6 years ago

Innovation: Look beyond Silicon Valley

Today the popular website Virgin Disruptors, one of Richard Branson’s innumerable activities, posted the following article of mine under the title “Innovation — Look beyond Silicon Valley.” I had answered the challenging question, “Have entrepreneurs lost the will to innovate?” Innovation is alive and well among entrepreneurs—but not so much where you’d expect. Take Silicon Valley, […]

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6 years ago

How much is a Pulitzer Prize worth?

If you’ve ever written a book, you might be shocked by the vanishingly small sales, whether your book was fiction or nonfiction. Like me, though, you’ve probably imagined that winning a big prize such as a Pulitzer or a National Book Award would make all the difference in the world. Here, then, as a cold […]

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6 years ago

Surprised? Here are the REAL bestsellers

Most of the time I turn to the New York Times Book Review when I want to know which books are selling best. Today, on a lark, I checked out Amazon’s list. Boy, was I surprised! First, understand why I decided to do this. The reason is summed up in a sentence from an online […]

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6 years ago

How many Americans read books?

If you’re convinced that the combination of television, video games, social media, longer work hours, and accelerated lifestyles has caused Americans to read fewer books, you’re right. Recent polls reveal that around one in four U.S. adults read no books at all last year—a proportion that is three times as great as the eight percent […]

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6 years ago

Are bound books destined to disappear in the future?

These days it’s fashionable to predict the demise of the traditional bound book – not just because of continuing inroads by the e-book but also because, we’re told, people these days simply don’t have the time or the attention span to read a 300-page book, much less one that runs to 600 pages or more. […]

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9 years ago

When it comes to our national security, do we really get what we pay for?

Thoughts on reading Top Secret America: The Rise of the New American Security State by Dana Priest and William M. Arkin. The 16 major U.S. intelligence agencies have collectively spent — or, for the most part, better put, squandered — hundreds of billions of dollars since 9/11. Many of the 16 were established after the 2001 attacks. The money has paid for a host of overlapping and duplicative efforts that employ tens of thousands of people, many of them in the private sector. Much of what this ill-considered community has done in the past decade would be viewed by any dispassionate observer as ineffective at best.

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9 years ago

What is a “Great Man,” and why should we care?

Thoughts on reading Wild Bill Donovan: The Spymaster Who Created the OSS and Modern American Espionage, by Douglas Waller Have you ever heard of Tiglath-Pileser? Unless you’re a student of ancient history, chances are slim that you’re familiar with the man’s name or have so much as a clue about who he was or what […]

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