Three Crucial Leadership Lessons from the U.S. Navy SEALs

Twice recently, I have presented my synopsis of Leadership Lessons of the U.S. Navy SEALS : Battle-Tested Strategies for Creating Successful Organizations and Inspiring Extraordinary Results by Jeff Cannon and Lieutenant Commander Jon Cannon.  I was struck with how practical, how timely, and how needed these lessons are.

We have a new and deeper appreciation for the folks who make up those Navy SEAL teams, after the successful mission that took out Osama bin Laden.  That success was no accident.  They prepared, drilled, trained, rehearsed …  the preparation was literally decades in the making!  This book helps us understand just why they succeed.

The entire book is worth a careful look.  But here are three lessons to take seriously for any current or aspiring leader.

Lesson #1 – care for your people.  Really, care for your people.  If people are cared for, and feel cared for, they will trust, follow, and stay with their leader.  People go to where they feel cared for.  From the book:

If passion for the big mission is not enough, then maybe commitment for the success of (the life of) your team members will keep you focused.  In other words, because you care for the people you work with, you work responsibly, professionally, sacrificially…

Lesson #2 – Plan well.  Plan thoroughly. Plan some more.  Because the more you plan, the more you know exactly what to do  — and, the more prepared you will be when you have to adjust the plan on the spot.  From the book:

Do you think you are spending too much time on planning?  Spend some more…  Success in the boardroom or on the battlefield does not require everything to go perfectly.  It requires you to be ready when things go wrong.  Set specific goals and establish identifiable paths to reach them… 
Time after time, organizations fail to do this. 

Lesson #3 – Maintain your rituals, because this plants and sustains a deep appreciation and commitment to the systems that work.  Systems matter.  Get the wrong systems, and the whole enterprise can come crashing down.  Get the right systems, and the whole enterprise has a much better chance at success.  From the book:

Sweat the small rituals…  By maintaining its rituals, an organization is communicating the idea that a system or culture is in place. 
By adhering to its rituals, you are confirming that you belong to the organization.  If you buck the system, you are not simply rebelling against formal suits and orthodox memos; you are questioning the organization, strategies, and processes they represent.  You are questioning the company you work for. 

This book is filled with other, valuable lessons – here’s just a sampling:

build boundaries to prevent infighting and cannibalism;
the vast majority of the time, you know what you should do;
if you think no one else can replace you, you’re an egotistical S.O.B. who’s failed;
 there is no “I” in “Shut up and do the work”;
let them be angry when they have a right to be;
tell them when the ship is sinking;
you’re the one who can make it work, and that’s often thanks enough;
cowboys and cogs don’t have job security, team members do; 
your own people are your best recruiters;
identify your lead dogs, feed them well, and build a pack around them;
let it be known that you’ll get rid of people who just shouldn’t be part of the team – even the nice people;
practice (“if you need to scream, you need to practice”);
and
make a decision!

These are just a few more of the many valuable lessons of the U.S. Navy SEALs.  I’m glad they have learned their lessons so well.

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You can purchase my synopsis (with handout + audio) of Leadership Lessons of the US. Navy SEALs, which comes with an introductory section about Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda, with brief excerpts from Inside the Kingdom by Carmen bin Laden and The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright (this book won the Pulitzer Prize), from our companion web site, 15minutebusinessbooks.com.

The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson – A Big Book

Our mattresses were made
of corn shucks
and soft gray Spanish moss
that hung from the trees….
From the swamps
we got soup turtles
and baby alligators
And from the woods
we got raccoon,
rabbit and possum.
• Mahalia Jackson, Movin’ On Up

Richard Wright, the bard of the Great Migration, defected to the receiving station of Chicago, via Memphis, in December, 1927, to feel as he put it, “the warmth of other suns.” 

————–
I’ve been thinking about Big books vs. small books.

I’m not talking about the size of the book — although, a big book is usually bigger — i.e., more pages.  But not always:  consider Big Think Strategy:  How to leverage bold ideas and leave small thinking behind by Bernd H. Schmitt.  This is a big book with fewer than 200 pages.

