Crush It! Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion by Gary Vaynerchuk

Crush It! is Gary Vaynerchuk’s manifesto on business, social media, and life. Progressing on the themes of Gary’s inspirational keynotes, Gary explains why the current social media revolution has opened the door for everyone to pursue a career around what they’re passionate about without sacrificing their financial health, provided they’re willing to hustle.

The book outlines many of the ideas and strategies that Gary has utilized to great success in both his personal career and his consultations while maintaining the motivational and humorous tone that has made his keynotes such a success. Touching on, but delving beyond, platform-specific strategies, Crush It! will teach you why the increasingly social nature of the internet is so important and show you how to not only take advantage of the current landscape but how to succeed in the constantly changing internet economy.

HarperStudio, $19.99, October 2009, ISBN#: 978-0061914171

AOT #183: Helen Thorpe Podcasts Just Like Us

Helen Thorpe, wife of Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, is a freelance writer who has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, New York Magazine, The New York Observer, and Texas Monthly, among other publications. Thorpe reads from and discusses Just Like Us: The True Story of Four Mexican Girls Coming of Age in America, a powerful and moving account of four young women from Mexico who have lived most of their lives in the United States and attend the same high school. Two of them have legal documentation and two do not. This brilliant, fast-paced work of narrative journalism is a vivid coming-of-age story about girlhood, friendship, and, most of all, identity. No matter what one’s opinions are about immigration, Just Like Us offers fascinating insight into one of our most complicated social issues today.

($27.99) Scribner ISBN #978-1-4165-3893-6. You can visit Helen Thorpe’s official web site as well.

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AOT #182: T. R. Reid Podcasts The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care

Bestselling author T. R. Reid is a longtime correspondent for the Washington Post and former chief of its Tokyo and London bureaus as well as a commentator for National Public Radio. Reid discusses his new book The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care, which offers a whirlwind tour of successful health care systems worldwide, revealing possible paths toward U.S. reform. The Healing of America lays bare the moral question at the heart of our troubled system, dissecting the misleading rhetoric surrounding the health care debate. In the end, this is a good news book: It finds models around the world that Americans can borrow to guarantee health care for everybody who needs it.

($25.95) Penguin ISBN #978-1-59420-234-6.

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AOT #181: George McGovern Podcasts Abraham Lincoln: The American Presidents Series

George S. McGovern–a Midwesterner, former U.S. senator, presidential candidate, veteran, and historian by training, discusses his new book Abraham Lincoln: The American Presidents Series: The 16th President, 1861-1865. “McGovern’s Lincoln is a finely wrought gem. In this small volume McGovern captures Lincoln’s character and leadership strength better than many weighty tomes. It is a worthy addition to the brilliant American Presidents Series.”–Doris Kearns Goodwin

($22.00) Henry Holt ISBN #978-0-8050-8345-6.

You can also listen to George McGovern podcast Social Security and the Golden Age: An Essay on the New American Demographic.

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AOT #180: Carlotta Walls LaNier Podcasts A Mighty Long Way: My Journey to Justice at Little Rock Central High School

When fourteen-year-old Carlotta Walls walked up the stairs of Little Rock Central High School on September 25, 1957, she and eight other black students only wanted to make it to class. But the journey of the “Little Rock Nine,” as they came to be known, would lead the nation on an even longer and much more turbulent path, one that would challenge prevailing attitudes, break down barriers, and forever change the landscape of America. Carlotta Walls LaNier will discuss and sign her remarkable memoir A Mighty Long Way: My Journey to Justice at Little Rock Central High School, which includes a forward by President Bill Clinton. Complete with compelling photographs of the time, A Mighty Long Way shines a light on this watershed moment in civil rights history and shows that determination, fortitude, and the ability to change the world are not exclusive to a few special people but are inherent within us all.

($26.00) Ballantine ISBN #978-0-345-51100-3.

