What books should entrepreneurs read ?

A list of the best books for entrepreneurs, found in this topic:

Start Ups/Business:

• The Entrepreneur Mind: 100 Essential Beliefs, Characteristics, and Habits of Elite Entrepreneurs by Kevin Johnson
• Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel
• The 7 Day Startup: You Don't Learn Until You Launch by Dan Norris
• The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses by Eric Ries
• Platform Scale: How an emerging business model helps startups build large empires with minimum investment by Sangeet Paul Choudary
• TOP 101 Growth Hacks: The best growth hacking ideas that you can put into practice right away by Aladdin Happy
• The $100 Startup: Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love, and Create a New Future by Chris Guillebeau
• Exponential Organizations: Why new organizations are ten times better, faster, and cheaper than yours by Salim Ismail
• Startup Idea Action Plan: Validate Your Startup And Get Customers in 7 Days, When All You Have is a Business Idea by Ryan Mulvihill
• The Startup Owner's Manual: The Step-by-Step Guide for Building a Great Company by Steve Blank
• ReWork: Change the Way You Work Forever by Jason Fried
• Craft Business Power: 15 Days To A Profitable Online Craft Business by Cinnamon Miles
• Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth by Gabriel Weinberg
• Startup Growth Engines: Case Studies of How Today's Most Successful Startups Unlock Extraordinary Growth by Sean Ellis
• The Magic of Thinking Big
• Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim
• The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy
• Good to Great by James Collins
• The Four Steps to the Epiphany by Steven Blank
• Contagious: Why Things Catch On by Jonah Berger
• David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants by Malcolm Gladwell
• The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail--but Some Don't by Nate Silver
• The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers by Ben Horowitz
• The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less by Barry Shwartz
• Influencer: The New Science of Leading Change, Second Edition by Joseph Grenny, Kerry Patterson, et al.
• The Art of the Start 2.0: The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything by Guy Kawasaki
• Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days by Jessica Livingston
• The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses by Eric Ries
• Rework by David Heinemeier Hansson
• The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It by Michael E. Gerber
• The Black Swan: Second Edition: The Impact of the Highly Improbable: With a new section: "On Robustness and Fragility" (Incerto) by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
• Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose by Tony Hsieh
• Losing My Virginity: How I Survived, Had Fun, and Made a Fortune Doing Business My Way by Richard Branson
• The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal by Jim Loehr, Tony Schwartz
• The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right by Atul Gawande
• The $100 Startup: Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love, and Create a New Future by Chris Guillebeau
• Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think by Kenneth Cukier
• The Fine Art of Small Talk: How To Start a Conversation, Keep It Going, Build Networking Skills -- and Leave a Positive Impression! by Debra Fine
• The Score Takes Care of Itself: My Philosophy of Leadership by Bill Walsh, Steve Jamison, Craig Walsh
• The Thank You Economy: Gary Vaynerchuk by Gary Vaynerchuk
• Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business by Jeff Howe
• Where Good Ideas Come From: Steven Johnson by Steven Johnson
• The Strategy and Tactics of Pricing: A Guide to Growing More Profitably by Thomas Nagle, John Hogan, Joseph Zale
• Leaving Microsoft to Change the World: An Entrepreneur's Odyssey to Educate the World's Children: John Wood by John Wood
• The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding by Al Ries, Laura Ries
• Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin
• The Black Swan: Second Edition: The Impact of the Highly Improbable: With a new section: "On Robustness and Fragility" (Incerto) by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
• The Four Steps to the Epiphany by Steve Blank
• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change by Stephen R. Covey
• The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses by Eric Ries
• Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant by W. Chan KimRenee Mauborgne
• Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers by Alexander OsterwalderYves Pigneur
• The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It by Michael E. Gerber
• Hackers & Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age by Paul Graham
• Predictably Irrational, Revised and Expanded Edition: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions by Dan Ariely
• The Innovator's Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth by Clayton M. ChristensenMichael E. Raynor
• Warfighting by U. S. Marine Corps Staff
• Get Back in the Box: How Being Great at What You Do Is Great for Business by Douglas Rushkoff
• Googled: The End of the World As We Know It by Ken Auletta
• The Curse of the Mogul: What's Wrong with the World's Leading Media Companies by Jonathan A. KneeBruce C. GreenwaldAva Seave
