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Guest Blogger: Paul Ingrassia

I've covered the auto industry for 25 years, but during my research for Crash Course I discovered much that I hadn't known about the dynamics of Detroit's near-collapse. For example, how senior auto workers could (and did) invoke "inverse layoffs" to get paid for not working. Or how Honda managed to keep the UAW-- and "inverse layoffs"-- out of its American factories only because its managers in Ohio bucked their bosses back in Japan.

I was surprised at the extent to which GM executives bet the company, once the biggest and richest on earth, on sub-prime mortgages and SUVs, which proved to be big-time losers. Ford, meanwhile, barely avoided bankruptcy by zigging every time that GM zagged; it hired a new CEO, sold brands such as Jaguar and Land Rover that it couldn't support and steered clear of the home-mortgage debacle. As for Chrysler, President Obama's advisors were sharply divided on whether to save the company last year, forcing Obama himself to make the call in a dramatic meeting in the Roosevelt Room of the White House.

The Detroit bailout is arguably Obama's biggest domestic policy success to date, because the president insisted on tough terms in return for the federal aid that got GM and Chrysler through bankruptcy. GM had to shed brands, and "inverse layoffs" were consigned to history. Washington Post book critic Jonathan Yardley, wrote: "In order to understand just how much of a mess (Detroit) was-- not to mention how it got that way and how, if at all, it can be cleaned up--you really need to read Crash Course.'" Obviously, I agree.

-Paul Ingrassia, author of Crash Course

Harvard Business Review Short Cuts

So much to read, so little time?

Whether you've got 10 minutes over coffee, 30 minutes on your train ride to work, or an hour or two on a plane, Harvard Business Review Short Cuts give you the best business ideas just the way you want them. You can download an entire book, an individual chapter, or a book summary that'll quickly get you up to speed.

"We've chosen to make 'HBR Short Cuts' available in the Kindle Store so that our readers can easily stay up to date on the latest business books we publish, as well as reference their previous favorites," said Joshua D. Macht, Group Publisher, Harvard Business Review Group.  "Kindle makes the possibility of purchasing, downloading and reading a select and relevant chapter en route to a business meeting or while on a business trip a reality." To find them, search "Harvard Business Review Short Cuts" in the Kindle Store.

Linchpin

Insubordinate! Not just a free bonus, but exclusive too. For the next month, when you buy Seth Godin's new book Linchpin on Kindle, it automatically comes with a short companion book. This is the only place in the world you can read it, and you don't have to pay a penny extra.

Linchpin is Seth's manifesto, a book about art and gifts and love and making a difference and doing work that matters in a world that no longer respects you for following instructions.

Insubordinate highlights some of the Linchpins Seth has worked with over the years, from his first boss in 1984 to current movers and shakers. It will inspire you to take your game up another notch. These are real people with real jobs and deadlines to meet who figured out how to do that at the same time they stepped up and made a difference. The bonus book is about 50 pages long but you'll probably remember it for a long time to come.

Award-Winning Children's Literature on Kindle

When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead was awarded the John Newbery Medal. This is the highest of honors in the field, for the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children.

Going Bovine by Libba Bray received the Michael L. Printz Award for literary excellence in Young Adult literature.
 
Julia Alvarez won the Pura Belpre Author Award for Return to Sender--given to a Latino writer whose work best portrays, affirms, and celebrates the Latino culture and experience in an exemplary work for youth.
 
A Faraway Island by Annika Thor, translated from the Swedish by Linda Schenck, received the Mildred Batchelder Award for the most distinguished translated work from an American publisher.

Mare's War by Tanita S. Davis is a Coretta Scott King Author Honor.

Kindle Development Kit

We are excited to invite software developers to build and upload active content that will be available in the Kindle Store later this year. Developers can learn more about the Kindle Development Kit today at http://www.amazon.com/kdk/ and sign up to be notified when the limited beta starts next month.

Participants will be able to download the Kindle Development Kit, access developer support, test content on Kindle, and submit finished content. The Kindle Development Kit includes sample code, documentation, and the Kindle Simulator, which helps developers build and test their content by simulating the 6-inch Kindle and 9.7-inch Kindle DX on Mac, PC, and Linux desktops.

Living Oprah

What happens when a thirty-five-year-old average American woman spends one year following every piece of Oprah Winfrey's advice on how to "live your best life?" Robyn Okrant devoted 2008 to adhering to all of Oprah's suggestions and guidance delivered via her television show, her Web site, and her magazine. Living Oprah is a month-by-month account of that year.

Some of the challenges included enrollment in Oprah's Best Life Challenge for physical fitness and weight control, living vegan, and participating in Oprah's Book Club. After 365 days of Living Oprah, Okrant reflects on the rewards won and lessons learned as well as the tolls exacted by the experiment.

