Ford Library

Here are the latest titles added to our DVD collection:

Ant-Man and the Wasp
Barry, season 1
Eighth Grade
Hotel Artemis
Killing Eve, season 1
Leave No Trace
Life of the Party
Mandy
Over the Garden Wall
Skyscraper
Sorry to Bother You
The Spy Who Dumped Me
Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

You may browse the entire DVD collection via the library catalog.

Barak Richman (Strategy)
Recommends: Evicted by Matthew Desmond
Library catalog | Amazon

Barak Richman writes, “Last year I read Matthew Desmond’s Evicted and decided to incorporate it into my Property course. In fact, the book could inform each of my classes – contracts, antitrust, health law and policy – because it vividly describes the daily challenges that confront a vulnerable population. If we want to design government policies, or construct markets, that enable the nation’s poor to benefit from the nation’s wealth, we need this kind of deep dive into understanding structural challenges of poverty.”

Paula Ecklund (Decision Sciences)
Recommends: The Lies that Bind by Kwame Anthony Appiah
Library catalog | Amazon

NYU philosophy professor and the Sunday Times “Ethicist” columnist explores the nature of the identities that define and divide us – Gender. Religion. Race. Nationality. Class. Culture. These identities shape our sense of who we are and they bring meaning to our lives by connecting us to larger causes. But collectively, these same identities also form our understanding of our world. And our generalized notions about race, culture, religion, et al. are full of contradictions and falsehoods.

Jeremy Petranka (Assistant Dean of MMS and MQM Programs)
Recommends: The Art of Asking by Amanda Palmer
Library catalog | Amazon

Singer-songwriter Amanda Palmer finds it difficult to ask for things as a musician and as a partner. Many people are reluctant to ask for help and it depletes their lives and relationships. In The Art of Asking, Palmer examines the barriers to asking and reveals the emotional and practical aspects of asking for help. Fuqua’s Jeremy Petranka comments, “a mentee I greatly respect told me it changed her view of the world. I’m kind of seeing her point, which is a good sign.”

© Meg Trauner & Ford Library – Fuqua School of Business.
All rights reserved.

Yen, Anna. Sophia of Silicon Valley : a novel. HarperCollins Publishers, 2018.

Sophia of Silicon Valley by Anna Yen is a fictionalized account of the author’s experience working in investor relations for Steve Jobs during his Pixar years. This narrative is bookended by her character’s paralegal work for a law firm specializing in tech IPOs, and by a second stint in investor relations for Elon Musk at Tesla.

Sophia Young, the main character, is an unlikable, coddled 20-something either whining about her over-protective Taiwanese parents, lack of a husband, and less than Ivy League education; or bragging about designer clothes and luxury hotel suites as golden career opportunities fall effortlessly into her lap. While her diabetes could be a vehicle for a reader to develop an early sympathy for her, Yen glosses over the illness, and it is not until the final third of the book when Sophia experiences a crisis and encounters an adversary that she comes into her own as a character worth caring about.

Yen’s fictional depictions of Steve Jobs and Elon Musk are as superheroes. Even when Sophia sees and experiences their self-absorption, she finds excuses for them, assuming that they have loftier and nobler goals that these actions serve. These portrayals prove frustrating because they provide little insight into the characters who are Sophia’s raison d’etre.

In an interview with Business Insider, Yen mentions that she also wrote the book to impart lessons to her readers. This goal is generally at odds with good storytelling, and Sophia of Silicon Valley is no exception. It struggles with both character development and plot.

If a reader is interested in the history of Pixar or Steve Jobs, other books such as Creativity, Inc by Ed Catmull or Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs might be better choices. Thankfully, Yen had the good sense not to cast Sophia’s experience as somehow prescriptive for women wanting to succeed in high-power careers.

With a strong final third and an interesting perspective on working for quirky, powerful men in Silicon Valley, the book ultimately redeems itself from its lackluster storytelling.

Also available on OverDrive as an audiobook and an eBook.

© Julianna Harris & Ford Library – Fuqua School of Business.
All rights reserved.

Here are the latest titles added to our DVD collection:

Adrift
Beast
Billionaire Boys Club
Hereditary
Ocean’s 8
Paddington 2
RBG
The Seagull
Uncle Drew
Breath
Gotti
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
Solo: A Star Wars Story

You may browse the entire DVD collection via the library catalog.

Thames, Elizabeth Willard. Meet the Frugalwoods : achieving financial independence through simple living. HarperBusiness, 2018.

There are any number of personal finance blogs, and several devoted to living a life of frugality. One of the best known is Frugalwoods.com written by Elizabeth Willard Thames, mother of two who is living her dream life on 66 acres of woodlands in Vermont. This year, she recycled her blog postings into a popular new book, Meet the Frugalwoods. In her blog and in her book, Thames explains how she restructured the way she lived — how she spent her money and her time to craft a meaningful and contented life.

The book begins in 2006 as Thames graduates from college and takes a fundraising job for a nonprofit in New York City that pays an AmeriCorps stipend of $10,000. She considers every dollar before spending it and ends the year with $2000 in the bank. In the ensuing years, she moves to Boston; to Washington DC; then back to Boston, continuing her career as a fundraiser. Finding her work increasingly meaningless, she spends money on small luxuries to compensate. When she and her husband begin hiking in the woods every weekend, exposure to nature changes her life. They embark on a program of extreme frugality to save enough money to make them financially independent by age 32 in order to move to rural Vermont and live a life that they are passionate about.