• Planet Google: One Company's Audacious Plan to Organize Everything We Know by Randall Stross
• Spent: Sex, Evolution, and Consumer Behavior by Geoffrey Miller
• Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter ThielBlake Masters
• Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking by Andy Sernovitz
• Guerilla Marketing: Easy and Inexpensive Strategies for Making Big Profits from Your Small Business by Jay Conrad Levinson
• The Art of the Start: The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything by Guy Kawasaki
• Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy by Carl ShapiroHal R. Varian
• Do More Faster: TechStars Lessons to Accelerate Your Startup by Brad FeldDavid Cohen
• The Thank You Economy by Gary Vaynerchuk
• The Innovator's Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book That Will Change the Way You Do Business by Clayton M. Christensen
• The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development: A cheat sheet to The Four Steps to the Epiphany by Brant CooperPatrick Vlaskovits
• Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist by Brad FeldJason Mendelson
• The Monk and the Riddle: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living by Randy Komisar
• The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture by John Battelle
• The Little Kingdom: The Private Story of Apple Computer by Michael Moritz
• The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story by Michael Lewis
• Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days by Jessica Livingston
• Don't Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability (3rd Edition) (Voices That Matter) by Steve Krug
• Theory of Fun for Game Design by Raph Koster
• The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses, Second Edition by Jesse Schell
• Losing My Virginity: How I Survived, Had Fun, and Made a Fortune Doing Business My Way by Richard Branson
• Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin
• Primal Leadership, With a New Preface by the Authors: Unleashing the Power of Emotional Intelligence by Daniel GolemanRichard BoyatzisAnnie McKee
• The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century by Thomas L. Friedman
• Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution - and How It Can Renew America, Release 2.0 by Thomas L. Friedman
• Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell
• The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell
• Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell
• Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies (Harper Business Essentials) by Jim CollinsJerry I. Porras
• Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...And Others Don't by Jim Collins
• Good to Great and the Social Sectors: A Monograph to Accompany Good to Great by Jim Collins
• How The Mighty Fall: And Why Some Companies Never Give In by Jim Collins
• How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas, Updated Edition by David Bornstein
• Essential Creativity in the Classroom: Inspiring Kids by Kaye Thorne
• Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, Revised Edition by Robert B. Cialdini
• The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron by Bethany McLeanPeter Elkind
• Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip HeathDan Heath
• Improv Wisdom: Don't Prepare, Just Show Up by Patricia Ryan Madson
• The Art Of War by Sun Tzu
• Crossing the Chasm, 3rd Edition (Collins Business Essentials) by Geoffrey A. Moore
• Inside the Tornado: Strategies for Developing, Leveraging, and Surviving Hypergrowth Markets (Collins Business Essentials) by Geoffrey A. Moore
• Marketing High Technology by William H. Davidow
• The Breakthrough Imperative by Mark GottfredsonSteve Schaubert
• The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene
• Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors by Michael E. Porter
• The Art of Seduction by Robert Greene
• The 33 Strategies of War (Joost Elffers Books) by Robert Greene
• Extraordinary Popular Delusions and The Madness of Crowds by Charles MacKay
• Term Sheets & Valuations - A Line by Line Look at the Intricacies of Term Sheets & Valuations (Bigwig Briefs) by Alex WilmerdingAspatore Books StaffAspatore.com
• Agile Estimating and Planning by Mike Cohn
• Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age by Michael A. Hiltzik
• The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable by Patrick Lencioni
• The SPEED of TRUST: The One Thing That Changes Everything by Stephen M .R. Covey
• Divide or Conquer: How Great Teams Turn Conflict into Strength by Diana McLain Smith
• CustomerCentric Selling, Second Edition by Michael T. BosworthJohn R. HollandFrank Visgatis
• Answering the Ultimate Question: How Net Promoter Can Transform Your Business by Richard OwenLaura L. Brooks PhD
• Behind the Cloud: The Untold Story of How Salesforce.com Went from Idea to Billion-Dollar Company-and Revolutionized an Industry by Marc BenioffCarlye Adler
• The Toyota Way: 14 Management Principles from the World's Greatest Manufacturer by Jeffrey Liker
• Start-up Nation: The Story of Israel's Economic Miracle by Dan SenorSaul Singer
• The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook: A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal by Ben Mezrich
• The Design of Everyday Things: Revised and Expanded Edition by Don Norman
• Think and Grow Rich: The Original 1937 Unedited Edition by Napoleon Hill
