Reviews

A review of A Most Violent Year.

A review of The Imitation Game.

A review of The Theory of Everything.

How did Herb Kelleher, founder of Southwest Airlines, build the most profitable airline in America? In Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone To Action, Simon Sinek shows that what separates fabulously successful business leaders such as Kelleher from mediocre leaders is their clarity in defining why they do what they do.

Don’t be fooled by the pastel exterior of The Grand Budapest Hotel. Although laced with comedic elements, this is a serious film with important things to say about suffering and hope, betrayal and courage, brutality and love. It is strange but worth a visit.

At its heart, Whiplash is the story of a young man who strives for greatness in his chosen career and who struggles to overcome the failings of his overbearing mentor to do so. The film is inspiring, not only because it portrays the quest for greatness, but because the people who created the film achieved greatness in their work.

Stuff Matters: Exploring the Marvelous Materials that Shape Our Modern World, by Mark Miodownik. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013. 272 pp. $16.45 (hardcover). Reviewed by Daniel Wahl In May 1985, a young Mark Miodownik sat on a train, with a fresh thirteen-centimeter stab wound in his back, and thought…

The Frackers, by Gregory Zuckerman. New York: Portfolio, 2013. 404 pp. $29.95 (hardcover). The Frackers: The Outrageous Inside Story of the New Billionaire Wildcatters, the second book by Wall Street Journal reporter Gregory Zuckerman, tells the story of the development, over the past several decades, of the amazing technology by…

The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, by Alex Epstein. New York: Portfolio/Penguin, 2014. 256 pp. $27.95 (hardcover). Who would argue that producing and using fossil fuels is not only not shameful, but also positively virtuous? Alex Epstein would. And he has done so eloquently and thoroughly in his book, The…

Success is possible, but not guaranteed. We can achieve our dreams, but only if we direct our thought and effort toward them. Difficulties, roadblocks, obstacles are a part of life, and Ryan Holiday’s The Obstacle is the Way is a great resource for learning how to turn these obstacles into opportunities.