It’s been months since I’ve done book reviews, so I’ll just wrap up a bunch of quick summaries of things I’ve finished recently. Alas, I still have many books that I am about 100 pages into that I’m not sure when I’ll finish, not because I don’t find them interesting, but just because I don’t […]
Category: nonfiction
The Colossus of New York, by Colson Whitehead
Amazon link Official site I’ve liked Colson Whitehead’s previous work, including The Intuitionist (the title convinced me to pick up the book), and John Henry Days. His writing is just wonderfully sumptuous, so rich that I often have to re-read bits to appreciate the language. A few years ago, he published this book, a set […]
Made to Stick, by Chip and Dan Heath
Amazon link Official site This is a study of what makes ideas stick. They start it off by relating the kidney heist urban legend, a story that all of us have heard and can probably recount. Why has this story stuck in our memories so successfully? It has no advertising budget, nobody pushing it – […]
Learn and latch
On the plane ride to my parent’s place, I read the book Flock and Flow: Predicting and Managing Change in a Dynamic Marketplace, by Grant McCracken. I’ve been reading McCracken’s blog, titled This Blog Sits at the Intersection of Anthropology and Economics for a while and really enjoy his commentary on the process of ethnology […]
Bobos and Biology
A couple weeks ago I broke down and actually did some non-class, non-Economist reading. Crazy, eh? It was a weekend where I didn’t feel up to socializing, but didn’t feel up to homework either. So I looked for something light in my book pile, and this is what I read. Bobos in Paradise, by David […]
Chuck Klosterman
I first heard of Chuck Klosterman when the ESPN Sports Guy did an interview with him (here’s part 2). Described as a pop culture guru, the interview made it clear that he spent way way too much time thinking about inconsequential things. And I mean that in a good way. So he was on my […]
Nonfiction roundup
Lipstick on a Pig, by Torie Clarke Subtitled “Winning in the No-Spin Era by Someone Who Knows the Game”, this book is one woman’s perspective on playing the PR and communications game in the panopticon era. I thought it was pretty decent for providing some good overall principles for a communications strategy, with advice like […]
Reassembling the Social, by Bruno Latour
Amazon link I finally finished the Latour, about a month after starting it, which is about how long it took me to read his previous book, The Politics of Nature. It’s a hard book to review; the goal of the book is to explain actor-network theory, which Latour co-created based on the social studies of […]
Purple Cow, by Seth Godin
Book website After reading Survival Is Not Enough, I figured I would go ahead and pick up another of his books since it was in the office library. This was another very quick read, with one good idea. To wit, Godin suggests that it is no longer good enough to have an outstanding message or […]
The Career Programmer, by Christopher Duncan
Amazon link Another book from the Joel reading list. Subtitled Guerilla Tactics for an Imperfect World, this is a book by a career programmer on how to survive in the corporate world. Having spent eight years as a software developer in a variety of corporate environments, I was curious to see how much these tactics […]