I’m talking about the ideas, the sweep of the book.  And I am a big fan of big books.  Books that tie things together over a long haul.  Books that point me to connections that are important, connections that I have not thought of.  Recently, at the First Friday Book Synopsis, I presented my synopsis of Where Good Ideas Come From by Steven Johnson.  This is a big book, with a massive sweep.  Other titles come to mind:  Collapse by Jared Diamond; The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright.

(Click on the book cover for a better look at the photographs)

Well, here’s my new “current favorite big book” — The Warmth of Other Suns:  The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson.  Wilkerson is a Pultizer Prize winner (in 1994:  the first African American woman to win the Pulitzer in journalism) from her reporting days with the New York Times, and in this massive sweep of a book she tells the epic story of the Great Migration, the years from 1915 to 1970, when over six million African Americans left the American South for the North and West.  It is a terrific read, overflowing with insight into people, this country, prejudices, hopes, dreams…  I would like to suggest that you add it to your “serious non-fiction book” stack.  You will not be disappointed.

Here is a description from the New York Times review by David Oshinsky:

Wilkerson follows the journey of three Southern blacks, each representing a different decade of the Great Migration as well as a different destination. It’s a shrewd storytelling device, because it allows her to highlight two issues often overlooked: first, that the exodus was a continuous phenomenon spanning six decades of American life; second, that it consisted of not one, but rather three geographical streams, the patterns determined by the train routes available to those bold enough to leave.

People from Arkansas, Alabama and Mississippi boarded the Illinois Central to Midwestern cities like Cleveland, Chicago and Detroit; those from Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas and Virginia rode the Seaboard Air Line up the East Coast to Washington, Philadelphia and New York; those in Louisiana and Texas took the Union Pacific to Los Angeles, Oakland and other parts of the West Coast. Wilkerson is superb at minding the bends and detours along the way. She notes, for example, that some migrants, unfamiliar with the conductor’s Northern accent, would mistakenly get off at the cry of “Penn Station, Newark,” the stop just before Penn Station, New York. Many decided to stay put, she adds, giving Newark “a good portion of its black population.”

A segregated railroad depot waiting room in Jacksonville, Fla., 1921. (State Archives of Florida)

Here is just one paragraph – such a great excerpt:

The actions of the people in this book were both universal and distinctly American.  Their migration was a response to an economic and social structure not of their making.  They did what humans have done for centuries when life became untenable – what the pilgrims did under the tyranny of British rule, what the Scotch-Irish did in Oklahoma when the land turned to dust, what the Irish did when there was nothing to eat, what the European Jews did during the spread of Nazism, what the landless in Russia, Italy, China and elsewhere did when something better across the ocean called to them.  What binds their stories together was the back-against-the-wall, reluctant yet hopeful search for something better, any place but where they were.  They did what human beings looking for freedom, throughout history, have often done.
They left. 

Wilkerson spent fourteen years researching this book (you can tell!), and interviewed over 1000 people.  The poignant moments in this book are too numerous to mention.  The description of the photograph of her own mother taken in the New World will leave a lump in your throat at the sheer symbolism of this new world ”passport.”  This is the kind of reading that I wish I had more time to do.

I hope you have your stack of serious, sweeping, big book books to read.  They are rich indeed.  Add this one to your stack – you will not be disappointed.

 

Honoring our Military with a special Book Synopsis Presentation/Gathering – The Leadership Secrets of the Navy SEALs

The business world has increasingly become a world of individuals.  Corporate teams that once banded together to push forward are now like mercenary gangs…  Corporate culture has often become little more than a sea of managerial nomads, loyal to no one and motivated overwhelmingly by salary, convenience, and the size of the corporate gym…
This has been a disaster for managers and leaders who want to create values and get results.  It’s difficult to lead workers who have been abandoned to senior management.  It’s tough to make unpopular choices when senior management won’t back you up.  It’s hard to stay on course when subordinates can go around you. 
Enough…  It’s time to run your organization like a team again, and in a manner that is principally designed to produce results. 
Jeff Cannon, and Lieutenant Commander Jon Cannon:  Leadership Lessons of the U.S. Navy SEALS : Battle-Tested Strategies for Creating Successful Organizations and Inspiring Extraordinary Results

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You are invited…

As we ponder the remarkable accomplishment of Navy SEAL Team 6, we will host a special Bonus Program Book Synopsis, focusing on the book  Leadership Lessons of the U.S. Navy SEALS : Battle-Tested Strategies for Creating Successful Organizations and Inspiring Extraordinary Results by Jeff Cannon and Lieutenant Commander Jon Cannon.

