These are the books that I have read since May 2005, not including textbooks. All citations below are in APA format.
r = required readings for some of the classes I have taken.
* = Waste of time
** = OK
*** = I recommend it.
**** = I highly recommend it!
***** = This one is a MUST!
Eyres, D. J. (2001). Ship Construction.
** A good overview of ship construction. Introductory level.
Buttler, D. (2000). Guide to Ship Repair Estimates (in Man-Hours).
** A good one. Brief and well structured. Not all-inclusive, but much better than nothing.
Peters, T. (2003). Re-imagine!.
r *** A pretty good one.
Michaelson, G. A. (2001). Sun Tzu: The Art of War for Managers; 50 Strategic Rules.
r *** Sun Tzu is good. The business commentaries - not so much. Worth reading.
Surowiecki, J. (2004). The Wisdom of Crowds.
r *** Quite interesting.
Edelman, R. (2004). The Truth about Money.
**** Very good. I can definitely recommend it to anybody.
*** Very interesting. Winning business today must be and stay nimble!
Liker, J. K. (2004). The Toyota Way: 14 Management Principles from the World's Greatest Manufacturer.
***** Very much worth reading. Very comprehensive.
Roberts, R. (2001). The Choice: A Fable of Free Trade and Protectionism.
r * Interesting approach of story telling, not a typical business book. However, if it were not a required class reading, I would probably not read it.
Friedman, T. L. (2005). The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century.
r ** Quite interesting economics reading. It's worth reading and helps broaden one's perspective.
Lewis, J. P. (2002). Fundamentals of Project Management.
*** Good summarized introductory book on project management.
Strauss, S. D. (2005). The Small Business Bible: Everything You Need to Know to Succeed in Your Small Business.
*** A really good one if you are planning to start a small business.
Wilmerding, A. (2006). Term Sheets & Valuations - A Line by Line Look at the Intricacies of Venture Capital Term Sheets & Valuations.
r ** Not as boring as the professor advertised it. :-) Also, not that hard to understand.
Christensen, C., MacMillan,
r ** Interesting collection of articles.
Block, Z., MacMillan,
r ** Interesting collection of articles.
Verzuh, E. (1999). The Fast Forward MBA in Project Management.
*** More detailed than the fundamentals of PM by Lewis.
Cook, M. J. (1998). Time Management : Proven Techniques for Making the Most of Your Valuable Time. Adams Media Corporation:
***** Absolutely excellent! Different than other time management books. Very, very good! Read it!!!
Harris, P. E. (2006). Planning and Control Using Microsoft Project and PMBOK® Guide Third Edition.
**** An absolute must if you plan to use MS Project extensively. I recommend that one be well familiar with the program prior to reading this book.
Maxwell, J. C. (2002). Leadership 101: What Every Leader Needs to Know.
**** Do not promote anyone to a management position without having him/her read this book! It's quite a small book and can be read over the weekend.
Osborne, C. (2003). Managing Your Boss.
** A better title for this book would be "Working well with your boss". It's a good one promoting positive thinking.
Project Management Institute, (2004). A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge, Third Edition (PMBOK Guide).
*** Read it only with a highlighter in your hand. Some repetition in each chapter, and a little bit dry. Overall it's very good,but a little more theoretical than practical.
Beckwith, H., & Beckwith, C. C. (2007). You, Inc. .New
**** The book is definitely worth reading. It's pretty good. To a degree it is about good common sense. Each concept is briefly explained, typically over one or two pages. This is both a strength and a weakness - it gives the reader the highlights of many very important concepts in a nutshell; on the other hand, sometimes the message is not quite clear.
Kendall, L. C., & Buckley, J. J. (2001). The Business of Shipping.Centreville, MD: Cornell Maritime Press.
***** Excellent! Very practical, very interesting and easy to read. A must-read for anyone having anything to do with the marine or related industries.
McIntyre, M. G. (2005). Secrets to Winning...
r **** Quite good. Fosters positive thinking and a goal-oriented approach. A must-read for winners :-).
Chan Kim, W., & Mauborgne, R. (2005). Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant.
r *** This is an interesting book covering topics beyond strategic planning. Very much worth reading.
