Stories
Stories
Alumni Books
So You Think You Can Teach: From Expert Practitioner to Successful Instructor
by Bill Cockrum (MBA 1961)
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Cockrum provides a guide for presenting or teaching a class to an adult audience, including learning how to create effective presentations, building a syllabus and course outline, and using established educational theory in practical situations.
Mom Hacks: 100+ Science-Backed Shortcuts to Reclaim Your Body, Raise Awesome Kids, and Be Unstoppable
by Darria Long Gillespie
Da Capo Lifelong Books
Long Gillespie combed the latest in medicine, psychology, and holistic health for answers when her own health crises struck. She now brings those solutions to moms everywhere. Mom Hacks gives you the specific smallest changes that yield the biggest impact for moms and their children. Every hack is a super-charged minisolution with an immediate impact. So you feel good, lose the baby weight, and are more present, while raising thriving children—in an entirely do-able, time-saving, with-you-in-the-trenches way.
Confessions of a Christian
by Art Hilsinger (MBA 1952)
Independently published
All is not well in the Christian world today. Far too many people have become disillusioned in their religious beliefs and are leaving the church in great numbers. They are doing so mainly because they find church dogmas and traditions lack credibility. The church has not maintained pace with important changes that have taken place in society, and it needs to regain its credibility by making significant changes in its outlook and practices. Hilsinger examines five key areas of scripture, about which he feels church dogmas are particularly bothersome or confusing to people in today’s society. These dogmas, considered sacrosanct since the beginning of church history, need updating to be more creditable.
The Hilco Story: Discovering a Diamond in Our Own Backyard
by Art Hilsinger (MBA 1952)
Independently published
Hilsinger offers a candid, clear-eyed look at the process of building a successful business. The business began in 1956 as a contract manufacturer for eyewear companies. It grew over the years. Ultimately, the company would realize that it had a “diamond” in its own backyard, a core business that had been in the picture all along. Focusing on that core, the Hilsinger team grew the company into a strong, sustainable business that would find a new owner, continuing to operate very successfully to the present time.
I Really Meant to Tell You…: Finding the Courage for Kindness
by Jeff Hutsell (MBA 1978)
BookLogix
Have you ever regretted not telling someone you love them? Have you ever lost a friendship over something that could have been fixed by the right words? Has your best employee walked out the door without you ever telling them how much they meant to you? Do you still recall that wonderful thing someone said to you so many years ago? If so, then you know that words matter! Hutsell explores why it is so challenging to have those important conversations, create those moments of meaning, and deliver great words to the people we care about at the office, at home, and in all areas of life.
The 7 Laws of Enough: Cultivating a Life of Sustainable Abundance
by Gina LaRoche (MBA 1994) and Jennifer Cohen
Parallax Press
The 7 Laws of Enough is about a radical kind of change at the personal, organizational, and societal level: a shift from scarcity to sustainable abundance. LaRoche offers seven principles to guide readers on a transformational journey of self-discovery, toward new leadership strategies and a renewed sense of fulfillment and purpose. Her first law or principle is that stories matter. We are all living in the story of scarcity—the story that tells us we don’t have enough. We want more and more, perpetuating a vicious cycle of consumption that lowers our own well-being and irreparably damages the Earth. This book is an invitation to live in another story, the story of sustainable abundance.
Cleantech Sell: The Essential Guide to Selling Resource Efficient Products in the B2B Market
by Tony McDonald (MBA 1989)
Cleantech Sell Publishing
The essential resource for selling resource-efficient products in the B2B marketplace, this book provides specific knowledge of use to people in the cleantech, energy efficiency, and resource efficiency space. It is packed with wisdom and resources for launching a successful cleantech product and is based on the author’s 10 years’ experience building and mentoring successful cleantech companies. Some highlights: Why there is no such thing as cleantech, there is only money; Avoiding the cleantech fallacy; Pre-marketing your product to avoid problems later; Prioritizing your prospects quantitatively; Finding and managing indirect and direct distribution channels; The secret marketing vector that only cleantech companies can use; Harnessing utility companies to help you sell your product; How to establish your credibility; and Financing your sale.