• High-tech Ventures: The Guide For Entrepreneurial Success by C. Gordon BellJohn E. Mcnamara
• Delivering Profitable Value : A Revolutionary Framework to Accelerate Growth, Generate Wealth, and Rediscover the Heart of Business by Mike Lanning
• The Stand by Stephen King
• The Structure of Scientific Revolutions: 50th Anniversary Edition by Thomas S. Kuhn
• The Silicon Boys: And Their Valley of Dreams by David A. Kaplan
• Essentials of Entrepreneurship : What it Takes to Create Successful Enterprises by TiE: The Indus EntrepreneursTiE
• The Small Business Start-Up Kit for California by Peri H. Pakroo J.D.
• Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation by Tim Brown
• The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World by David Kirkpatrick
• The Whuffie Factor: Using the Power of Social Networks to Build Your Business by Tara Hunt
• High Stakes, No Prisoners: A Winner's Tale of Greed and Glory in the Internet Wars by Charles Ferguson
• Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time by Keith FerrazziTahl Raz
• Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality by Scott Belsky
• How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie
• The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits, Revised and Updated 5th Anniversary Edition by C. K. Prahalad
• Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams (3rd Edition) by Tom DeMarcoTim Lister
• Naked in the Boardroom: A CEO Bares Her Secrets So You Can Transform Your Career by Robin Wolaner
• By William C. Taylor: Practically Radical: Not-So-Crazy Ways to Transform Your Company, Shake Up Your Industry, and Challenge Yourself by -William Morrow-
• What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20: A Crash Course on Making Your Place in the World by Tina Seelig
• Get Noticed by Marcus TaylorRob Lawrence
• Mastering the Rockefeller Habits: What You Must Do to Increase the Value of Your Growing Firm by Verne Harnish
• The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding by Al RiesLaura Ries
• The Founder's Dilemmas: Anticipating and Avoiding the Pitfalls That Can Sink a Startup (The Kauffman Foundation Series on Innovation and Entrepreneurship) by Noam Wasserman
• Business: The Ultimate Resource by Editors Of Perseus PublishingPerseus PublishingDaniel Goleman
• Everything I Know About Business I Learned from the Grateful Dead: The Ten Most Innovative Lessons from a Long, Strange Trip by Barry Barnes
• Culture & Empire: Digital Revolution by Pieter Hintjens
• The Essence of the Church: A Community Created by the Spirit by Craig Van Gelder
• The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (Dover Thrift Editions) by Benjamin Franklin
• Business Adventures: Twelve Classic Tales from the World of Wall Street by John Brooks
• Rich Dad Poor Dad: What The Rich Teach Their Kids About Money That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not! by Robert T. Kiyosaki
• Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?: Seth Godin by Seth Godin
• How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell
• Outliers: The Story of Success: Malcolm Gladwell by Malcolm Gladwell
• What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures by Malcolm Gladwell
• The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Thomas Ferriss
• The Success Principles(TM): How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be by Jack Canfield, Janet Switzer
• How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie
• Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen
• The Talent Code: Greatness Isn't Born. It's Grown. Here's How by Daniel Coyle
• How I Made My First Million on the Internet and How You Can Too!: The Complete Insider's Guide to Making Millions with Your Internet Business by Ewen Chia
• SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance by Steven D. Litt
• Street Smarts: An All-Purpose Tool Kit for Entrepreneurs eBook by Norm Brodsky
• Strategy for Sustainability: A Business Manifesto by Adam Werbach
• The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis
• Who Says Elephants Can't Dance?: Leading a Great Enterprise through Dramatic Change by Louis V., Jr. Gerstner
• The Ten Faces of Innovation: IDEO's Strategies for Defeating the Devil's Advocate and Driving Creativity Throughout Your Organization by Tom Kelley
• Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the FinancialSystem--and Themselves by Andrew Ross Sorkin
• The Innovator's Dilemma : The Revolutionary National Bestseller That Changed The Way We Do Business by clayton m. christensen
• The Paypal Wars : Battles with eBay, the Media, the Mafia, and the Rest of Planet Earth by Eric M. Jackson
• Origin of Wealth: Evolution, Complexity, and the Radical Remaking of Economics by Eric D. Beinhocker
• Create Your Own Economy: The Path to Prosperity in a Disordered World by Tyler Cowen
• One Click: Jeff Bezos and the Rise of Amazon.com by Richard Brandt
• Predictably Irrational, Revised and Expanded Edition: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions by Dan Ariely
• The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic by Dan Ariely
• Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age by Clay Shirky
• Super Crunchers: Why Thinking-By-Numbers is the New Way To Be Smart by Ian Ayres by Ian Ayres
• The Curse of the Mogul: What's Wrong with the World's Leading Media Companies by Jonathan A. Knee, Bruce C. Greenwald, Ava Seave

