Amazon link This book is based on the idea that complex organized behavior can emerge out of simple atomic behavior. In physics, simple atoms interact with each other and generate complex behavior like temperature. Such models were never thought to be applicable to humans because people are too complicated and have free will. Buchanan collects […]
Category: books
Nonfiction Roundup June 2007
As usual, I’ve been reading lots of books, and haven’t been writing them up, so it’s time for another round of short reviews. The Creative Habit, by Twyla Tharp I’ve already mentioned Tharp’s ideas in my posts on discipline and laying the foundation, but this is a record that I did eventually finish the book. […]
Stumbling on Happiness, by Daniel Gilbert
Amazon link This wasn’t at all the book I was expecting when I ordered it, but ended up being much more satisfying. I thought it was going to be some tract on how and why the brain feels happiness, and what we can do to make ourselves happier. Instead Gilbert, a professor of psychology at […]
Artful Making, by Rob Austin and Lee Devin
Amazon link Subtitled “What Managers Need to Know About How Artists Work”, this book addresses the question of managing knowledge workers who are more independent than ever before. The authors study how a dramatic troupe puts together a performance for ideas on how to assemble talented and creative free agents into a coherent effort. In […]
Fiction Roundup May 2007
It looks like I haven’t done a fiction review for most of the past year, so this will be a chance to collect everything I’ve read but wouldn’t admit to reading when I was supposed to be studying 🙂 Intuition, by Allegra Goodman This sounded interesting after reading the Economist review, so I picked it […]
Becoming a Technical Leader, by Gerald M. Weinberg
Amazon link This was recommended to me by a friend as a great book on becoming a leader and manager. The book reminds me of How to Win Friends and Influence People in that the advice is deceptively simple. If I had read this book even five years ago, I think I would have dismissed […]
Nonfiction Roundup February 2007
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 […]
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 […]
