It's How We Play the Game by Ed Stack

IT'S HOW WE PLAY THE GAME by Ed Stack is the story of the founding and growth of DICK’S Sporting Goods company. Stack begins with tales of how the company was founded in Binghamton, New York with $300 from his dad’s grandmother’s cookie jar.  Throughout, he stresses the importance of family and the impact that family members had on each other.  For example, he writes about his father’s love of sport and how he encouraged Ed to really study and analyze the game of baseball. The idea of taking care of the local community was also always important and Stack says, “[my dad] was making a difference … before I knew it was happening … my dad understood the transcendence of sports – that they can channel kids’ energies, give them focus and goals, keep them out of trouble, reshape their lives.  … He was willing to reach into his own pocket.” Stack has carried forward that legacy and frankly, shocked me with some of the statistics he cited: “In the 1999-2000 school year, 11.3 percent of public high schools in the United States did not offer interscholastic sports. By ten years later, 22 percent of public high schools – more than one in five – no longer fielded sports teams.” Of those that did, forty percent required fees from the players and their families. To raise awareness, Stack began a number of programs including the Sports Matters Initiative. This book chronicles those efforts as well as changes in the business, such as decisions to expand, and DICK’S principled relationships with landlords like Wegman’s and suppliers like Callaway. In addition, you may have read recently in The New York Times or USA Today about how DICK’S destroyed about $5 million in inventory of assault style guns in response to the shooting in Parkland, Florida. The thinking and strategy behind implementing that decision is included in this text, too. Recommended by Adam Silver, Phil Knight, Mark Kelly and others, IT'S HOW WE PLAY THE GAME is definitely worth a read, particularly in light of the shift from shareholder to stakeholder perspective amongst US businesses, as evidenced by the change in Business Roundtable’s mission statement.  

The Warehouse by Rob Hart

THE WAREHOUSE by Rob Hart is a new work of dystopian science fiction which is a LibraryReads selection for August. Set in the near future at a MotherCloud facility where employees live, eat, play and work for credits, there is some corporate espionage underway. Zinnia has been secretly recruited to find the source of the complex’s power and Paxton is a prison security guard and inventor whom she meets on the first day. Much of their orientation is delivered through videos and everyone wears a shirt that reflects their job – red for pickers (order processors), blue for security, green for maintenance, white for managers and so forth.  Work shifts and timing are all controlled centrally – communicated through smart watches called CloudBands which are activated with a fingerprint and track their wearer’s movements, making Zinnia’s task very challenging. Despite the opportunities - cool air, fresh water, a job and place to live - available through Cloud, the atmosphere is menacing; an associate of Paxton’s remarks, “you’ll see there’s the Cloud way of doing things and the right way of doing things. Sometimes those are the same, sometimes they aren’t.” Gibson Wells is the industrialist who heads the company, the monopolist who has overtaken tons of small businesses (including Paxton’s), and corporate lobbyist who has helped push through legislation like the Red Tape Elimination Act and FAA takeover. As Hart indicates in his acknowledgements, this is a thriller with a message about opportunity and about income inequality, essentially an attempt, he hopes, that “nudges us in the right [future] direction.” THE WAREHOUSE received starred reviews from Kirkus and Publishers Weekly. Watch also for the forthcoming movie from Ron Howard and Imagine Entertainment.

Recent titles about business and economics ...

Here are a few comments about some recently published books dealing with economic issues:

ROCKONOMICS by Alan B. Krueger will be of special interest to those who are curious about the music business.  A former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, Krueger provides “A Backstage Tour of What the Music Industry Can Teach Us about Economics and Life.”  In chapters with titles like “The Supply of Musicians,” “The Economics of Superstars,” or “Streaming is Changing Everything,” he looks at this evolving industry from a variety of perspectives. In terms of economics, he notes its size (employing about 0.2% of the workforce), income inequality that is more severe than the larger society, and implications of copyright laws and royalty arrangements. He also writes about the increased reliance on performance revenue as well as alternative ticketing options. Krueger provides charts and graphs to illustrate his points, plus extensive notes and an index. Student researchers will definitely find information and value here, including from the last chapter on “Music and Well-Being” in which Krueger quotes Oliver Sacks and others, noting “part of the reason for the durable power of music appears to be that listening to music engages many parts of the brain, triggering connections and creating associations.” ROCKONOMICS offers a unique reading experience and received a starred review from Booklist.  

THE LEVELLING by Michael O'Sullivan focuses on “What's Next After Globalization.” O’Sullivan, currently chief investment officer for Credit Suisse’s International Wealth Management Division, describes the shift from the world-order of the last forty years to one that is “less interconnected, more multipolar.” He draws parallels with past periods of transition, especially between the Grandees (elites) and the Levellers of the 1640s. A fan of Alexander Hamilton, O’Sullivan devotes another chapter to the question of What would Hamilton do? and outlines some possible courses of action for Europe (e.g., revising and condensing a constitution-type document so as to increase the union’s relevance and force in geopolitics), the United States (e.g., seeing immigration as a necessary part of economic vitality) and China (e.g., promoting development of social infrastructure). In terms of the future, he takes a fairly negative perspective, noting “the probable onset of a recession by early 2020” and “the need to accept expectations that the trend level of growth worldwide will be lower in the next ten to twenty years than it has been over the past forty.” Having used a rather verbose writing style throughout, O’Sullivan concludes with a sweeping statement that the “deep persistent underlying issues in our world are the need to reduce imbalances in indebtedness globally, the need to decommission the vast power of central banks, wealth inequality, the role of women in economies, the search for a new model of economic growth, and the rise of emerging countries to rival incumbent powers.”  His expertise and concern are obvious, but the sometimes convoluted argument does not seem very practical, actionable or, at times, relevant for the general reader.  

Written by Pat Garofalo, THE BILLIONAIRE BOONDOGGLE was published earlier this spring. Garofalo is a managing editor at the Center for American Progress who takes a fairly liberal view, subtitling this work, “How Our Politicians Let Corporations and Bigwigs Steal Our Money and Jobs.” His focus is primarily the interplay between the entertainment and sporting industries and local government and politicians. For example, Garofalo writes about the movie/television industry and explains the tax breaks and subsidies they receive.  He also touches on a number of “celebrity-type” events such as the Olympics and World Cup, arguing that the cost to taxpayers of playing host is rarely if ever, justified, and often “a waste of money that could be used for the greater good.” Although clearly opinionated and sometimes quite informal, Garofalo’s writing style is very accessible and his choice of topics will appeal to students. In fact, there is an entire chapter which discusses “why lotteries and casinos are a bad bet” which is a frequently chosen topic for student research (roughly ten percent of THE BILLIONAIRE BOONDOGGLE is devoted to notes and an index).