This book covers the easy-to-follow solutions to the top 100 manners/etiquettes dilemmas that we face in our life, mostly common senses. But there were times when I could use these tips. The basic principles I read from the book:
1) Be in control of your emotion – no screaming or yelling,
2) Be firm. If all fails, get away fast.
3) Be truthful. Don’t lie and don’t be brunt either. Better to say nothing or just state you’re not comfortable talking about it. A good tactic is ask the question back: “Why you asked?”
4) Be considerate of the other’s position,
5) Avoid surprises and embarrassing others,
6) Don’t say “I know how you feel” because we usually don’t.
7) Use hand written notes if at all possible to be personal (I think I’ll fax or email scanned copy of the notes, if that counts 🙂
8 ) Use common sense.

I didn’t care for the dining arrangement (like where to put the salad plate or the “charger” plate) – sounds too complicated and excessive. The tipping etiquettes also sounds too generous (constitutes nearly 15% of the annual spend for Xmas gift) – or I’m just cheap. The author really stretches the dilemmas to add to up 100. There are some obscure ones like how to deal with others’ happy and sad events at the same time, like a mother giving birth to a twin but loses a baby to stillborn. Wow, that’s a dilemma all right.

This is an easy listen (audio book). Having 100 distinctive chapters allows a few items to be missed without losing the continuity. This book epitomizes the “algorithm” of the Golden Rules in this book – a good bet that if you practice them, you won’t get yourselves in trouble – most of the time.

Anderson Cooper, the author, gave the personal perspectives, which he normally cannot do as a journalist, on the tragedies he reported from the edges of the world. He seemed to be running toward where the actions or disasters are happening. From the Somalia genocide, to Burma, Vietnam, and Tsunami in Sri Lanka and back in New Orleans after Katrina hit. In a way, he thrives on reporting those dangerous events and tragedies because in a way he’s running away from his personal tragedies, the death of his father during a heart bypass surgery when he was 8 and the suicide of his brother, Carter, when he was 20. Running toward tragedies allows him to see the worst that could happen, taking some pain from his own tragedies. Writing this book is probably very therapeutic for him.

As the son of Gloria Vanderbilt and Wyatt Cooper, he inherit some of the “star” quality. The reporting of the tragic events were dove-tailed with his personal life stories, keeping the event very personal and yet real. It’s like reading the journal of the journalism exhibited during the reporting of the events, which are normally fairly dry to avoid projecting the reporter’s perspectives. The stories were interesting. The Katrina story was very little close to home. Anderson showed very little respect for politicians that botched up the rescue mission.

I don’t remember ever listening to his reporting at CNN but his speech style reminds me of the Y generation people, who speak with little energy/emotion or perhaps his New York accent. I hope he speaks better than the narration of the audio book.

I enjoyed this book because Anderson Cooper was brutally honest about his own feelings – at times confusing, conflicting, but mostly sincere and honest. And I really empathize his personal struggle on his own tragedies. Of course, it doesn’t hurt to have lots of pictures, video and personal journal to remind him constantly his state of mind and state of the event at the time of occurrence.

In light of recent subprime mortgage disaster that caused many hedge funds to lose lots of money, Taleb is right that most academia are locked into the Bell curve assumption, failing to see the outlier or Black Swan, in the author’s term. Indeed, most people or pundits would like to think that they’re more in control of the environment than they really are. There are simply many factors that can NOT be explained by the models they created. And if they’re successful, it may be due to their luck that a black swan is not lurking in the background.

This book gives me a lot of insight on how to manage the different kinds of risk. There are the Gaussian curve tolerances that we can model the risk on and then there are these outlier risks that seem to come from nowhere because we never expected it. We need to watch out and prepare for it and reduce our exposure to it.

Also, one must not fall into the narrative fallacies. Just because we have the leading story that lead to an event, it does not mean it’s the root cause. In other words, correlation does not mean causal. This is a common warning from well-intentioned statistician. Unfortunately, this is the trap lots of people fall into.

The book was difficult and too long to read for me. Too many references to some philosophical arguments that seems to reduce the impact of the message. There is a lot of self glorification and attacks on other fellow economists in this book. The guy is smart – no doubt about it. But the ideas were so much of a chop suey; it’s hard to follow.

