Listened to the audiobook a while back. I was impressed with Greg Mortenson’s tenacity to fulfill a promise he made during his failed conquest to reach the 2nd peak of the Himalaya. In that trip, he had gotten lost and was rescued by his porter and taken care by a group of village people during his recovery. He made a promise to the carefree poor village people that he would come back to build a school to return a favor. It took him over a year to collect enough money from one of the earlier pioneers of the Silicon Valley. But his first trip wasn’t successful because he didn’t account for the need for a bridge to bring the building materials in. He had to return to the states to get more money and finally risked his life to build his first school. Later he was appointed the New Asian Institute to oversee the money to build more school on behalf of this rich donor.

Later he met his wife and took on the challenging work of building more schools for the regions, at times risking his life (got kidnapped) during the Talaban uprising in Afghanistan.

Sometimes, you just have to sit down and enjoy 3 cups of the tea (symbolic of the 3 stages) with people to get to understand people especially of the people you don’t share a lot commonalities.

I admire Mortonson’s tenacity and his passion to help the poor in the remote corner of the world. Somehow, I have a feeling that he’s making a bigger difference to the people more than some of the politicians are doing. Wish he has planted and continue to plant the seeds for the future generations of people there to enjoy the prosperous and fulfilled lives.

This is a very interesting story about a bright kid, Art William, who could have gone straight growing up but due to the loss of his father, he and his younger brother and sister was left defending themselves with a mentally-deteriorating schizophrenic mother. He turned his skills toward making counterfeit US currency when a boyfriend of his mothers took him under his wing and taught him how to make counterfeits. But he perfected the process through many trials and errors. It’s about the acid-free paper, color changing ink, the metal strip which he devised to be sandwiched between two thin paper, the water mark, and the details of the printing.

Printing money is useless without having to distribute them. Art and his wife, Natalie, came out with a shopping spree throughout their journey, to wash the money out and return real money back in. Of course, there are other ways through mixing in with the drug money to Mexico but it was a more dangerous method. He almost died from doing that.

Ultimately, it was his long re-united father that did him in by not staying low-key and spread the money out via inexperienced people. It was the greed that got them all in trouble. Art was sentenced to several years of jail time, offering himself to free up the other affected people. When he came out, he was supposed to be on the right side of the law and teach the police how to catch counterfeiters. Unfortunately, he was banned from working in the same area that deal with money. He turned back to making counterfeits again at the end.

The story was well written and captivating. It’s sad to hear that Art Williams eventually re-committed the crime after going straight for a while, or perhaps he never did. His pursuit of his criminal father was an interesting one. Despite being abandoned at his early age, he still felt a sense of kinship toward his own father. It’s doubtful that his father felt equally passionate about him as he expressed more regrets toward his unmanaged dogs than toward his own family when he was sent to jail for possessing firearms during probation.

While reading this book, you can’t help to be imagining doing the counterfeiting yourself and going on the shopping spree like they did. It sounds so fascinating to be in the middle of passing the fake bill. On the other hand, I feel sorry for Art William Jr. He could have made a good craftsman of any kind. A lift lost to the temptation of the crime.

There are five short stories in this book by Ann Packer. Overall, the stories are interesting but the fact that they’re short stories seems to make me want more like “what happens at the end?” I particularly like the author’s masterful use of metaphors. The sad stories are also easy to follow and down to earth, especially most happened in the Bay Area. They’re all about missing the loved ones and emotional struggle dealing with loss. The audiobooks are wonderful with five audio narrators skillfully mimicking the voices of the people. Some of the description of the stories are copied from Amazon. I have my comments at the end.

“Walk for Mankind,” teenager Richard Appleby describes his bittersweet relationship with Sasha Horowitz, a rebellious, risk-taking 14-year-old, who has a clandestine affair with a drug dealer. The narrative starts from the present when the narrator is 50+ years old. The author and the readers never knew what happened to Sasha after they parted their way 30+ years before, thanks to the narrator’s intentional loss of the scrap paper, most likely having the contact information from Sasha. He “murdered” two birds in one stone and many readers wishing for more.

“Things Said or Done” is set three decades later, when Sasha, now 51 and divorced, has become Richard’s caretaker, forced to deal with his self-destructive, narcissistic personality while recognizing the ways in which they are alike. This is the part I didn’t hear from the audiobook. Maybe I’d need to go back and re-listen it.

“Molten” conveys a mother’s grief over her adolescent son’s senseless death – killed while rescuing another boy tracked on the railroad track. This one is rather emotional. The author did a great job in expressing the grieving mother’s emotion.

