Peak Careers

Professional Development for Career Practitioners

Book Reviews

My 2020 Book Reviews

by Leave a Comment

I love to read. Normally I have a “professional” book going that I read in the morning before I dive into work and a “fun” or “historical novel” that I read in the evenings. Here are the books I’ve read in 2020 in three categories; Books that make me better. Historical / Non-Fiction. Just for Fun. I assume if you are reading this, you love reading books too…check out this interview I did recently with four other book lovers. Watch now.

Each link below will take you to a short summary I have written about the book. I do this so I can share book ideas with others and to help me remember which books I’ve read and the actual correct title and author 🙂

 Books That Make Me Better

Retirement by Design:  A Guided Workbook for Creating a Happy and Purposeful Future. By Ida O. Abbott, JD.

Life’s Great Question : Discover How YOU Contribute To The World. By Tom Rath. Author of Strengths Finder as well. Good stuff here.

Transpirations: Guidance for the Head & Heart through Career and Beyond. By Thomas Bachhuber, Ed.D. A view of the career process with through the filter that Thomas calls, Transpirations is a combination of “transitions” and “spirits”as he says, “transitions inspired by the spirit.” 

The Introvert’s Complete Career Guide: From Landing a Job to Surviving, Thriving, and Moving Up. By Jane Finkle. As an extrovert, I am always looking for insights on introverts to better understand them. 

Small Teaching Online Applying Learning Science in Online Classes. by Flower Darby with James M. Lang. I’ve been teaching online for 18 years and this reinforced much of what I know and gave me some great tips.

Virtual Training Basics by Cindy Huggett . Ditto to my above comment.

Small Teaching :Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning. By James M. Lang. This is filled with research on how people learn and much of this was instituted into Flower Darby’s book above.

Creative Lives: An Anthology by Ed Murphy. It is a collection of stories from a variety of people who work in a creative industry and how they got into their jobs.


The Treasure Hunt of Your Life: Seeking Your Calling, Encountering God, Finding Yourself. By Rebecca Schlatter Liberty. I love how serendipity is included in this book of the “treasure hunt”.

 Walking with Glenn Berkenkamp: 35 Wellness Walks to Expand Awareness, Increase Vitality, and Reduce Stress. By Glenn Berkenkamp. My backpacking buddy Howard sent this to me, knowing that I love to do walking-meditation.

Historical and Non-Fiction

Salmon: A Fish, the Earth, and the History of Their Common Fate By Mark Kurlansky. This book is worth it for the pictures in it alone. But his world-wide research on what is killing off salmon is fascinating and frightening.

Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World’s Greatest Nuclear Disaster. By Adam Higginbotham. I knew this was a bad thing but had no idea of the depth of the event and how the Russians had hid it from the world for so long.

America’s Game: The epic story of how pro football captured a nation. By Michael MacCambridge. Yep, football and why it is America’s sport. Its great.

Beyond The Trees by Adam Shoalts. If you love the wilderness and canoeing, you will love this 2500 mile canoe trip across the top of Canada.

The Invention of Nature: Alexander Van Humboldt’s New World By Andrea Wulf. Van Humboldt was probably one of the last people on earth who literally knew everything there was to know about all of the sciences in the 1800’s and he was able to tie it all together to give us understanding of nature in a completely different way.

Road to Valor by Aili and Andres McConnon. Thank God people like Aili and Andres saved this story about the Italian bicyclist who rode in WWII. This should not be forgotten.

 JUST FOR FUN BOOKS

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. John LeCarre

As I write this blog, I am finishing up Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John LeCarre who sadly passed away this month. I will have a link here later this week.

Port City Crossfire. By Gerry Boyle

Flood Tide. By Clive Cussler

Jim Peacock is the Principal at Peak-Careers Consulting and writes a weekly email for career practitioners. Peak-Careers offers discussion-based online seminars for career practitioners focused on meeting continuing education needs for CCSP, GCDF and BCC certified professionals as well as workshops for career practitioners and individual career coaching.

He is the author of A Field Guide for Career Practitioners: Helping Your Clients Create Their Next Move and the recipient of the 2020 Kenneth C. Hoyt Award from the National Career Development Association.

Sign up here to receive my  TOP 10 TIPS WHEN WORKING WITH AN UNDECIDED PERSON.  You will also receive the career practitioner’s weekly email on a variety of career topics, industry news, interesting events, and more. 

Small Teaching Online

by Leave a Comment

Applying Learning Science in Online Classes by Flower Darby with James M. Lang. I read James Lang’s book called Small Teaching first, and I’m glad I did because this book refers back to much of his science and research in that book.

Because I have been teaching online for about 18 years, I learned that my instincts are good. So many of the things I have been doing were reinforced here with good solid research from Darby and Lang.

