Jack and Todd's Big Adventure

For my part in this adventure, the genesis of this book began about six or seven years ago when David Schwartz (owner of Milwaukee's independent Harry W. Schwartz Bookshops...and the guy who gave me my first job in books) and I were at one of our bi-yearly "where we are at" dinners. He suggested that I probably knew more about business books than most people and I should write book reviews. I scoffed at him, saying I can do some things, but writing isn't one of them. He pushed back, and so I wrote my first Jack Covert Selects review. Since then, my reviews have appeared in newspapers around the country. Much to my surprise, I found that I liked writing them, and maybe even more shocking to me, is that I enjoyed delving into the business books and ideas that I was reviewing. This all happened before Todd joined me here at 800-CEO-READ, but when he arrived, he and Tom Ehrenfeld started discussing the possibility of putting together a book that would showcase our experience with business books. As the discussions moved forward, I was excited by the idea of taking a fleshed-out version of our JCS reviews, adding some cool graphics, and tying it all together to give the reader a pathway or travel guide to this world of business books...and, by conjunction, the world of business.