Vince Flynn – Kill Shot (Atria Books)

Kill Shot marks the 13th novel from thriller author Vince Flynn and the second installment of the American Assassin series of books, designed to back fill the story of Flynn’s heroic killer Mitch Rapp.

The story finds Rapp diligently and single-handedly working his way through a hit list of terrorists when someone throws a wrench in the works and sends assassins after the assassin, leaving Rapp on the run and doubting the players on his own team.

The story line of Washington insider infighting, political types getting in the way of people doing the heavy lifting is a familiar one to Flynn fans. Flynn does a masterful job of painting the halls of power and the action in the field. You can feel the slime of the Washington insiders and envision the hulking thugs.

Kill Shot is light on plot but heavy on great characters and does its job of filling in the blanks about how Rapp became the stone cold hero. While the whole story takes place over a short period of time and limited space, it is the interactions between the characters and their often diametrically opposite goals that drives the story
Flynn draws characters in black and white, who remain interesting and easy to love or hate. While the initial shot in this series, American Assassin, left some fans short, this round has Flynn back and track and me looking forward the forthcoming third installment.

Dylan Ratigan - Greedy Bastards (Simon & Shuster)

I have always found the portrayal of Conservatives as “angry white guys” entertaining and misguided. Grab your Advil, tune in MSNBC, which is guaranteed to induce a headache, and soak up to nearly non-stop anger and bitterness of the cavalcade of Liberal hosts.
That is the point you have to start from when you read Greedy Bastards by Dylan Ratigan, host of MSNBC’s The Dylan Ratigan Show, described by the press materials accompanying the book as “one of the highest-rated, daytime shows on the network.” Talk about damning with faint praise…given the cable news channel’s less than stellar audience numbers.

In Greedy Bastards, Ratigan attempts to details his perspective on our “broken system.” He runs down what ails a wide variety of problems ranging from banking to the stock market and healthcare to big oil/energy. Taking off on his crusade to remove money from politics, Ratigan attempts to draw correlations between the root cause of the problem and the flow of cash to politicians.

I don’t disagree! But I do find it interesting that Ratigan spent much of his early career as a financial journalist covering Wall Street yet he didn’t do a whole lot to raise red flags about the ridiculous Ponzi schemes and outright fraudulent financial instruments that the folks he was charged with covering were creating that became part and parcel of the financial meltdown tsunami that mowed down the housing, banking, finance and insurance industries in it’s wake. These guys created a financial house of cards that got a total pass from the regulators and politicians that wrap themselves in the cloak of looking out for the little guy and Ratigan stood idly by and said nothing until now.

Full disclosure; my day job is in the healthcare industry, so I read that section of the book with great interest. Ratigan lays out a classic example of his friend “Larry” who was clearly suffering a repetitive stress hand injury and was offered medical advice to address the issue with physical therapy which would have offered some relief. “Larry” decided not to follow through on the exercises that were recommended…let me stress that point; “Larry” decided not to follow through on the exercises that were recommended, and later needed to have surgery to solve the problem. It seems more than a bit ridiculous to indict the entire industry based on a patient choice.
Surprisingly, Ratigan does offer up a market based solution to the problem of the high cost of healthcare, rather than turning to the government to fix the problem. He advocates for a solution that I have pushed for many years; allowing market forces of health savings accounts and patient choices to drive down the cost of healthcare through competition and increasing quality.
The roadblock to most solutions tends to be the government and a HUGE increase in regulation. Ratigan bemoans some regulation, while pushing for new regulations, never accounting to the very real costs of those regulations and the fact that regulatory costs get passed through the so-called “greedy bastards” and get paid by the end-users.
The cartoonish cover may not have been the best choice, because it sets the tone for Ratigan’s BAM, BIFF, POW, approach; skimming the surface of very real issues, yet not really offering much in the way of in-depth solutions to the problems. Instead he chooses to nibble around the edges of solutions or offering up tried and failed solutions; like the electric car to solve the so-called energy crisis.
The real solution is not getting money out of politics, which is a limitation on free speech. The real solution is an energized, alert and informed electorate that pays attention and calls their elected officials when the put self-interest over public interest and an electorate that understands that the government is not the source of solving problems, but the source of creating problems.

Betsy Myers - Take The Lead

Ms. Myers was the COO of the Barack Obama presidential campaign and chaired the Women for Obama campaign organization in the last election cycle. She has served as the executive director of the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. She, like her sister Dee Dee, was a senior official in the Clinton administration, working as the President’s advisor on women’s issues; women’s issues… not the President’s issues with women…I’ll leave it to you to fill in your own punch line.

