It started to heat up in New England, and while my son was mountain biking I ran through the mountains while listening to books for my #AcademicRunPlaylist!

First was "The Supreme Court on Unions" by Julius Getman. Before reading this book I was a bit concerned that the reading experience would be non-stop pain, but I'm pleased to report that instead this is a feisty, meticulous deconstruction of the many decades of flawed, anti-labor legal reasoning that has pervaded the high court since these issues first started being raised. Getman combines a review of major cases across the decades and their intersections, showing how many fundamental cases that have been cited ad nauseum are deeply wrong (and that was often understood at the time) and often used incorrectly by later courts. Throughout it becomes clear how the court's reliance on theoretical, philosophical arguments are continually refuted by empirical work, and how the anti-labor project will take generations to unwind. Getman frames this all in a way that calls for action rather than leaving one to wallow in despair, which is certainly what we need right now. Highly recommend https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501702730/the-supreme-court-on-unions/

Last was "Competitive Strategy" by Michael Porter. That most of the insights in this book will strike the modern reader as common sense is a testament to the influence it's had, but also its limitations. A third of the book can mostly be summed up with the phrase: "engage in collusion," while much of the rest of the book should come with a giant "citation needed" label. The problem with the frameworks Porter provides isn't that they're overly general or not prescriptive - a single book attempting to cover strategy in all circumstances will necessarily have to be. Rather, the question is whether or not his frameworks are predictive when employed. Certainly in terms of post-hoc analysis they're convincing, but of course the real question is does this approach actually lead to strategic insights that are more predictive of the future than more ad hoc methods. Nothing here suggests that's the case. That doesn't mean that some of the suggestions here aren't helpful, but beyond these general pointers, which probably should fit in a single article, there's a stunning lack of validation https://archive.org/details/competitiveadvan00port