How should I talk to people when I have nothing to say ?

One time my parents accidentally left me at church…

Maybe because I was the forgettable middle child but more likely because I didn’t talk.

I was a dreamer in school. I still am today.

Now we’re called introvert-extroverts. We love people but we also want time to explore the amazing adventures we have in our heads.

It’s fun there.

Maybe this is you, too.

Here are some things that made talking for me way easier. It’s also a helluva lotta fun.

---

THE EASY

Say hi. A lot. I know…snooze. But it works.

I practiced saying hi with people that were forced to listen: Cashiers, waitstaff, retail people and pets. Good for me. Bad for them.

This kept me using my mouth and voice at the same time.

Talk shorter. Words used to pile up in my brain.

The next poor sucker to strike up a conversation with me was pummeled in an avalanche of words and disconnected topics.

Talking shorter means giving the listener time to respond.

Do interesting things. Be interesting by doing interesting things.

Us dreamers and intro/extroverts do lots of interesting things…in our heads.

Many times this leads us to believe we are interesting.

Then we get blind-sided by the dreaded, “So, what have you been up to lately?”

And it’s dreaded, not because it’s a bad question (I’ve learned to love it), but because we’re not doing anything interesting.

So get interesting. Enroll in that class, go on that vacation, knock out that bucket list item, do something…anything!

---

THE SLIGHTLY LESS EASY

Ask good questions. Like others have posted, people love to talk about themselves.

So let them.

Start with good questions that call out the obvious. The obvious would be a positive mention that includes them:

• Anything new: shoes, shirt, car, house, baby, pet, vacations…
• Accomplishments: school, work promotion, license, fitness, health…
• Environmental: location, people, weather… Be careful with this one. It’s easy to complain. Instead, make an unpleasant situation fun. “Dang, it’s banana’s in here. I found the last parking spot. We should have taken the helicopter.”

Tip: Save deep questions like, “If you could meet anyone in the world, who would it be” for conversations that have matured that far.

Build up to that. Otherwise it will be forced and awkward.

Pay attention. When people talk, they are giving you TONS of great information about themselves.

Take this example: “We just moved from California to Texas. The drive was long and interesting. I’m excited but the kids will miss their friends. We’re excited about the new house though.”

Whoa…just look at all the golden conversation nuggets!

• “What was California like?”
• The drive was long and interesting? Tell me more!
• Kids? People love to talk about their kids! (Inside scoop: Nobody cares about your kids so change topics unless you want to torture people. It sucks because kids are more fun than adults…anyway…getting off topic.)
• New house? Where? New favorite restaurants around there? What’s there to do?

---

ProTip: This is the fun part. Use the popular “yes and” improv lesson.

Whatever topic someone is talking about, “yes-and” it. Agree and amplify the conversation.

It keeps the conversation moving forward in a fun way. It sounds like this:

Them: “It’s hot in here.”

You: “I know!” [that’s the “yes and”] I should wear less clothes.”

Them: “I bet that would make you a hit”

You: “Yeah, they’d probably throw my ass in jail.”

Them: “You’ve always wanted a family reunion.” blah blah blah.

---

Like with anything, you get good from doing.