Suffice it to say that Myers has tackled some high profile, high powered leadership roles. Yet I find her book, Take the Lead, as not so much a leadership book, but rather a set of what she describes as 7 core principles, that she wraps with political antidotes as an example of those principles in practice.
Myers 7 principles include:


• Connection – Making people feel seen and heard

• Collaboration – Being willing to embrace different points of view

• Authenticity – Knowing who you are

• Respect – Treating each person as important

• Clarity – laser focus and uncompromising consistency

• Learning - always listening and staying open to new ideas

• Courage – The courage to take risks; to apologize; to tell the truth; to grow
This could be the most contradictory list I have ever seen. Taking Ms. Myers at her own words, how can you be willing to embrace different points of view and be open to new ideas, yet remain uncompromisingly consistent? Does this say more about my Myers background in the political realm then about leadership?

Politicians by their very nature are some of the least authentic people I have ever encountered. Realistically speaking, if Barack Obama had been genuinely authentic during his Presidential campaign, does anyone really believe that he would have been elected President?

Boiling it down, Ms. Myers “core principles” aren’t a road map to leadership, but a road map to becoming a Democrat politician. It reads like a playbook for talking a good game, but doesn’t really show how to deliver the goods, which is really what Democrat elective politics have become – make it sound like you care about and issue/person, act like you’re going to do something, but never really deliver on a promise.

It’s interesting that the two powerful leaders that Ms. Myers worked for were so uniquely skilled at connection, yet such utter failures at having the courage to tell the truth. Interesting political insights…maybe. Leadership book…not so much.

My Life Deleted, by Scott and Joan Bolzan and Caitlin Rother.

By Katie Johns – Guest Reviewer


How would you like to go to work one morning, slip and fall, and wake up hours later lying in your own blood, not knowing who you are, how you got there, and where you are?

This very thing happened to Scott Bolzan who owned an airplane business with his wife, Joan. He was the kind of man who woke up in the middle of the night and started working on his very successful business. Scott went into work at about 5 in the morning, worked for several hours, and simply walked into the men’s bathroom where his life was changed forever.

He slipped and fell on something oily, tried in vain after several hours to get back up, but kept slipping only to hit his head against the hard tile floor over and over.

Finally after getting up he hailed a woman walking through the building starting her business day. This was only the beginning of a strange new world of a major traumatic brain injury that irrevocably changed Scott’s life.

You see, after falling, repeatedly hitting his head numerous times, Scott lost all of his memory. He woke up in the hospital not knowing who he was, if he was married, or even what a hospital was. Scott essentially was taken back to being an infant, and could not remember anything.

When his wife of about 24 years walked into his hospital room, he didn’t know who she was, or what a wife was. He did not recognize any of his family members.

Scott had major head trauma, so horrible, he had to teach himself what everything was again. His wife daughter and son had to tell him about his life all over again.

Scott Bolzan’s story is fraught with heart wrenching misery, but you will see a man who was once a determined NHL football player, become a determined, strong man who digs deep to learn about his life, and how he teaches himself what everything is again. You will feel horrible for him in this story that could have turned out to be a feel sorry for yourself kind of book. But it’s not, My Life Deleted will teach everyone, even people who have had brain injuries, how to push past the pain, and get back into the game.

My Life Deleted is a story of a how a man relearns about his life, and how he relearns about all the things we learn as we grow up. It’s a story of character building, everyday problems, struggles, the agony of defeat and the hard won victories Scott and his family build on. It shows how a successful man realizes he was a not so nice a guy, and changes his personality becoming yet again a monetary success. He even becomes more of a nicer, more sensitive kind of guy, the kind of guy he never was before.

My Life Deleted is an interesting read, but it is written very simply. You will not get a complicated, big word kind of book where someone is trying to impress scholars. You will discover a simply written book, because you will realize that Scott is still learning about the world. This is a real life story that just might teach you how to push past all the misery in your life, and that hard work, a great attitude and determination will get you through even the worst of all situations.

Ronn Torossian – For Immediate Release (BenBella Books)

Entire sections of book stores are dedicated to books on business and an endless array of theories on operations, sales and marketing. Ronn Torossian is the founder, president and CEO of 5W Public Relations, so it’s only natural that his first entry into the business book sweepstakes For Immediate Release would be centered on a public relations approach to building brands.

Torossian sites IBIS World, a media research firm when he rolls out the staggering fact that businesses spent an estimated $9.73 billion on public relations efforts in 2010, with forecasts having that spend increase to a projected $12.82 billion by 2015. While any dollar amount featuring the B-Word is impressive (at least outside the realm of government) those amounts pale in comparison to the estimated $210 billion that is spent on advertising.

Torossian makes a legitimate case that the impact that public relations efforts have on building brands and delivering bottom line results may be greater than that of straight brand advertising. The book is loaded with examples and case studies of how public relations strategies delivered positive measurable results.

In one glaring case, Torossian sites the BP Oil spill as an example of advertising as bad crisis management. The oil giant spent $50 million on an ad campaign to convince the public that the spill was really all that bad. While the spill was nowhere near the doomsday scenario that some in the media had painted, a well managed critical response public relations campaign featuring an expenditure in say the tens of millions in communities and with the people that were directly impacted by the spill would have had a much more positive impact than a bunch of TV commercials.

It’s nearly impossible for a small to mid-size enterprise to compete against the giants in a given business sector. With a concerted, focused, effort in the public relations realm, you can have an impact and improve bottom line results. I can’t imagine a more competitive business than the beverage industry; Torossian rolls out the case study of Hint Water, a bottled water company with $30 million in annual sales. When you think about the Dasani’s (Coca Cola), Aquafina (Pepsi) and the Perrier/Poland Springs’ (Nestle) of the world, who’s annual ad budgets dwarf Hint’s bottom line, how do they possibly compete? Any marketer worth their salt knows that it is impressions that count and Torossian was able to help Hint by garnering media coverage and significant profile features. It’s a whole lot easier to make a lasting impression when someone else, in many cases the media, are doing the heavy lifting for you.

Clearly Torossian makes the case that public relations needs to be a forethought rather than an afterthought. For Immediate Release makes me wonder how Torossian would have handled the Penn State mess; I would have to guess it would have been though a whole lot more proactive route than the one the University chose.

Bill Bennett- The Book of Man- Readings on the Path to Manhood (Thomas Nelson Books)

The introduction of talk show host/commentator/former Secretary of Education Bill Bennett’s new book The Book of Man is as thought provoking a handful of pages as I have read lately. In it he makes the case that the state of manhood in America has gone through a dramatic and altogether not good transition over the course of the past couple of decades.

While it is not Bennett’s premise, I think the case can be made that we can trace the current malaise we find ourselves mired in, to the pussification of the American male. We have steadily erased some of the cornerstones of what made men, men. And Bennett’s book wants to put in place a framework, through the written word, to put manhood back into its rightful place, by changing the way we teach the next generation of males.

Think about it. We have erased from our society some of the most basic tenets of manhood. We whimpify boys by not allowing them to keep score in youth sports; going a step further when we actually allow scoring in scholastic sports, teams who win a lopsided victory are chastised for “running up the score.”

We have raised a generation of men not to seek knowledge and pursue critical thinking skills, but to merely get good grades. I recently took part in a discussion with a college professor who studies generational differences who spoke of the disturbing trend where college students are likely to have a parent call a professor about a bad grade or even go so far as to bring along a parent on job interviews!

We have taught a generation of men that they are inconsequential to the family unit; that women are strong and don’t really need them around. Is it any wonder that we have tragic divorce rates, scores of children being born and raised out of wedlock and where in the 1950s 96 percent of males between the ages of 25-54 worked; today that number stands at around 80 percent. Yes, a full 20 percent, one fifth of men do not get up and go to work each day!

Where once men took care of families, the government now plays the role of provider. No I am not a chauvinist, women are certainly a vital part of the work force and the family, but how can you read these numbers and not see that we have created an unsustainable and growing problem of dependency.

The Book Of Man is not a prescription to fix this problem, but gathers the writings of great thinkers on a variety of topics including; Man at Work, Man at Play, and Man with Women and Children, which can at the very least envision a different sort of path to manhood than we currently find ourselves on.

I can’t help but wonder if instead of government handouts if we might see a greater benefit in handing out copies of Mr. Bennett’s book. I also have to wonder if the maggot-infested flock of Wall Street Occupiers might benefit from a copy of the Book of Man…maybe we could enlist someone to read it to them, or better yet, we could set up a large PA system and blast them with the audio book version 24/7.

Simon Toyne- Sanctus (William Morrow)

Scott Turow and John Grisham weren’t the first writers to write a legal thriller, but they set the tone and spawned phalanx of legal writers that churned out a library full of court room drama.


Tom Clancy wasn’t the first writer to knock out a military techno thriller, but he did marshal an army of writers who battled the forces of evil on millions of pages.

And Dan Brown wasn’t the first author the juggle ancient conspiracies in a modern setting, but he did guide a legion of wordsmiths who put quill to parchment and conjured up countless religious warriors, who protect a vault full of secrets.

While these authors set the proverbial tone, what separates those who follow from the rest of the pack is the ability to take the genre in a new in a new direction. Simon Toyne has done that with his debut thriller Sanctus.

Set in modern day Turkey, Sanctus details a mysterious religious sect that remains separated from the world in a mountain stronghold, the Citadel; protecting an ancient relic, known as the sacrament and it’s secret. If the secret were revealed it would change the face of religious belief, so the secretive brotherhood does whatever it takes to guard the cipher.

The intrigue starts early and remains at a steady pitch as competing forces battle for control of the secret. Keep in mind, if you need a firm grip on reality, then you’ll find yourself questioning things nearly every step of the way; this one falls firmly in the realm of the suspension of disbelief.

But that’s what a thriller is all about and Toyne it’s the right tone at the intersection of the ancient and modern worlds.