Kevin Hoffberg: Book Recommendations

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These Books Are About Journeys

The Hero with a Thousand Faces (Mythos... If you've read my essay on Try vs. Do, you know that I'm a huge fan of this book. This comes about as close to a must read as I can think of. Your customers are on a journey. The question is, how relevant are your organization and your offers to that journey? Same is true for your employees? Read my essay, then buy the book, then call me.

Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible... And you think you have it tough. Bunch of guys head on down to the Antarctic to be the first to cross the frozen continent by dog sled. Ooops. Boat gets frozen in and ultimately crushed by the ice. In a terrific tale of heroism and grit, everyone of them makes it off the ice and ultimately to safety. Easy read. Great story. The essence of the heroic journey. It will take you most of a Saturday to read this.

Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea This is a ripping good tale, a true pairing of two stories. The first, of the sinking in a terrible hurricane of the steamship Central America along with 50 tons of gold rush era gold. The second, of a young engineer named Tommy Thompson who takes nothing for granted, questions everything about everything, and ultimate figures out what no one for any amount of money including the US government with it's unlimited treasury could do before him: do delicate, real work at extreme depths. Tommy not only finds the wreck, but salvages the gold. It reads like fiction. It's a pot boiler from the first page to the last. If you like a good tale, if you like innovation and a never say never attitude, read this book.

Beowulf: A New Verse Translation This is a book that many people have heard about, but unless you were an English Lit major, went to private school in the US, or had a proper English education (as in the kind they serve up in the home isles), your probably never read it. Pity. It's the fountainhead of Anglo Saxon heroic literature. One of the leading lights on the book was a fellow named Tolkien, and indeed, the Ring trilogy and Star Wars, to name two, owe much of their architecture to Beo. For us moderns, it is a terrific metaphor for our own journey, personal, corporate or otherwise. Read this version.

Way of the Peaceful Warrior, 20th... It's probably not too much to say that this book is a classic. It's a novelized autobiography about a college gymnast and his encounter with a mystic service station attendant he takes to calling Socrates. The emphasis is very much on living in the now. It's sold about a jillion copies. You should add it to your collection. "Release your struggle, let go of your mind, throw away your concerns, and relax into the world. No need to resist life; just do your best. Open your eyes and see that you are far more than you imagine. You are the world, you are the universe; you are yourself and everyone else, too! It’s all the marvelous Play of God. Wake up, regain your humor. Don’t worry, you are already free."