Michael Port, author of a number of bestselling sales-guru business books, has now come out with a pocket volume called The Think Big Manifesto: Think You Can’t Change Your Life (and the World?) Think Again.
I like the arresting graphic design of the book (a publicist sent me an advance copy) but was somewhat wary of the bold marketing language on the wrapper. Still, I found on opening the book that I was drawn in by the author’s cool, knowing style and I prepared myself to be convinced.
I started reading the book, nodding my head: I agreed with just about everything I read. The prose voice is somewhat breathless, though, and I had trouble staying focused on the book’s flow. As brief as it is, I noticed myself skimming ahead to the summarizing statements.
I found myself agreeing with all of the specific advice in the book and wondering whether I can (or do) actually follow it myself. What most of it comes down to is daring to think big and avoiding the doubts and negativity and small thinking that can so often hold us back.
I like this kind of thing, though I am also wary of it. That is, I want self-help, breakthrough, artistic and entrepreneurial leaps, but I have also seen a lot of snake oil and easy answers in my day. So it’s love/hate with this type of thing for me, and sometimes I adore it (The Power of Now, The War of Art, Money & the Meaning of Life) and other times it doesn’t stick.
For all of the books of this ilk I’ve devoured, where are my masterpieces, my killer apps? I’m still waiting to see if this one will take.

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Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
Something Jonathan Lethem might have cooked up after watching all three seasons of the Venture Brothers while perusing the Watchmen graphic novel.



I enjoyed it!


View all my reviews.

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Quoting from More Alan Furst Blogging:

More Alan Furst blogging, this time from Unqualified Offerings:

Unqualified Offerings: Henry Farrell got me into a to-do for novelist Alan Furst at GWU this evening. The food was fabulous and the author did not disappoint. Controversial GWU President Stephen Joel Trachtenberg did the introduction, and it was good – the kind of informed appreciation a writer can get, if lucky, from a very smart fan. See previous Furst-blogging on this site and current Furst-blogging from Brad DeLong. Furst read a few pages from The Foreign Correspondent, which will be out in time for Father’s Day – 2006. I have to say, the excerpt completely hooked me…

Now excuse me while I turn green with envy.

If anything I’d expect to see more discussion of Alan Furst in blogs. He’s an incredible writer and as good as Patrick O’Brian is at conjuring up a different time in all its nuances. Now that I’ve read all his books I’m always impatient for the next one, and other supposedly similar writers out there (not naming any names) don’t quite scratch the same itch.

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Quoting from The Poor Man: He Sat Right Down And Wrote Himself A Letter:

[I]t is a waste of time to teach utterly uninterested schoolkids how to calculate reaction rates and trajectories of cannonballs and so on, things which are going to be about as useful to most of them in the grown-up world as being able to name all of the seven dwarfs, instead of teaching them A) what is science, B) what isn’t science, C) how to tell one from the other.

The result of this is that 99% of journalists, and the public at large, think that science is just one rather boring topic for “Crossfire”-style argumentation, where there’s one side screaming one set of lies and the other side screaming another and everyone hates America and/or babies and now here’s some ads for Matt Damon movies and dick pills.

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