in where he goes.  After co-leading the operation that successfully kidnapped General Kreipe and delivered him to Allied headquarters in Cairo, Moss returned to Crete to work with his beloved partisans to continue to harass and keep the hated Nazi’s off balance and preoccupied.  He has a few minor successes, but just as he feels his work is gaining momentum, he is unaccountably recalled to Cairo and told that he is being sent to Macedonia to join the few SOE operatives supporting partisans there.

Arriving in Macedonia he is surprised at how different that theater of operations is from Crete.  Here, the partisans have no real sense of urgency, little commitment, little initiative, little discipline. The Greeks who he and a small contingent of SOE are there to support are divided among themselves, and can’t be trusted. Some partisan groups are communist zealots, hate the capitalist Allies almost as much as the Nazis, and are more interested in positioning themselves to take power at the end of the war than they are in fighting the Germans.  Other Greek partisan groups are not communist but are unreliable in the extreme.  They talk with great courage, but will not plan nor rehearse thoroughly, nor put themselves at risk against the disciplined Nazi forces.  They expect the SOE operatives to give them whatever they want, and then also to do the fighting – to assume the risk in the fight against the invaders of their country.  When the partisans take German prisoners, they simply kill them. There is no sense of civilized warfare, or honor in the Western sense, in how they fight.  When Billy and his SOE partners objected, the partisans simply shrugged their shoulders and ignored them.

In this section of the book, Billy Moss describes working, moving, living in the remote Macedonian countryside, conducting a few successful raids and sabotage operations, but also a number of missed opportunities, aborted operations and mission failures due to their unreliable partisan partners. Billy Moss was impressive in his patience and diplomacy in working with the leaders of these undisciplined guerrilla forces, but his frustration was palpable and understandable. This frustration was very reminiscent to me of my experience working with special forces counterparts in militaries with long traditions of officer privilege, and no strong tradition of disciplined training.  And this frustration is very consistent with what my colleagues have experienced working with Iraqi and Afghani forces fighting Al Quade, Taliban, and ISIS.

As the war in Europe was coming to a close and the Germans were hastily withdrawing from Greece and Macedonia, Billy Moss was recalled again to Cairo, this time to be returned to his conventional army regiment, but he successfully petitioned to stay with the SOE.  He was then sent to the far Eastern theater of war to fight in the continuing war against the Japanese.  Staging out of Ceylon he parachuted with two of his SOE comrades into the jungles of what was then known as Siam, now known as Thailand to support Siamese guerrilla bands in their operations against the Japanese.

They parachuted into the jungle with a considerable amount of equipment to support themselves and their partisan allies.  When they were met by the Siamese guerrillas on the ground, they found that those who had prepared the equipment had not only failed to include the radios they needed for communication, but also left out other key items, and only put in right-foot boots to provide to the partisan armies.  Through their partisan contacts they communicated this mistake back to their Headquarters in Ceylon, who responded that the needed equipment would be sent forthwith. They waited 3 weeks, during which there was little to do, but swim, go hunting, drink rice whiskey, smoke – simply hang out. Reminiscent of Catch 22.

As Billy Moss tells this story, there are no hair-raising, movie-worthy special operations missions, but fascinating descriptions of life deep in the jungle with the partisans, negotiating, deciding what to do next and how, and learning to deal with a whole new environment, culture, and new partners. And he is amusing in his description of how three SOE friends amused themselves often with little else to do.

Shortly after finally getting the equipment, they were notified of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the subsequent surrender of Japan.  Regardless of the surrender, the Japanese army was still in Siam and still controlled the Siamese peninsula.  The SOE operatives now were tasked with tracking Japanese movements and ensuring that Allied prisoners (there were about 300 or so) were not massacred, and to be prepared to accept surrender of the Japanese forces in that area of Siam.

The final section of the book is his description of working WITH the Japanese and the local authorities to reestablish civil order in a remote part of Siam which had been occupied by the Japanese for 5 years.  In this transition period, law and order were tenuous and fragile.  Renegade bands of military deserters and criminals were at large, and as in Macedonia, communist insurgents were positioning themselves to take over after the war. Billy Moss and his two SOE partner represented the force and the authority of the Western Allies to the local civil authorities, and their word and desires were essentially law. But all knew that they were there only temporarily, and there were only three of them.

Several months after VJ day, Billy Moss is finally given leave to detach and return to Cairo to spend Christmas with his wife.   But on the way home he is waylaid in India – as India too breaks out into an insurrection against British rule, and he is unable to get home.  The book concludes with him finally getting to see his wife and celebrate Christmas with her – in April 1946.