Forget It; What's the Point?: Letting Go and Claiming Joy
by Marguerite Rose Orane (MBA 1985)
Self-published
In her first book, Orane outlined six “free and laughing” principles: Be Present, Observe, Accept, Release, Trust, and Love. In this one she zeroes in on her stories of acceptance and release, perhaps the most difficult. It’s not easy to let go of our memories of experiences, but let go we must, if we want to be free.
How to Get Back Up: A Memoir of Failure & Resilience
by Neil Pasricha (MBA 2007)
Audible Studios
Pasricha combines his personal story of failure and resilience with the latest scientific research on happiness, along with a strong dose of the self-development strategies he’s honed over the past decade to get more done and live a fuller life. He offers lessons on resilience and perseverance, such as the 3 Bs of getting yourself out of burnout; the single word that opens up any opportunity; the most important question to ask when sizing up a new opportunity; a simple step-by-step framework for letting go of shame; and how just two minutes can make every day intentional.
Fortitude: The Story of My Ancestors
by Charles Rentschler (MBA 1964)
Authorhouse
This is the story of Rentschler’s grandfather, George Adam Rentschler, a German immigrant orphaned at age 12 who created an industrial empire in Hamilton, Ohio, that employed thousands, including hundreds of poor whites who came from Kentucky to southeastern Ohio to find work. And it’s the story of three of his sons, who went on to run Fortune 500/New York Stock Exchange-listed companies. It is a story of the fortitude of these four men.
Are We French Yet? Keith & Val’s Adventures in Provence
by Keith Van Sickle (MBA 1985)
Dresher Publishing
A continuation of Van Sickle’s One Sip at a Time: Learning to Live in Provence, this book tells of the Van Sickles’ adventures as they unlock such mysteries of France as how French people are like coconuts; Can you learn to argue like a French person? What books have changed French lives? And, most important of all, how do you keep your soup from exploding?
New to Big: How Companies Can Create Like Entrepreneurs, Invest Like VCs, and Install a Permanent Operating System for Growth
by Christina Wallace (MBA 2010) and David Kidder
Currency
Most established companies face a key survival challenge. Operational efficiency and outdated bureaucracy are at war with new growth. Legacy companies are skilled at growing big businesses into even bigger ones but less adept at discovering new opportunities and turning them into big businesses. The authors reveal their proprietary blueprint for installing a permanent growth capability inside any company, the Growth Operating System, which borrows the best tools, systems, and mind-sets from entrepreneurship and venture capital and adapts them for established organizations, leveraging these two distinct skills as a form of management for building in a future that is uncertain.
Faculty Books
Disciples of the State?: Religion and State-Building in the Former Ottoman World
by Kristin Fabbe
Cambridge University Press
As the Ottoman Empire crumbled, the Middle East and Balkans became the site of contestation and cooperation between the traditional forces of religion and the emergent machine of the sovereign state. Yet such strategic interaction rarely yielded a decisive victory for either the secular state or for religion. By tracing how state-builders engaged religious institutions, elites, and attachments, this book examines the divergent religion-state power configurations that have developed. There are two central arguments. First, states carved out more sovereign space in places like Greece and Turkey, where religious elites were integral to early centralizing reform processes. Second, region-wide structural constraints on the types of linkages that states were able to build with religion have generated long-term repercussions. Fatefully, both state policies that seek to facilitate equality through the recognition of religious difference and state policies that seek to eradicate such difference have contributed to failures of liberal democratic consolidation.
Creative Construction: The DNA of Sustained Innovation
by Gary Pisano
PublicAffairs
Pisano tackles the myth that larger enterprises are inherently incapable of transformative innovation and are doomed to be disrupted by nimble start-ups. If larger enterprises seem incapable of transformative innovation, it is due to how we design and manage them rather than anything inherent in their scale. In fact, if used properly, scale can be an asset rather than a liability when it comes to innovation. But to leverage the advantages of scale for innovation, companies need the right combination of strategy, systems, and culture. This book offers a set of principles that will lead readers to rethink many long-held beliefs about innovation.
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