DHH and the Ninja Rock Stars at 37Signals have drunk the Tim Ferriss cool-aid and churned out another motivational book called Rework. They’re taking advance orders for their new copy-and-paste collection of NR (Nouveau Riche) fortune cookie wisdom. I hear (from their Twitter droppings) that they are the most awesome pre-ordered/unpublished business/motivational/self-improvement book on Amazon. When I looked today it was ranked #4739, not quite the top of the heap, but almost #1.
An important person named Seth Godin contributed the hyperbolic blurb on the cover: “Ignore this book at your own peril”. This is quite an ominous statement. It sounds like someone from the publisher is going to knock on your door and punch you in the face if you don’t buy this book. I think this is what the encyclopedia and vacuum cleaner salesmen call the “hard sell.” There a few other appropriate words for it: pompous, bombastic, hyperbolic, gassy, windy, Billy-Maysian etc.
This Zig Ziglerish exhortation reminds me of the pitch I heard when I got sandbagged into attending an Amway meeting: This will change your life forever. If you work the Plan, the Plan works for you. K.I.S.S! You’ll have hundreds of people working under you while you sit on the beach in Florida! You’re gonna be working 4 hours a week and driving a Porsche and flying in a private jet with blondes in bikinis!!!
I think the title Rework is the authors’ (there are quite a few geniuses involved) subtle way of saying they’ve found some important information that has escaped every other human being who has lived on the planet in the last 10,000 years. We are blessed to live in the same era as DHH and his cohort. Newton couldn’t figure it out. Einstein missed this nugget completely. Turing didn’t come close. Goethe, Keats, Heine, Flaubert—all blind. But now the guys who created Backpack and Campfire (don’t know what they are) are going to blow us away with their profound insights. They will rework the way we think about work.
When I stop to think about it, the title alone is worth $22.00. You get one layer, a literal word — rework, as in redo a job — and a second layer (re (regarding) work). That’s only $11.00 a layer, and if you pre-order now, they’ll throw in another layer for free. This book is a steal.
Don’t steal it, though: pre-order it right here from my Amazon Associate account so that I can make a few bucks, too, as I climb out of the ranks of work slaves to live on the sunny mountain tops with the NRs.
37Signals Introduces New Color to the World
I should mention that DHH and gang have pulled out all stops with this book. They’ve expanded the primary color palette by adding in a new, heretofore unknown color that they call “black.” They’ve used this new color on the jacket of their book.
Fanboys across the nation have declared this new color “the bestest color ever.” Here are a few gushings on the 37Signals blog, with names changed to protect the embarrassed:
Jxx Oxxx 21 Aug 09
Cover looks great! Just placed a pre-order for my whole team on Amazon. Looking forward to it.Dan 21 Aug 09
WOW . What’s “fire the workaholics/emulate drug dealers” about?
Really curious.Mxxxxx Rxxxx Mxxxxxxxxx 21 Aug 09
The back cover looks really great, and I love the clean, mostly empty covers. Great job guys; I’ll be sure to pick up a copy.JB 21 Aug 09
Great design, very… Swiss inspired?
Congrats, very good start,
jbAnonymous Coward 21 Aug 09
Design: reminds me of those cheesy 90’s motivational posters found in corp. offices.
I think the cover is definitely Swiss inspired! I urge you to buy this book—through my link, or course. With the proceeds I collect, I’ll be able to get a deck chair on that beach in Valhalla. God, it’s going to be swell to rub elbows with the Illuminati and Nouveau Riche Rat Pack. If you want to join us, you get reworked.
Rework is so awesome that I feel reworked already, even without reading the book. Sometimes a good title, a good blurb, and a new color is all you need to “sell” an idea. As that carnival dude says, “Ignore this book at your own peril.”
Happy hacking…
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Doug Putnam has been teaching PHP at CCSF for almost a decade. He is currently teaching courses in PHP and Ruby at the City College of San Francisco and the College of San Mateo.
Jxxx Sxxxxxxx 21 Aug 09