The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
Malcolm Gladwell
SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide
Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance
by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
Money for Nothing: How the Failure of Corporate Boards Is Ruining American
Business and Costing Us Trillions
by John Gillespie
Poorly Made in China: An Insider's Account of the Tactics Behind China's
Production Game
by Paul Midler
A Mathematician's Lament: How School Cheats Us Out of Our Most Fascinating
and Imaginative Art Form
by Paul Lockhart
In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto
by Michael Pollan
Nation of Rebels: Why Counterculture Became Consumer Culture
by Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter
A Spot of Bother
by Mark Haddon
The Lassa Ward: One Man's Fight Against One of the World's Deadliest
Diseases
by Ross Donaldson
Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe
and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity
by James C. Hansen
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The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
by Malcolm Gladwell
kindle, hardcover, paperback, audio
From Publishers Weekly
The premise of this facile piece of pop sociology has built-in appeal:
little changes can have big effects; when small numbers of people start
behaving differently, that behavior can ripple outward until a critical mass
or "tipping point" is reached, changing the world. Gladwell's thesis that
ideas, products, messages and behaviors "spread just like viruses do"
remains a metaphor as he follows the growth of "word-of-mouth epidemics"
triggered with the help of three pivotal types. These are Connectors,
sociable personalities who bring people together; Mavens, who like to pass
along knowledge; and Salesmen, adept at persuading the unenlightened. (Paul
Revere, for example, was a Maven and a Connector). Gladwell's applications
of his "tipping point" concept to current phenomena--such as the drop in
violent crime in New York, the rebirth of Hush Puppies suede shoes as a
suburban mall favorite, teenage suicide patterns and the efficiency of small
work units--may arouse controversy. For example, many parents may be alarmed
at his advice on drugs: since teenagers' experimentation with drugs,
including cocaine, seldom leads to hardcore use, he contends, "We have to
stop fighting this kind of experimentation. We have to accept it and even
embrace it." While it offers a smorgasbord of intriguing snippets
summarizing research on topics such as conversational patterns, infants'
crib talk, judging other people's character, cheating habits in
schoolchildren, memory sharing among families or couples, and the
dehumanizing effects of prisons, this volume betrays its roots as a series
of articles for the New Yorker, where Gladwell is a staff writer: his trendy
material feels bloated and insubstantial in book form.
______________________________________________________
SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide
Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance
by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
kindle, hardcover, audio
From Publishers Weekly
Economist Levitt and journalist Dubner capitalize on their megaselling
Freakonomics with another effort to make the dismal science go gonzo. Freaky
topics include the oldest profession (hookers charge less nowadays because
the sexual revolution has produced so much free competition), money-hungry
monkeys (yep, that involves prostitution, too) and the dunderheadedness of
Al Gore. There's not much substance to the authors' project of applying
economics to all of life. Their method is to notice some contrarian
statistic (adult seat belts are as effective as child-safety seats in
preventing car-crash fatalities in children older than two), turn it into
economics by tacking on a perfunctory cost-benefit analysis (seat belts are
cheaper and more convenient) and append a libertarian sermonette
(governments tend to prefer the costly-and-cumbersome route). The point of
these lessons is to bolster the economist's view of people as rational
actors, altruism as an illusion and government regulation as a folly of
unintended consequences. The intellectual content is pretty thin, but it's
spiked with the crowd-pleasing provocations—'A pimp's services are
considerably more valuable than a realtor's' —that spell bestseller.
______________________________________________________
Money for Nothing: How the Failure of Corporate Boards Is Ruining American
Business and Costing Us Trillions
by John Gillespie
kindle, hardcover, audio
4.5 stars on Amazon (N=11)
From Publishers Weekly
Gillespie, a former investment banker with Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley,
and Bear Sterns; and Zweig, business consultant and Salon.com founder, blow
the whistle on the insular, apathetic, and dangerously lackadaisical world
of corporate boards. Of the world's 200 largest economies, more than half
are corporations, whose economic might is matched by their political and
environmental sway. While the media highlights misbehaving moguls, boards
work behind closed doors, and their substantial impact often goes unnoticed.
These boards, described by the authors as predominantly made up of white men
in their '60s, make their decisions based on the fact that it's not their
money, and the trickle-down effect onto ordinary people is enormous. While
Gillespie and Zweig sew in just enough juicy tales of mismanagement and
scandalous misbehavior, they make a genuine effort to highlight
representative issues and portray corporate leadership in all its
complexity, instead of as a simplistic morality tale. They take a running
jump at solutions and reforms that might help boards work more effectively
and ethically. Both thoughtful and lively, this is a fascinating discussion
of a little-seen force in corporate America.
______________________________________________________
Poorly Made in China: An Insider's Account of the Tactics Behind China's
Production Game
by Paul Midler
kindle, hardcover
4.5 stars on Amazon (N=26)
"This fast-paced travelogue through the world of Chinese manufacturing is
scary, fascinating, and very funny. Midler is not only a knowledgeable guide
to the invisible underbelly of the global economy, he is a sympathetic and
astute observer of China, its challenges, and its people. A great read."
