Nonfiction Book Reviews
Page One of TwoAmerica: The Book by Jon Stewart and the Writers of The Daily Show
Warner Books, September, 2004Hardcover, 221 pages
ISBN: 0446532681
Ordering information:
Amazon.com
In addition to being hilarious, America the Book is a well-organized and
well-planned book about our country and government. After going through the standard U.S.
Government textbook, students in high school should then be given this book so
they really understand how our government operates. Readers of this faux textbook
will learn about important subjects like democracy, voting, lobbyists, political
campaigns, Halliburton, the news media and of course, C-SPAN drinking games.
A well-written foreword from former President Thomas Jefferson is also provided.
The book also contains the notorious nude photographs of the Supreme Court Justices,
which got the book banned from Wal-Mart's shelves. (Wal-Mart's censors clearly
missed the robes that you can cut out and paste on the judges photographs to restore
their dignity.) If only the Daily Show staff would actually release some of the books
they describe at the end of the book: The Daily Show With Jon Stewart
Presents Get Ready for the Metric System and Jon Stewart's Anthology of
Public Domain Victorian Erotica. Perhaps they will at least
write a sequel to the America: the Book, which offers something
that's laugh-out-loud funny on every single page.
--Greg Knollenberg
The Daily Drucker by Peter F. Drucker
HarperBusiness, October, 2004Hardcover, 448 pages
ISBN: 0060742445
Ordering information:
Amazon.com
Peter F. Drucker, a highly respected business strategist and thinker, offers a
collection of his ideas in The Daily Drucker for readers to use for inspiration
and motivation. Drucker has written dozens of books which have
been required reading for world leaders like Winston Churchill
to executives running successful business like
Hewlett Packard, Merck, Ford, Proctor & Gamble, General Electric and Motorola.
Drucker says this book is an
answer to the question he is often asked, "Which book of yours should I
read first?" Drucker writes that The Daily Drucker "presents in organized form--and
directly from my own writings--a key statement of mine, followed by a few
lines, also from my own works, of comment and explanation, on topics ranging
across a great many fields of my work: management, entrepreneurship; decision
making; the changing workforce; the nonprofits and their management; and so on."
At the bottom of each of Drucker's 366 entries readers will find an
action point that tells them exactly how to put Drucker's ideas into use.
This is a great book for the busy executive that needs to focus and for the nonprofit
manager who has so much to do he can't even figure out where to start. For
those new to Peter Drucker's crisp and practical advice, the Daily Drucker will make a
great beginning.
Nonfiction Book Reviews
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Return to the February 2005 issue of The IWJ.
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