The Commons

1776 by David McCullough

While this part-biography of George Washington/part-historical account of the most pivotal year of the Revolutionary War, has little to do with marketing and communications, it’s a book that I’ve recently finished, which falls in the brain-maintenance category.  But in reading it, as well as ‘Truman’, by Pulitzer prize-winning McCullough, there are some insights that can be pulled out of his writing style that apply to the art of storytelling.  McCullough is a master storyteller.  Weaving painstaking detail into an easy-to-digest narrative, McCullough paints vivid images of events that may have only lasted minutes, but in such a compelling and accessible way that they leave a lasting impression and a clear understanding of the events and the personalities involved.

In-progress:

Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely

I’ll tell you more about it when I’m through, but here is a description from the cover sleeve: “MIT behavioral economist Dan Ariely, refutes the common assumption that we behave in fundamentally rational ways.  Blending everyday experience with research, Ariely explains how expectations, emotions, social norms, and other invisible seeming illogical forces skew our reasoning abilities….Yet these misguided behaviors are neither random nor senseless.  They’re systematic and predictable – making us predictably irrational.” More to come later…

- John Kim, Account Planner

Tags: resources