Name: The Score Takes Care of Itself: My Philosophy of Leadership
Rating: 4.21 (6396 reviews)
Author: Bill Walsh

QB: My Life Behind the Spiral

★ 4.27

Steve Young

In the most candid and compelling sports memoir since Andre Agassi’s riveting bestseller Open, former San Francisco 49er, Super Bowl champion, NFL MVP, and Hall of Famer Steve Young gives readers an unprecedented and stunning inside look at what it takes to become a super-elite professional quarterback.Steve Young produced some of the most memorable moments in NFL history. But his most impressive victories have been deeply personal ones that were won when no one was watching. His remarkably revealing memoir is the story of a Mormon boy with a 4.0 GPA, a photographic memory, and a severe case of separation anxiety. As an eighth-string quarterback at Brigham Young University, it was doubtful that he would ever see any playing time. But Young became an All-American, finished second in the Heisman voting, and was the top draft choice out of college. Then, after signing the largest contract in sports history, anxiety nearly drove him to walk away from football completely. In short, Young’s quest in life was always about grit. Now, he shares the experience of being inside his helmet while he faces down his toughest adversaries, both on and off the field."This book is gold.”—Peter King “Intense.”—San Francisco Chronicle “Steve Young is a hero of mine, and his story is a source of inspiration for me. His perseverance, intelligence, and, most of all, grace under pressure, NFL-style, make this book a fascinating read. Thanks, Steve, for sharing your story with one of your biggest fans!”—Tom Brady

The Last Folk Hero: The Life and Myth of Bo Jackson

★ 4.19

Jeff Pearlman

By the New York Times bestselling author of Showtime—the source for HBO’s Winning Time—the definitive biography of mythic multi-sport star Bo Jackson.

From the mid-1980s into the early 1990s, the greatest athlete of all time streaked across American sports and popular culture. Stadiums struggled to contain him. Clocks failed to capture his speed. His strength was legendary. His power unmatched. Video game makers turned him into an invincible character—and they were dead-on. He climbed (and walked across) walls, splintered baseball bats over his knee, turned oncoming tacklers into ground meat. He became the first person to simultaneously star in two major professional sports, and overtook Michael Jordan as America’s most recognizable pitchman. He was on our televisions, in our magazines, plastered across billboards. He was half man, half myth.

Then, almost overnight, he was gone.

He was Bo Jackson.

Drawing on an astonishing 720 original interviews, New York Times bestselling sportswriter Jeff Pearlman captures as never before the elusive truth about Jackson, Auburn University’s transcendent Heisman Trophy winner, superstar of both the NFL and Major League Baseball and ubiquitous “Bo Knows” Nike pitchman. Did Bo really jump over a parked Volkswagen? (Yes.) Did he actually run a 4.13 40? (Yes.) During the 1991 flight that nearly killed every member of the Chicago White Sox, was he in the cockpit trying to help? (Oddly, yes. Or no. Or … maybe.)

Bo Jackson isn’t Jim Thorpe.

He’s not Deion Sanders, either.

No, Bo Jackson is Paul Bunyan.

The Last Folk Hero is the true tale of Bo Jackson that only “master storyteller” (NPR) Jeff Pearlman could tell.

The League: How Five Rivals Created the NFL and Launched a Sports Empire

★ 4.17

John Eisenberg

The epic tale of the five owners who shepherded the NFL through its tumultuous early decades and built the most popular sport in America

The National Football League is a towering, distinctly American colossus spewing out $13 billion in annual revenue. Yet its current dominance has obscured how professional football got its start.

In The League, John Eisenberg reveals that Art Rooney, George Halas, Tim Mara, George Preston Marshall, and Bert Bell took an immense risk by investing in the professional game. At that time the sport barely registered on the national scene, where college football, baseball, boxing, and horseracing dominated. The five owners succeeded only because at critical junctures in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s each sacrificed the short-term success of his team for the longer-term good of the League.

At once a history of a sport and a remarkable story of business ingenuity, The League is an essential read for any fan of our true national pastime.

Never Go With Your Gut: How Pioneering Leaders Make the Best Decisions and Avoid Business Disasters

★ 4.12

Gleb Tsipursky

Avoid terrible advice, cognitive biases, and poor decisions.

Want to avoid business disasters, whether minor mishaps, such as excessive team conflict, or major calamities like those that threaten bankruptcy or doom a promising career? Fortunately, behavioral economics studies show that such disasters stem from poor decisions due to our faulty mental patterns—what scholars call “cognitive biases”—and are preventable.

Unfortunately, the typical advice for business leaders to “go with their guts” plays into these cognitive biases and leads to disastrous decisions that devastate the bottom line. By combining practical case studies with cutting-edge research, Never Go With Your Gut will help you make the best decisions and prevent these business disasters.

The leading expert on avoiding business disasters, Dr. Gleb Tsipursky, draws on over 20 years of extensive consulting, coaching, and speaking experience to show how pioneering leaders and organizations—many of them his clients—avoid business disasters. Reading this book will enable you to:

Discover how pioneering leaders and organizations address cognitive biases to avoid disastrous decisions.
Adapt best practices on avoiding business disasters from these leaders and organizations to your own context.
Develop processes that empower everyone in your organization to avoid business disasters.