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Best of AOT: Wally Lamb Reads from Braided Cords Essay

When Wally Lamb packed the Tattered Cover book store in Highlands Ranch, CO in late 2008, many of the people in attendance were fans of Lamb’s first two novels, She’s Come Undone and I Know This Much Is True, both Oprah’s Book Club selections. The fact that his new novel, The Hour I First Believed, dealt with the 1999 tragedy at Columbine High School also hit close to home for the crowd in this south Denver suburb.

Lamb started this event, however, by reading a majority of his essay Braided Cords, a hilarious look back at his early life and career. Lamb starts by introducing us to his older sisters and girl cousins who forced young Wally to play such games as “Death Drums” and “Kingy Boy” (you’ll have to listen to understand!). He also takes us though his college years, his post-collegiate teaching career, and then describes the life-changing call he received from Oprah Winfrey, telling him that She’s Come Undone was chosen as an official selection for Oprah’s Book Club.

This reading of Braided Cords was a great way to start the evening that continued with a riveting reading from I Know This Much Is True.

This podcast was originally recorded on December 1, 2008. You can read the entirety of Wally Lamb’s Braided Cords essay by clicking here.

Please also listen to the uncut Wally Lamb Podcast.

AOT #179: Lev Grossman Podcasts The Magicians

Lev Grossman, the book critic for Time magazine, and author of the bestselling novel Codex, reads from and discusses his new novel The Magicians, a thrilling and original coming-of-age novel about a young man practicing magic in the real world. At once psychologically piercing and magnificently absorbing, The Magicians boldly moves into uncharted literary territory, imagining magic as practiced by real people, with their capricious desires and volatile emotions. Grossman creates an utterly original world in which good and evil aren’t black and white, love and sex aren’t simple or innocent, and power comes at a terrible price.

($25.95) Viking ISBN #978-0-670-02055-3. You can visit Lev Grossman’s official web site as well.

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AOT #178: Greg Schwipps Podcasts What This River Keeps

Greg Schwipps reads from and discusses his debut novel What This River Keeps. “What This River Keeps bears comparison to the best work of Steinbeck–in this case we’re given the vivid portrayal of the common working men and women of rural Indiana juxtaposed against great forces, without pity or hope, but without true defeat, though they may well lose all in the end. Schwipps also gives us, in full measure, the ancient father and son story, reinvented and made new; the complications of family; the friendship between men; the long tested love between married people; the discovery of the responsibilities of love; the love and care of the land; the love of a river; the keen life of the outdoors; the close attention to the earth in its seasons and myriad variousness. This is a very fine first novel. I read it compelled and fascinated to the last word.” –Kent Haruf, author of Plainsong

($19.95) Ghost Road Press ISBN #978-0-9816525-5-9.

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AOT #177: Stephen White Podcasts The Siege

Colorado author Stephen White–author of over a dozen New York Times bestsellers–reads from and discusses his new thriller, The Siege. White’s Alan Gregory novels are beloved by both fans and critics–the most recent, Dead Time, was a USA Today and Book Sense bestseller. In The Siege, Gregory’s longtime friend Sam Purdy takes center stage in a story that feels ripped from tomorrow’s headlines. From the first page on, readers need to be buckled in for a nonstop ride full of terror and pathos.

($25.95) Dutton ISBN #0-525-95122-9. You can visit Stephen White’s official web site as well.

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AOT #176: Anne Waldman Podcasts Manatee/Humanity

Internationally renowned poet Anne Waldman co-founded the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado, where she still teaches. Waldman reads from and discusses her new work Manatee/Humanity. This new investigative hybrid-poem explores the nuances of inter-species communication and compassion. It draws on animal lore, animal encounters (with grey wolf and manatee), dreams, evolutionary biology, neuroscience, and Buddhist ritual to render a text of remarkable sympathy, reciprocity, and power.

($18.00) Penguin ISBN #978-0-14-311521-2.

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