It seems that the more you know about things, the more you know that you don’t know. I guess it’s the central theme of the book. Don’t limit or fool yourself into thinking that you can control the outcome.

At the end, the author really didn’t offer a solution how to overcome the “black swan” effect. Of course, the author would argue that it’s the whole idea – it’s a black swan because we cannot predict it. The author seems to leave the reader dangling for more insight.

This book gave the readers a glimpse what was like to live through these tumultuous years between the two world wars (1913 and 1933) both started by Germany. The story ended right at the onset of the World War II. There were several German governments during these times. The people seemed numbed from all the changes and went about their own business and life, without knowing what they were stepping into a “duel” between the “state” (Hitler’s Nazi government) and the individual people (their belief, righteousness and right). The writing was most excellent even after being translated from German. The author used great metaphors to draw the readers into the vivid picture of their lives and what are left.

My take-aways:
– Things can turn from bad (losing the WW I) to worse (hyper inflationary era, where money lost its value between paychecks) to disaster (Nazi’s take over) very quickly without the people’s even noticing the threat to rise against it.
– When Nazi (SA) soldiers ran around with guns, it’s very hard to argue against the “power.” People succumbed to the power and learned the phrase “hail to Hitler” very quickly, when the alternative was being beaten up and even facing death. Going against the power and risking death did not seem logical to the author and obviously the majority of the people.
– By the author’s account, the forced camaraderie (or peer pressure of sorts) among the youths in the concentration camps drove people to do things they normally wouldn’t do on their own including turning against the Jews and their own conscience/belief.
– The youthful innocence among the author’s friends who used to argue against one another in good faith suddenly changed when Nazi took over the power. The nationalist extreme friends became Nazis. And his friends of the other extreme emigrated outside of Germany. The polarization was clear cut.
– The hyper-inflationary era after Germans loss of WW I drove the economy into a tail spin. This created an fertile ground for Hitler and his party. Hitler was in the “right” place at the “right” time.
– The continued concession by the leader to Hitler without any principles may have seeded Hitler’s ruthlessness and his obsession with power. Of course, lack of alliance with other countries like France, UK after WW I certainly did not help to stem Hitler’s encroachment.
– Ironically, the author married a Jewish woman – illegal by Nazi’s law. As a result, he had to emigrate to UK to be united with his wife and two children, leaving a country he loved and yet hated the people in power. It’s a duel that the individual usually loses or walks away.
– The relation between the author and his father was very close. Perhaps that was normal in that era in Germany. At the age of 27+, he was still consulting his father about career decision whether to become a lawyer or writing for the newspaper or getting his PhD. The guy was talented for sure.

Unfortunately, the story ended abruptly in 1933 at the strengthening of the Nazi party. Would be nice to know what happened during and after the WW II.
I listened to the audio book version, which was narrated very well by a German-accented person, which makes the story seem very realistic.

Overall, I utterly enjoyed the book. The emotional impact is very real and lasting.

This is a good complement book to Colin Powell’s own memoir, I supposed, as it’s written by a third party – not Colin Powell himself. The audio book, downloaded from OverDrive, was very long – 23+ hrs. I had a hard time staying on track but the narration and story lines flowed very well, which helped when my mind wondered off and came back without missing the essence.