My favorite quote (pg.6): "Yet the overriding focus of strategic thinking has been on competition-based red ocean strategies. Part of the explanation for this is that corporate strategy is heavily influenced by its roots in military strategy." This, I think, refers to Sun Tzu.
Gogol, N. (2006). Taras Bulba.
*** I had to read a classical book for a management class and write a paper on management lessons I learned from the book. I think this was a pretty good book – with plenty to write about in my paper. The life of the Cossacks (or Kazaks) in
Bolles, R. N. (2007) What Color Is Your Parachute? 2008. 1.
**** Very good. I highly recommend it to all job searchers, career changers, to those who simply feel "stuck" and to all students who are about to graduate!
Click here for a shortcut to an online version of the prioritizing grid. Click here to download my Excel version of the prioritizing grid.
Vault Editors, (2007). The MBA Career Bible - 2008 edition.
*** Very inspiring for MBAs. Covers many career fields and seems to provide a realistic outlook of what to expect in each one. A must read for all MBA grads.
Dyer, W. W. (2007). Change Your Thoughts - Change Your Life: Living the Wisdom of the Tao. Hay House, Inc..
**** Quite different from what I typically read, however, quite good too. The essays sometimes seem to pick just a part of each verse and expand on it, but they are all very well intended and can truly change one's perspective.
My favorite quote: "With the greatest leader above them, people barely know one exists. ... When a leader trusts no one, no one trusts him. The great leader speaks little. He never speaks carelessly. He works without self-interest and leaves no trace. When it is all finished, the people say, "We did it ourselves.""
Frank, M. O. (1987). How to Get Your Point Across in 30 Seconds or Less.
***** This book will teach you to express yourself briefly and convincingly - a much needed art in the business world. Read it - it's only 120 pages!
If you have already read the book, click here to download a cue card (the size of a business card) that you can carry around in your wallet, with reminders of the highlights of the book (the last one is ... :-) ... totally mine.)
Robbins, S. P. (2008). The Truth about Managing People.
**** Based on more than 25 000 research studies of human behavior, this book is a gem! Each truth is explained concisely on a couple of pages.
Quotes: "Truth 1: Forget traits; it's behavior that counts.", "Truth 15: You get what you reward", "Truth 23: You get what you expect", "Truth 39: Beware of goupthink", "Truth 47: Most people resist any change that doesn't jingle in their pockets", "Truth 53: Beware of the quick fix".
Campbell, C. A. (2007). The One-Page Project Manager: Communicate and Manage Any Project With a Single Sheet of Paper.
**** Highly recommended for all project managers. Focuses on the big picture and the no-stress-reporting to upper management. Perfect illustration of my version of the KISS principle: Keep It Short and Simple!!! Check out the web site where templates are available for downloading: www.onepageprojectmanager.com/resource.html
Hopkins, T. (2005). How to Master the Art of Selling.
** / ***** The book is quite interesting. I rate it OK for people not working in sales, and a must for sales personnel. If you never intend to sell read it to see what good sales people can do to you :-).
Hurson, T. (2008). Think Better: An Innovator's Guide to Productive Thinking.
***** This book is truly exciting! The Productive Thinking method is very powerful! Read this book and recommend it to your friends!!!
Kemp, S., & Dunbar, E. (2003). Budgeting for Managers.
**** Simple, down to Earth budgeting that's easy to understand. I highly recommend it.
Whitticks, E. (2005). Construction Contracts: How to Manage Contracts and Control Disputes in a Volatile Industry.
*** The industry referred to in the title is the oil and gas industry; however, most of the information in the book can be applied to other industries, such as shipbuilding. The book is only about 300 pages, so don't expect answers to all your questions, rather expect an overview of construction contracts from conception to grave.
Bing, A. (2002). Wisdom for Graduates: Words to the Wise from the Even Wiser.
*** An excellent a-page-a-day desktop motivational reading - I really enjoyed it! Since it is a compilation of great quotes it is really hard to pick which one I like best.
