What is this world coming to? This is a question I occasionally find myself asking myself or others around me. Even though these days most things don’t really surprise me, sometimes you have to wonder about what you are reading and seeing in the news.

But maybe that’s it – it’s what I read and see in the news. If you hear bad news (or even good news) it is a short, sound-byte driven story that has very little depth. On the surface, a news story could be the worst thing to possibly happen in the world. But with more depth and information beyond the brief story, it may reveal a story that could still be bad – or good – but the more you know, the more you know. This is the idea behind the book All The Troubles In The World.

P.J. O’Rourke is a conservative political satirist. Whether you agree with his politics or not, he makes his point with sarcasm and dry humor that would find someone on the polar opposite politically giving an occasional chuckle. This book, written in 1994 (and sitting on my bookshelf since then), is, as stated on the cover, “the lighter side of overpopulation, famine, ecological disaster, ethnic hatred, plague and poverty.” Lighter side? I asked myself that prior to digging into the dusty pages of this book, one which did give me take-aways.

My biggest takeaway is that you really do need depth to a story. We don’t have time to look into every nuance or wrinkle in everything we see in the news, but more information on the people and scenarios that encircle a story help give it context, and help one make their own opinions on it. Many news Web sites have “related links” to other stories pertaining to a certain news story. I often find myself at Wikipedia when I want a start to get depth in a story.

Another takeaway from the book is you need multiple perspectives on a story, or really anything. There is plenty of talk about liberal or conservative biases in the media. While I am well aware when I see something being spun in a certain direction in front of me, I am able to discern the shaft from the wheat, and see what is truly happening and what is not.

A final takeaway is that we need more humor in our lives. As I write this, I admit I have been grumpy throughout this day. If I had a little more humor or something funny happen to me today, I probably wouldn’t be so grumpy. O’Rourke does this funny very well, in a brainy sort of way.

I recommend All The Troubles In The World to anyone who likes P.J. O’Rourke’s work, or anyone who recalls the news and events from the early 1990’s. It was interesting to read this and think back to that time, and see what has changed, and what has not.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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In my takeaways on the book The Venture Cafe I said in business you cannot truly go it alone. But what if you took it to the extreme, where the ideas for what your business does came from other people, namely the same people you are trying to sell to? This is the premise of the book e-Preneur, subtitled “From Wall Street to Wiki: Succeeding as a Crowdpreneur in the New Virtual Marketplace.”

A crowdpreneur, as defined by the author Richard Goossen, is, “an individual or organization that uses the strategy of online crowd empowerment in its various forms (collective intelligence, mass collaboration, crowdsourcing & others) in the pursuit of an entrepreneurial venture.” In other words, your business is solely about the ideas from others. Crowdsourcing, as I have digested it, is making an open call for ideas. An example of a crowdpreneur often cited is Chicago’s Threadless, a t-shirt company where ideas are submitted by the community through their Web site, who vote on what shirt designs will eventually be sold.

To many this is not only a new idea but one they probably would never consider. How can you give control over what your business does to others? However if you have some curiosity on the topic, this may be a read for you. Even though my own business Dunkirk Systems, LLC would be considered traditional in comparison to a crowdpreneurial business, I did have takeaways from this book.

My greatest take away is to keep in close contact with your customers. Business owners of all sizes can easily lose focus of their business and the service they offer to their customers. As a small businessperson, the input and ideas from my partners and clients are critical to the success of my business. On the other extreme is the airline industry, who plainly doesn’t give a damn about their customers. Input can sometimes be a distraction, but managed properly it can be a vital source for ideas and as a result increased business.

Another take away is that there is no shortage of ideas for running a business. Advances in technology, including Internet technologies labeled as “Web 2.0,” have enabled companies to do many great things, including crowdsourcing and being crowdpreneurial. Just think back a few years for many of the services and Web sites (e.g. YouTube) were merely good ideas in someone’s head. By keeping an open mind and being able to adapt and change as needed, companies can either stay ahead of the game, or survive in tough economic times.

E-Preneur takes the reader through 5 steps to create a crowdpreneurial venture, from the original concept to funding it. Throughout the book there are many lists, though if they were broken out more as tabular lists would have been more helpful in organizing your thoughts as you read it. The book closes with some basic business start-up concepts that, if you are already at this point, you may already have down. Where many books have a type or two, a glaring error was in citing name of the chairman of Cisco Systems as John Cisco instead of John Chambers! All things considered, if you are looking for ideas or a different perspective on business, e-Preneur is a good and encouraging read.

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As the saying goes, it takes money to make money. This is something I learned first-hand when I started my own business, Dunkirk Systems, LLC, several years ago. In my case, I bootstrapped my business – used savings as well as revenues to grow and expand my business. It has worked for me as it fits the size and scope of my business. But bootstrapping isn’t for everyone, and not just people who don’t have money to invest in a business. Some business ideas require a large amount of cash for research and manufacturing, and this is where venture capital can come into play.