1. This book highlights how much power within George W. Bush’s administration has been hijacked by Dick Cheney. Who’s the real president? How much of Iraq war was attributed to Dick Cheney’s own agenda? How sad.
2. Colin Powell is a very lucky, patient and smooth guy. He survived the short stint in Vietnam and kept on being promoted from the ranks. He doesn’t make too many enemies and was able to turn all adversarial situation into his advantage. He’s also very patient in turning his reputation into a financial asset much later in life but going on the leadership speech circle.
3. Colin Powell is a good and loyal soldier to his superior (including lying for his boss – Bush, on the Irag’s nuclear buildup), to the country. As a result, he has lots of credibility.
4. He is a natural leader, partly because he thinks for the lowest rank – the solider. He was very hesitant to go to any war, attempting to resolve the issue diplomatically (like in the Haitian coup). But when it’s time for a fight (like the 1st and 2nd Iraq war), he prepares to win the war in the most decisive manner.
5. He was able to concentrate on his career and moved around so much because his supportive wife and understanding family members.
6. Having served 4 US Presidents, he saw four very different style of Presidential leadership. Ronald Reagan was very hands-off. He didn’t care much for the details and ended up with the Oliver North’s Contra Scandal. The 1st Bush had a very good leadership style; he stood by Colin Powell when needed. Powell didn’t exactly worked for Clinton but he helped out whenever he could and spoke very highly of Clinton. George W. is probably the President he held least respect for, because his tolerance for Cheney’s manipulation and his easily being influenced by the last person who spoke to him.
7. One must have principle in life and look at things at a much longer horizon. Doing all the right things most of the time is what leadership is all about.
8. I’m amazed how the Whitehouse administration make decisions. Managing the country seems to take a very different skill set than the political process of winning the election. Everyone seems to have their own agenda, even under the same Presidential leadership.

This book in audio format is a good listen. Very funny and interesting on how human brain work to make us alive and happy.

1. Human brain tends to take snapshot of our memory – a bad “wizard.” We fill in the gaps to make things seem continuous. Our perception of happiness or unhappiness may depend on a lot of factors.
2. We have an emotional circuit breaker that allows to take on traumatic experience more readily than things that don’t trigger the circuit breakers. For example, a wife can forgive the spouse sexual transgression but cannot tolerate or forgive the husbands’ not taking out the garbage last week.
3. Happiness is rarely as good as we imagine it to be, and rarely lasts as long as we think it will. The same mistaken expectations apply to unhappiness.
4. People do a poor job of predicting how they will feel because they focus on a given theme without consideration for others. We may as well ask people’s experience than to predict it ourselves.
5. This book doesn’t give you some magic pill on becoming a happy person, but it may give you some insight into how your mind processes your self talk.
6. Happiness is a state of mind that are very subjective and dependent on what you’re comparing to. Our mind doesn’t work well in isolation. Experiencing shorting electrical shocks after some long ones are better than all long shocks.
7. Because of how our minds work, pleasing people or making people happy may be more of playing tricks on one’s mind than really doing good things for that person.
8. For a people manager, making an employee happy may take a very different strategy. This may sound like a deception but it’s no more guilty than our brains.
9. Writing personal journal has a way to capture one’s state of mind that’s not altered by the brain’s filling the gap. This is a good way to assess one’s happiness in retrospect.

This is a great book about how boys and girls are hardwired to be different and how to deal with their differences.

The main take-aways for me:
1. Girls listen better than boys. Put boys in the front of class helps.
2. Boys like to take risks and enjoy thrill while girls tend not to. This is why scaring boys about the negative effects of drug does not work well. “Victim-orient” discussion is best for girls but not for boys. And boys don’t really “feel” things.
3. What the recent phenomenon of hook-up means to boys and girls and how to prevent boys and girls from hooking-up.
4. Co-ed schools may be harmful for girls who tend to lack self-esteem and not take risks. And it’s harmful for boys who may be compelled not to take arts and literature and other seemingly feminine activities. Having been educated in an all-boy school, I felt I was deprived of the skills in dealing with girls. This has negative effects as well. I think there needs be balance.
5. The harmful effects of ignonymous male – being rejected by male and female friends.
6. The difference between gays and trans-sexual. Gays tend to be more masculine than non-gay. Not true for lesbian. And the physiological difference between male and female is bigger than male and gays. Bi-sexual is rare for men – more as a cover up for homosexuality. Bi-sexual for women is not unusual but not necessarily in the sexual sense.
7. Girls who play sports tend to do well due to high esteem and less likely to be teen mom or suicidal. Should encourage girls to take risk and sports activities and boost girls’ self esteem. On the other hand, boys who play sports has higher risk to get a girl pregnant.
8. Being strict with girls work by allowing them to have a way out of activities they may not want to do but forced to do by peer pressure.
9. The fact that being masculine and feminine are independent. The self tests at the end are interesting.

I’ve learned a lot from the book. Very useful for raising a child – boy or girl.