I have been using short videos doing welcome and wrap ups of each week for awhile now and they concluded this is a great technique to keep people online engaged. Online is a strange place in many ways because you can’t “see” how engaged a person is. So you have to create activities and use techniques to keep people engaged.

Holding office hours and finding ways for people to be able to reach me quickly is another tip I share with others. I now offer “office hours” regularly via zoom AND give people my online scheduler for 15 minute appointments if the office hours don’t work for them.

The key is to also think about offering multiple ways for people to engage, whether it is via a group discussion, paper sent only to me, video, screen-captures, whatever works for them. Be creative!

If you teach online or are thinking about teaching online, get this book and devour it. Take lots of notes because it was helpful to me as a seasoned online person but it will be chock-a-block full of tips for newbies.

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. John LeCarre

by Leave a Comment

I was in need of a fantasy book after reading a three books on teaching and teaching online. My neighbor stopped me on my walk the other day and we ended up talking about books and how he needed to start getting rid of some of his. Me mentioned his John LeCarre books and I said, drop them off if you want… and the rest is history.

It has been a while since I read any John LeCarre but this was another great one. I read it in the evenings to get my mind out of all the “things to do” and to “quiet” my stress & anxiety levels before bed. Yes, spy’s and people getting killed really helped 🙂

Just when I thought I knew what was going on, there would be a twist. Some uncertainty as to what was true or might be true and who was the “good guy” and who were the “bad guys”. I really had to pay attention and because of that I finished this book pretty quickly.

If you like spy novels with twists and you like to be surprised at the end of books, you’ll love this one.

Walking with Glenn Berkenkamp

by Leave a Comment

35 Wellness Walks to Expand Awareness, Increase Vitality, and Reduce Stress. By Glenn Berkenkamp

I enjoy walking. I love backpacking and hiking. My backpacking buddy, Howard, bought me this book recently and has helped me understand why I love walking so much. This book 35 different walks with details of why you might do them, how, and what you might learn from doing them.

They range from walking meditation (which I do nearly daily), Full Moon Walk, Gratitude Walk, Slow Motion Walk, and all the way to a Backward Walk.

The big lesson here is focusing. Focusing on the present moment you are in and connecting the movement of walking to your head, heart, and hara (your center).

I particularly embraced his GBS start for every walk. You start every walk by turning off your cell phone (or leaving it behind).
G- ground yourself to the earth
B- find your breath. Take a couple of deep breaths.
S- Sense the space around you.

I find myself when I walk taking the time to do his GBS start and really “think” about where I am before I just start cruising. If you enjoy walking and want to explore ways to go deeper in ‘being present’ in your walks, this is a great book for you.

Virtual Training Basics by Cindy Huggett

by Leave a Comment

I have been teaching online since 2002. Myself and Cathy Van Dyke converted the Facilitating Career Development (FCD) class to a hybrid model and CCE didn’t know what the heck we were trying to do 🙂

We thing we were the first people to actually move the FCD class to a hybrid model.

Since then I have added online, discussion-based, 5-week long seminars that are completely asynchronous using a variety of Learning Management Systems (LMS) over the years. Even so, I picked up a number of tips from Cindy and tons of affirmations that I am doing things right (and now I have the research to support it).

If you teach or train online (in COVID many of us have had to) and if you are new to teaching online, get your hands on this book, it will help you prepare to be a better trainer online.

Small Teaching by James M. Lang

by Leave a Comment

Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning.

As an instructor, I am always looking for ways to improve my teaching and ensure that people are retaining the information I am sharing. This book, brings numerous tips backed by science, research, and the author practicing them to the reader.

I really appreciated the way he presented the information broken down into three major parts. (1) Knowledge and how we learn it (2) Understanding which is taking the knowledge and DOING something with it, and (3) Inspiration. What are some tips on how to inspire our students.

Each section introduces the theory, then gives models of use, review principles to remember, and provides a nice tips and summary.

My big take aways are that you have to practice retrieving from memory and the more times you can do that, in different ways, the more you will remember. Reminds me of the time I had to memorize what seemed like over a hundred trees by their bark, leaf, and their Latin names. We played pool at night in the local bar and your opponent would give you a quiz. If you answered it right, you got to shoot. 🙂

He also introduces ways to “interleave” learning by adjusting your class time. Things like using the first or last 5 minutes of each class to review key points. Using short quizzes that are not heavily graded and spreading them out before you give the test that has many points attached to it.

I particularly liked his section on Inspiration and how he demonstrates the importance of telling stories to improve learning. Stories on one of the foundations of my career coaching practice and it was good to see the research behind this.

If you teach in classes to any level, even if it is in a hybrid model, or totally online, this books has lots of tips that will improve what you do.