Book Reviews

I was talking about my love of reading books with my brother Mark and asked him what his favorite book was. He said, “Chip the Dam Builder in 4th grade…it changed my life!”  He even stated he’d tried to find it and could not… so I found a copy and sent it to him and then I found my own copy via inter-library loan.

It is a great story about how the ecology is so interrelated and humans have an impact on it even when they don’t realize it. There are all kinds of animals in the forest, some are predators, and some get eaten, but they make it better for everyone but making the deer faster, and baby beavers stronger.

The author does not sugar coat the fact that some live and some die. I love how he demonstrates how the environment is so intertwined. Loggers came into this area and clear-cut and then there were floods. Then beaver moved in and suddenly the floods diminished because the streams had small ponds all along.

I devoured this book and can see why Mark liked it so much.

Found this book at the Bangor Folks Festival from a family member of the author. Signed copy that he found in her garage with a bunch of other of her books.

Elinor’s nephew was a park ranger in Baxter State Park in the 1950s. I was constantly pulling my Baxter park map out to see where they hiking as they were often on old logging roads or bushwhacking off-trail.

I’ve backpacked and hiked throughout Baxter and was fascinated to hear stories from the 50s from a warden and his aunt about the park and descriptions of places I’ve been to and some I’ve not. Many of the logging camps were still there and cutting in some places.

This was a very interesting book on Lincoln. A compilation of many historians writing about Lincoln from different perspectives at different times of his life. I am such a Lincoln fan that some of them were hard to read because I figured “everybody” loved Lincoln. Apparently not.

But it is good to hear multiple perspectives and their reasons why. He is one of those people we could only wish had lived longer. But one train of thought was that maybe he is so famous because he was assassinated. Pretty much everyone agreed he was brilliant and was president at our countries worst time.

I also loved the fact that some of his most important speeches were included in the back of the book. Gettysburg Address (which I memorized and recited in 8th grade), the Emancipation Proclamation, and his two inaugural addresses to name a few.

If you want to learn more about our 16th President, this is worth the read.

Live Video Revolution. How to Get Massive Customer Engagement and Skyrocket Sales with Live Video.

I know that video is more important these days than simply putting up text. We are an ‘image-happy’ nation/world. Joel was a speaker at the Agents of Change conference this past September and gave everyone his book. Thank you Joel.

I picked up a number of good tips on how to approach using video. He has inspired me to keep trying Facebook Live and possibly “live” on other platforms.

He also confirms that my monthly interviews on various career topics are a great idea. So…look for more of those at https://peak-careers.com/career-interviews/