This article is owned by:

Matt Bennett, Lifestyle Geek, Writer, Consultant & Entrepreneur

How do less-than-intelligent people make money ?

One of the things that I've noticed throughout college and adulthood is how limited the perspectives were among the "smartest" people I knew as far as possible ways to make a good living.  The majority of my friends from college work in one of five industries:

1. High Finance
2. Software
3. Law
4. Medicine
5. Consulting

After that, there are a bunch of long-tail professions my friends fall into. Sure, those are big, big industries that attract loads of bright people who collaborate and compete with one another. But think about how many things don't fall under any of those. Look around the room that you're sitting in right now and ask where all of the things in it came from. Most of them were probably manufactured somewhere, which means that  they had to be made, marketed, shipped, and sold by lots of people you've probably never thought about before. In that supply chain there un-sexy businesses that nonetheless make big money doing what they do. Someone has to run those companies that all of the bankers and app developers shun ;)

I return to this question often at Smart Like How, although I look at the problem a bit differently. For me, the question most of us encounter more often is how to stand out among a group of smart, hard-working people when you aren't the hands-down smartest person in the room.  Most of the time, young professionals in this situation respond by attempting to outwork each other and push their limits of exhaustion trying to out-compete all of the other smart people. I call this the Hard Work Paradox, because the smartest, hardest-working people are actually the least able to differentiate themselves on the basis of hard work. And besides, just working hard doesn't guarantee that your output is more innovative or accurate than someone else's - especially if that less-than-intelligent person in your eyes sees the problem differently than you do.

I'd highly recommend that anyone interested in the topic check out the following articles on how to succeed despite not being the absolute smartest person out there. Even if you think you are, you'll benefit from understanding how to translate IQ into business value:

• Four Things You Won't Hear During Orientation
• The Hard Work Paradox (Part 2): What I Learned by Watching Other People Succeed
• Want to Build Career Momentum? Start By Figuring Out What Your Job Really Is
• Every Business Has Hidden Problems (and That’s a Good Thing)
• Building Momentum: Become an Authority on Something Valuable
• Be Careful What You Get Good At
• When Success Becomes the Enemy: The Promotion Snowball Effect
• Not a Data Scientist? You Can Still Be Data Savvy
• How to Drive Adoption of Your Ideas
• The Seven Types of Failed Thought Leaders

This article is owned by:

Christian Bonilla, Author of "Smart Like How: The Hidden Side of Career Success"

Why is J.R.R Tolkien's LOTR considered a classic

 

 

That's a question with a long answer, which I don't have time for, but I'll give you the 2 minute version.

It's not about the races, or the references to the destruction of the English countryside. Academic enthusiasm for it really has very little to do with conventional fantasy tropes at all. It's about the depth behind every sentence on the page. Most fantasy authors make up some gibberish and call it a language, and make up some place-names likewise, and call it done. For them the goal is to get the plot hammered out and sell their book.

Here's what Tolkien actually did. Before and during the First World War, he began inventing languages for fun, because he was a linguistic genius and he could just do that. Then he decided to invent a history that would explain how those languages came to exist. That required a map, so he created a map, and a long series of legends (now called The Silmarillion) to go with it. And he used his incredibly extensive knowledge of Finnish and Welsh and Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian language and legend, and he borrowed the names of the dwarves from the Icelandic sagas and the stories from the Finnish Kalevala and his unbelievable depth of reading and linguistic skill went into it all.

Then he tried to publish it, and his friends said, "no way in hell, this stuff is too arcane, nobody cares about your invented languages and map and legends and so on."

Then he wrote a fun little children's story called The Hobbit, set in his world. He gave it to Sir Stanley Unwin of the book publishers Allen & Unwin, and he gave it to his kid Rayner Unwin to look at, and his kid read it and wrote this:

"Bilbo Baggins was a Hobbit who lived in his Hobbit hole and never went for adventures, at last Gandalf the wizard and his Dwarves persuaded him to go. He had a very exiting (sic) time fighting goblins and wargs. At last they get to the lonely mountain; Smaug, the dragon who guards it is killed and after a terrific battle with the goblins he returned home — rich!
This book, with the help of maps, does not need any illustrations it is good and should appeal to all children between the ages of 5 and 9."

