"Business, like life, is all about how you make people feel," writes restauranteur Danny Meyer in his Introduction of Setting the Table. "It's that simple, and it's that hard." Meyer spells out his recipes for cooking those tasty feelings into his 20+ lunch haunts, happy hour bars, fine dining taverns, Central Park hot dog stands, and late-night pizza joints via thirteen easily-consumable chapters. 

From his early twenties spent studying the dining rooms, kitchens, and markets of Europe to his insatiable appetite for discovering and improving on local specialities in his NYC apartment, Meyer's life-long journey to realize his visions of perennial dining experiences is packed with inspiration for any business venture. I found his later chapters on navigating press and customer reviews, as well as building teams through discerning hiring practices especially illuminating. Meyers' nine traits for successful managers and seven core business teams are imbued with the essence of his mantra of "enlightened hospitality." 

"Hospitality is the foundation of my business philosophy. Virtually nothing else is as important as how one is made to feel in any business transaction. Hospitality exists when you believe the other person is on your side...Hospitality is present when something happens for you. It is absent when something happens to you." But what does this look like in practice? Meyer's feast of examples include the time a couple celebrated their anniversary, but realized they had left a champagne bottle in their freezer. Minutes away from exploding, Meyers' manager arranged to have one of his waiters go take it out and leave a dessert. And the time a reservation was lost in the new tech system's glitches, causing the manager to catch up to the angry couple three blocks away and personally escort them to one of Meyers' other restaurants to enjoy a free meal. But some of the most informative examples oh enlightened hospitality are ones done behind the scenes: 

• Ripping up floorboards and stuffing fabric beneath tables to better absorb sound so that patrons can hold conversations more easily
• Embracing Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software despite the glitches and traditionalists to track idiosyncrasies of guests in order to better serve their needs
• Optimizing menu boxes with lighting, prices, and non-head-scratchy ingredients lists
• Thank you cards for first-time diners with survey information and a coupon for their next visit
• Training reservationists to "plant like seeds in like gardens," in order to increase networking value for patrons at lunch and dinners, but still maintain privacy

I can't wait to begin applying these principles and set the table. [JG]

It's been sixteen years since discovering the novel Eragon and almost stumbling into the real life fairy-tale surrounding its publishing. Back in August 2002, my best friend Dan's family and I road-tripped from Philadelphia to a small town in Montana called Paradise Valley near Yellowstone National Park. Somewhere during the bison-induced traffic jams, altitude sickness, and late-night Nerts marathons, I managed to drag Dan downtown and into a dusty bookstore. There, to our amazement, we learned from the owner that a local boy named Christopher Paolini, who was not much older than us, had self-published a novel about a sapphire blue dragon.

​Already the local celebrity, Paolini was on the cusp of hitting the national stage, thanks to another young boy, the son of writer Carl Hiaasen, who had bought a copy to read during his own family's road trip to Yellowstone. Surprised by his son's sudden interest in reading, Hiassen passed it along to his editor at Random House. Fast forward through not one but four #1 New York Times bestsellers and a painfully long, seven-year hiatus, Paolini has returned, finally, to his teenage creation.

The Fork, the Witch, and the Worm is a dazzling constellation of short stories set in the magical world of Alagaësia. Rather than continue linearly from The Inheritance Cycle's ending, the stories sample from all four corners and cultures of the map, delving into Dwarf cave-ins, soaring into Urgal mountaintop myths, trekking the southern terrain via the series' most complex character, and even excerpting from the childhood adventures of our favorite witch. Returning to Alagaësia after so long and spending an afternoon wandering alongside both new and familiar characters made me feel like a kid again and woke in me a deep sense of gratitude for Mr. Paolini and all the real-life magic of that road trip with Dan to Montana. If this one isn't in the cards for you, maybe it's the perfect New Years kick-in-the-pants needed to finally revisit your own stack of childhood favorites. I'll be sure to do the same.

Wherever you land, happy reading and cheers to 2019! [JG]

"In my dreams I always do it right."