Robert B. Parker (1932-2010)

The Internet is awash with tributes to Robert B. Parker, whose passing this week in his Cambridge home has hit readers and fellow novelists alike very hard. Parker is a giant among literary men: a bright, purposeful, prolific writer (a winner of two Edgar Awards and designated as a Grand Master) whose enormously popular Spenser series is praised time and again as the most worthy heir to classic noir fiction by Chandler and Hammett (a pair of his personal heroes). Beyond the Spenser books, he also created three more series--one piloted by small-town police chief Jesse Stone, another featuring female PI Sunny Randall, and the third, a developing Western series about two guns-for-hire. Though he was writing 2-3 books a year--like many of his mega-blockbuster mystery peers--it's always seemed to me that no one else has been writing novels like Parker. How did he maintain (for me, anyway) this sense of fresh expectation? Part of it may be that, despite long-held hopes, I haven't read him yet. But I suspect there's more to it (and I hope fans will chime in here): in the nearly four decades since his first Spenser novel, did Parker figure out that the best formula for fiction is, perhaps, to write as if there were no formula at all? If that's true, it's a mighty feat, and a sign of a talented and peerless novelist.

--Anne

What I’m Watching For In 2010

By all accounts, there were few tears shed when 2009 came to a close several weeks ago. Last year was much closer to the worst of times than anything resembling the best, and while I look forward to better days in 2010, I’m not exuberant. Though many think the worst is over, I’m not convinced. Still, I think we’ll see some good things happen this year. Here are my predictions:

• “Buycotting” will grow as more and more consumers make a conscious effort to buy products from companies whose environmental and social policies they support. The opposite of a boycott, this values-driven purchasing will begin to create impacts that companies both good and not-so will feel.

• Fueling this trend, 2010 will be the year of the Good Guide, which a critical mass of consumers will begin to use to guide their purchasing.

• The “localvore” food movement will enter the mainstream as middle America at last becomes aware of the many ways that food choices impact the environment. Beyond simply eating more locally-sourced edibles, people will begin to adjust their diets to remove foods that have big carbon footprints, use too much water, damage rainforests, and cause other kinds of harm

• The American Sustainable Business Council http://www.asbcouncil.org/ will relegate the increasingly out-of-step U.S. Chamber of Commerce to the sidelines of the national debate about energy policy, climate change, and other environmental priorities.

• Driven by new government incentives, increases in the cost of energy, and concern for global climate change, this will be the year America finally starts to get serious about energy conservation.

• 2010 will mark the beginning of the end for bottled water as people realize how wasteful it is to drink and the stigma surrounding it grows. Fiji Water will be out, and home water filters will be in.

• This trend will also herald the return of the public water fountain albeit in redesigned forms. New “filling stations” that let you refill your reusable bottle for few cents will appear in major cities.

• Bike sales will continue to grow aggressively as everyone discovers that biking is the ideal form of transportation, one that gets you where you need to go while replacing CO2 emissions with lots of great exercise.

• Cap & Trade carbon emissions legislation will finally pass Congress and initiate an energy revolution.

• China will move into high gear in its the transition from the maker of cheap junk to exporter of serious green technologies from electric cars to wind turbines. The country will start to challenge the West as the go-to global source for these and other good ideas.

That’s some of what I see coming in 2010. Whether or not any of these predictions come true depends a great deal on the individual decisions we’ll each make and the actions we’ll all take in the months ahead. In a sense, that makes them prophecies that we have the power to fulfill ourselves, which leads me to my final piece of prognostication: That all of us together will focus our energies on making 2010 the year the changes we’ve been waiting for finally come to pass.

By Jeffrey Hollender
Chief Inspired Protagonist
Seventh Generation

~Thanks to Jeffrey Hollender for this post.
Amazon Green Scene

Expanded Digital Text Platform

Authors and publishers around the world can now use the self-service Digital Text Platform (DTP) to upload and sell books in English, German and French to customers worldwide in the Kindle Store. Until January 15th, DTP was only available in the United States. Now, authors and publishers outside of the U.S. can take advantage of this same opportunity and start offering their books to fellow Kindle readers at http://dtp.amazon.com/.

Additional language options with DTP will be added in the coming months. To learn more about the Kindle Digital Text Platform, visit http://dtp.amazon.com/.

New on Kindle

Noah's Compass: From Anne Tyler, a compassionate novel about a schoolteacher who has been forced to retire at sixty-one, coming to terms with the final phase of his life.

Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier is a stunning novel of how one woman's gift transcends class and social prejudice to lead to some of the most important discoveries of the nineteenth century. Above all, is it a revealing portrait of the intricate and resilient nature of female friendship.

Treasure Hunt by John Lescroart: Mickey Dade hates deskwork, but that's all he's been doing at Wyatt Hunt's private investigative service, The Hunt Club. His itch to be active is answered when a body is discovered: It's Dominic Como, one of San Francisco's most high-profile activists--a charismatic man known as much for his expensive suits as his work on a half dozen nonprofit boards. One person of interest in the case is Como's business associate, Alicia Thorpe--the sister of one of Mickey's friends.

Checklist Manifesto: Bestselling author Atul Gawande reveals the surprising power of the ordinary checklist. First introduced decades ago by the U.S. Air Force, checklists have enabled pilots to fly aircraft of mind-boggling sophistication. Now innovative checklists are being adopted in hospitals around the world, helping doctors and nurses respond to everything from flu epidemics to avalanches. Even in the immensely complex world of surgery, a simple ninety-second variant has cut the rate of fatalities by more than a third. In riveting stories, Gawande takes us from Austria, where an emergency checklist saved a drowning victim who had spent half an hour underwater, to Michigan, where a cleanliness checklist in intensive care units virtually eliminated a type of deadly hospital infection. He explains how checklists actually work to prompt striking and immediate improvements.