On the basis of this recommendation, Sir Stanley agreed to publish it. It was a hit. People loved it and asked for more stories about hobbits.

So he started another fun little children's story, only his mind was working all the time, and it just got longer and deeper and darker and more grownup as he went, right through the Second World War. Then when he reached the end he had to go back and fix a lot of things, because it wasn't a children's story any more.

But almost every single thing in The Lord of the Rings is built on something he had created decades previously, and that itself was built on centuries of myth and legend from Northern Europe.

When the Riders of Rohan sing, they sing in Anglo-Saxon alliterative verse. When the elves speak, they speak in a language that actually works. Even the Ring-inscription, which is almost all we have of the Black Speech, has correct verb tenses:

Ash nazg durbatuluk
One ring to rule them all
Ash nazg gimbatul
One ring to find them
Ash nazg thrakatuluk
One ring to bring them all
Agh burzum-ishi krimpatul!
And in the darkness [to] bind them.

So -uk obviously adds all to the sense of the transitive verb. -ul- is them, the object of the verb, and -at- makes it infinitive: to rule. The root words are durb, gimb, thrak, and krimp, which probably not coincidentally means bind. All this just for a language of which we only have nine words!

So far as I know, nobody else does this, or even comes close to doing this. Of course many people don't care, but this is what amazes his more ardent fans.


This article is owned by:

Ernest W. Adams  -   Tolkien reader since 1968.

Top 10 Shocking Historical Facts

TOP 10 SHOCKING HISTORICAL FACTS:

THE SHORTEST WAR[1]

The Anglo-Zanzibar War of 1896, fought between the United Kingdom and the Zanzibar Sultanate, lasted for 38 minutes. Overall, this was caused due to the fact that the UK was much more powerful military-wise – or perhaps they didn't know how small this conflict would be. In fact, the Sultanate's forces sustained roughly 500 casualties, while only one British sailor was injured.

(The caption says: “Marines after seizing the Palace, with broken Zanzibari Gun”).

THE LONGEST WAR[2]

Lasting a shocking amount of 335 years, the Three Hundred and Thirty Five Years' War (convenient name) fought between the Netherlands and the Isles of Scilly is considered to be the largest conflict to have ever existed. Due to a lack of a treaty advocating peace, for more than 300 years the relation between these two states remained in a state of war. In theory, although this was a bloodless conflict, the theoretical war setting remained there for all those years. In spite of that, if humanity is not careful, other current events such as the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict can extend to many more years than it has now.

NEW HOLOCAUST RESEARCH[3]

Researchers Geoffrey Megargee and Martin Dean from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum have conducted a thirteen-year long investigation which recently publicly concluded that an “estimate [of] 15 million to 20 million people died or were imprisoned in the sites that they have identified as part of a multivolume encyclopedia,” which is a much larger quantity than many historians believed to be so. Also, it was documented that in reality there were “30,000 slave labor camps; 1,150 Jewish ghettos; 980 concentration camps; 1,000 prisoner-of-war camps; 500 brothels filled with sex slaves; and thousands of other camps used for euthanizing the elderly and infirm, performing forced abortions, ‘Germanizing’ prisoners or transporting victims to killing centers.” In sum, the cruelty surrounding the events of the Holocaust were actually much more brutal than what we bargained for.

(“A propaganda photograph showing Hitler speaking to followers in the canteen of a Munich hostel for SA men. You may think that they look quite decent people”).[4]

THE KHMER ROUGE BRAINWASHED CHILDREN[5]

The Cambodian group of followers of the Communist Party of Kampuchea – the Khmer Rouge – strived to brainwash thousands of Cambodian children into becoming soldiers who committed mass murders (based on Pol Pot's ideals). As explained by a former Cambodian citizen which lived through the genocide, “they told us we were VOID. We were less than a grain of rice in a large pile. The Khmer Rouge said that the Communist revolution could be successful with only two people. Our lives had no significance to their great Communist nation, and they told us, ‘To keep you is no benefit, to destroy you is no loss.’ ”

(Pol Pot leading Khmer Rouge troops).