— Mace Windu, Shatterpoint

In the climax of Star Wars, Episode II: Attack of the Clones, Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Senator Amidala find themselves trapped in the Circus of Horrors on the planet Geonosis. They're each chained to their own execution column facing down three monsters charging toward across the blood-red sand. Each one is as lethal as the next. The killings are seconds away and the arena, packed with thousands of spectating Geonosians, erupt in cheers. High up in a private balcony, Count Dooku looks on with malice, joined by Jango Fett, the most deadly bounty hunter in the universe, along with some other worm-like conspirators. These leaders are on the eve of launching a secret attack that will shatter the Galactic Republic, which has stood for a thousand years. In a purple flash, Mace Windu ignites his lightsaber beneath Jango's neck. 

The Jedi Master has snuck into the arena to save his friends. He does, and kills Jango Fett easily, but Dooku and the other conspirators escape. It's this missed opportunity that haunts Mace Windu when Shatterpoint begins six months later. The Battle of Geonosis was a resounding victory for the Grand Clone Army of the Republic, but one that incurred too many Jedi casualties, and, Mace believes, one that he could have entirely prevented. If instead he had dropped a bomb to kill the Separatist leaders, his friends included, the entire galaxy would have been spared from civil war. Or, if he had infiltrated the arena box and instead twitched his lightsaber to kill not Jango, but Count Dooku, he would have prevented the future deaths of millions by giving his own. "The Jedi are keepers of the peace, not soldiers," Windu had said earlier in Episode II, but now, every Jedi is needed for the war effort—because of his errors.

Windu's regrets extend to his former padawan, Depa Billaba, who has since been sent to the jungle planet Haruun Kal to help train and local tribes and lead them in a guerrilla war against the Separatists. Billaba seems to have completed her mission, but after the enemy withdraws from the system she has mysteriously not returned to Coruscant. Worse, a hologram shows what appears to be a civilian massacre with corpses bearing the kill-wounds of a lightsaber.  Master Yoda tasks Windu with ascertaining the truth, and if necessary, arrest Billaba and return her to be tried and sentenced for war crimes. 

Windu's Heart-of-Darkness-like journey into the mountains and jungles of Haruun Kal is a dramatic tale that single-handedly expands George Lucas' universe greater than any other Star Wars fiction I've come across. The deep, psychological maturity that Stover uses to characterizes Windu, his allies, his enemies, and the majestic yet deadly planet of Haruun Kal is spellbinding. And the philosophy and moral code of the Jedi is explored and dramatized powerfully by the events, bolstering the prequels' one-line aphorisms. I first picked up Shatterpoint when I was thirteen or so, just after Episode II was released, and (re)reading it again this month had me feeling like a kid again. The Force is strong with this one. [JG]
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The internet's pre-eminent father figure, Dr. Jordan B. Peterson, has written an unconventionally inspiring and instructive manual for dealing with career, romance, family, and personal meaning. I've found a tremendous amount of practical insights from his analysis of biblical and archetypal stories, his mining of history to courageously look at mankind in its worst moments, and his synthesizing of biological and psychological research to understand how societies fail and function. Because of Peterson, I'm not as lazy, messy, bitter, resentful, angry, and pitiful. I see the implications for such chaos a bit more clearly. I hope others begin to help themselves too.

Perhaps my favorite section of the book was "Rule 7: Pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient)." This chapter speaks to one of the most ancient stories, Cain and Abel, and its ideas of competence, envy, and destruction. The tragic tale of two brothers, the competent Abel and less-so Cain, who comes to resent God because his offerings are not as favored as Abel's own, finds, Peterson contends, significant relevance in our current culture of entitlement with its cries for equal outcome and fetish for emotional offense. "Long ago, in the dim mists of time, we began to realize that reality was structured as if it could be bargained with," and if reality finds your offerings wanting, resentment can only lead to destruction of oneself and others. "Not all sacrifices are of equal value," Peterson writes, and we should forget this ancient wisdom at our own 21st century peril.

Structured into eleven more harrowing, yet at-times humorous chapters, ​​Twelve Rules for Life distills the author's clinical work, university teachings, and other life experiences in order to map a path for sorting out one's strengths and weaknesses, setting one's own house in order, and improving the world that much more because of it. Peterson's message of personal empowerment through humbling self- and historical-knowledge is the call to action that much too much of us need, but many still want. [JG]