The copy of A War of Shadows I read is a 2015 reprint of what was first published in the early 1950s.  This later reprint includes a short bio of Billy Moss at the conclusion, which adds some details to his life story, and some context to both Ill Met by Moonlight and A War of Shadows.  This man whose writing and perspective I liked and admired so much, was affected more by the war than comes out in his writing.  In a WWII version of PTSD, he apparently became an adrenaline junkie and an alcoholic, costing him his family, and eventually his life.  As a journalist he seems to have continued a futile pursuit of the thrill and camaraderie he had experienced in the SOE, and it appears he died of alcoholism in Jamaica at age 44 where he eventually landed, living alone as a journalist, writing feature pieces for the local newspaper.  Such a remote and inauspicious circumstance to end the life of such a talented and and sensitive man.

Why this book: Selected to be read and reviewed by All American Leadership Faculty Reading Group for our bimonthly reading group session.

Summary in 3 Sentences:  Dr Atul  Gawande shares his research-based “manifesto,” supported by many engaging stories for how following simple checklists can be stunningly effective in reducing errors and improving results in a variety of settings.  Much of the book is based on his experience developing  and using checklists as part of surgery, and he describes his efforts with the World Health Organization to universalize this simple process for saving lives and preventing errors.  He also explores with more fascinating examples how checklists have  revolutionized safety in aviation and engineering, and are increasingly used by the most successful chefs in high-end cooking, and by venture capitalists in financial investing.

My Impressions:  The author shows us how the seemingly self-evident process of creating simple checklists can make a profound difference in improving how people and organizations function.  In situations where leaders face numerous variables and potential distractions, potentially must make many decisions, large and small, it is easy to get distracted and lose focus.  Checklists ensure that simple and critically important steps are taken, not skipped inadvertently due to distraction,  nor ignored when emotion or other factors may get in the way.

Sounds obvious, right?  The Checklist Manifesto gives many examples of how effective checklists can be, at so little cost in time, effort and attention, to ensure things are done right, and the right things are done. He explores the worlds of surgery, aviation, engineering, cooking in high-end restaurants, and finance.  These very diverse fields show how this simple process can be adapted to any activity which demands discipline and process to ensure the simple but critical functions are taken care of before too much attention is given to the more complex functions.  Checklists have been shown to serve as a “cognitive safety net” to account for the “flaws in memory, attention, and thoroughness.” (p48)

Gawande is a surgeon and much of his book deals with his experience using and promoting checklists in the operating room.  He led the World Health Organizations effort to recommend that checklists become an international standard for surgery, and his description of the research and his  work with the WHO is fascinating and informative.  Research has shown that at least half of the deaths and major complications that follow surgery have been due to avoidable mistakes.   He offers numerous examples of mistakes that surgical teams have made that have cost people their lives or many extra months of recovery –  that could have been avoided had the surgical team gone thru a simple checklist at certain key stages of a surgical procedure.  He includes his own experience in surgery, in which checklists have been critical to saving the lives of his patients.

The checklist made its debut on the large stage of professional activity in aviation, and was so effective, it has become standard practice in commercial aviation the world over, in helping aircrews ensure that key steps and procedures are followed during routine, non-routine or emergency situations.

He also looks at how checklists have transformed the world of complex engineering, where so many different trades and specialties must coordinate and collaborate to create a large and complex structure.  In engineering, he found that checklists often include an unexpected imperative: Simply that people from different disciplines key to building the structure have met and spoken with each other.  In engineering, as in so many other fields, communications gaps and miscommunications are the source of many serious failures.

At the conclusion of the book he introduces us to to three highly successful venture capitalists who have used checklists for making sure that their investments meet rational and agreed upon criteria.  They seek to avoid what they call “cocaine brain” when an investor or an institution falls in love with a company or project for whatever reason, and invests without putting checks in all the key boxes to ensure a dispassionate due-diligence  analysis has been done.  These “cocaine brain” investments that have not been carefully scrutinized can cost a company millions of dollars and immeasurable disruption and distraction.  He shares how the “airline captain” methodical checklist-driven approach to investing has resulted in dramatically fewer firings of senior managers, and significantly higher returns on investments, compared to investors using other styles and approaches to investment decision making.  (p171)

The Checklist Manifesto also shares examples of ineffective and even counter-productive checklists.  These are checklists that try to do too much, are too long, too complicated, are vague or imprecise, hard to use, impractical.   Boeing has a team of people who create checklists for their aircraft – and this team puts enormous energy and research into making sure the checklists are short, clear, precise (without being too detailed,) and easily understood. The checklists Boeing provides are invariably modified by users to better fit the context in which they will be used.   Boeing found that creating a great checklist took multiple iterations, and constant feedback, and some compromise.  But on one thing the Boeing team is  adamant: A checklist must be tested in the real world, which is inevitably more complicated than expected.  (p124)

There is a lot of basic, good leadership advice in this book.  Using the checklist process allows leaders to evaluate team members’ conscientiousness and discipline.  Gawande echoes McChrystal in Team of Teams and Marquet in Turn the Ship Around in pointing out that efforts to dictate every step from the center (or the top) will fail.   But discipline, and well ingrained processes and procedures (checklists) to ensure that fundamentals are covered make it easier for leaders to push decision making down to those closest to emerging problems.  Checklists also have the effect of distributing power; the surgeon cannot begin surgery until the nurse has gone through the checklist and gives the go-ahead.

