What are we reading?
What we at Olson Zaltman have on our nightstands

I recently saw a social media post by the marketing consultancy Prophet in which they highlighted all the books that their staff is currently reading.
It was an impressive list. Our founding partner Gerald Zaltman insists that reading widely opens the door to creativity and insight like nothing else. And those folks at Prophet look like a widely read bunch.
But so are we at Olson Zaltman. Unfortunately, I am neither widely read enough nor innovative enough to come up with a creative spin on Prophet’s idea, so I am just going to blatantly rip it off.
(I hope they subscribe to the idea that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Also, I highly recommend their founder David Aaker’s book Brand Relevance. Perhaps that will buy me some goodwill.)
With that, here is what our team has been reading lately. I trust something here will catch your eye:
Marketing

The Choice Factory by Richard Shotton. An ad agency veteran from the UK, Shotton brilliantly ties behavioral science to advertising and consumer behavior. (His Twitter feed is a must-follow if you work in marketing.)

Brand Admiration by C. Whan Park, Deborah J. MacInnis, and Andreas B. Eisingerich. Three academics (Park and MacInnis from the University of Southern California, Eisengrich from Imperial College London) outline the Three E’s of brand admiration. Bob Woodard from our friends at Deep Relevance Partners has reviewed this book in the Olson Zaltman Medium channel.
History

Without Precedent by Joel Richard Paul. A judicial biography of Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall, whose expansive view of the Constitution forever shaped how we live in the United States. (Oh, and Thomas Jefferson was his cousin. And they couldn’t stand each other.)

Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown. A story of working-class triumph in a blue-blood sport during the Great Depression. (Rowing was more mainstream in the 1930s that you probably realize.)

What is the Bible? by Rob Bell. The author makes a case that Scripture is not just for the religious, and offers a plea to read the Bible literately, not literally.

Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond. A classic that attempts to unravel the common threads in why some civilizations have thrived while others have struggled.

American Photography by Miles Orvell. A look at how photography has shaped American culture, from daguerrotypes and Mathew Brady’s Civil War photos up until the 21st century.

The Boer War by Thomas Pakenham. This was the last major “imperial war” fought by the British. It is known as Britain’s Vietnam.

Barracoon by Zora Neale Hurston. This unpublished manuscript about the last living survivor of the Middle Passage languished in an archival collection for decades before being released earlier this year.
Science

The Disordered Mind by Eric Kandel. Kandel is a Nobel Prize winner in Medicine, a giant in the field of neuroscience, who argues here that virtually all thought stems from the unconscious mind. He focuses much of this book on brain disorders and how those “broken” brains provide insight into how healthy brains function.

Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin. You might consider this a shorter, more fun version of an evolution textbook. It details specific anatomical structures in the body that look and function like those of fish and worms. Spawned (no pun intended) an Emmy award-winning PBS series.

The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan. A provocative look at what we should eat and why we don’t.

Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? by Frans De Waal. Squirrels aren’t as good at math as humans. They can’t count to 10. They also don’t need to be able to count to 10. They can, however, remember exactly where they buried those nuts. You can’t even find your car keys in the morning. So what does it really mean to be “intelligent?”

Other Minds by Peter Godfrey-Smith. The author is a distinguished philosopher and also a diver. One day he began to wonder — what is that octopus thinking when it looks at me?
Current Events

Strangers in Their Own Land by Arlie Russell Hochschild. A Berkeley professor’s ethnographic sojourn into rural Louisiana. Democrats often wonder why conservatives frequently “vote against their self-interest.” This book begins to explain why.

We Were Eight Years in Power by Ta-Nehisi Coates. A look back at the popularity, legacy, and failures of Barack Obama, through a series of Coates’ essays in The Atlantic. (Do you think reparations for slavery is a bad idea? Coates may change your mind.)
Memoirs

Educated by Tara Westover. The Guardian says it all. “Tara Westover grew up preparing for the End of Days in rural Idaho with radical survivalist Mormon parents. She didn’t get a birth certificate until she was nine and had no medical records because her father did not believe in doctors.” Now she has a Cambridge PhD.

Can You Tolerate This by Ashleigh Young. Winner of the 2017 Windham-Campbell Prize in Nonfiction, this collection of personal essays “explores fragility and resilience with a visceral, bodily focus,” according to Vogue. Seldom has a trip to the chiropractor been rendered in such profound terms as it is here.

Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls. Walls’ father was an impoverished vagabond whose dream was to build his family a glass castle. A story of the unbreakable bonds of family. Particularly appealing for those of us who were raised by a well-meaning lunatic.

Trust Me, I’m Lying by Ryan Holiday. A damning portrait of the modern online media landscape by a former marketing and PR executive who knows better than most how to generate clicks and page views. Holiday explains the somewhat scary ways in which bloggers shape news coverage.
Sociology

Women Who Run With the Wolves edited by Clarissa Pinkola Estés. A collection of archetypal stories of female empowerment, written a generation ago but still right on time. Here are 13 reasons why you should read it.
Fiction

My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh. Sort of a modern day Rip van Winkle. A woman is overwhelmed by the stresses and problems of the world so she drugs herself into a year-long hibernation. Sounds like a pretty good idea sometimes! Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.

The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan. If a book were a mahjong game, this would be it. Literally. The book is structured like a mahjong game. It focuses on four Chinese immigrant families in San Francisco through the lens of three mothers and four daughters. Some critics have branded the book as racist. Others call it a tribute to the indelible bonds between mothers and their daughters.

Dragon Teeth by Michael Crichton. Another paleontology-themed novel from the man who brought us Jurassic Park. He began writing this in 1974, and therefore actually served as an inspiration for Jurassic Park. Crichton himself might not have thought much of it — his wife found the manuscript buried in his extensive papers following his death in 2008 — but critics and readers seem to think it holds up well.

The Trouble With Goals and Sheep by Joanna Cannon. An enigmatic tale of a 10-year-old girl coming of age in Great Britain in the summer of 1976, and the strange mysteries surrounding her neighborhood. Per The Guardian, “As in an Agatha Christie novel, each character is concealing a secret, but not necessarily the one you suspect.”

The Martian by Andy Weir. You may know the film adaptation, which stars Matt Damon. This is Weir’s debut novel about an astronaut marooned on Mars in 2035 and the resourcefulness needed to survive on a desolate planet.

Less by Andrew Sean Greer. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. A middle-aged gay man in San Francisco ponders his own limitations as a writer. A rare Pulitzer winner that is genuinely funny. Darkly funny, but funny nonetheless.

Origin by Dan Brown. The next one in the Robert Langdon series. Here are six things you need to know before you read it. “A fantastic swirl of big ideas and non-stop action,” according to the New York Times.
Self-Improvement

Relentless by Tim S. Grover. The author was a trainer for Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant so he must know something about being unstoppable. Are you a cooler, a closer, or a cleaner?

Eat Pretty Every Day by Jolene Hart. Daily advice on beauty nutrition — recipes, reminders, and nutritional guidance.

The Motivation Manifesto by Brendon Burchard. This spent 32 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Burchard has a superhuman social media presence, in case you want to learn more about his approach.
James Forr is Head of Insights at Olson Zaltman.

