Showing results by author "Os Swift" in All Categories

This is a summary of Behind the Cloud: The Untold Story of How Salesforce.com Went from Idea to Billion-Dollar Company - and Revolutionized an Industry (2009), which explores how salesforce.com used cloud-based computing to create new business standards in the early 2000s.

The Law of Success (1928) by Napoleon Hill outlines the principles and values that informed his best-known work, Think and Grow Rich! (1937), which was published almost a decade later. By embracing the boundless power of the human mind, anyone can accomplish their wildest dreams....

This is a summary of The Fifth Agreement: A Practical Guide to Self-Mastery (2010) by Miguel Ruiz and Jose Ruiz with Janet Mills. The Fifth Agreement explores how people can harness their innate personal power to create a life that is rich in peace, happiness, and love - or, the equivalent of heaven on earth. The Fifth Agreement is the follow-up to Miguel Ruiz’s best seller The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom (1997).

Written in 1729 as a satirical piece, selling the babies of the poor to the rich to be braised, baked, broiled, or boiled to rid Ireland of a perceived problem was probably less repulsive than it is today, but are the children of the poor still viewed as a throwaway segment of our population? Interestingly, the practice is also viewed as a solution to the "abortion" problem.

Educated (2018) by Tara Westover is a memoir about how an uneducated young woman raised in the remote mountains of Idaho came to earn a doctorate from Cambridge University. Raised outside of society, in a violent household run by Mormon fundamentalists, Tara never saw herself as a person with choices or prospects...

Girl, Stop Apologizing: A Shame-free Plan for Embracing and Achieving Your Goals (2019) by entrepreneur, influencer, and bestselling author Rachel Hollis is a self-help guide for women who want to pursue their dreams. Hollis’s advice comes from her own firsthand experiences as an enterprising woman, building her own business from scratch....

Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (1994) by Barack Obama chronicles his quest to understand how the varied threads of his upbringing, including his father’s absence and his multiracial and multinational roots, shaped him and his understanding of his place in the world. Obama was born in Hawaii in 1961 to Stanley Ann Dunham, a white woman, and Barack Obama Sr., a black economist from Kenya. Obama Sr. and Dunham met while studying at the University of Hawaii....

Pour Your Heart Into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time (1997) details how a small coffee roastery in Seattle became a monolithic corporation with a worldwide reputation for providing affordable luxury beverages. Author Howard Schultz, now retired CEO and chairman of Starbucks, recounts how he grew the company into an internationally recognized chain after joining Starbucks in the early 1980s and buying it later that same decade...

In From the Ground Up: A Journey to Reimagine the Promise of America (2019), Howard Schultz examines how his upbringing in a working class New York family influenced his actions when he became chairman and CEO of Starbucks. Schultz uses his eventual professional success to argue that the United States still can be a land of opportunity if those with means are willing to give chances and resources to those without.

First Things First (originally published in 1994, updated in 2015) by Stephen Covey, A. Roger Merrill, and Rebecca R. Merrill is a time-management book that asks readers to examine their most deeply held values. When people center the things in life that are most important, whatever those may be, triaging a busy schedule becomes an easy exercise instead of an ongoing nightmare....

Almost Everything: Notes on Hope (2018) by best-selling author Anne Lamott is a collection of essays on finding glimmers of optimism even amid great turbulence. Just before her sixty-first birthday, Lamott wrote these essays to share the wisdom she has gleaned from her many decades of living with her grandson and niece. Listen to this in-depth summary by Swift Reads to learn more.

In The Big Short (2010), journalist Michael Lewis traces the stories of a handful of misfit investors who predicted the 2008 financial crisis. In the parlance of Wall Street, to “short” something is to bet against an investment or company through the purchase of a complex high-finance product.... (Disclaimer: This is NOT the original book. If you’re looking for the original book, it is available from Amazon and Audible.)

Full Disclosure (2018) by Stormy Daniels is the adult film star’s tell-all memoir, with special emphasis on her relationship with Donald Trump. While her association with Trump was brief, its aftermath has been long and painful, with no end in sight.... (Disclaimer: This is NOT the original book. If you’re looking for the original book, it is available from Amazon and Audible.)

It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work (2018) teaches companies and entrepreneurs how to increase productivity and improve work performance by setting reasonable boundaries on the hours spent completing tasks. Authors Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson use their web application company, Basecamp, as an example of a tranquil work environment where calm, steady progress is favored over breakneck speed.... Purchase this in-depth summary to learn more.

In The Dichotomy of Leadership: Balancing the Challenges of Extreme Ownership to Lead and Win (2018), authors Jocko Willink and Leif Babin show how key military principles apply to leaders who work in corporate settings. As former Navy SEALs, Willink and Babin have extensive experience guiding their fellow warriors through life-or-death situations in combat.... (Disclaimer: This is NOT the original book. If you’re looking for the original book, it is available from Amazon and Audible.)

Accessory to War by Neil deGrasse Tyson and Avis Lang is a meditation on the history of space research and its interdependence on military research and warfare. The narrative contextualizes discoveries such as the compass and adaptive optics in order to evaluate the present global state of space diplomacy. Purchase this in-depth summary to learn more.

Creative Selection: Inside Apple’s Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs (2018) explores how Apple creates its products through the perspective of a programmer who worked at the corporation for more than a decade. Author and software engineer Ken Kocienda uses stories from his time at Apple to demonstrate how the company pushes its employees to solve seemingly impossible programming problems...(Disclaimer: This is NOT the original book. If you’re looking for the original book, it is available from Amazon and Audible.)

Путешествия Гулливера - фантастический роман английского писателя Джонатана Свифта о невероятных путешествиях судового врача Лемюэля Гулливера в четырех частях.

The Fifth Risk, by Michael Lewis, is a journalistic account of how broad swaths of the US government are being ignored or dismantled under Donald Trump’s administration. After shunning the conventions of a presidential transition, Trump and his tiny team assumed stewardship of the government without ever bothering to learn how it works. (Disclaimer: This is NOT the original book. If you’re looking for the original book, it is available from Amazon and Audible.)

Astroball: The New Way to Win it All, by Ben Reiter, tells the dramatic story of how the Houston Astros transformed from being the worst team in professional baseball to the best. Reiter first made the bold prediction that the Astros would win a World Series in a Sports Illustrated cover story in June 2014. (Disclaimer: This is NOT the original book. If you’re looking for the original book, it is available from Amazon and Audible.)