Man's Search for Meaning

Victor Frankl

I've read this multiple times.

"Live your life as if this is the second time, and you have already behaved as wrongly as you are about to do now."

Freedom without responsibility becomes random and meaningless.

Frankly survived the concentration camps of WWII. Half of this book covers that story. It's very compelling.

The second half covers Logo-therapy… the psycho therapy of finding meaning. Basically, you have to find your own meaning in life, in how you approach challenges, in how you make choices and especially in your attitude. Everyone's destiny and situation is different. Don't expect God or the Universe to tell you how to live. Since you are free, than is your choice.

Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo and the Battled that Defined a Generation.

by Blake J Harris.

This is the story of console video games in the early 90's focusing on Sega Genesis & Nintendo's SNES. I think the author had a lot of access to Tom Kalinske, the CEO of Sega of America as the book largely focuses on his story.

It's fascinating how Kalinske lead the Genesis a  huge success, but failed to lead Sega to create a strong next gen console. Clearly internal politics paid a huge part in this. Sega of Japan was never interested in following Kalinske's lead even though Kalinske had huge ideas and great foresight. He wanted to partner with Sony. When that partnership failed (Due to SOJ's cold response) Sony took the core tech and went on to create the Play Station. He wanted to partner with SGI. When that partnership failed (again due to SOJ), SGI took their core tech and went on to partner with Nintendo on the N64.

The book never really gets to the bottom of Sega of Japan's cold relationship with Kalinske and Sega of America. I think that says as much about Kalinske as it does about the book. Kalinske's failure as a leader was that he could never establish a relationship with SOJ. The employees their are largely faceless and unknown where as Sega of America is described in great detail. Perhaps if Kalinske had delegated or fostered the Sony and SGI relationships through SOJ, rather than trying to make them his own successes, then the Sega & Sony story would be very different.

This is a very readable book.