Here are some one-liner quotes:
"A man is a product of his thoughts. What he thinks, he becomes." - Mohandas K. Gandhi
"A man is not what he thinks he is, but what he thinks, he is." - Jean Paul Sartre
"When you are content to be simply yourself and don't compare or compete, everybody will respect you." - Lao Tzu
"You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions." - Naguib Mahfouz
"The hard and mighty shall fall; the flexible and yielding shall survive." - Lao Tzu
"It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change." Charles Darvin
"It’s not the load you carry that breaks you down, it's the way you carry it." -
"Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it." - Henry David Thoreau
"Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising every time we fall." - Confucius
"Worry not that no one knows you; seek to be worth knowing." - Confucius
"Outside show is a poor substitute for inner worth." - Aesop
"Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless." - Mother Teresa
"True friends are two people who are comfortable sharing silence together." - Ralph Aldo Emerson
"It's the friends you can call up at
"I have friends in overalls whose friendship I would not swap for the favor of the kings of the world." - Thomas Alva Edison
"The road to a friend's house is never long." - Danish proverb
"Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can." Arthur Ashe
"Time you enjoyed wasting was not wasted." - John Lennon
:-) "Money can't buy you happiness, but it can buy you a yacht big enough to pull up right alongside it." :-) :-) :-) - David Lee Roth
:-) "Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle." :-) :-) :-) - Abraham Lincoln
:-) "Time sneaks on you like a windshield on a bug." :-) :-) :-) - John Lithgow
:-) "Education is when you read the fine print; experience is what you get when you don't." :-) :-) :-) - Pete Seeger
:-) "If you think education is expensive, try ignorance." :-) :-) :-) - Emma Goldman
:-) "We are here on earth to do good for others. What the others are here for, I don't know." :-) :-) :-) - W. H. Auden
:-) "They say time changes everything, but you actually have to change them yourself." :-) - Andy Warhol
:-) "I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it." :-) :-) :-) - Thomas Jefferson
:-) "I have not failed. I've just found 10 000 ways that won't work." :-) - Thomas Alva Edison
:-) "
:-) "When life hands you a lemon, say, "Oh yeah, I like lemons. That else ya got?"" :-) :-) :-) - Henry Rollins
:-) "Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there." :-) :-) :-) - Will
:-) "The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat." :-) :-) :-) - Lily Tomlin
Gladwell, M. (2008). Outliers: The Story of Success.
*** Really interesting reading. (Thanks for lending me the book, Patrick!). A popular notion is that success is a result of personal traits, intelligence, ambition and hard work. While that is true, it is only a part of the whole truth. Malcolm Gladwell presents the other half of the truth about success, nicely summarized in the following citation (pp.175-176):
"So far in Outliers we've seen that success arises out of the steady accumulation of advantages: when and where you were born, what your parents did for a living, and what the circumstances of your upbringing were all make a significant difference in how well you do in the world. The question for the second part of Outliers is whether the traditions and attitudes we inherit from our forebears can play the same role. Can we learn something about why people succeed and how to make people better at what they do by taking cultural legacies seriously? I think we can."
McClain, G., & Adamson, E. (2001). The Complete Idiot's Guide to Zen Living.
*** The book explains about Zen and how Zen can be applied in many different aspects of life. It is easy to read - one of the authors has an MFA in creative writing. Sometimes the fact that the other co-author is a psychologist shows a little too much, but is not aggravating.
My favorite story is on page 67 about the two traveling monks. Here are some random quotes (I did not highlight a favorite quote while reading the book):
“Singing in the shower or the car is often more Zen-like than singing in a performance.”
“Striving to get ahead implies the future is somehow preferable to the now and more worthy of your attention. It also tends to backfire. You’ll go farter being the best you can be right now.”
Pirsig, R. (2005). Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
* I could not read more than a third of the book - I only read through chapter 11. I had to stop after a 7-page discussion on 2 philosophers - Immanuel Kant and David Hume. This book may be groundbreaking in modern philosophy, but it’s not my type of reading and I do not recommend it to ordinary people (non-philosophers, that is). Here is what I found about it in The Complete Idiot's Guide to Zen Living: “Pirsig’s brand of Zen… may not sound much like anything coming from
NOW READING:
Hyman, M. (2009). The UltraMind Solution.
IN THE PIPELINE :-)
American Bureau of Shipping, Rules for Survey after Construction 2006, part 7.
The 2008 edition is available here., (also available in PDF format, free download after registration).
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