Venture capital, or VC, is a large part of the story of the book The Venture Cafe by Teresa Esser. It is a non-fiction piece about entrepreneurs and those with business or product ideas and how they go about taking those ideas forward. The notion of a cafe stems from the author’s experience with a pub on the campus of MIT in Cambridge, MA where people with gather to talk thru various business and technology ideas. The book follows the path from idea to established companies, and throughout are interviews with people at various stages themselves, including the author’s own personal stories.

My greatest takeaway from the book is you cannot do it alone. Whether you need financial or human capital or merely cheerleaders on the sidelines, to grow and be a true business you need resources that will surely go beyond yourself. This can be hard for some who are, using a term I commonly use, control-freak entrepreneurs. It is not letting go, it is empowering others. And things may not go exactly as you have planned, especially when using other people’s money.

An equally important takeaway is accountability, to everybody including the investors to employees to you. Investors want to know how and why their money is being spent, and if they will make a profit or not. This may mean making hard, unpopular decisions, but to pursue the goal and move forward, they have to be made.

A final takeaway is that you may fail. Where another saying says failure is not an option, it can happen, and if it does, you need to react to it. One example in the book is about an executive who loses everything, yet in his next opportunity he excels to an extreme. Recovering from this failure, or bouncing back, shows the true mettle of a person.

I enjoyed The Venture Cafe, especially for someone who was living in the Boston area around the time it was written. Many of the people and companies were ones I was familiar with. Though it was published in 2002 and talks much of the dot-com bust of that period, many of the stories and lessons learned from it apply today. And as much as the book is about VC, it does not profess it is the only way to go, and provides takes of those who chose VC and those who did not for their business. I recommend this book for anyone who may want to reminisce about the past, and learn from it to empower the future.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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Several years ago on a business trip to Amsterdam, I was offered a book by the hotel I was staying at. The book was about the hotel and area where I was staying, and I gladly accepted it and it sat on my bookshelf until now. So why would I keep such a book? Now I know.

The book is titled “Be Our Guest! All about Jan Toebaxman, Holland and the Dutch.” The hotel I stayed in was called the Golden Tulip Jan Tabak – Golden Tulip is a hotel chain and Jan Tabak is a version of the name Jan Toebaxman, or Joe Tobaccoman in English. It tells the story about the original hotel built near the site back in the 1600’s, as well as the story of the innkeeper and the region where it is outside of Amsterdam.

Did I have any takeaways from this 47-page book? Of course! My greatest takeaway is that there are stories to be told. From stories of individuals to families to businesses and cities, there are surely many stories never documented in some form, and thus lost over the generations. It is not until years later this is usually found, and the recreation of the stories from other stories takes some great effort. Telling a story, no matter how small, adds to the conversation of life and society.

Another takeaway is you can sell through telling your story. If I had more time on that trip this book pointed out small towns and sights to see in those towns. The book itself had little mention about the present-day hotel itself, but in selling on the area, it would be top of mind to stay at this hotel if I wanted to visit this area again.

A final takeaway is receiving this book was unexpected. The only other hotel I have been in that had a book or story of any kind was a Marriott hotel, where I found a copy of the Marriott family and hotel chain story. This was years ago, and I don’t even know if they distribute the books in hotel rooms anymore. Usually the “reading materials” in a hotel room are sales pitches or the Gideons Bible, and some hotels don’t offer the latter anymore. This book was a pleasant surprise, even though it took a while for me to read it.

As I pass along a book after I read it, I will send this book to the first person who posts a comment stating they would like it. Don’t leave your address, as I will email you outside of the blog for it. And there’s no obligation to visit The Netherlands either, though I highly recommend it. The hotel is still there, but is now NH Jan Tabak.

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To keep well-rounded, I try to read both business books and anything else. One book on my list was The Girl From Farris’s by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Set in Chicago in the early part of the last century, it is the story of a young woman who tries to go on the straight and narrow after a career as a prostitute, and the people who try to help and hinder her. My original intent on reading it was due to the references to Chicago’s Loop. And like anything about life, I found takeaways from the book.

My greatest takeaway is that you must follow your dreams, no matter how hard they are. The heroin of the book, Maggie (who’s real name is June), makes the decision to go on the straight and narrow, get a job and make a life for herself. She is lured back to her old ways and as well encounters people who try to help her but are more furthering their own causes. But Maggie persists, moving forward but not forgetting where she came from.

Another takeaway was that it’s a small world. Maggie repeatedly encounters people from her past throughout the story, under varying circumstances. And this was in the day of the manual typewriter! Keeping this is mind will help you in dealing with people you may never want to encounter again the next time you see them.

The Girl From Farris’s is short and enjoyable story, packed with plot twist throughout. If you’re looking for a book for a cross-country flight, allow me to recommend this one.

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