John’s Blog

Every time I get down to Monterey I find myself thinking about John Steinbeck, who’s one of my very favorite authors, along with Vonnegut and Twain, and who, like them, captures some of the American voice that I really enjoy.

Anyway, I picked up a Steinbeck book I’d not read before: The Moon is Down. I don’t think many have read it here in the US — it’s a short (100 pages) book that was written near the start of WW2 as a piece of Allied propaganda; as a way of capturing the psychology of occupied and occupying populations. (It’s ironic that Steinbeck worked with the agencies that would become the CIA & such, given that he was branded as a communist/socialist by many in our government in years following.)

Anyway, the book was clearly written with an agenda here, and it’s easy to tell that. But I enjoyed it nonetheless; very good empathy with both populations, I thought. This book was translated by the resistance in many many countries in Europe during the war — it had a material impact on the movement in Norway & other regions. (He even received the Hakkon medal in Norway after the war.)

I’m glad to have read it — it’s unusual for a Steinbeck work for sure.

Great post by one of my favorite guys, Bob Sutton @ Stanford, about how you can have all the great folks in the world and not be successful unless you put good systems in place to be effective. You should check out his blog generally — great stuff.

Here’s a post from Bob about how thankful we should all be for librarians in this new age of truthiness.

And another gem about “Marge’s Asshole Management Metric.” Bob’s a smart, thoughtful guy — pre-order his new book now…