Ascent Builders

The Man-Eaters of Tsavo is a book written by John Henry Patterson of the Birtish Army in 1907 that recounts his experiences while overseeing the construction of a railroad bridge on the Uganda Railway in what would become Kenya. John Henry Patterson acts as the Engineer, Project Manager and Superintendent. He encounters many difficulties while building the bridge including labor disputes, engineering problems, floods...and 2 man eating lions that manage to stalk and kill 100+ workers! Part construction tale and part suspense thriller, this book is sure to please.

The 1996 film "The Ghost and the Darkness" starring Val Kilmer and Michael Douglas was based upon this book.

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I gave myself about four months to wade through this meaty book. It was worth it. The book gives the history of oil from the first discovery of crude bubbling out of the ground in Pennsylvania in the 19th century.

It's an eye opener.

The name says it all - This is a fascinating book about companies that  have stood the test of time.

This is an excellent book and it really opened my eyes to some of what goes on under the rule of Kim Jong-Il. I strongly recommend it. Here's a review from Publishers Weekly:

This is one of the better non-fiction books I've read recently. I heartily recommend this one!

Here's one of the many reviews:

[Laurence Gonzales's] science is accurate, accessible, up-to-date and insightful. An extremely good book. -- Robert Sapolsky, author of Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers  

Last Night In Twisted River is a fascinating story about a family that spans about five decades. I definitely recommend this one.

Jon Clinch takes a crack at what Huckleberry Finn's father might have been like. This page-turner is dark and chilling. I read it right after finishing "Huck" and I think that helped to establish the context.

I give this one a "thumbs up."

I hadn't read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn since about 6th grade and it was great to read it from an adult perspective. This is still one of the greatest works of American Literature.

I enjoyed this book with its twists and turns and intrigue but it took me forever to slog through it. I give it about a 6.5 out of 10.

These guys liked it better than I did - here are some reviews from amazon.com.

"[von Hippel] shows that, in fields ranging from surgical instruments and software to kite surfing, customers often come up with new products of new ways of using old ones. Some companies encourage their customers to modify their merchandise. Others, however, do not: when a devoted user of Aibo, Sony's robot dog, wrote applicatons that would allow the Aibo to dance to music, Sony threatened the man with a lawsuit."
— James Surowiecki, New Yorker

"The fruits of his labor are nicely summarized in Democratizing Innovation, a useful primer on what he calls 'user-centered innovation.'... Despite its brevity, Democratizing Innovation is a heavyweight book, written with the lightness of touch you might expect from a regular contributor to the journal Management Science. But where innovation comes from and how value gets created are heavy questions for all companies in all industries. No innovation means no value added, and ultimately no profits."
— The Financial Times
 

I really enjoyed this book - Here's the blurb from the author's website.

The Omnivore’s Dilemma

A Natural History of Four Meals

What should we have for dinner? The question has confronted us since man discovered fire, but according to Michael Pollan, the bestselling author of The Botany of Desire, how we answer it today, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, may well determine our very survival as a species. Should we eat a fast-food hamburger? Something organic? Or perhaps something we hunt, gather, or grow ourselves? The omnivore’s dilemma has returned with a vengeance, as the cornucopia of the modern American supermarket and fast-food outlet confronts us with a bewildering and treacherous food landscape. What’s at stake in our eating choices is not only our own and our children’s health, but the health of the environment that sustains life on earth.

In this groundbreaking book, one of America’s most fascinating, original, and elegant writers turns his own omnivorous mind to the seemingly straightforward question of what we should have for dinner. To find out, Pollan follows each of the food chains that sustain us—industrial food, organic or alternative food, and food we forage ourselves—from the source to a final meal, and in the process develops a definitive account of the American way of eating. His absorbing narrative takes us from Iowa cornfields to food-science laboratories, from feedlots and fast-food restaurants to organic farms and hunting grounds, always emphasizing our dynamic coevolutionary relationship with the handful of plant and animal species we depend on. Each time Pollan sits down to a meal, he deploys his unique blend of personal and investigative journalism to trace the origins of everything consumed, revealing what we unwittingly ingest and explaining how our taste for particular foods and flavors reflects our evolutionary inheritance.

The surprising answers Pollan offers to the simple question posed by this book have profound political, economic, psychological, and even moral implications for all of us. Beautifully written and thrillingly argued, The Omnivore’s Dilemma promises to change the way we think about the politics and pleasure of eating. For anyone who reads it, dinner will never again look, or taste, quite the same.