6 Popular Business Books Adapted as Comics

What 6th-century Chinese military strategy has to do with the art of closing a deal.

Comic books resonate so deeply with us because they speak to our brains’ fundamental visual bias, known as the pictorial superiority effect. A new series of books by SmarterComics is harnessing this human predilection and doing for nonfiction what The RSA has done for lectures, adapting popular business and strategy books by iconic thought-leaders into visually-driven narratives. Here are the first six of the series.

THE LONG TAIL

Based on the 2006 bestseller of the same name by Wired editor Chris Anderson, The Long Tail explores a counterintuitive side of business profits as Anderson declares the death of “common culture” and makes a case for the multiplicity of small niches, as opposed to the high-volume peaks of the mainstream, as the sweet spot of market opportunity.

THINK AND GROW RICH

In 1937, Napoleon Hill wrote what’s commonly considered the greatest wealth-building guide of all time. SmarterComics breathes playful new life into the now-iconic Think and Grow Rich, a blueprint for improving your life through the practical power of positive thinking, a cognitive toolkit to which many of modern history’s most famous millionaires and billionaires point as the secret to their success. A self-help book for the hard analytical types, Hill’s classic is considered a landmark publication in success philosophy and has shaped generations of subsequent business books.

MI BARRIO

Entrepreneur Robert Renteria grew up as an infant sleeping in a dresser drawer, then got drawn into drugs and gang violence as a teenager. But rather than letting his circumstances dictate and define him, he let them become a part of him as he grew from a childhood of poverty and abuse into a successful businessman and civic leader. In Mi Barrio (My Neighborhood), Renteria turns his story into a modern-day, real-life fable of persistence and hard work, extending an invitation to all of us to transcend the limitations of our circumstances and the burdens of our past.

HOW TO MASTER THE ART OF SELLING

Since its original publication decades ago, Tom Hopkins’ straight-shootingly titled How to Master the Art of Selling has remained true to — and widely acclaimed for — its title’s promise. Among the many sales scrips and tactics on everything from building trust to closing elusive deals are also a number of anecdotes, which seem to lend themselves particularly well to the storytelling format of a comic book.

OVERACHIEVEMENT

Originally written by performance coach and psychologist John Eliot in 2004, Overachievement offers an ambitious look at what it takes to be exceptional. Eliot explores a number of cognitive performance enhancers used by Olympic athletes, business moguls, surgeons, salesmen, financial experts, and rock stars, pointing to the importance of intuition and what he calls “the trusting mind” — the same idea, no doubt, that inspired Nike’s iconic “Just do it” slogan — as the fundamental make-or-break point of success.

THE ART OF WAR

Chinese military treatise The Art of War (not to be confused with Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art), attributed to philosopher and military general Sun Tzu, is one of the world’s oldest and most successful books on military strategy, dating back to late 6th century BC. The wisdom from this 2,500-year-old text remain required reading for today’s MBA classrooms, offering history-tested insight on how to prevail in any conflict, be it in on the battlefield or in the boardroom.

Besides the traditional printed editions, the books are also available in a variety of eletornic formats on the SmarterComics site.

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Arabic Graffiti: An Eastern Voice in the Global Street Art Dialogue

Diplomacy by way of street art, or what Gaza has to do with Banksy.

We love street art, but the majority of coverage on the subject has a severe geographic bias — every street art encyclopedia, every showcase of notable work, every documentary on graffiti culture tends to focus on Western lettering and imagery. Until now. Arabic Graffiti is an ambitious new anthology by Berlin street culture tastemaker Don Karl and Lebanese typographer Pascal Zoghbi exploring the use of Arabic script in urban context. The lush hardcover tome curates graffiti artists and typographers from the Middle East and around the world, who incorporate Arabic calligraphy styles in their artwork — a beautiful intersection of tradition and contemporary creativity.

Images courtesy of Slanted

Part cultural anthropology, part study in creative ingenuity, Arabic Graffiti is one of the most exciting design books to come by this year and a timely cross-cultural bridge of visual communication in the context of today’s global political climate.

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7 Brilliant Book Trailers

How to connect haberdashery to Zach Galifianakis in under three minutes.

With a killer combination of animation, motion graphics and music, what’s not to love about book trailers? We couldn’t think of a thing, which is why we’ve rounded up seven of our favorites. As provocative, funny, and poignant as the books they represent, these videos prove that ideas are the ultimate teasers. And despite the publishing industry’s alarmist prophecies, these trailers bespeak the power of books to appeal to readers with their core, age-old value proposition: Compelling storytelling, creatively delivered.

GOING WEST

Gorgeous production values and jaw-dropping papercraft animation earned the trailer for Going West by the New Zealand Book Council our top spot. Created 15 years after the book’s publication in 1994, the BBDO-produced spot perfectly captures the haunting tone of Maurice Gee’s hybrid mystery-travelogue.

The pages of Going West literally rise up to depict the world of mid-20th-century Auckland. It’s a show-stopping feat that left us totally intrigued about the story inside its pages.

WISDOM

We’re longtime admirers of Andrew Zuckerman’s ambitious projects, like the beautiful Bird series. With Wisdom: The Greatest Gift One Generation Can Give to Another, Zuckerman asked 50 of our time’s greatest thinkers and doers — writers, artists, philosophers, politicians, designers, activists, musicians, religious and business leaders — all over 65 years of age to impart some knowledge for posterity. (Zuckerman subsequently divided the great tome into four smaller, more digestible sub-volumes, each with its own thematic DVD: Wisdom: Life, Wisdom: Love, Wisdom: Peace, and Wisdom: Ideas.) Clips of the accompanying film comprise this trailer, which for its sheer star power is tough to beat.