I presented my synopsis of this book at the special request of a client company, and it is both a good book, and worth a new look after the recent accomplishment of this remarkable group of professionals in Pakistan.

I will begin will begin with a few reflections from the book The Looming Tower:  Al-Queda and The Road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright (Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, 2007), and then present the full synopsis of the Navy SEALs book.

Proceeds will be donated to Fisher House (Helping Military Families).  Fisher House is rated 4 stars by Charity Navigator, their highest rating..

Date:  May 23
Time:  7:30 am (we will begin serving breakfast at 7:00 am)
Place:  Park City Club, in the Park Cities/Dallas (near the corner of Northwest Highway and the Tollway)
Cost:  $30.00.

Please let us know if you plan to attend.  We will not offer on-line registration.  Either send me a direct e-mail (click here to send me that e-mail), or call Karl Krayer at 972-601-1537 to reserve your spot.  You can pay at the door with either check, cash, or credit or debit card.

Thank you.

A Reading List – Post 9/11 (A Good List to check out After the Death of Bin Laden)

I have oft quoted, on this blog, and in countless presentations, from The Looming Tower:  Al-Queda and the Road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright (winner of the Pulitzer Prize, 2007).  And Inside the Kingdom by Carmen Bin Laden.

Here is s link to a reading list, all books that were highlighted on PBS, with links to interviews with the authors:  A Reading List for the Post-9/11 Era, posted by Molly Finnegan , May 3, 2011.  From the intro:

The NewsHour has featured conversations with many writers over the past decade on books that address, directly and indirectly, how 9/11, bin Laden and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have influenced how we live today. After the jump, find a sampling of some of these featured titles with links to the full conversations.

The list is a good one, and, yes, it includes The Looming Tower.  Here is the quote lifted from the full interview (link on the page) with Wright on the book list page:

From the conversation:
“Humiliation is one of the most common words in bin Laden’s vocabulary. Certainly there have been many Muslim men who have been physically humiliated, especially Arabs and Egyptians in those prisons. For instance, Ayman al-Zawahiri, the number two guy in al-Qaida, experienced three years of torture in Egyptian prisons, as was true of many people who are in al-Qaida today. I think that accounts for the appetite for bloodshed that’s so characteristic of al-Qaida and so unusual in many respects for a terrorist movement, which is normally just interested in theater….When he uses that term, it resonates with many Muslims who feel that Islam has been in retreat for hundreds of years and been displaced from his proper place in the world.”

 

“The Security of Justice” – Thoughts on the Death of Bin Laden

Martin Luther King, Jr., Washington D.C., August 28, 1963:

But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we’ve come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.

Carmen Bin Laden (Inside the Kingdom):

No one will ever be able to take an airplane again without a sense of apprehension.
Osama Bin Laden and those like him didn’t spring, fully formed, from the desert sand.  They were made.  They were fashioned by the workings of an opaque and intolerant medieval society that is closed to the outside world.
When Osama dies, I fear there will be a thousand men to take his place.
Our defense is the defense of truth.

President Barrack Obama, May 1, 2011:

We were also united in our resolve to protect our nation and to bring those who committed this vicious attack to justice.
Justice has been done.
Let us remember that we can do these things not just because of wealth or power, but because of who we are: one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Lawrence Wright, author of The Looming Tower (from The New Yorker):

…the fact that he was able to evade justice since 1998, when he authorized the bombings of the two American embassies in East Africa, emboldened terrorists all over the globe.
The recent bombing in Marrakesh and the arrests in Germany demonstrate that Al Qaeda continues to have enthusiastic, entrepreneurial operatives that are eager to make their own mark on history.
But bin Laden’s death comes at a time when Al Qaeda has been sidelined by the democratic surge that has unsettled the Arab world.
Democracy and civil society are the cure for the chronic misery of Muslim countries that has fed the rise of Islamic extremism. The death of the most notorious terrorist the world has ever seen, whose mission was to create a clash of civilizations, will allow the door to open more widely to the tolerance, modernism, and pragmatism that is so badly needed and so long awaited in a part of the world where despair, corruption, brutality, and fanaticism have laid waste to so many generations.

