Maybe it was the eternal skeptic in me, or the bright orange cover and punchy font, or the fact that a Penguin Publishing scout passed me a free copy at a conference way back when—I'm not really sure. But from the get-go, I was spellbound by Think Like a Freak. It was an unexpectedly vitalizing mash-up of psychology and economics with outlandish examples and iconoclastic humor. This book is anything but dry and a fascinating portrait of odd-bird people, cultures, and situations across the globe: 
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• How to catch a cheating sumo wrestler
• Winston Churchill's quitting attitude
• The pros and cons of breastfeeding
• Ping-pong diplomacy
• Gut science
• And more

The authors' "Freak" mindsets as "rogue economists" to solve these head-scratchers is on full display throughout their afternoon-sized read—a mindset they contend that's completely learnable. Taught through nine, self-contained chapters, thinking like a freak, definitely involves some unoriginal conclusions (learning to say 'I don't know,' and 'I quit,' and respecting the relationship between human behavior and incentives), but the unconventional analysis of unheard-of examples is so compelling that it is for all intents-and-purposes new—it's alive; a perspective that sharpens your vision after setting the book down. Can't wait to crack open their debut, Freakonomics, also a runaway success.

​Let's get freaky. [JG]
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ABOUT THE AUTHORS

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This 50-page, one-act play hit me even harder than The Winslow Boy. Terence Rattigan's ability to both plot and stylize his worlds and characters with such concise care and understated romance is incredible.

Andrew Crocker-Harris, a retiring classics professor is unpopular with his students, disrespected by his employer and colleagues, and unloved by his wife. And yet, there is so much good in him, just under the surface, which in part he hides and others don't look. Rattigan's simple situation grows in complexity as he paints the characters around the professor and their particular estimations of him with a deliberate, breaking of expectations. The result is a partial, yet powerful grail of redemption. 

I loved once again experiencing in The Browning Version what I loved in The Winslow Boy and Harlequinnade—the world-changing capacities of small, personal gestures. [JG]
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Don't let the 1993, cringy cover fool you. 22 is 100, still. Loads of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs like Tim Ferriss and always-in-their-pajamas-entrepreneurs like Dead Beat Dan shout this book out in 2018 for its timeless, straight-forward, example-rich yet super-concise lessons. ​"More money is wasted," Ries and Trout write, "in marketing than in any other human activity (outside of governments, of course." These lessons are expensive! Take note! 

#1: The Law of Leadership — It's better to be first than it is to be better.

Can you name the second person to ever successfully fly across the Atlantic? Probably not, even though he was a better pilot, reached the other side faster, and consumed less fuel. How about the first pilot to ever fly across the Atlantic? Charles Lindbergh, duh. Everyone knows that. 

#2: The Law of the Category — If you can't be first in a category, set up a new category you can be first in. 

Amelia Earhart was the third person to ever fly across the Atlantic. But she's gone down in history as the first woman to ever do it. People seem to have a more open mind when it comes to categories than brands. 'Me too!' and 'I'm better!' doesn't fly with them as much as 'I'm new. I'm different.' 

Leave the aviation world aside. How about a business example, not a personal brand one. Well, Miller Lite was the first domestic light beer in the US of A. It took five years for Anheiser Busch, the parent company, to introduce Amstel Light, the first imported light beer to American markets. It became the largest selling of its category. Part of the reason it took five years though was because it had worked to introduce Carlsberg, a second imported beer to combat the first imported, Heineken, disobeying Law #1 and paying for it. Case in point, if you can't lead a parade, start a new one to lead. 

Lastly, my favorite, #7 The Law of the Ladder — The strategy to use depends on which rung you occupy on the ladder. 

Each category has a hierarchy or ladder in a person's mind. Ries and Trout cite the care rental category. Hertz got into the minds first and earned the top rung. Avis got in second, National third. Hence the slogan, 'Avis is only No. 2 in rent-a-cars. So why go with us? We try harder.' "In general," Ries and Trout write, "a mind accepts only new data that is consistent with its category ladder. Everything else is ignored." Avis leans in to owning their second position, with candor that makes their promise for quality that much more compelling. They're competing. At least, until Uber swoops in ala Law #2! ;)

I highly recommend picking up a copy of 22 and exploring the other 18 laws. This book is the perfect short-afternoon-sized read. I've opened it back up at least once a year since 2012 thanks to Tim Ferriss' recommendation in The Four Hour Work Week. It continues to refine my digital marketing eye. ​[JG]

5. "Failure to forecast competitive reaction is a major reason for marketing failures."

(See: Law #17 — The Law of Unpredictability)

4. "Mr. Trump's strategy was to put his name on everything committing the cardinal sin of line extension. (Denial seems to go hand in hand with a big ego. When we first met The Donald, his opening remarks were about how people accuse him of having a big ego. All the while it was hard to avoid noticing a three-foot high brass "T" sitting on the floor next to his desk. So much for the sermon."