Love something. I think we’ve got to learn to love something deeply. I think it’s love. It sounds sentimental as hell, but I really think it is.” ~ Andrew Wyeth, artist

LOWBOY

Speaking of stars, we love this LOL-worthy trailer for the novel Lowboy featuring funnyman Zach Galifianakis.

The actor trades identities with author John Wray, who plays an interviewer trying to find out about the book. The resulting improvised hijinks have the same slightly uncomfortable, dark comedy as Lowboy itself. Bonus points for the 9-to-5 movie reference and cutaways to Galifianakis using a binary typewriter.

13 WORDS

We expect no less than wonderful from a collaboration between Lemony Snicket and Maira Kalman, and the trailer for their book 13 Words doesn’t disappoint.

It’s a clear winner in the cool-for-both-kids-and-parents genre, all in Kalman’s delightfully analog, decidedly non-Pixar style. Animated images from the book — which illustrates 13 essential English words — combined with Snicket’s narration results in a charming combination for all ages.

WORST-CASE SCENARIO POCKET GUIDES

The title alone is promising: Worst Case Scenario Pocket Guide: Breakups aims to satisfy the person looking for a little post-heartbreak humor.

Smart motion graphics augment the trailer’s tongue-in-cheek narration about how to trick out your online dating profile when it’s time to get back on the market.

How could you go wrong with such solid advice as the following:

Use euphemisms: avoid the word unemployed by saying that you are currently enjoying a sweat-free lifestyle while you search for new challenges.

SHOCK DOCTRINE

Naomi Klein’s 2008 book Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism enlisted the skills of Oscar-nominated director Alfonso Cuaron, and it shows. The trailer functions as both a teaser for the book and a mini-documentary for Klein’s argument: that economists and politicians take advantage of crises to push through social policy, often to the detriment of billions.

Whatever your view of Klein’s politics, the power of this trailer – as either advertising or propaganda – is undeniable.

IT’S A BOOK

The trailer for illustrator Lane Smith’s It’s A Book provides a rebuttal to the terminably app-addicted. A donkey asks his monkey pal whether the object he’s holding can scroll, text, or tweet, to which the latter invariably — and each time more exasperatedly — replies, “no, it’s a book.”

Smith provides a sweet reminder that the written word can still rock one’s world.

We hope these trailers have piqued your interest about the books they present. They suggest that, though a book’s main delivery mechanism may have moved online, readers themselves are still moved by curiosity.

Kirstin Butler is writing an adaptation of Gogol for the Google era called Dead SULs, but when not working spends far, far too much time on Twitter. She currently lives in Cambridge, MA but still stubbornly identifies as a Brooklynite.

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Celebrating Ella Fitzgerald

Five ways to celebrate The First Lady of Song, from illustration to rare concert footage.

On April 25, 1917, the world welcomed the great Ella Fitzgerald, nicknamed The First Lady of Song. Her remarkable recording career spanned 59 years, garnered 13 Grammys and forever changed the face of jazz with her signature improvisational scat singing. Today, we celebrate Lady Ella five ways.

ONE NOTE SAMBA

Ella’s legendary scat singing springs to life in this rare recording from June 22, 1969. Here, she performs One Note Samba with Ed Thigpen on drums, Frank de la Rosa on bass, and Tommy Flanagan on piano.

ELLA + LOUIS

As far as artistic collaborations go, hardly does it get more iconic and powerful than Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong. While sifting through YouTube’s annoying array of static-photo-with-low-quality-audio-recording non-videos for a decent example, we stumbled upon this lovely animation from BBC4, a charming take on one of their most beloved duets, Dream A Little Dream Of Me:

SKIT-SCAT RAGGEDY CAT

It’s no secret we have a soft spot for children’s books. So we love Skit-Scat Raggedy Cat: Ella Fitzgerald from author Roxanne Orgill and mixed-media artist Sean Qualls — the wonderfully illustrated rags-to-riches story of how Lady Ella sang her way from the streets of Yonkers to jazz history.

Bonus points: Interwoven throughout the eloquent biographical narrative are snippets of Fitzgerald’s most iconic songs.

But what makes Skit-Scat Raggedy Cat most noteworthy is the very concept of engaging kids with jazz — another facet of the kind of cross-disciplinary curiosity that’s fundamental to true “education” and creativity.

SUMMERTIME

It hardly gets more classic than Lady Ella belting George Gershwin’s Summertime, as she does in this rare and powerful footage from a 1968 concert in Berlin:

ELLA BY HERMAN LEONARD

This rare photograph of Ella on stage in New York in 1948 comes from Jazz — the humbly titled yet absolutely amazing retrospective of the work of legendary photographer Herman Leonard, which we reviewed last year. Leonard had been photographing jazz musicians since the 1950s and developed close friendships with greats like Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis, which gave him unique access to these innovators and their larger worlds beyond the stage. The book reveals a rare glimpse of the underbelly of a cultural revolution through stunning, luminous never-before-seen images of icons like Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, and more.

Leonard captures, with his signature visual eloquence, the grace and elegance with which Lady Ella was able to command a room’s attention, transfixing the audience like the vocal hypnotist that she was.

Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, NYC, New York, 1948

Image courtesy of Herman Leonard

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