It was a surprise to read how checklists have been resisted at every turn.   Even after presenting irrefutable data that show how effective checklists have been, many leaders are unwilling to adopt them, and prefer to trust people’s intuition, and trained habitual practice to make sure key steps are taken.  They don’t want to give authority over to the holder and enforcer of a checklist.  There is a sense that checklists add rigidity to a process and reduce the autonomy of the experienced leader.  Gawande makes the case that this prejudice has resulted in great costs.  He argues that checklists add discipline and process, but don’t take away the need for judgment. Judgment is always required he says, but “judgment aided – even enhanced – by procedure.” (p79)

He has a great sentence which summarizes his views on the resistance to checklists:

We don’t like checklists. They can be painstaking. They’re not much fun. But I don’ think the issue here is mere laziness. There’s something deeper, more visceral going on when people walk away not only from saving lives, but from making money.  It somehow feels beneath us to use a checklist, an embarrassment. It runs counter to deeply held beliefs about how the truly great among us – those we aspire to be – handle situations of high stakes and complexity. The truly great are daring . They improvise. They do not have protocols and checklists.   Maybe our idea of heroism needs updating. (p173)

Some key points and insights I got from The Checklist Manifesto:

• Checklists can ensure consistency in performing the basics and fundamentals.
• There are three types of problems – each of which requires some consistency in approach and some basics that must be done to ensure a good outcome:
  • Simple problems – Follow a simple procedure and  you get the result  -like a recipe for baking a cake.
  • Complicated problems – A series of predictable processes that require multiple people, multiple teams, specialized expertise, that require timing and coordination. Like sending a rocket to the moon.
  • Complex problems – Every situation is different and even the variables are different or unknown. Each problem requires a new approach. Like raising a child. 49
• Checklists get the dumb stuff out of the way, the routines our brain shouldn’t  have to occupy itself with.  177
• Checklists free up the leaders to consider complexities and contingencies, since they know that the basics will be taken care of. 177
• Amazing how effective it is to include steps to ensure that key people have communicated with each other.  In surgery, this simply includes the requirement that those on the team introduce themselves to each other before surgery begins.
• He refers to the “activation phenomenon,” giving everyone a chance – or even forcing them – to say something and communicate with the others on the team,  which activates their sense of participation in and responsibility for the outcome. 108
• Pilots use their checklists for two reasons: “First they are trained to do so…. Second, the checklists have proved their worth – they work.” (p121)
• You must decide whether you want a DO-CONFIRM checklist, or a READ-DO checklist 123
• A rule of thumb is to keep a checklist to between five and nine items, and should last between 60 and 90 seconds to run through.  After 90 seconds, it becomes a distraction and people start shortcutting.  123
• Points of controversy in implementing a checklist to a procedure:   Who has the authority to start the process – get everyone’s attention to kick off the checklist? Who has the authority to  bring the process to a halt? 137
• A tension exists between brevity and effectiveness. 138
• Using the checklist involved a major cultural change – a shift in authority, responsibility, and expectations about care..146
• One of the key functions of the checklist:  It grabs everyone’s attention and bring focus onto what is important – right now.  153
• The Hawthorne effect – a byproduct of being observed in a study rather than proof of the checklist’s power.
• There was also a notable correlation between teamwork scores and results for patients – the greater the improvement in teamwork, the greater the drop in complications. 157
• Gawande noted that if someone discovered a new drug that could cut down the surgical complications with anything remotely like the effectiveness of the checklist, we would have television and minor celebrities extolling its virtues.  158
• He notes that it DOES matter whether surgeons believe in the process.  “Just ticking boxes is not the ultimate goal here. Embracing a culture of teamwork and discipline is.”  160
• The “rock star” status of surgeons and aviators is diminished when processes create a much greater consistency in excellent performance.  As a culture, we value having “the right stuff” and audacity in high risk environments.   Following checklists and Standard Operating Procedures feels like the exact opposite. 161
• One of the venture capitalists found that using the checklist did increase the up-front work load. But eventually they were able to evaluate many more investments in far less time overall, with the benefit of making fewer mistakes. 168
• In the financial markets using a checklist to help make investment decisions created efficiency – one more edge over their competitors. They created a process that was not only more thorough, but also faster.  168-69
• We’re obsessed in medicine with having great components – the best drugs, the best devices, the best specialists – but pay little attention to how to make them fit together well.  184
• We don’t study routine failures.. we don’t look for the patterns of our recurrent mistakes or devise and refine potential solutions for them…When we look closely, we recognize the same balls being dropped over and over, even by those of great ability and determination.    185-86
• No matter how routine an operation is, the patients never seem to be.  189