(See: Law #18 — The Law of Success)

3. "...For the most part, hype is hype. Real revolutions don't arrive at high noon with marching bands and coverage on the 6:00 p.m. news. Real revolutions arrive unannounced in the middle of the night and kind of sneaky up on you." 

(See: Law #20 — The Law of Hype)

2. "You've tasted the most popular German beer in America. Now taste the most popular German beer in Germany." — Beck's, out-positioning Heineken and Lowenbrau as the most popular.

(See: Law #9 — The Law of Opposites)

1. "The customer believes that marketing is a battle of products. It's this king of thinking that keeps two brands on top: they must be the best, they're the leaders." 

(See: Law #8 — The Law of Duality)

A man sentenced to ten years of hard labor for stealing a crust of bread. A police detective devoted to upholding his brand of merciless justice. An unemployed mother choked by poverty into prostitution. An orphan girl exploited by her adoptive parents in order to further their thievery. A bereft revolutionary taking up his post on the barricades. And the man who wrote them all. 

"From the day of its publication on 4 April 1862," author David Bellos writes, "Les Misérables has remained at the forefront of bestseller lists the world over. It has been read in French and in hundreds of translations by millions of people in any country you care to name. It was turned into a play within weeks and has been adapted for radio and the cinema screen over the last century and a half more than any other literary work. But the unique adventure of Les Misérables as a global cultural resource did not come about by chance. From his roof terrace with its wonderful view of Sark and the Sea, Victor Hugo always intended his great work to speak far beyond the borders of France, and beyond the pages of a book." It seems fitting that upon finishing The Novel of the Century: The Extraordinary Adventures of Les Miserables, I had amassed the most notes I've ever taken on a book: 22 full pages front and back.

The book's historical breadth and depth is astounding and built for readers both familiar or new to Les Miserables. Mirroring its subject's own structure, Novel is organized into five Parts with an Introduction, four Interludes, and Epilogue. We begin with Hugo, "open[ing] his eyes" to certain injustices around him and recorded in a journal titled, "Choses Vues" ("Things Seen"): 

• A man arrested for stealing a loaf of blackened, tough bread
• A girl, victim of a well-aimed snowball, fall on top an aristocrat and then dragged off to jail (during which Hugo interceded.)
• A street riot erupt over pay between employers and employees

"I do not like these symptoms," Hugo wrote in 1847. "When there's poison in the blood...a mere graze can lead to an amputated limb." These observations and others (like the inhumanity of Parisian jails) would find themselves lifted, reworked, dramatized, published, and eventually devoured by adoring fans fifteen years later. 

Bellos' book is a biography of a book, and I loved how he dipped into the bio of its author— but only in order to chart and traverse his greatest work's creation and publication. This might sound obvious, but it's one thing I wish Walter Isaacson had done much more in his bestselling biography on Steve Jobs. Granted the later is a biography about a man's life, but there are so many opportunities for a researcher to psychologize about Hugo from his personal life events. I didn't detect any of that. Hugo's public scandals, bohemian lifestyle, and ardent political views are handled with care, nuance, sympathy, and filtered for relevancy in an extremely refreshing way. Biographers, take note! 

Moreover, Bellos' brevity is impressive. The one hundred plus sources consulted and referenced in Novel are at the author's disposal to pluck from and patch together with grand, Hugo-esque brushstrokes. Just one example of such contrast and condensation comes mid-way in which Bellos introduces Alexandre Dumas, a (turns out) fair-weather friend of Hugo's and the author of The Count of Monte Cristo, another 19th century adventure novel rivaling Les Misérables' own 1,400+ page count. Bellos' writes, "The Count of Monte Cristo is a story of extravagant and spectacular revenge, but Les Miserables asks us to be kind." 

And asking us to be kind paid. Les Misérables was the largest book deal in history and it sold out for months, an instant bestseller in France and Belgium (Hugo's adoptive country until Napoleon II was no more). Soon Europe had her translations, and then, the US too—and the Confederacy. With the American Civil War raging, Robert E. Lee's army altered Les Misérables to Lee's Miserables, summoning Valjean's spirit, (mistakingly), often re-enacting and reading scenes from the novel between battles. In these ways, Jean Valjean's epic underdog story of redemption was a story for the world--the story of the 19th century. It was a novel of significant importance in the 20th too, from red Moscow to Washington, D.C.

Hugo said in his time, "I do not know whether [my book] will be read by all, but I wrote it for everyone. It speaks to England as much as to Spain, to Italy as much as to France, to Germany as much as to Iceland, to republics with slaves as well as to empires with serfs. Social problems go beyond borders. The sores of the human race, these running sores that cover the globe, don't stop at read or blue lines drawn on the map. Wherever men are ignorant and desperate, wherever women sell themselves for bread, wherever children suffer for want of instruction or a warm hearth, Les Misérables knocks on the door and says, 'Open up, I have come for you.'" 

It's still a novel of the 21st century. And its creation is one extraordinary adventure. [JG]
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