As Amy and I settle into our time in Homer, we spent a lot of last weekend (and the evenings) reading. We donât have a TV up here, so our lying around entertainment is reading with some bonus knitting time for Amy.
Iâve been working my way through the books at the upcoming Authors and Innovators Business Ideas Festival and got through three of them so far. I also read a near-final draft of John Minnihanâs upcoming book and The Impossible Long Run: My Journey to Becoming Ultra by Janet Patkowa.
But, the best book of last weekend was Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber by Mike Isaac. Itâs the first major book about the story of Uber, by a New York Times writer who has covered tech (and Uber) for a long time.
Itâs incredibly fast-paced. Itâs in the same category of a number of other âfirst major book about an emergent important company by a journalistâ including Bad Blood (Theranos) by John Carreyrou and The Facebook Effect by David Kirkpatrick.
While I knew over 80% of the content in the book, having it strung together in a time sequence, with emphasis on key activities that happened at the same time, or influenced other future actions, was critical to the narrative and extremely well done by Isaac. While some of it had a reporter flavor, most were non-judgmental and let the activities stand on their own. Periodically Isaac would nudge you toward a conclusion, but most of the time he let you take your view where you wanted from the context provided.
Itâll be interesting to see where Uber is in a decade. In the meantime, reflecting on how it got to where it is today is fascinating.