Moneyball

★ 4.27

Michael Lewis

Billy Beane, general manager of MLB's Oakland A's and protagonist of Michael Lewis's Moneyball, had a problem: how to win in the Major Leagues with a budget that's smaller than that of nearly every other team. Conventional wisdom long held that big name, highly athletic hitters and young pitchers with rocket arms were the ticket to success. But Beane and his staff, buoyed by massive amounts of carefully interpreted statistical data, believed that wins could be had by more affordable methods such as hitters with high on-base percentage and pitchers who get lots of ground outs. Given this information and a tight budget, Beane defied tradition and his own scouting department to build winning teams of young affordable players and inexpensive castoff veterans.

Lewis was in the room with the A's top management as they spent the summer of 2002 adding and subtracting players and he provides outstanding play-by-play. In the June player draft, Beane acquired nearly every prospect he coveted (few of whom were coveted by other teams) and at the July trading deadline he engaged in a tense battle of nerves to acquire a lefty reliever. Besides being one of the most insider accounts ever written about baseball, Moneyball is populated with fascinating characters. We meet Jeremy Brown, an overweight college catcher who most teams project to be a 15th round draft pick (Beane takes him in the first). Sidearm pitcher Chad Bradford is plucked from the White Sox triple-A club to be a key set-up man and catcher Scott Hatteberg is rebuilt as a first baseman. But the most interesting character is Beane himself. A speedy athletic can't-miss prospect who somehow missed, Beane reinvents himself as a front-office guru, relying on players completely unlike, say, Billy Beane. Lewis, one of the top nonfiction writers of his era (Liar's Poker, The New New Thing), offers highly accessible explanations of baseball stats and his roadmap of Beane's economic approach makes Moneyball an appealing reading experience for business people and sports fans alike. --John Moe

The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York

★ 4.52

Robert A. Caro

One of the most acclaimed books of our time, winner of both the Pulitzer and the Francis Parkman prizes, The Power Broker tells the hidden story behind the shaping (and mis-shaping) of twentieth-century New York (city and state) and makes public what few have known: that Robert Moses was, for almost half a century, the single most powerful man of our time in New York, the shaper not only of the city's politics but of its physical structure and the problems of urban decline that plague us today.

In revealing how Moses did it--how he developed his public authorities into a political machine that was virtually a fourth branch of government, one that could bring to their knees Governors and Mayors (from La Guardia to Lindsay) by mobilizing banks, contractors, labor unions, insurance firms, even the press and the Church, into an irresistible economic force--Robert Caro reveals how power works in all the cities of the United States. Moses built an empire and lived like an emperor. He personally conceived and completed public works costing 27 billion dollars--the greatest builder America (and probably the world) has ever known. Without ever having been elected to office, he dominated the men who were--even his most bitter enemy, Franklin D. Roosevelt, could not control him--until he finally encountered, in Nelson Rockefeller, the only man whose power (and ruthlessness in wielding it) equalled his own.

Who Moved My Cheese?

★ 3.87

Spencer Johnson

"Who Moved My Cheese?" is a simple parable that reveals profound truths. It is an amusing and enlightening story of four characters who live in a "Maze" and look for "Cheese" to nourish them and make them happy.

Two are mice named Sniff and Scurry. And two are "Littlepeople" — beings the size of mice who look and act a lot like people. Their names are Hem and Haw.

"Cheese" is a metaphor for what you want to have in life — whether it's a good job, a loving relationship, money, a possession, health, or spiritual peace of mind.

And the "Maze" is where you look for what you want — the organisation you work in or the family or community you live in.

In the story, the characters are faced with unexpected change. Eventually, one of them deals with it successfully, and writes what he has learned from his experience on the Maze walls.

When you come to see "The Handwriting on the Wall," you can discover for yourself how to deal with change, so that you can enjoy less stress and more success (however you define it) in your work and in your life.

Written for all ages, the story takes less than an hour to read, but its unique insights can last for a lifetime.

The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics

★ 4.39

Daniel James Brown

For readers of Unbroken, out of the depths of the Depression comes an irresistible story about beating the odds and finding hope in the most desperate of times—the improbable, intimate account of how nine working-class boys from the American West showed the world at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin what true grit really meant.

It was an unlikely quest from the start. With a team composed of the sons of loggers, shipyard workers, and farmers, the University of Washington’s eight-oar crew team was never expected to defeat the elite teams of the East Coast and Great Britain, yet they did, going on to shock the world by defeating the German team rowing for Adolf Hitler. The emotional heart of the tale lies with Joe Rantz, a teenager without family or prospects, who rows not only to regain his shattered self-regard but also to find a real place for himself in the world. Drawing on the boys’ own journals and vivid memories of a once-in-a-lifetime shared dream, Brown has created an unforgettable portrait of an era, a celebration of a remarkable achievement, and a chronicle of one extraordinary young man’s personal quest.

The Score Takes Care of Itself: My Philosophy of Leadership

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