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Howdy folks,

Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving. I was able to crank through a good number of books over the past two months, partly thanks to "cutting the cord” and disconnecting our cable service. I never thought I’d see the day when I eliminated cable TV, but so far, it’s been awesome. Fewer distractions, less brain pollution, no more silly reality shows about Alaska, and more time to read, work, and enjoy other worthwhile activities. I highly recommend it and hope my lack of TV will yield a few books that are of interest to you.

Buffalo for the Broken Heart: Restoring Life to a Black Hills Ranch by Dan O’Brien - This book combines many of the subjects I find fascinating: ranching, natural history, bison, conservation, the American West, and regenerative agriculture. It follows the author’s journey to convert his South Dakota ranch from a traditional cattle operation to a 100% grassfed and finished bison operation, which, as it turns out, is not an easy task. I had the pleasure of meeting the author a year ago, and he’s equal parts tough-guy rancher and soft-hearted intellectual—he seems just as likely to write a verse of poetry as he is to finish a bar fight. The book thoroughly explains the economic and emotional challenges facing ranchers throughout the West, while digging deep into the historical and ecological aspects of flora and fauna, particularly buffalo, in the shortgrass prairie ecosystem. But if you’re looking for a brief overview of O’Brien’s work without all the words and stuff, check out the short, free film Unbroken Ground. [If you like this book, I’d also suggest O’Brien’s most recent title: Wild Idea: Buffalo and Family in a Difficult Land.]

Natural Born Heroes: Mastering the Lost Secrets of Strength and Endurance by Christopher McDougall - Several friends who run ultras recommended this book, so I was excited to check it out. It’s basically two books rolled into one: a historical account of a little-known WWII battle on the island of Crete and the author’s personal adventure to discover how Cretans were able to run farther and lift more than average humans using only natural and timeless training methods. While the WWII stories are interesting, I enjoyed the second part of the book the most, which involves the author ripping to shreds the U.S. government’s food-pyramid-based diet, gyms that encourage the use of weight machines, and the “sports nutrition” industry. Contrary to popular belief, true fitness and lifelong health do not require a membership to Gold's Gym or chugging gallons of gatorade. Reading tip: If you get bogged down in the WWII history details, just skim ahead a few pages and it will pick up. [I also highly recommend McDougall’s other well-known book Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen.]

The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg - I’m always looking for tips on how to easily break bad habits and form good ones. (For a friend. Not for me, of course.) This books answers those questions with detailed scientific research and well-documented case studies, all presented in an engaging and entertaining style. The author, a New York Times investigative reporter, does an excellent job presenting a ridiculous amount of data in a way that is fun to read and memorable. It consists of three sections: habits of individuals, organizations, and societies. I found the habits of individuals section to be the most useful, but folks who work at larger companies or manage teams of people may get more out of the other two sections than I did. If you’re the type to set New Year’s resolutions, this book might give you a fighting chance of sticking with them past January 15th.

Islam and the Future of Tolerance: A Dialogue by Sam Harris and Maajid Nawaz - An outspoken atheist neuroscientist (Harris) sits down with a former radical Islamic extremist (Nawaz) to discuss religion… what could possibly go wrong? Surprisingly, nothing. In fact, I’d say everything goes right—they have a respectful, in-depth, wide-ranging conversation in which they both come away better understanding each other’s opinions. This short book is basically their conversation transcribed into print, and it provided me with new insights into Islam and the controversies surrounding the religion. Given our current political climate, it’s very refreshing to observe two smart, well-informed people with opposite belief systems have a civil and substantive conversation. If more people like these authors were on TV, I probably wouldn’t have canceled my cable! [I also highly recommend Sam Harris’s Lying, another short book that argues that no one should tell a lie of any kind, "white lie" or otherwise, ever.]

Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike by Phil Knight - The only things I knew about the early days of Nike were that founder Phil Knight paid an art student a few bucks to design the famous “swoosh” logo and something about his using a waffle iron to create prototype shoe soles. Turns out there’s more to the story than that. I LOVED this book, and it’s one of the best business memoirs I’ve ever read. It’s an extremely revealing and exciting firsthand account of Knight’s journey from writing a business plan during grad school to eventually taking Nike public. He seems to be very honest in his telling of the story—he’s upfront about his self-doubt and open about how the company was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy for well over a decade. He makes it crystal clear just how damn hard it was to survive, much less thrive as a company. This was my favorite book on this list, highly recommended. [One of my other favorite business memoirs is Call Me Ted by Ted Turner. Ted’s on the polar opposite end of the personality spectrum than Knight, but many of his struggles and lessons learned are similar.]

The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance  and the Art of Living by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman - This is the third book by Ryan Holiday that I’ve recommended. It’s what I call a “bedside table book”—one that I keep close at hand to page through before bed or first thing in the morning. This one is 366 quotes by Stoic philosophers, each followed by a brief discussion of how the idea can be applied to our daily lives. I was forced to take standard philosophy in college and found it infuriatingly worthless, but my experience with Stoicism has been the exact opposite—the ideas are amazingly relevant and useful in my day-to-day life. The basic gist of Stoicism is that you can’t control what happens to you, only how you react, and guys like Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, and Epictetus have some pretty solid thoughts on the subject. Think of this book as a compilation album of the Stoics' greatest hits. [One of my other favorite bedside table books is the National Outdoor Leadership School’s Wilderness Wisdom.]

Running Man: A Memoir by Charlie Engle - To call the author's life “interesting” would be a comical understatement. Charlie Engle grew up an excellent athlete and solid student, but then his life veered into the abyss of drug and alcohol abuse, culminating in a multi-year addiction to crack. Miraculously, he pulled himself out of the death spiral and focused his addictive energy on ultra-endurance challenges such as 100-mile runs, adventure races, and a ridiculously long run across the Sahara Desert. But after getting his addictions under control and life in seemingly good order, he was busted for mortgage fraud and spent 16 months in federal prison. Now he’s out of the ol’ gray bar motel and back at his endurance feats... and apparently trying to scrape together some dough by selling this book (sorry, Charlie, I borrowed it from the library). I read this book as more of a cautionary tale than an inspirational one, which I don’t believe was its intended purpose. Trouble and conflict seem to follow this guy wherever he goes, and, other than his physical gift for endurance, there’s not much about him that I’d like to emulate. Entertaining book, nonetheless. [For a more uplifting addict-turned-athlete story, I recommended Finding Ultra: Rejecting Middle Age, Becoming One of the World’s Fittest Men, and Discovering Myself by Rich Roll.]

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Thanks again for subscribing to my bimonthly book recommendations.  I've discovered most of my all-time favorite books through suggestions from friends like you, so the whole point of this email is to encourage more discussions about good books.  Please let me know if you have any suggestions, and feel free to forward this email to any of your friends who may be interested.

If you were forwarded this email and want to receive future editions, you can either sign up here or send me an email (edroberson@gmail.com).  One email, every other month with a few books that I’ve recently read, enjoyed, and highly recommend.

Thanks,


Ed

www.mountainandprairie.com






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