——-

Osama Bin Laden is dead.  I am glad.  Joy is not the right word.  (A friend of mine tweeted last night that she felt no joy in such a killing).  But I am glad.  “Justice has been done,” said President Obama.  Yes, it has.

Dr. King spoke of the “security of justice,” justice that had too often withheld from the people he led.  But that phrase is so powerful.  Our security is in the idea, the promise, of justice.

There is a terrific reminder of the purity of justice in a courtroom scene at the end of The Verdict (Paul Newman).  Here is part of his speech:

I mean there is no justice. The rich win; the poor are powerless. We become tired of hearing people lie. And after a time we become dead, a little dead. We think of ourselves as victims — and we become victims. We become weak; we doubt ourselves; we doubt our beliefs; we doubt our institutions; and we doubt the law.
But today you are the law. You are the law, not some book, not the lawyers, not a marble statue, or the trappings of the court. See, those are just symbols of our desire to be just. They are, in fact, a prayer, I mean a fervent and a frightened prayer.
In my religion, they say, “Act as if you had faith; faith will be given to you.”
If we are to have faith in justice we need only to believe in ourselves and act with justice. See, I believe there is justice in our hearts.

I believe the decision by President Obama was a pure decision, on the side of justice.  I do not rejoice.  Too many died, and Bin Laden’s death brings back that sadness…  But it was right, and we are glad.  Justice has been done.

The Muslim Brotherhood – The Hostility Goes Way Back (with insight from The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright)

Here’s some serious background reading to recommend.

Shortly after it came out, I read the book The Looming Tower:  Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright. He won the Pulitzer Prize for this book (for General Nonfiction – 2007).

Sayyid Qutb

As the Egypt situation unfolds, this might be a good book to put in your reading stack.  We hear a lot about the Muslim Brotherhood.  Here is a little background from the book about Egypt and the Muslim Brotherhood (there is much more in the book).

The year was 1949.  Sayyid Qutb, (who later had an enormous influence on Osama bin Laden), was in Washington D.C. studying English.  He had his tonsils removed at the George Washington University hospital, where he has deeply offended by the conversations, and the “look,” of an American nurse.

“News came of the assassination of Hasan al-Banna, the Supreme Guide for the Society of the Muslim Brothers, on February 12, in Cairo.  “Today, the enemy of Christianity in the East was killed,” he says the doctors told him.  ”Today, Hasan al-Banna was murdered…”

Banna’s voice was stilled just as Qutb’s book Social Justice in Islam was being published – the book that would make his reputation as an important Islamic thinker…

Shortly after, Qutb was offered a fee of ten thousand dollars for the rights to translate his new book into English, “a fantastic sum for such an obscure book.”  Qutb refused.  He later speculated that James Heyworth-Dunne (the man who offered the fee) was attempting to recruit him to the CIA.  “I decided to enter the Brotherhood even before I left the house.”

The book is filled with insight into the thinking of the Muslim Brotherhood (“It is the nature of Islam to dominate, not to be dominated, to impose its law in all nations, and to extend its power to the entire planet,” wrote Hasan al-Banna).

Hasan al-Banna founded the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Ikhwan al-Muslimeen, in 1928

And the book is filled with details about the treatment of its followers in Egyptian prisons.

In 1955, some of the imprisoned Brothers staged a strike and refused to leave their cells.  They were gunned down.  Twenty-three members were killed and forty-six injured.  Qutb was in the prison hospital when the wounded men were brought in.  Shaken and terrified, Qutb wondered how fellow Muslims could treat each other in such a way.

In this week of protest erupting into violence in Egypt, it might help to read some background. As Lawrence Wright captured, everything is connected, and goes back quite a ways.

And, by the way, learning about Sayyid Qutb is a good/important addition to your learning plan.

• (for a quick read about Qutb, read this article from American Public Media. Scroll down into the article).

Knowing What Is Coming, and Preparing For It – It May Be Leadership’s Most Important Task

Today at noon, I will present my reflections on The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright.  It won the Pulitzer, and is the definitive work on the birth and work of Al-Queda (leading up to the September 11, 2001 attacks).

As I revisited the book preparing for this presentation, I was reminded again of this simple fact:  we are so very capable of turning a blind eye on reality.  And out of our ignorance, we do not prepare.  For example:  at the time of the attack on 9/11, we had eight (8) people capable of speaking Arabic in the FBI.

