Amazon link I read a Wired article a couple years ago about the MIT blackjack team, a group of MIT students who used their ability to count cards to beat the system at Vegas and make a lot of money. Millions of dollars allegedly. This intrigued me both because it was about MIT students, but […]
Category: reviews
Shutter Island, by Dennis Lehane
Amazon link I’m a big fan of Dennis Lehane’s Kenzie/Gennaro series. I didn’t enjoy Mystic River as much, although the movie was well done. So I didn’t know what to expect from this novel, which I picked up from the library. It was okay. Pretty standard psychological thriller. Interesting characters, breezy writing. I should have […]
Inside the Tornado : Marketing Strategies from Silicon Valley’s Cutting Edge, by Geoffrey Moore
Amazon link After reading Crossing the Chasm by Moore a few months ago, I had some interest in reading his next book Inside the Tornado but didn’t quite get around to it. However, one of my coworkers brought it into work last week, and I borrowed it and read it over the weekend. Inside the […]
Moral Politics, by George Lakoff
Amazon link I’ve been pretty interested in the work of George Lakoff recently, so I figured I should read one of his books to learn more. Moral Politics was the one available in a bookstore when I stopped by, so that’s the one I picked up. It’s also the one most relevant to my political […]
Catching up…
As is probably obvious, even though I put up reviews of five books today, I didn’t read them all recently. I finished them over the course of the last month or so, but I did want to continue my policy of reviewing every book that I read, so they piled up on my desk until […]
Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand
Amazon link I never got around to reading Ayn Rand in college when everybody else did, but I was going away for a week on business, and wanted something long but compact to read, so I picked this up in paperback form at the used bookstore. Her basic thesis of Objectivism is that reason and […]
Aramis or the Love of Technology, by Bruno Latour
Amazon link I really liked Science in Action, another book by Latour, so when I saw this on a friend’s shelf, I borrowed it. Unfortunately, it took me several months to actually get through it; I started it over Christmas vacation, but I kept on getting distracted by other things, until I finally powered through […]
Close to the Machine: Technophilia and Its Discontents, by Ellen Ullman
Amazon link Saw this at the used bookstore, and it looked sufficiently interesting that I picked it up. Ullman worked as an independent computer programmer contractor throughout the dot-com years, and this book is a sort of memoir of her dedication to the machine, sometimes at the cost of losing track of the people involved. […]
The Art of the Long View: Planning for the Future in an Uncertain World, by Peter Schwartz
Amazon link I liked the talk by Peter Schwartz that I went to, so when I saw his most well-known book at the used book store for $3, I picked it up. A pretty quick read detailing the idea of scenario planning, a management strategy involving coming up with several detailed future possibilities for the […]
To the Nines: A Stephanie Plum Novel, by Janet Evanovich
Amazon link Another Stephanie Plum novel. It was at the library when I stopped by recently, and so I grabbed it and read it. Entertaining and frothy as always. A nice quick read.
