Reviews
What Really Matters: Find Meaning Amid Upheaval
Robert A Saul MD & Michael Cogdill (Koehler Books)
In an age of noise, weaponized misinformation, and frenzy for viral hype, Dr. Robert Saul and Emmy-winning journalist Michael Cogdill deliver a timely, most-needed compass for the soul. Inspired by the shooting at Columbine and refined through decades of civic engagement, professional courage, and frontline storytelling, What Really Matters: Find Meaning Amid Upheaval successfully conveys the message that a meaningful life is built not on viral influence or political victory, but on six interconnected pillars: truth, trust, science, civility, d...
Grunts, Gramps & Tanks: A Soldier’s Tales
Rick Bogdan (Bookbaby)
Rick Bogdan’s Grunts, Gramps & Tanks: A Soldier’s Tales follows the unpredictable journey of a disillusioned Chicago retail buyer, Tyler Gordon Willett, who impulsively enlists in the infantry in 1975 without telling his wife, Nancy. The teenage recruits at Fort Polk nickname him “Gramps” as he survives basic training, memorably marked by the “Private Dickhead” payday incident. He also endures the OSUT program, where a tank commander’s sweaty Coke inspires his ambitions. The narrative tracks his growth from a novice to an officer, through e...
Off Wall Street: How to Win at Short Selling by Betting Against the Crowd
Mark Roberts (Advantage Books)
Mark Roberts’s Off Wall Street is far more than a memoir of an exceptional investor; it is a brilliantly written manifesto for the independent mind venturing into the investment business. The book follows the author’s unique path, from a master’s in French literature and a family steel business to becoming the owner of Off Wall Street Consulting Group, which, in 2001, made history on Wall Street with its Enron call. The book develops a powerful argument: that short selling is not cynical betting against success, but a discipline that uncovers t...
Cultural Excellence: A Leader's Guide to Strengthening the Heart of Your Organization
Michele Herlein (Forbes Books)
Michele Herlein’s Cultural Excellence is the definitive playbook for leaders who want to ditch hollow mission statements and build a culture that actually moves the needle. Herlein dismisses the idea that culture is soft “fluff” and illustrates that it is the hard wiring of any organization—the behavior of its leaders and what they tolerate. For her, excellence is not accidental; it must be intentionally architected, and she lays out a battle-tested, practical framework for diagnosing your current culture and then redesigning it through a colla...
In The Mountain
Dottie Lee (Atmosphere Press)
Dottie Lee’s In the Mountain drops readers into a top-secret facility buried deep inside a mountain. After a catastrophic earthquake, the central Tube collapses, the glass shatters, and floors slide into the abyss, killing most of the staff and leaving a handful of survivors, including Trace, Paul, Pearl, and Joseph, who escape through an emergency exit into the suffocating darkness beyond the Wall. What follows is a struggle for survival as the group, later dubbed the “Dislocated Family,” discovers a subterranean stream, faces pitch-black ruin...
G.A.L.E. Force: Navigating Strategy, Culture, and Value Creation in Modern M&A
J. Michael Coffey (Entrepreneur Books)
Executive and strategist J. Michael Coffey (former CEO, Manitex and H-E Parts International) delivers a clever examination of the factors behind the success or failure of acquisitions and mergers in an era marked by local fragmentation and global ambition. Drawing from decades of industrial turnarounds, multinational deal-making, and a fourteen-company buildup across seven countries, Coffrey organizes the book around the G.A.L.E. Force framework—Global Aim, Local Execution—and the four market forces now reshaping the lower-middle market. Each s...
Unbroken: Life Outside the Lines
Adriene Cat ()
Adriene Caldwell’s memoir, Unbroken: Life Outside the Lines, chronicles a childhood characterized by trauma. Born to a schizophrenic mother who beat her, neglected her, and eventually surrendered her to the state, Caldwell endures sexual assault, the drowning death of a friend, homelessness, extreme poverty, and a sadistic foster mother she dubs “The Bitch from Hell.” She claws toward stability through academic excellence and a transformative year in Germany. Yet adulthood brings new devastation: stripping, cocaine addiction, a predatory a...
Into the Eye
James Houston Turner (Regis Books (an imprint of Ruby Rock Films))
James Houston Turner’s Into the Eye is a geopolitical thriller that introduces former KGB colonel Aleksandr Talanov, who is thrust into the heart of a diabolical human-trafficking network in central Africa. Tasked with the covert KTAC team, Talanov must locate and rescue Dr. Shawni Juma, a virologist who has uncovered evidence linking the brutal warlord Ojo Mutebi to the wealthy communist ideologue Istvan Szabo. When a rescue helicopter is betrayed from within, and Talanov is stranded in a rebel camp, the mission explodes into a high-stakes, gl...
No Truce With The Vampires - Those Who Endure
Martyn Rhys Vaughan (Martyn Rhys Vaughan)
Martyn Rhys Vaughan’s No Truce with the Vampires: Those Who Endure transplants gothic horror into the sun-scorched Australian outback to conclude its trilogy. In a future where vampires have conquered Earth after humanity nearly destroyed it, the surviving human race is exiled to “Stralia” and infantilized into docile farmers. The story follows Greg Ferguson, a hardy sheepherder in the Red Centre, who discovers from his dying mother’s hidden documents that their world is a prison. Alongside the mysterious Allira, he uncovers the truth about vam...
Turning the Giant: Disrupting Your Industry with Persistent Innovation
John Berra (Forbes Books)
Automation industry veteran and former president of Fisher-Rosemount Systems and executive vice president of Emerson, John Berra, delivers a spirited manual for facing adversity in professional life. He draws on his personal experience turning corporate obstacles into opportunities and his four-decade ascent from Monsanto control engineer to the leader of a $6.7 billion automation division to contend that the giants professionals face—self-doubt, competition, innovation, corporate bureaucracy, skepticism, and success—are not enemies to be slain...