Here is a paragraph from the book:

On the fifth of July, 2001, Dick Clarke assembled representatives of various domestic agencies – the Federal Aviation Administration, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Coast Guard, the FBI, and the Secret Service among them – to issue a warning.  “Something really spectacular is going to happen here, and it’s going to happen soon,” he told them.

The warning wasn’t adequately heeded, and the rest, as they say, is history.

What we don’t know can hurt us.  And of all the tasks of leadership, knowing what is coming, and preparing for it, may be the mort important of all — in national security; in business; in life…

 

Lawrence Wright’s Trip to Al-Qaeda

I don’t know how to decide which are the most important books.  But I think this may be one of them.

I read the Pulitzer Prize winning The Looming Tower:  Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright just days after it was published.  I could not put it down.  I have read two of his earlier books:  In the New World (Growing Up in America, 1960-1984) should be a must read for anyone who wants to understand Dallas, and Saints and Sinners, an absolutely gripping read.

Here is an excerpt from The Looming Tower:

In so many respects, the Trade Center dead formed a kind of universal parliament, representing sixty-two countries and nearly every ethnic group and religion in the world.  There was an ex-hippie stockbroker, the gay Catholic Chaplain of the New York City Fire Department, a Japanese hockey player, and Ecuadoran sous chef, a Barbie Doll collector, a vegetarian calligrapher, a Palestinian accountant…. The manifold ways in which they attached to life testified to the Quranic injunction that the taking of a single life destruys a universes.  Al-Quada had aimed its attacks at America, but it struck all of humanity.

Tonight, HBO will debut the new film based on his one-man play, My Trip To Al-Qaeda.  (I saw him present an earlier version here in Dallas).  Read the synopsis and watch the trailer on the HBO site here.

Lawrence Wright

If you haven’t read the book, it is absolutely worth your time.  And I suspect the HBO version of his play will also help you understand.

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(By the way, Mr. Wright wrote the script for the movie, The Siege, with Denzel Washington, Bruce Willis, and Annette Bening.  It came out in 1998, but was the most rented movie shortly after the 9/11 attack).

“What Three Books Should I Load On My Kindle For My Cruise?” – w/update

So, here’s the request that came in an e-mail:
We are going on a cruise in September and I want to load my Kindle with three books.  What are the three best books you would recommend for my reading? The request came from a very sharp, keen-minded, successful, independent business consultant.  He attends one of our book synopsis events.  This is my attempt to answer his question.

I am tempted to simply list some of my all time favorite reads (not necessarily the best books I’ve ever read, although they are close –  but definitely books that I am very glad I have read), like:  The Doorbell Rang, one of my favorite Nero Wolfe mysteries, by Rex Stout; and The Powers That Be and The Reckoning by the truly great David Halberstam; and Defining a Nation, edited by the same Halberstam.

And then there is this:  what are the business books from the last few years (and even a little longer ago) that should be on your “I’ve definitely read that book” list?  I would certainly include Good to Great by Jim Collins; something Gladwell (it’s tough to choose — probably Outliers); Servant Leadership by Robert Greenleaf and The Leadership Engine by Noel Tichy; almost anything, but definitely at least one thing, by Peter Drucker.  Add to this The Art of Innovation by Tom Kelley, and a major personal favorite, The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp.

But – I still have not answered the question.  If I had but three books to load on my Kindle for a September cruise, what titles would I choose?  Here’s a list of five; you will have to narrow it down to the three that most interest you.

Choice #1: Collapse:  How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond.  Diamond, a Pulitzer Prize winner with his earlier book Guns, Germs, and Steel, has written a tour de force in Collapse, sweeping us through the societies that collapsed, and providing warnings regarding the decisions societies make.  An important book!

Choice #2: Inside the Kingdom:  My Life in Saudi Arabia by Carmen Bin Laden, or, The Looming Tower:  Al-Queda and the Road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright.  Of course, the Wright book is the heftier of the two; it won the Pulitzer, and provides an amazing education about the rise of Al-Queda, what went into their thinking, and especially their animosity toward the West.  But there is a personal tone and a very personal take on life in the strict Muslim world of Saudi Arabia in Carmen Bin Laden’s book — the former wife of Yeslam, one of the brothers of Osama Bin Laden.  It is a captivating read, and noticeably shorter than The Looming Tower.  (You can tell, from this  response, that I think we ought to seek to understand this “other” culture that is so foreign to our own).  

Choice #3: OK, which two business books to put on the list? Not necessarily which books to read for enjoyment, but which books provide the most important and useful information?  I list two choices.  I would put The Other 90%:  How to Unlock Your Vast Untapped Potential for Leadership and Life by Robert Cooper, because everyone would benefit from reading an occasional “let’s aim high, and take things higher” book.  Unfortunately,this book is not available for the Kindle. (Yes, I checked on all the others).  So, for this category of business book, I recommend The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz.  (I haven’t yet read the new Schwartz book, The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working: The Four Forgotten Needs That Energize Great Performance, which could be a better choice).  And, for the other business book, I would have to go with The Checklist Manifesto:  How to Get Things Right by Atul Gawande, just because I think it deals with the complexity of this age and provides really valuable suggestions.  (And, it gives every patient going in to surgery an important question to ask his or her surgeon:  “do you use a checklist?”).

These are the five.  You’ll have to reduce it to your three.  And, of course, you may be asking others for their suggestions, and reject my three altogether.

And you will notice that there are no novels on my list.  I read about a novel a decade (except for my relatively frequent re-reading of the Nero Wolfe mysteries).  But I have actually bought a novel – in the past week.  It is: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson.  I might actually read it – one of these days soon.

————–

Two personal footnotes:

#1 – thanks, Tom, for providing a great idea for a blog post.  I apologize for answering you in this fashion.

#2 — And, it would be interesting to have Bob Morris give his list of “only three” in response to this request?  I’m pretty sure he would have different titles – all absolutely worth the investment of a Kindle purchase and a few hours of reading.  So many books… so little time!

——

update:  I definitely should have put The Big Short:  Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis into the mix — as the book I would recommend to help you understand the financial meltdown of the last couple of years.  So now I am up to six to choose from, to then narrow down to three.  Sorry about that.

Just Like Us — a book to do your soul good

I have written often about the two main worlds I live in (professionally):  the world of business books, especially with the books I present at the First Friday Book Synopsis, and the world of nonprofits and social justice, especially with the books I present at the Urban Engagement Book Club.

These two events are back to back – the first Thursday, and the first Friday of the month.  This week is a week for two exceptional books.  I have already raved, time and again on this blog, about The Checklist Manifesto, my selection for the First Friday Book Synopsis.  The book that I am presenting today at the Urban Engagment Book Club is also worthy of your attention.  It is written by Helen Thorpe, journalist and wife of Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper.  Here is what two very well known and respected authors said about this book:

“Helen Thorpe has taken policy and turned it into literature.” (Malcolm Gladwell).

“This is a penetrating, fair, and refreshingly personal examination of the passions that fuel the immigration controversy in this country.  Helen Thorpe measures the arguments on both sides of this national debate against the actual human costs imposed by the status quo.  This book will find a central place in this debate.” (Lawrence Wright, Pulitzer Prize-winning author).

And here’s why.  The book tells the story of four young women, all growing up together, as best friends, in Denver — all mexicana.  But, two are legal, two are not.  Here are a couple of key quotes:

In all the time I had known the girls, no adequate solution had been provided by elected officials to the perplexity of Marisela’s existence.  Now here was the enigma of her child.  With any luck, Marisela’s son or daughter would be born with an American birth certificate, and would grow up in the United States without worrying quite as much as Marisela had about whether he or she belonged.  As long as Marisela herself lacked legal status, however, her child was going to have to worry about whether his or her mother might someday be deported.
This was the essence of what it meant to be illegal:  One lived with the possibility of salvation or despair close by, all the time.
What was the weight of one human soul?

We typically think of politics as something that occurs on a grand scale, but the more I watched politics unfold, the more I wondered why.  Did the idea of a country – an abstract concept, really – truly matter more that the sum happiness of al the individuals living within its boundaries?  No, I thought.  People mattered more than governments.  In fact, this country was founded on that very idea.

I hope you will add this book to your reading list.  It will do your soul good, and really help you understand the human elements of a very complex issue.