Well Read Pulse By Patrick Carman ’88
The Next Scott Nadelson: A Life in Progress By Scott Nadelson
Kill the Company By Lisa Bodell
Predictably Irrational By Dan Ariely
Adventure. Romance. Telekinesis. And a tale set nearly 40 years in the future. What curious young adult could turn down that literary combo platter? Stocking the platter is none other than Willamette alumnus and New York Times-bestselling author Carman. He turned diverse skills and experiences — a business econ major, 10 years of entrepreneurship launching and running his own ad agency, founding a tech company, and finally, taking his creative skills as a storyteller — very seriously indeed. The stories Carman told his two daughters have ended up as a series of popular fantasy and adventure stories for children and young adults. “Pulse,” book one, and “Tremor,” book two, are part of a trilogy. To date, his books have been translated into two dozen languages. On the side, he and his wife (Karen Wilcox Carman ’89) support literacy causes at home and abroad.
Nadelson, associate professor of English at Willamette, mastered the short story in “Saving Stanley: The Brickman Stories,” “The Cantor’s Daughter” and “Aftermath.” Inspired by his students, whom he describes as fearless in exploring creative nonfiction, Nadelson turned his hand to writing memoir. “The Next Scott Nadelson: A Life in Progress” springs out of a trifecta-plus-one of misery in Nadelson’s life — a bad breakup, exile to a drafty attic and a dying cat. Then the brakes on his car gave up. The memoir has already been honored as an Oregon Book Award finalist, and the convergence of comedy and heartbreak is irresistible. As Nadelson writes: “I’d always prided myself on being someone who appreciated the absurdity of life, who didn’t take it too seriously, but there’s an enormous difference, I discovered, between reading a Kafka novel or watching a Woody Allen movie and living inside of one.”
The Atkinson Graduate School of Management (AGSM) Alumni Book Club gathers alumni online in spring and fall to read and discuss a management-related book with the author. Based on past participation, AGSM alumni are avid readers! Each session averages 75 participants. One recent club selection was Lisa Bodell’s “Kill the Company”. Bodell makes the case that to be truly innovative, you don’t start with innovation, you start by “offing” entrenched behaviors, cultures and processes that deflate the innovative spirit. Founder of futurethink, an innovation research and training firm, Bodell says innovators have to reduce before they add. Question assumptions, challenge rules, kill off outdated status quo attitudes — all are practices that will create space for change and time to think.
Ariely’s credentials are interesting — faculty appointments at MIT and Duke, professor of psychology and behavioral economics — but here’s the most tantalizing fact about him: This author of another provocative favorite of the AGSM Alumni Book Club is the founder of The Center for Advanced Hindsight. Ariely’s premise is that humans seem to behave irrationally — from splurging on lavish meals while painstakingly cutting coupons to choosing cars and sweethearts in apparently random ways. But Ariely’s work reveals that there’s structure, even predictability, in what appear to be random, senseless, even misguided behaviors. In fact, he asserts, human beings behave in ways that are systematic and predictable, making us predictably irrational. Despite the whimsical name of his Center, the research is serious, covering areas such as the psychology of money, decision making by physicians and patients, cheating and social justice.
Note: The AGSM Alumni Book Club was launched and supported by a generous donor.
Illustration by Jane Mount 36
FALL 2014