My two favorite books about management, ever

They are:

Johnny Rogan, The Byrds: Timeless Flight Revisited, The Sequel, get the full-length edition, not the much shorter 1980 volume.

Chris Twomey, XTC: Chalkhills and Children.

…in addition to the very recent Dreaming the Beatles, which I just reviewed.

NB: These are music books and I am not even recommending them to most of you.  These books only make sense if you already know a good deal about the careers of the artists involved.

Here is my advice on how to find excellent management books and management advice: pick some areas you know fairly well, be it music, sports, military campaigns, a scientific discovery, the making of a historic plane flight, or whatever.  Read a very detailed book about that.  Think through the lessons of that book(s).  Unfortunately, books about corporations so often filter their management information through homilies, hidden agendas, NDAs, ego boosts, paybacks, and other forms of…bullshit.  Music and sports books won’t, as they are too concerned with other kinds of stupid filters.  But you will get the lowdown on management for the most part.

There are some special reasons why I find the Byrds and XTC fruitful areas for reading for management advice, above and beyond my knowledge of the history and the musical content.  Neither group was massively profitable in a sustained manner, though they had their successes.  The two histories contain both triumphs and some major mistakes.  The main creators worked very consistently at their music for decades, and were not afraid to take chances or to operate with a long time horizon.  Nor did they destroy themselves, even though they were fatally flawed as creators.  Both histories are also studies in small group dynamics, including their eventual collapse; the Byrds are more a story of changing personnel and its costs.  Both histories embody tales of retreat and also return, and an ongoing evolution of styles and media.  Both stories have (relatively) happy endings, but only for those who kept at work rather than partook in indulgences.  Those features may or may not apply to your own personal circumstances, choose your management books accordingly, but I those kinds of stories more interesting than say books about the Rolling Stones.

If you can find books such as these, they are among the most valuable you will read.  Yet it is very hard to find them through recommendations, given the idiosyncratic nature of the content and its relevance.  Of course that is precisely why they have such high marginal value.

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