Professor Elam

Several of you have asked about a book to review.  The idea behind the book review has multiple goals-college should require one to read and acquire knowledge outside the classroom
you should develop a stable of authors you admire
you should discover new ways of looking at the same old landscape.

For example, who is your favorite non fiction author?

If I had to pick one, it would be hard to improve on Tom Sowell .  Dr. Sowell is officially a professor of economics at Stanford, but also an incredibly prolific author and columnist.  One rarely sees him on television or hears him on radio as he refuses to let the host cherry pick questions for him and then edit his actual response at a later time.  You can click on the hyper link to look at the incredible range of topics he has addressed.  Tom Sowell’s Random Thoughts  are better than most people thinking at their best.

Walter Williams  is a professor of economics at George Mason University.  Here is another brilliant and prolific author worthy of your investigation. Williams and Sowell are good friends on opposite coasts, if you get the chance to hear Walter Williams interview T Sowell on the radio, don’t miss it, Sowell does not suffer fools gladly.

A UNT professor named Dr. James Duban  has written Be a College Achiever: The Complete Guide to Academic Stardom.  Note it is on Dr. Williams list of must reads, and mine too!

Some of you are reading  Jim Rogers  books recounting his two round the world tours. I have two copies of each for loan (but I want them back!). These are excellent introductions to the global economy. In the first, Investment Biker, he spends three years circling the globe on a BMW motorcycle. On the next trip, Adventure Capitalist, he has a special $800,000 hand built Mercedes 230 sports car built on a G Wagon 4wd diesel powered chassis-and amazingly returns without a scratch on the car.

Here is a Business Week site on current best sellers.

Some of my other favorites include

Den of Thieves by James Stewart – the non fiction account of the rise of Mike Millikan at Drexel Burnham and his junk bond empire, and the second half details how the government brought him down-better than fiction

Final Accounting by Barbara Toffler –  an inside look at the fall of Arthur Andersen, we read this in the audit class

How to Swim with Sharks without Being Eaten by Harvey McKay – McKay runs an envelope company in Minnesota, but has a lot of great ideas on business

What they Don’t Teach You at Harvard Business School by Mark McCormack who was the original Jerry McGuire by signing Arnold Palmer as a client and creating the sports agent business as we know it today.

I have found the easiest way to get any book I want is either the public library or log on to Amazon.com  and type in the title.  You can order anything used for less than the cost of driving around DFW looking for it.

Other recent winners include Freakonomics and The World is Flat.

Don’t hesitate to stop by the office to peruse what I have available, or you might visit a public library, this would be a public building filled with books that are free for holders of a library card.  Not familiar with a library, no problem as my high school English teacher used to say, you don’t need to know how to use the library but you do need to know how to use the librarian. These are always helpful folks who can usually find whatever you need.

DLE