Walker, a neuroscientist and sleep expert, is also the director of University of California-Berkeley’s Center for Human Sleep Science. Lack of sleep makes you “stupider, fatter, unhappier, poorer, sicker, worse at sex, as well as more likely to get cancer, Alzheimer’s and to die in a car crash.” This looks to be a fascinating dive into the simple question of why we sleep, and the more complex issue of why we have become so sleep-deprived as a society.
No. 9. “Leadership: In Turbulent Times,” by Doris Kearns Goodwin.
How do great presidents respond to times of crisis? Does the leader make the times or do the times make the leader?
The acclaimed presidential biographer draws upon the lives of four presidents — Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson to answer these questions. Donald Trump is never mentioned, but as Bloomberg News observed, the book “serve[s] as an indirect critique of today’s hysterical political climate.”
No. 10. “Gridiron Genius: A Master Class in Winning Championships and Building Dynasties in the NFL,” by Michael Lombardi.
Imagine spending decades working alongside three of the greatest dynasty-builders in NFL history. The results of that are Lombardi’s first-hand account of Bill Walsh in San Francisco, Al Davis in Oakland, and, of course, Bill Belichick in New England. These teams were all systems, an example of building a process versus focusing solely on outcome. The takeaway lesson for corporate managers reading this book is that it isn’t the best players, but those who best fit in a specific system who will have the greatest impact.
Bonus read: In my reading list for the summer, I included Jim Chanos’s recommendation for “A World Lit Only by Fire” (1992), by William Manchester. That led to several people recommending James Carroll’s “Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews, A History” (2001). Carroll, a priest turned writer, is part memoir and part history of the schism of the church and Judaism, in particular the Church’s silence during the Holocaust. It comes heavily recommended, so I am looking forward to it.
This column was provided by Bloomberg News.