“Dwell Time” features a protagonist’s happy second marriage—until her husband disappears. This odd story describe a perpetually disappearing man from the war zone of the family life. I’m not sure if it’s related to the post-traumatic disorder or not. I can imagine someone would something like that though I never met one.

In the affecting “Her First Born,” a new father finally understands his wife’s attachment to the memory of her first child, who died. Another loss of dear family member, in the case a 6-month old baby, showed how good the author is in expressing the embarrassment and sorrow of confronting other expecting parents.

“Jump” is an odd story about a rich man’s son who fakes an underprivileged background to work in a photocopy shop. This one is probably a filler – not much to talk about.

This book is all about all the sciences behind support human life in space. Very interesting topics on the problems and inconveniences associated with zero gravity that we take it for granted on earth. For example, drinking, eating, deprecating, sex, recycling of resources, and physical changes in our body from long traveling. Pursuing answers to the those questions requires much brain power and experiments. It takes lots of money – estimated to be $150B to travel from Earth to the Mars. Is it worth it? Probably not but neither is a useless war like Iraq that consumed many lives and the same amount of money. The author did a great job in this book – very enlightening and funny at times in her famous “notes.”

Michael Lewis described his experience as a father to her three children in their early life. Interesting anecdotes are his daughter’s acquiring cuss words in front of boy bullies, his mistaking his daughter’s insect bites for chicken pox – more like trusting a “bad” doctor’s advise, accounting the sibling rivalries when his 3rd child was born, facing his wife’s postpartum depression, camping out with his daughters, safeguarding his son in the hospital while his son’s getting care for RST, his getting vasectomy and his ambivalence and the experience through it, and a few other interesting stories about his family life.

Michael Lewis’ use of sports metaphors is masterful and keen – hence the name “Home Game.” Writing a revealing personal story is difficult and at times awkward (like the Vasectomy surgery). He did it with grace and in a funny way that kept the reader laughing throughout. This book is highly recommended for anyone embarking on a child bearing journey and anyone who has gone through it and may have forgot what it’s like down in the trenches fighting a war of attrition with your loved one. It brought back a lot of “painful” memory of my own.

The author wrote a very good biography of one of the greatest Presidents of the United Stated. He was an accidental President who got pushed into limelight after FDR’s death. His humble beginning being born to a poor family and rose to become a good farmer. Despite his father’s bad gambling habit that thrust the family into a spiral bad fortune, he decidedly owned up the responsibility of keeping the family intact in Independence, Missouri. Truman was a meticulous person from the beginning with integrity and resolution. Due to his friendly demeanor which did not offend anyone, he made a good politician. With a help of a Democrats big boss, Tom Pendergast, he got elected to be a county court judge. Then he got elected to be US Senator. Through some luck, he became the Vice President to FDR.

Truman showed lots of courage when confronted with the decision to end the war with Japan using an unknown weapon of mass destruction. Dropping the two Atom bombs in Japan was one of the most momentous decisions he had to make. Even after wrapping up the World War II, he still had to struggle getting re-elected, in an election that humbled the media establishment. None of the papers were projecting him to win and he won the heart of the people through the merits of his accomplishments.

Another big decision he had to make was to fire General Douglas McCarthur. The old soldier was servicing his own agenda. He made the right call with a war strategy in the beginning of the Korean War to cut off North Korea’s attack but he later made some strategic mistake in not foreseeing China’s involvement and almost started another World War between China and US.

I came away learning so much about the critical period between the end of the World War II with Germany and the end of the World War II with Japan. Also the history behind the Korean War was new and interesting to me. Harry Truman was indeed a good President despite his poor background and poor vocal appeal. He served the country well in her time of crisis without any selfish agenda. The irony was that his mother-in-law still didn’t think Harry Truman was good enough for her daughter before she passed away in the Blair’s house across from the White House.

The abridged audiobook I listened was pretty concise and to the point. Highly recommended.

Yes, small things matter and the author would like you think it matters more than you think. They do provide very good convincing evidences that small things do roll up to big things. Small things are especially important for authors’ creative/advertising industry, where creative ideas could be small to start with.

Going the extra inch could make or break a person’s careers. The story about this guy’s job interview which he started the commute 3 hours ahead of the schedule and yet still missed the schedule due to the bad weather. He got the job because he was diligent in going the extra “inch.”

Don’t ignore small mistakes. They could become a big one. Many examples are there in the technology industry.

The author encouraged the readers to think small or niche when deciding to start a new business. It doesn’t have to be a big idea.

Overall, this book is full of good advises and examples why you’d need to heed the advises. Ultimately, it’s about doing the right things – small or large, starting small, observing the smallest details. They could mean successes or just mediocrity.