Final Books of 2019: Starting with Why; Ending with Love

Two of the final books I read in 2019 were both read by Audible. They are below. With these two books completed, I surpassed my 24-book reading goal of 2019 with one bonus book, bringing me to 25 books total for the year.

In total, I read 8,914 pages. I did 10 books by Audible — and those Audible books represented 4,653 of those 8,914 pages. The rest were rent in print, either on my iPad Kindle/iBooks apps or in hardcover or paperback format. Six of the 24 books I read were fiction, the rest were nonfiction, from a variety of categories: 5 being biographies (one of those an autobiography); 3 history books; 3 memoirs; 1 political book; 2 religious books; 2 cultural books; 1 leadership book; 1 self-help book; and one a travelogue with history mixed in. Not a bad collection! Below are reviews of Starting With Why and The Tattooist of Auschwitz, two of the final 25 books of 2019.

About 10 years ago, Simon Sinek spoke in front of a TED audience and to this day his TED talk remains one of the most popular in the history of that platform. I watched that video about five years ago and finally got around to reading his full book on the topic, Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action.

The biggest thing Sinek conveys to his readers is that too often people in companies and organizations start conversations by telling people what they do and / or how they do it. It’s natural. But what really inspires others is learning WHY you do what you do. He encourages us to start with WHY. The book revisits leaders of some great recognizable companies: Apple, Microsoft, Southwest Airlines, Wal-Mart, Starbucks, and others. These companies did not just produce products and services, but transformed the market, and in some cases, the world.

Bill Gates is a great example. Microsoft is not his “WHY.” Rather it’s one of his “WHATs” or “HOWs: to accomplish his WHY. Since stepping down as the leader of Microsoft, Bill Gates is still pursuing his “WHY” of bringing technology and resources to the masses, through the Gates Foundation.

Sinek offers some snippets of advice that I wrote down:

• Organizations should not focus on hiring people who perfectly match the right skills sets; rather they should hire people who share same values and beliefs; when this happens, you can build trust.

• The best companies are the ones with the best cultures; Southwest Airlines is a prime example of this. Their leadership believes the most important thing they can focus on is the relationship between management and employees; once that culture is established, the employees will translate that to customers; and when customers are happy, ultimately shareholders are too.

• Trust and familiarity and shared beliefs and values are better than a resume of experience. Only when individuals trust the culture and beliefs will they take risks to protect and further that culture and belief.

• Average companies give their employees something to work on; great companies give their employees something to work towards.

• Leaders are not simply CEOs or politicians. Leading means others are willing to follow you because they want to, not because they are forced to. Sam Walton was a leader many followed. He never took private planes; his company, Wal-Mart, was built for the common man, so he wanted to travel how they did. He also never took a salary above $350,000 a year, which was small in comparison to the size of his company.

• Great leaders begin with WHY – they inspire the people around them.

• Followers are followers not for the leader, but for themselves.

• You want influencers who believe what you believe; this ultimately helps organizations grow successfully.

• All great leaders have charisma because great leaders clearly express their WHY.

• The best working relationship are between the WHY types and the how types. The CEO needs to be a WHY type and the CFO or COO are the HOW types.

• The WHY of any organization must be clear (clarity) and amplified (megaphone) and remain clear as the organization grows and progresses in time.

• Achievement comes when you pursue WHAT you want; success comes when you are clear WHY you want it. Achievements are the milestones of success; we need both.

• Many successful companies start with WHY and then move to WHAT; Success is the biggest challenge of any organization. When the WHY goes fuzzy, that’s where the split happens between WHY and WHAT.

• Money is never a cause for the entrepreneur, the founder, the company, the organization; it’s always a result.

• Only 2.5% of the population have the innovator mentality.

• Finding WHY is a process of discovery, not invention; it comes from the past, the experience of the individual or a group. It requires discipline to maintain.

• When you compete against someone else, no one wants to help you. When you compete against yourself, everyone is there to help you. Great organizations don’t compete against others, they offer a unique WHY and they always try to maintain that WHY and improve on their own past and present.

• All organizations start with WHY; but only the great ones keep their WHY clear year after year. Those who forget WHY they were founded show up every day to outdo someone else, not themselves.