Thames is at her best when she is evaluating the work/spend cycles of American consumer culture. People work hard at frustrating jobs and then mitigate their discontent by buying expensive homes, furniture, cars, clothes, electronics. Thames explains that people accept roles that society, family and they themselves expect, instead of living life on their own terms. To craft the independent life that she wants, Thames examines her spending to determine when it made an improvement in her life and when it was superfluous. She eliminates makeup and haircuts, buys cheaper food, does her own home repairs. She estimates her family’s savings rate of 71%.

Offering abundant tips on how to live frugally, Thames is mum about one large expense for a family – healthcare. She also fails to disclose the source of the $400,000 needed to buy the spread in Vermont – after they kept their $460,000 house in Cambridge. Their secret: her husband still has his job as a software engineer. It is easier to be independent, frugal or not, if you have a high income. Nonetheless, Meet the Frugalwoods is recommended for its thoughtful message, detailed advice and approachable style.

Also available on OverDrive as an audiobook and eBook.

© Meg Trauner & Ford Library – Fuqua School of Business.
All rights reserved.

Ford Library, in conjunction with Duke Libraries and Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina, is now collecting non-perishable food and household items for those affected by Hurricane Florence.

Fine waives will be offered for donations of food items, hygiene items, and select paper products. 1 item donated =$1 in fines waived.

Donations will accepted from Wednesday 10/10 – Friday 10/26.

Guidelines:

• Replacement fees on lost items that haven’t been returned are not eligible for fine waives.
• Maximum fine waive amount per patron is $25.
• Please, no expired food items.
• Most needed items: canned fruits and vegetables, canned meats, canned beans & soup ..
• Details on other needed items are in this linked document.

Thanks for your support!

Cabot, Heather. Geek girl rising : inside the sisterhood shaking up tech. St. Martin’s Press, 2017.

The book Geek Girl Rising by journalists Heather Cabot and Samantha Walravens should be required reading for anyone interested in entering a white, male dominated STEM field. This book covers the history of women in technology or engineering fields, and in business in general, making pivotal points about the lack of diversity in the technology sector; the importance of women helping other women succeed; and the importance of metrics in effecting change.

After a discussion about the need for diversity in STEM companies, the authors discuss ways to advocate for change. The first step to change is learning the actual ratios of women and individuals of color vs white males across industries, facts that tech companies seemed determined to hide. In a lawsuit in 2008, five of the largest Silicon Valley companies, including Google, won a lawsuit that had their company employee makeup declared a “trade secret.” This was reversed around 2013-2014 when the lack of diversity in these companies gained mainstream public attention through popular campaigns like #ChangetheRatio, as well as harassment claims and other lawsuits. People became interested in making a difference, both in reporting the numbers in their workplaces and in using consumer power to incentivize companies to change.

One factor contributing to the lack of diversity in engineering and technology fields is a lack of positive role models and success stories, despite the number of women with power and influence in these industries. Media outlets fail to promote and encourage women, who often face difficult or painful work situations, leading them to leave the industry or to avoid the spotlight as it attracts negative attention. Women pioneers in tech are not cited in articles or books as if their contributions are un-noteworthy. Ultimately, this lack of visibility corresponds to a lack of access and opportunities for growth as well as an inability to inspire others. To counter, Geek Girl Rising exhibits inspirational stories from a multitude of women from a wide range of companies and industries with pithy bios, interviews, anecdotes, and upbeat newsy briefs.

To combat this lack of diversity in key industries, Cabot and Walravens recommend several solutions. First, bring the problems of working in a male dominated work place to light using metrics; for example, the recent media stories about issues at Google and Facebook. A second solution is to “ignite the next generation.” President Obama’s 2014 STEM incentives encourage children, especially girls and children of color, to enter fields involved in innovation. The authors also begin and end their book referencing one female entrepreneur, Debbie Sterling, who in 2014 came out with GoldieBlox, a building/engineering/puzzle game focused around storytelling and problem-solving for children, which was sold by Toys R Us and exhibited at the toy expo in New York’s Jacob Javits Center.

This book is also available as an audiobook on OverDrive.

© Amy Brennan & Ford Library – Fuqua School of Business.
All rights reserved.

Ford Library will be open extended hours this weekend from 8am – 8pm, Saturday (9/22); and from 8am – 12am, Sunday (9/23).

The Fuqua School will be holding make-up classes here on campus on the above dates, and Ford Library is extending its weekend hours so that our students can access reserve materials and in-house data resources.  Professional library staff will not be on site this weekend; but access to materials and resources and the Library will be available.

Here are the latest additions to our DVD collection:

Avengers: Infinity War
Book Club
Breaking In
Deadpool 2
First Reformed
Justice League
Marrowbone
Shock and Awe
Show Dogs
The Terror, season 1
Upgrade
Wildling
Woman Walks Ahead

You may browse the entire DVD collection via the library catalog.

UPDATED (9/15/18) – Ford Library will remain closed due to severe weather conditions related to Hurricane Florence through Saturday, September 15th.  Ford Library will be open from 12 noon – 6pm, Sunday, September 16th.

For updates on Library hours, please follow our social media channels (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram).

For updates on the Severe Weather Policy from Duke University and Fuqua regarding class scheduling and access to campus, please monitor https://emergency.duke.edu/ and your Duke email account.