Archives for March 2016

Dreamland – Sam Quinones

This is an incredible book. MBA programs in universities around the country should be using it as a case study. Author Sam Quinones is a long time crime reporter who became fascinated by the opioid and heroin epidemic that swept across this country killing more people than auto accidents. Quinones started researching the book full time in 2013 and it was published in 2015. The numbers are staggering. Just unimaginable. If it’s a subject you aren’t familiar with, it’s because the stigma associated with drug addiction and death has kept the largely white middle class Americans who have been affected silent about their suffering.

As with many books written by journalists, this one is gripping and reads like a novel from start to finish. The title “Dreamland” comes from a large community swimming pool in Portsmouth, Ohio. For decades it was the community gathering place. The book begins and ends in Portsmouth, which Quinones calls “America’s opiate ground zero.”

This is a story about big pharma, the release of OxyContin, a single paragraph published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1980, the shift in chronic pain management, the collapse of the manufacturing economy in many states, and the small state of Nayarit in Mexico that produced a large network of heroin traffickers out of its capitol of Xalisco. It was a convergence of pill mills in the East meeting a distributed network of drug traffickers from the West peddling a cheap and potent “black tar heroin” that collided in the state of Ohio.

The fascinating cast of characters includes Virginia’s own John Brownlee, US attorney for the western district in 2006, who filed the first law suit against Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, for criminal misbranding. “Purdue Pharma pleaded guilty to a felony count of ‘misbranding’ OxyContin. To avoid federal prison sentences for its executives, the company paid a $634.5 million fine, among the largest in the history of the pharmaceutical industry at the time.”Read More

by Catherine Read

Rising Strong – Brené Brown

Rising Strong - Brené Brown “When we stop caring what people think, we lose our capacity for connection. But when we are defined by what people think, we lose the courage to be vulnerable. The solution is getting totally clear on the people whose opinions actually matter.”

I LOVED this book! I finished it on the plane headed to SXSW and then saw Dr. Brené Brown speak at that conference the next day. She received the #SXSW2016 “Speaker of the Event” Award. Well deserved.

“Every part of the rising strong practice points to these questions: Can we lean in to the vulnerability of emotion and stand in our truth? Are we willing to lean in to the initial discomfort of curiosity and creativity so we can be braver with our lives? Do we have the courage to rumble with our story?”

Brené Brown brings so much of herself, her family, her experiences to her books and to her talks. She lives the concept of living in truth – our own truth. Spending time with her book was a positive and life affirming experience and I highly recommend it. She ends the book with this:

MANIFESTO OF THE BRAVE AND BROKENHEARTED

There is no greater threat to the critics and cynics and fearmongers
Than those of us who are willing to fall
Because we have learned how to rise

With skinned knees and bruised hearts;
We choose owning our stories of struggle,
Over hiding, over hustling, over pretending.

When we deny our stories, they define us.
When we run from struggle, we are never free.
So we turn toward truth and look it in the eye.

We will not be characters in our stories.
Not villains, not victims, not even heroes.

We are the authors of our lives.
We write our own daring endings.

We craft love from heartbreak,
Compassion from shame,
Grace from disappointment,
Courage from failure.

Showing up is our power.
Story is our way home.
Truth is our song.
We are the brave and brokenhearted.
We are rising strong.

by Catherine Read

Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Notorious RBG You can’t spell truth without Ruth.

Just phenomenal! I love the format of the book with its photos, flowcharts, margin notes, and chapter titles inspired by the lyrics of the Notorious B.I.G.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s life mirrors the cultural journey our country has taken when it comes to the issue of women’s rights and equality in this country. She has lived it. And her lived experience informs many of her searing dissents on issues we are still battling today such as reproductive choice and equal pay.

As an attorney, RBG won 5 out of the 6 women’s rights cases she argued before the Supreme Court and she works to this day to protect the gains made for women over the last 40 years. To understand her life is to glimpse where her passion comes from and why she remains committed to the fight for equality for women – as well as men. Her husband Marty Ginsberg was her “life partner” and they enjoyed 56 years of marriage before he passed away in 2010. He was committed to her career success while being a successful attorney in his own right. Despite her own battles with cancer and Marty’s death, she did not slow down or step down.

RBG is determined to use what she has to improve this world while she is still in it. In that regard, she is inspirational . . . quite literally. I highly recommend this book to everyone. It’s a “must read.”