Tag Archives: Atria
Markel Debuts Pivot on Best-Selling Business List
Only one book debuted on the Wall Street Journal business best-seller list this week (July 23-24, p. C14).
The book is entitled Pivot: The Art and Science of Reinventing Your Career and Life 
(Atria Books, 2016). It entered the list at #7, and has been available since mid-April of this year.
The author is Adam Markel. He is the CEO of Peak Potentials. Over the years, he has trained thousands of people to find new jobs, careers, and directions. In addition to being an author, he is a keynote speaker, real estate developer, entrepreneur, and attorney. Having run his private law practice for more than 17 years, Adam underwent a career change by creating a successful commercial real estate investment firm, title insurance company, and social media start-up. You can read more about him by clicking HERE to find his website.
His website describes the book as follows:
“Adam reveals his top strategies and tools to creating a new path towards your ultimate happiness and fulfillment by finding your big ‘why’ for living. Adam shares powerful and life-changing exercises, declarations and challenges with you, as a way to help you start taking action, releasing negative beliefs and patterns and replacing them with powerful Intentions and daily rituals.”
Markel also publishes a downloadable Pivot Journal, to help you track your progress toward the reinvention of your career and life that you desire.
We have not yet determined if we will present this book at an upcoming First Friday Book Synopsis in Dallas. While it qualifies since it is on a national best-seller list, one factor will be whether it maintains its popularity, and appears on other lists. As I am writing this post, the book is at #157 on the Motivation and Self-Improvement business sub-category on Amazon.com.
So, stay tuned as we monitor its progress.
Hill’s Masterpiece Includes Sound Father’s Day Advice
I am reading Clint Hill‘s wonderful new best-seller, Five Presidents (Gallery, 2016), in which he details his seventeen years experience in the U.S. Secret Service, when he 
served under Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Ford.
Hill, you may recall, wrote two other best-sellers, Mrs. Kennedy and Me (Gallery, 2012), and Five Days in November (Atria, 2013). He was the agent who ran and jumped on the back of the limousine to shield Jackie, seconds after her husband, JFK, was fatally wounded in Dealey Plaza in Dallas. 
Since this is Father’s Day, I wanted to share what his father, Chris, told him about how to live:
“Always be respectful of others, no matter who they are; live within your means and save for the future; strive to do the best job at whatever you do; and never, ever be late.” (p. 7).
Later, Hill tells a story about what happened when he came home eight minutes late from his father’s self-imposed curfew. It was not pleasant.
I think this is pretty good advice. How about you?
Thor’s Thriller is at the Top of the List
Brad Thor’s newest novel, Act of War (New York: Atria, 2014) was one of the best-selling novels in the summer and early fall, topping the fiction lists for awhile.
Thor, has written numerous thrillers, one of which, The Lions of Lucerne (New York: Pocket Books, 2002) will be adapted for the big screen in 2015. You can read more about him at his web site by clicking here.
There are only a few books that I can honestly describe as not being able to put down. This is one of them.
I believe that one reason Thor is a great writer is that his books focus. There are not too many characters and not too many scenes, but just enough to keep the reader moving.
The key character is Scot Harvath, a former Navy SEAL and presidential secret service veteran, who returns from Thor’s previous books. He finds his hands full with the CIA, FBI, and local law enforcement when a critical quest for a terrorist provides startling information. The novel revolves around a top-secret operation developed by high-level individuals in the Chinese government. They have the objective of bringing the United States to its knees through multiple terrorist activities. At every level, their plan seems to have a strong chance to succeed in a swift and devastating manner. Harvath is pressured by the American president who stays on top of all the activities. He approves two missions that if Harvath cannot keep secret would end his career, and even his life. One of these Harvath controls, and the other is a chilling attempt to send a group secretly into North Korea. Time remains prominent and of the essence at every point in the story.
Readers will tell that this is a well-researched book. Thor provides a long list of acknowledgements, indicating the extensive scope of historians, military and law enforcement officials, and various other contributors who make this book believable.
I won’t tell you more so you can read this yourself. Since this is fiction, it does not qualify for the kinds of books we present, so you won’t be able to hear this at the First Friday Book Synopsis.
However, maybe in a few years, you will watch an adaptation of this at a theatre. I think it’s that good.
