The World's Toughest Job

Book Review: Father's Day: A Journey into the Mind and Heart of My Extraordinary Son by Buzz Bissinger

As my own children merge into the adult world, I have become increasingly certain that the hardest thing in the world is being a parent - that is, being a "good" parent. Knowing when to guide, when to discipline, when to hold them, when to let go; it's enough to give anyone nightmares.

In Father's Day, Buzz Bissinger adds yet a new element to the waking dream that is parenthood - that of being a parent to a 'special' child. Multiply all of the uncertainty factors by 2, add a 'normal' twin brother, and you have a landscape that Bosch would envy.

While I did not agree with the author on some counts (like taking this trip in the first place!) I could certainly empathize with his situation. Taking a cross-country trip with my two kids by automobile was stressful enough; the bonding experience was excruciating at times. But being a parent means taking the bad with the good. Bissinger wanted to be closer to his son, to get to know him again as he grew into an uncertain manhood.

Father's Day captures the anxiety, turmoil, hope, and love that define what it is to be a parent. At times an enjoyable father-son travelogue, sometimes a painful experience in estrangement, it is as real as it gets in a rented minivan in the heartland of America.

The Consequences of Denial

Book Review: Full Body Burden: Growing Up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats by Kristen Iverson

Author Kristen Iverson seems to be telling us two vastly different stories in Full Body Burden. The first is her own story of growing up in Arvada, Colorado - normal stuff about family and friends and pets and school.

The second story is the tale of the Rocky Flats Plant: its secretive workings, its impact on the environment and the citizens of the Denver Metro area, and the investigations into one of the most radioactively contaminated places on this planet. What brings these two seemingly disparate tales together?

The common thread is the ultimate cost of continual denial. The author refers repeatedly to the closed conversations within her family. There were some things you just didn't talk about; whether they were true or not was irrelevant. Her father's alcoholism symbolizes her family's emotional distance from reality. The gradual slide becomes a slippery slope and half-truths become untruths. As her parents' marriage goes into meltdown they desperately try to fill the cracks in the facade and refuse to deal with the problems around them.

The federal agencies charged with regulating Rocky Flats tried first to deny there was an issue at all; defining 'healthy' limits of radioactive exposure when there was no research to base those numbers on. As the leakage of radioactivity and information continued, the DOE tried to do a patch job, throwing the stone wall of "National Security" around the crumbling infrastructure, facts be damned.

Even today, the truth regarding Rocky Flats (now a National Wildlife Refuge) is not fully known: "The final contamination levels of Rocky Flats itself as measured by the U.S. government after the Superfund cleanup, and those reported to an impanelled grand jury, are sealed records and have not been reported to the public." [Wikipedia] The denial continues.

While Ms. Iverson does an excellent job pulling the threads of her twin stories together, there were a few points in the narrative where I felt a little confused about the timeline of events, and a little lost in the turmoil of her family. I imagine she felt the same. A solid four stars with those qualifications, and a huge "Thank you" to the author for bringing us this work.
(Note: This reviewer lived and worked in the Denver Metro area for twenty years.)

The Evolving Art of Virtual Teamwork

Book Review: Virtual Teamwork: Mastering the Art and Practice of Online Learning and Corporate Collaboration edited by Robert Ubell

Despite the glut of books on social networking (or perhaps because of it) there is a scarcity of peer-reviewed source material on virtual teams. Virtual Teamwork takes an important step toward bridging that gap.

Distance learning and virtual collaboration are here to stay. Team projects are now the norm in most organizations, often across geographical boundaries. In the past ten years I have been involved in three virtual teams for three different employers, as well as being involved in several distance learning efforts. The results have been mixed, but this is an indication of how this sector is evolving, not a question of its validity.

As many organizations are discovering, it is not just about the technology. "Cute cat" tools like Facebook or the divisive Twitter are obviously not a solution for corporate or educational communication. The fact that millions of people use social media does not give it value - millions of people also watch "reality" TV shows. In terms of connectedness, Facebook was over-valued. But just installing Lync or some other flavor of the month messaging tool into the corporate software pool isn't the answer either if no one uses it.

The essays that editor Robert Ubell has gathered covers many of the hurdles that one encounters in virtual teams. Although they are often couched from the perspective of one discipline, the insights can be applied across the spectrum. For instance, the problems that occur in team projects in a university class are not any different than one sees in a corporate environment, and the solutions bear equal weight as well.

While there may not be enough detail for organizational leaders looking for a blueprint ("use software X, it will solve all your problems"), Ubell and his contributors have given us a research based framework to build on. As such, I find Virtual Teamwork an invaluable resource that promotes 'out of the box' thinking towards managing virtual teams and collaborative groups.

A Labyrinthian Mystery

Book Review: Floors: Book 1 by Patrick Carman

Part fantasy, part mystery, part allegory, and part myth - author Patrick Carman covers all the bases in his young adult novel Floors. That's a high hurdle for any book to leap, and I think Floors clears it with room(s) to spare.

We join the young protagonist, Leo Fillmore in his quest to find out what happened to Merganzer Whippet, owner and builder of the Whippet Hotel. The hotel is a maze of hallways and stairwells, tunnels, hidden floors, and secret rooms. And in true labyrinth fashion, the only way out of the mystery of Mr. Whippets's disappearance is the way in - into the secret heart of the Whippet Hotel. Following cryptic clues, Leo follows the thread deeper into the unknown windings of the Whippet.

Every labyrinth needs a mythical monster, and in the case of the Whippet, that monster is the unnamed, unseen Mr. M. Or is it? There is a real monster inside the Hotel, and it is up to Leo to uncover it. In the process he discovers how the hotel and its builder are linked, and how Leo himself is part of the puzzle.

It's a journey of discovery for both Leo and the reader, Floors is a highly enjoyable story on many levels.

One Person Can Make a Difference

Book Review: His Name Was Raoul Wallenberg by Louise Borden

How do you convey the terror of one of the darkest times in modern history to the young? How do you try to explain the horror of the Holocaust to your children? And how do you show the heroism of those who refuse to let the light of humanity be extinguished?

In His Name was Raoul Wallenberg, author Louise Borden manages to answer those three questions with a text that is both lyrical and profound in its simplicity. Borden shows how the life of Raoul Wallenberg was changed by the time he lived in, and how he changed history in response. Born into a life of privilege, he became a tireless advocate of those who were being ruthlessly victimized simply because of their own birthright. Borden lets us see that as Wallenberg's awareness of what is happening grows, his resolve to take a stand grows as well. History made the man, and the man made history in return.

Adult readers may find the form and content of Borden's work unfamiliar and unfulfilling. Adult readers are not the target audience of this book. It is sent out to the young, and I believe it will squarely hit that mark. It is clear that Ms. Borden knows her subject well, and I do hope that she will grace us with a more detailed full-length adult version of Raoul Wallenberg's story. Even we adults need to be reminded that "one person can make a difference in the world."

Business as usual?

Book Review: Broken Markets: How High Frequency Trading and Predatory Practices on Wall Street Are Destroying Investor Confidence and Your Portfolio by Sal Arnuk and Joseph Saluzzi

First off: I am not a trader, broker, or analyst. I am not even an Investor (with a capital-ized I) - I am only an investor - an average American with a day job, bills to pay, and the hope that someone is watching the store where my 401k is being bought and sold.

Broken Markets left me feeling like I had just wandered into 'Black Friday' (the retail version), and that my investment is as safe as the racks at Wal-Mart. Yes, I have diversified, and no, I don't shift my portfolio everytime the market hiccups. I am at least ten years from retirement and I am taking the long-term view. And with IRAs and CDs at fractions of a percent interest, I don't have a lot of options.

And that is what is scary. The discussion in the book of the flash crash, the regulatory reactions to it, and the continued debate over the causes does not give me a warm fuzzy feeling. As I write this, Facebook's IPO is trading at about half of its initial price (which was probably too high to begin with), and a mini-flash occurred two weeks ago [Knight Capital]. These events underscore authors Arnuk and Saluzzi assessments - even if they are not spot-on regarding the causes. I'm not sure anyone is 100% sure.

Truth be told, most of the book was beyond my limited scope of financial acuity - but thorough re-reading got me the key points. HFT may not be the only culprit, but it is clear that the liquidity they offer is ephemeral, and at any rate is a side-effect to their function. Someone compared the Market to a casino, except that instead of the house making the rules, the high-rollers decide the winning hands. The trust that the average American once had in their financial institutions (including the market) is fast disintegrating. Broken Markets gives a clue as to why.

Travels with Reg

Book Review: The Great Northern Express: A Writer's Journey Home by Howard Frank Mosher

"But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love." [1 Corinthians 13:13, NASB]

Easy to say, not as easy to realize. As Howard Frank Mosher takes us on his journey through the three phases of The Great Northern Express, he re-learns the lesson that love is an ongoing process, not a destination. Love of life, of one's work, and of the people that we hold dear are intertwined in ways that we do not always appreciate or comprehend.

Northern Express is not so much a tale of a book tour; like all great journeys the actual reason may be obscured, even to ourselves. It is not a series of momentous discoveries and personal epiphanies. At the simplest level it is the story of a man in a car, traveling across the country to see what he can find. Like John Steinbeck in Travels with Charley in Search of America, Mosher is not really sure what he is looking for, or even sure he will know if he finds it.

The true measure of a road trip is not the things that you see, or the people you meet, or the photos you take. The true measure of a journey is seen in the person that comes back home. The journey does not occur 'out there', it is internal, and personal. Through his series of tales Mosher shows us both sides of the story, allowing us a glimpse of ourselves as he finds his own way home.

Thanks for the ride Harold.