As published in The Register Guard on December 3, 2019.
What you read affects you…
What you read affects you: all those words and ideas, the people both behind the books and in the books, all those successes, passions, challenges, failures, and philosophies. How do the books you read influence your life and your business? If you want to share a recent great read, we’d love to hear from you: Email bluechip@registerguard.com.
Walter Larsen
SCORE volunteer/Willamette Chapter
“Surviving Genocide” by Jeffrey Ostler
Reader’s Reflections: This book, part of a two-volume series, focuses on how “American democracy relied on American Indian dispossession and the federally sanctioned use of force to remove or slaughter Indians in the way of U.S. expansion.” It is a well-researched book and is an authoritative publication helping us to understand the seizure of Native American lands and the resilience of our Native American peoples. I was attracted to the book because Professor Ostler teaches at the University of Oregon and is considered one of the foremost authorities on this subject. It is a captivating book, dealing with this subject dating from the 1750s to the start of the Civil War. Eventually, I want to read Ostler’s “U.S. Colonialism from Lewis and Clark to Wounded Knee.”
David Walsh, J.D.,
Dean of Business, Northwest Christian University
“On the Clock: What Low-Wage Work Did to Me and How It Drives America Insane” by Emily Guendelsberger
Reader’s Reflections: She’s a reporter from Philadelphia, and she spent the better part of a year doing three jobs that were very similar to a lot of the jobs that people really have, not high-paying, the kinds of jobs that are often taken for granted. She worked at an Amazon fulfillment center for a couple months, at a call center, and at a McDonald’s. It’s all about her experience in doing those jobs, living that life, the people she met, and the challenges they face. It was really illuminating and fascinating. The people who do those jobs work very, very hard, and I just didn’t understand how hard those jobs really are. The warehouse jobs, in particular, are really incredibly taxing and actually very lonely. With the others, there’s constant pressure. But in all of those jobs, low-wage workers are subjected to stresses and performance requirements that are just draconian, and that are getting too hard to meet. Some employers have a 250% turnover every year, which is incredible. Yet this is how a lot of Americans work today. It made me appreciate those jobs a lot more — and the people who do them.
Source: BLUECHIP: Business Bookshelf.