Professor Elam

Tuesday Nov 11, 2014

I would agree with thre of Michael Lewis picks. 

Reminiscences of a Stock Operator This is the story of Jesse Livermore, one of the most famous stock investors of all time. While written decades ago it is as instructive today as then. Tragically the burden of performance was such that Livermore eventually took his own life.  This is an incredible bargain at 1.99 for the Kindle version. This has been on the sidebar of my market perspective blog since it began. And I discuss The Right Stuff later on. 

Huckelberry Finn is on many such lists but I found a couple of Twain's other works incredibly modern and insightful. 

 

 

 

The Mysterious Stranger like a Connecticut Yankee is more science fiction and what might be termed paranormal in this day and age. It is the story of Phillip Tradd. Who is Phillip?  If you enjoyed the movie The Devil's Advocate, you will find this essentially an earlier version of the same tale.

I am amazed Spielberg or someone like him has not made movie of Mysterious Stranger.  

 

 

 

Letters from Earth is another audacious tale from Twain. An Angel falls from Grace and is sentenced to a time of penance on a little known planet at the far side of a forgotten solar system. Of course it is Earth. The Angel records his observations of these strange people and their habits. He notes that their idea of heaven is to be robed in white while singing hymns, yet the same group seems to enoy a beer while watching a baseball game on that same Sunday Afternoon. Why then is Heaven not a baseball park the Angel wonders?

 

 

 

 

 

Think life is tough these days, well try A World Lit Only by Fire the Medieval Mind and the Renaissance Portrait of an Age.  Manchester traces history from the brutal Middle Ages into the Age of Enlightenment. Serious stuff, not a sissy read I promise. 

 

 

 

 

American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur 14880-1964 is much more than just a biography. But as the saying goes, there is no history there is only biography. Manchester begins with MacArthur's relatives how fought in the Civil War. He takes us on a the young MacArthur's journey as one of only about twenty Americans to have visited China by 1900. It is the story of the development of the Pacific Rim and more. The William Manchester page is here.  His three part biography on Churchill is the definitive work on the man. 

Paul Johnson is another famous British historian. Modern Times will be the most informative book you ever read on the 20th century. IT is the biography of notable figures, no monsters, like Mao and Stalin. 

A History of the American People is the book of American History.  ?Which is to say it is a serious of short biographies of those who shaped this country. Yes it is a long book but reading in fifty page chunks, as with American Caesar is the ticket. It is these men and women that shaped the unique experiment that became America. Which is something Russia will has and never will accomplish.  

 

 

 

 

And then there is simply the Dean of American Writers, Tom Wolfe.

Wolfe came to prominence with a piece he did for Esquire on Las Vegas. His stream of conscious it is happening right now method of writing was just right for the town that truly never sleeps. He observed that the radio in his rent car never would turn off, just the metaphor for a town where grocery stores were open at 3 AM for show girls getting off work. 

I remember reading the Kandy Kolored Tangerine Flake Streamlined Baby sitting by the pool in my college apartment house. Hunter S Thompson followed with Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas but given that Thompson later blew his brains out during a phone call to his wife, and the fact that Wolfe is still with us, gives Wolfe the nod I think, don't you. 

I preferred his non fiction to the fiction. HIs book The Right Stuff put pioneer Mach One Chuck Yeager on the pedestal he deserves. 

Wolfe's description of what it is like to land a jet aircraft on a heaving carrier deck is a classic in itself, a controlled crash as he says. 

Others in my MBA class chuckled when I named Davide E Davis as a great write of our time.  But he was. I just ordered his compilation Thus Spake David E for a bargain price and look forward to reading it over Thanksgiving.  He declared that Tom Wolfe would be an
inspiration for the writing at Car and Driver and he was.  

 

 

 

 

If you want to improve your writing, read good writers. For example,

Malcolm Gladwell on Ron Popeil, The Pitchman. Here is the Malcolm Gladwell page.

I hvae read Ouliers (not what you might think about exceptional people like Gates and the Beatles) and The Tippoing Point, both recommended. The latter describes how small ideas become big ideas and beliefs.

And finally, How to Pass the CPA Exam by Gleim is a must read for all accounting students. 

I used the very first Gleim review when it came out in  1974-75. Gleim has expanded since and has similar guides and courses for CMA, EA, and CIA. All have excellent ideas on how to study, how to develop a 'solutions approach' and yes they have the schedule leading up to sitting for any of these exams figured out to the week and day of what to do. 

I find that most students simply do not understand what the word 'study' really means. Gleim addresses that question. 

And in the non fiction deparment, no one writes about life at the top better than 

Dan Jenkins. Try Limo or Baja Oklahoma for starters. Jenkins professionally follows golf but has written on football in Semi Tough and gold in Dead Solid Perfect. Here is a line from the latter

I always figured hanging around a country club golf course in an alpaca sweater was a better deal than working under the grease rack on some guy's chevy…..

And while I amat it, nothning beats a Kindle Paper White for being able to carry around one hundred books at a time weighing only a few ounces,just the thing for the Qantas ride to Australia.