• When you start with WHY, you inspire others; No matter what success you have had, be sure you keep conveying to all involved in your company or organization what your WHY is. And leave a succession plan that continues to keep that WHY after the original founders are gone.

The Tattooist of Auschwitz is a true story about a man named Lale Sokolov, who was a Slovakian Jew who was sent to Auschwitz, one of the most horrific Nazi concentration camps, during World War II. After entering the camp, the SS guards recruit him to become the tattooist of the camp, meaning he is the one who tattoos serial numbers on the arms of all the prisoners.

During his time there, Lale meets lots of prisoners from all sorts of areas, Jews and non-Jews, including Russian enemy combatants who are put there. He also meets another woman named Gita, whose arm he also tattoos. This is a story of survival, but also a love story. They keep hope alive through their love for one another, dreaming to marry each other if they survive.

Gita tells Lale that even though most of his family has died, “you will honor them by staying alive, surviving this place, and telling the world what happened here.” That’s exactly what Lale did, many decades later. In fact, he didn’t tell this full story until he was in the last years of his life and after his wife Gita died. After the war, they spent most of the rest of their life in Australia. One of the reasons they kept their story hidden is that they always felt a sort of guilt; first, because they saw so many other people go to the gas chambers. They saw the ashes come out of one of the many crematoriums on-site at Auschwitz and the other concentration camps they were at. They also felt like they would be labeled as collaborators with the Nazis since Lale had a “job” as the tattooist, despite the fact his life was always at risk for being a Jew, and being a prisoner at Auschwitz.

Lale lost his faith during his time in the concentration camp; but Gita kept hers. It’s not clear, in the book, whether he later regained it. But he does promise Gita he will allow her to raise their future children in her Jewish faith. They later have one child, late in her child-bearing years.

Even though every day at Auschwitz seems tougher than the last, Gita tells Lale that every day they can survive is an act of defiance to the Nazis. Well, spoiler alert, they do survive. After the Russians liberate parts of Germany, including where Auschwitz was, they employ Lale to do their dirty work, getting young women in the town to be prostitutes for them. The young women mostly do so willingly because for them it is also a means of survival, and they are paid handsomely. But it is not a job Lale enjoys doing, but one he is forced to do out of survival as well. He later returns to Bratislava, and spends much time trying to find his long lost love Gita, who he met in the concentration camp. He eventually does. They move around Europe a little bit and finally end up in Australia where they spend the rest of their days.

There is a lot of darkness in this book because World War II and the Holocaust were very dark times. But through the darkness, there is light. There is survival, but mostly there is love. The love between Lale and Gita is the truest form of love. They will do anything for each other, to ensure each other’s survival. And that hope that their love will one day come to full fruition is what, in many ways, keeps them alive and gives meaning to each of their darkest of days.

I read this book by Audible and it was very captivating. It’s also fitting that this was the final book I read of 2019. I surpassed my goal of 24 books, making this book 25 of 2019.

The full 25 books I read in 2019 are listed below, in the order that I read them.

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo

Elvis in the Morning by William F. Buckley, Jr.

John Marshall: The Man Who Made the Supreme Court by Richard Brookhiser

1984 by George Orwell

The Babel Tower by J.B. Simmons

The Takeaway by John Evans

The Triumph of Christianity: How a Small Band of Outcasts Conquered an Empire by Bart Ehrman

Nearer, My God by William F. Buckley, Jr.

Hamilton by Ron Chernow

I, Rigoberta Menchu by Rigoberta Menchu

Turn Right at Machu Picchu by Mark Adams

Trust Me, I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator by Ryan Holliday

I See Satan Fall Like Lightning by Renee Girard

The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe

The Second World Wars by Victor Davis Hanson

The Case for Trump by Victor Davis Hanson

Brother Andre: Friend of the Suffering, Apostle of Saint Joseph by Jean-Guy Dubuc

Coolidge by Amity Shlaes

Lord of the Flies by William Golding

Our Lady of Guadalupe: Mother of the Civilization of Love by Carl Anderson and Eduardo Chavez

Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know by Malcom Gladwell

The Power of the Dog by Doug Winslow

Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action by Simon Senek

The Smallest Minority: Independent Thinking in the Age of Mob Politics by Kevin Williamson

The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris