Michael Putegnat

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About Michael Putegnat
Michael Putegnat grew up on the border in far south Texas in the 1950's and 60's and returned there after college to continue a family tradition in business, starting a computer enterprise. But his election to a local governing board in the 1980's was a perspective jarring event and led him deep into a conflict pitting radical change against old traditions and power. In a quest to understand how people choose to govern themselves, he studied public policy and administration at the Kennedy School, Harvard University in 1993 and 94, where he focused on Decision Theory and Negotiations. Following, he launched a consultancy for business, government, higher education and non-profits confronting structural change, eventually joining The University of Texas System Administration full time.
While it had been a life-long ambition, he wrote his first novel, LAGUNA, in 2005, and did not begin to write full time until 2016. He is interested in how and why people organize themselves as they do and why so many efforts fail. He has chosen the novel as his preferred medium for his exploration of these themes, partly because it provides greater subtlety and texture to the complexity humans bring to everything they do, and partly because he has long been a fan of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Patrick O'Brien, Charles Dickens, and Agatha Christie. He particularly enjoys writing about ordinary people who do extraordinary things.
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Author Updates
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Blog postEarlier this week, Joanna Barsh talked to the Amazon Book Review about her new book, Grow Wherever You Work: Straight Talk to Help With Your Toughest Challenges. This latest book by Barsh, a longtime director of McKinsey & Company, uses real-life case studies from the work lives of more than 200 rising leaders to create a guide getting through the trickiest times in a career, from "When Work Holds No Passion" to "When Everything Sucks." Intrigued? Below, we e4 years ago Read more
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Blog postNew year, new you—right?
On January first, hot off a night of staying up late and consuming extraneous amounts of delicious food and alcohol, we stare at ourselves in the mirror in the milky light of winter morning and decide what we want to change about ourselves. And how to do it.
Do more? More exercise, more gratitude, more phone calls instead of Instagram hearts, more vegetables, more organization.
Or do less? Less sugar, less anger, less time in front of a screen,4 years ago Read more -
Blog postJohn le Carré's The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy made the character George Smiley an icon of espioage fiction. More than 25 years later, A Legacy of Ashes returns to the world of the British Secret Service and Smiley-disciple Peter Guillam, who, despite his best efforts to leave the past behind, finds himself entangled in old conflicts—their Cold War justifications now lost to the intervening decades.
See le Carré's favorite reads4 years ago Read more -
Blog postWe've seen an explosion of graphic novels for kids in recent years, led by authors like Dav Pilkey, who's Captain Underpants and Dog Man series' have made readers out of kids who didn't think books were fun.
In 2015 two of the Newbery Honor books were graphic novels, Victoria Jamieson's Roller Girl and Cece Bell's El Deafo. Both are now finding their way into school reading curriculum (including my daughter's 5th grade classroom), giving even more kids a way into reading t4 years ago Read more -
Blog postIan Falconer's precocious porcine character has been delighting children since she arrived on the page in Olivia which promptly won a Caldecott Honor award. Since then, Falconer has sent Olivia to the circus among other adventures, including her latest as Olivia the Spy, a book we selected as one of our editors' picks for the best children's books of 2017.
A book by Maurice Sendak appears in Ian Falconer's picks below, along with two very interesting companions and commentary about wh4 years ago Read more -
Blog postJoanna Barsh began her long career in global business as a production assistant in the movie industry, where she says she "spent my days trying to do my best, getting yelled out, and being bored." How times change. Now director emerita at McKinsey & Co., Barsh has written three books to help people move ahead and excel in their careers. The latest in this trilogy is Grow Wherever You Work: Straight Talk to Help with Your Toughest Challenges. Praised by Facebook's Shery4 years ago Read more
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Blog postIt's really hard to believe, but Diana Gabaldon continued her uber-popular Outlander series with Dragonfly in Amber over 25 years ago! Revisit eighteenth-century Scotland and the story of soldier Jamie Fraser and his time-traveling wife, Claire Randa (ok sure, you're watching the television adaptation now, because Sam Heughan is dreamy and all, but we all know the book is always better).
What does Ms. Gabaldon like to read when she's not scribbling away? Browse her favorite books of 24 years ago Read more -
Blog postJason Reynolds recently told me about one of the best days of his life: the day he took his mother to the National Book Awards gala where his book didn't take the prize, but the two of them got to see congressman and civil rights leader John Lewis win, and win again. That story says a lot about the kind of person Reynolds is, and his writing reflects his generous spirit.
This year Reynolds wrote three books for young people, including Long Way Down; one of our top picks for the4 years ago Read more -
Blog postJann Wenner wanted a biography. As founder and Editor in Chief of Rolling Stone magazine, he has wielded an outsized influence over popular culture for decades, and his biography would have to match. When Wenner launched his “sort of a magazine and sort of a newspaper” in 1967, it also shot him into the whirlwind; soon he was socializing with the likes of John and Yoko, Mick , Janis, and Jimi, while indulging in the excesses inextricably intertwined with the rock-and-roll lifestyle. His succe4 years ago Read more
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Blog postSinger-songwriter Dar Williams has spent a great deal of time on the road during her music career, and she's seen much of this country from big city to small town.
Communities seeking to change their situation have grabbed her attention most recently, as she relates in her new book, What I Found in a Thousand Towns. "Powerful proximity" is how she describes the goodwill, pride, and action that pull people closer and help their town grow out of crime and poverty and into a vi4 years ago Read more
Titles By Michael Putegnat
A once-wunderkind, Professor Tom Campbell has procrastinated too long and is now stranded in a small backwater college and deeply resenting it.
Elly Asher is a rescuer, be it injured animals or broken people, but she cannot help herself. Now she hides from her past, tucked away in a small Texas town, afraid but ever hopeful.
Warrant Officer Bob Vardis is jaded at the end of a long career at the Pentagon as the Sherlockian devil's advocate. Rigid and doctrinaire, his life is ordered, methodical and loveless... and he is exhausted by it.
Whether the old man's life was real or imagined, his death is the catalyst that changes everything as lives of settling come to a final settlement.
John Magne, a powerful fourth-generation ranching patriarch, is faced with a financial crisis. Descended from a long line of masters of influence and manipulation, he deftly executes a plan that reaches deep into Washington, D.C. and state house politics and powerful New York Investment Banks.
Against his overwhelming political power, stands one unwilling and unwitting ex-government worker, with a deep aversion to conflict and a record of running from it...and five determined women, each on different missions, all converging on a shocking conclusion.
Laguna is a mystery set in our times, in a world where truth has become irrelevant, redemption impossible and murder is just business.
Or so it seems...