CHINA'S STRANGE ONE-CHILD POLICY [6]

Although I am always receptive to any opinions that may diverge from mine, I believe that is it irrefutable that China's one-child policy established cruel results throughout the 36 years that it was imposed. Since boys were considered to be more “useful” than girls, as a 2001 article from BBC says, “on the garbage dumps that surround Beijing, scavengers from time to time will find a newborn baby girl amid the stinking refuge,” many of which were still alive.

At that time, “perhaps a million girl fetuses [were] aborted and tens of thousands of girl babies [were] abandoned,” and “for every 100 girls registered at birth, there [were then] 118 little boys - in other words, nearly one seventh of Chinese girl babies [were] going missing.” The most shocking aspect might just be that this law was only suspended in 2015. I was actually trembling while typing this due to the anger building up inside me. What an absurd. There are other ways to solve overpopulation:

1. Overpopulation Solutions[7]
2. Overpopulation is solvable[8]

SULTAN IBRAHIM I OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE WAS MENTALLY INSANE

Being mentally unstable and unfit to rule, Ibrahim the First gave his authoritarian rule to this mother, although he still kept the label of Emperor. One day, in a rush of madness, he demanded 280 concubines to be drowned in the narrows of what is nowadays the country of Turkey.

THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR'S REAL DEATH TOLL[9]

As this NYTimes articles explains, “for 110 years, the numbers stood as gospel: 618,222 men died in the Civil War, 360,222 from the North and 258,000 from the South — by far the greatest toll of any war in American history.” However, recent research defies all of these well-known facts – an increase of 20% of deaths from the original death toll was calculated, which equates to a total of 750,000 individuals who died during the American Civil War. Further investigation concluded that this new total death toll corresponded to more than 2.5% of the entire population of the United States at that time which died as a result of this conflict.

THE U.S. ALREADY HAD A GAY PRESIDENT BEFORE[10]

His name was James Buchanan – the 15th American president. As a reporter from a Salon article says, “I know no historian who has studied the matter and thinks Buchanan was heterosexual.” As a matter of fact, when Mr. Buchanan fell in love with the Vice-President, William R. King, he wrote a letter which expressed:

“I am now ‘solitary and alone,’ having no companion in the house with me. I have gone a wooing to several gentlemen, but have not succeeded with any one of them. I feel that it is not good for man to be alone; and should not be astonished to find myself married to some old maid who can nurse me when I am sick, provide good dinners for me when I am well, and not expect from me any very ardent or romantic affection.” Poor man.

Now take a moment to analyze this:

This is interesting. To be honest, I wish I could be in the Editorial Board Meeting of Newsweek Magazine that die just to laugh and sarcastically clap at the exact moment they decided that this would be their cover for the week. Marketing is essential for profit, albeit it should demonstrate cleverness and not cheap sentimentality and obvious desperation. The only reason I say this, by the way, is that I like Newsweek. I don't want them to ruin their reputation, although this was five year ago already.

(James Buchanan in his later years).

THE TOWER OF PISA HAS NEVER BEEN STRAIGHT [11]

It's true. Once the construction started in 1173, the base of the tower started to subtly lean to its side. For that reason, further construction was stopped. After 100 years, it was finally continued, leaving the Tower of Pisa permanently inclined to its conclusion. “After the bell tower of the Cathedral of Pavia collapsed in 1989, the Consorzio Progetto Torre di Pisa (Tower of Pisa Project Consortium) commissioned engineers to stabilize the Leaning Tower. Because the Tower tilted in different directions in its first years, it is slightly curved, like a banana,” as an article I read described.

ADOLF HITLER WAS AN ANIMAL ACTIVIST[12]

Being a devout vegetarian and supporter of animal rights, many historians labeled him as an activist for the animal kingdom. Hitler took numerous measures which ensured protection to the animals in Germany. Heinrich Himmler, one of the leading figures of the Nazi Party, strived to abolish hunting throughout the country. They went as far as to create a Nazi Animal Protection Movement (and an Animal Welfare Act[13] ), which conceived certain plans that Hitler would execute – like the eradication of slaughterhouses after World War II. Paradoxically, it is excruciatingly interesting that this authoritarian dictator murdered millions of Jews simply because they existed.

Well, I hope you learned something interesting today.

Cheers

This amazing article was written by:

Gian Salles  -   Aspiring History buff