Scott J. Pearson’s Book Review

How to Be Everything: A Guide for Those Who (Still) Don’t Know What They Want to Be When They Grow Up

By Scott J. Pearson | September 3, 2022September 3, 2022 by Scott J. Pearson

Modern culture sometimes has hard-to-shake core beliefs. The social mores tend to suggest that workers specialize (or sub-specialize) in one thing. We expect people to define themselves by their work, and their work must consist of one main task or calling. That’s easy for people who are good at only one thing or favor/enjoy only one thing. However, some of us have trouble fitting into that mold. We do multiple things well and enjoy the…

The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt

By Scott J. Pearson | August 30, 2022August 30, 2022 by Scott J. Pearson

Alexander Hamilton, America’s first Treasury Secretary, is often credited with forming the nation’s new economic system. Not far behind him (or even beside him) sits Cornelius Vanderbilt. In modern times, his name is most associated with a university in Nashville, but his legacy touched many turning points of nineteenth-century America. In this biography, Stiles describes Vanderbilt’s story beginning with the waning years of the eighteenth century and continuing after the Civil War until railroads united…

Management-Business

Help Them Grow or Watch Them Go: Career Conversations Organizations Need & Employees Want

By Scott J. Pearson | August 29, 2022August 29, 2022 by Scott J. Pearson

Leading and developing a dynamic team is tough in any business field. Many people move from job to job and never gain critical depth. The organizational ladder used to reflect the “true path” towards career growth, but organizations are much flatter than they used to be. This means that career development needs to be rethought for new situations. In this book, Kaye and Winkle Giulioni try to help managers think about how to have these…

Fiction-Stories

A Tangled Mercy: A Novel

By Scott J. Pearson | August 27, 2022August 27, 2022 by Scott J. Pearson

Known for its history and beauty, Charleston, South Carolina, is one of my favorite places in the United States. My favorite Charlestonian of all time (besides my wife) is Denmark Vesey, who led a failed slave revolt in 1822. He left my church in Charleston (Second Presbyterian Church) to help found Mother Emmanuel AME Church – the same church that hosted a horrific Bible study in 2015 that ended when a white racist murdered nine…

Management-Business Society

How to Be an Inclusive Leader: Your Role in Creating Cultures of Belonging Where Everyone Can Thrive

By Scott J. Pearson | August 26, 2022August 26, 2022 by Scott J. Pearson

Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI, for short) were thrust towards the focal center of the workplace recently in the United States. Not only has white supremacy become more vocal, but well-reported events, such as the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and the Charleston Nine, irrefutably show that America is still overcoming systemic racism. Our racial struggles were not all settled with the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. One place of multifaceted struggle is…

Fiction-Stories

Breach: A Novel

By Scott J. Pearson | August 20, 2022August 20, 2022 by Scott J. Pearson

Some of us bear continual hardships that others might never encounter. Marleigh Mulcahy is one of these people. Both her parents are addicted to alcohol, and she was raised in a boxing gym by her grandfather. She is working through school to be a dental technologist, but has to work several jobs to make ends meet. Her grandfather fades into dementia and eventual death. Life seems stacked against her. While in the gym, she meets…

Management-Business

Show the Value of What You Do: Measuring & Achieving Success in Any Endeavor

By Scott J. Pearson | August 14, 2022August 14, 2022 by Scott J. Pearson

Job security is a desire common to many employees, yet full security remains an elusive goal in almost any endeavor. Patti and Jack Phillips, in this book, show how to calculate the value of your work so that you can communicate its value to decision-makers in a business setting. This value is called “Return on Investment” (or ROI, for short) and provides a business case for your labor. If you honestly contribute more than you…

Healthcare

Advancing Healthcare Through Personalized Medicine

By Scott J. Pearson | August 13, 2022August 13, 2022 by Scott J. Pearson

The sequencing of the human genome and the subsequent reduction in price for individuals to sequence their own DNA have opened up a new opportunity for medicine. DNA sequencing has the potential for clinical use in the near future. This means that drugs can be developed with applicability only to a subset of the population with specific genetics. Indeed, genomic therapy with CRISPR (not covered in this edition of this book) further opens up treatment…

Leadership Management-Business Software-Technology

Fostering Innovation: How to Build an Amazing IT Team

By Scott J. Pearson | August 12, 2022September 24, 2024 by Scott J. Pearson

A Chief Information Officer (CIO) is a relatively new addition to a modern business’s C-suite. However, despite being recent, in an era of digital innovation, it’s become an essential one. Instead of offloading work onto employees, most companies try to offload some of the work onto the IT department. IT specialists, the builders of technology, usually cannot meld their products into business-ready deliverables. That’s where the CIO comes in, to lead tech efforts towards a…

Biography-Memoir

No One Crosses the Wolf: A Memoir

By Scott J. Pearson | August 8, 2022August 13, 2023 by Scott J. Pearson

Fathers can sometimes present themselves to their children as a tyrannical lot, especially in abusive situations. Young ones can feel trapped in circumstances because they cannot escape their family, yet their circumstances are oppressive to their own personal growth. Coming to peace with their situation and themselves can consume years of early adulthood. Nikolidakis’ story embodies this storyline, yet as a thirty-something, a trip to Greece, her ancestral home, brought her a sense of peace…