—PIETRA RIVOLI, author of The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy
"Paul Midler takes us for a ride through the fastest-growing economy in the
world, revealing what can—and sometimes does—go wrong when U.S. companies
shift production to China. Working in the heart of China's export hub, in
the country's southern region, he has the advantage of a front-row seat to
the no-holds-barred games played between manufacturers and importers. He
introduces us to a cast of real-life characters and tells his story with a
mix of affection and skepticism for what is taking place in China today.
Midler delivers a revealing and often funny tale of life and commerce in a
country whose exports touch nearly everyone on the planet."
—SARA BONGIORNI, author of A Year Without 'Made in China': One Family's True
Life Adventure in the Global Economy
______________________________________________________
A Mathematician's Lament: How School Cheats Us Out of Our Most Fascinating
and Imaginative Art Form
by Paul Lockhart
paperback
4 stars on Amazon (N=15)
I've had trouble finding an editorial review for this one. Here's an older
description of the precursor to the book, a 25-page PDF:
This month's column is devoted to an article called A Mathematician's
Lament, written by Paul Lockhart in 2002. Paul is a mathematics teacher at
Saint Ann's School in Brooklyn, New York. His article has been circulating
through parts of the mathematics and math ed communities ever since, but he
never published it. I came across it by accident a few months ago, and
decided at once I wanted to give it wider exposure. I contacted Paul, and he
agreed to have me publish his "lament" on MAA Online. [Mathematical
Assocation of America] It is, quite frankly, one of the best critiques of
current K-12 mathematics education I have ever seen. Written by a
first-class research mathematician who elected to devote his teaching career
to K-!2 education.
Paul became interested in mathematics when he was about 14 (outside of the
school math class, he points out) and read voraciously, becoming especially
interested in analytic number theory. He dropped out of college after one
semester to devote himself to math, supporting himself by working as a
computer programmer and as an elementary school teacher. Eventually he
started working with Ernst Strauss at UCLA, and the two published a few
papers together. Strauss introduced him to Paul Erdos, and they somehow
arranged it so that he became a graduate student there. He ended up getting
a Ph.D. from Columbia in 1990, and went on to be a fellow at MSRI and an
assistant professor at Brown. He also taught at UC Santa Cruz. His main
research interests were, and are, automorphic forms and Diophantine
geometry.
After several years teaching university mathematics, Paul eventually tired
of it and decided he wanted to get back to teaching children. He secured a
position at Saint Ann's School, where he says "I have happily been
subversively teaching mathematics (the real thing) since 2000."
He teaches all grade levels at Saint Ann's (K-12), and says he is especially
interested in bringing a mathematician's point of view to very young
children. "I want them to understand that there is a playground in their
minds and that that is where mathematics happens. So far I have met with
tremendous enthusiasm among the parents and kids, less so among the
mid-level administrators," he wrote in an email to me. Now where have I
heard that kind of thing before? But enough of my words. Read Paul's
dynamite essay. It's a 25-page PDF file. --from
http://www.maa.org/devlin/devlin_03_08.html
“One of the best critiques of current mathematics education I have ever
seen.”—Keith Devlin, math columnist on NPR’s Morning Edition
A brilliant research mathematician who has devoted his career to teaching
kids reveals math to be creative and beautiful and rejects standard
anxiety-producing teaching methods. Witty and accessible, Paul Lockhart’s
controversial approach will provoke spirited debate among educators and
parents alike and it will alter the way we think about math forever.
______________________________________________________
In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto
by Michael Pollan
hardcover, paperback, kindle, audio
4.4 out of 5 stars (N=345)
From Publishers Weekly
In his hugely influential treatise The Omnivore's Dilemma, Pollan traced a
direct line between the industrialization of our food supply and the
degradation of the environment. His new book takes up where the previous
work left off. Examining the question of what to eat from the perspective of
health, this powerfully argued, thoroughly researched and elegant manifesto
cuts straight to the chase with a maxim that is deceptively simple: Eat
food, not too much, mostly plants. But as Pollan explains, food in a country
that is driven by a thirty-two billion-dollar marketing machine is both a
loaded term and, in its purest sense, a holy grail. The first section of his
three-part essay refutes the authority of the diet bullies, pointing up the
confluence of interests among manufacturers of processed foods, marketers
and nutritional scientists—a cabal whose nutritional advice has given rise
to a notably unhealthy preoccupation with nutrition and diet and the idea of
eating healthily. The second portion vivisects the Western diet,
questioning, among other sacred cows, the idea that dietary fat leads to
chronic illness. A writer of great subtlety, Pollan doesn't preach to the
choir; in fact, rarely does he preach at all, preferring to lets the facts
speak for themselves.
______________________________________________________
Nation of Rebels: Why Counterculture Became Consumer Culture
by Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter
paperback
From Publishers Weekly
So-called rebellion not only perpetuates the market economy, it's the
economy's biggest driving factor. So argue Canadian philosophy professors
Heath and Potter; in their world, you can't "sell out" or be "co-opted,"
because you're already participating in the market, where rebellion is just
another word for relentless innovation, fashion and cool. With sharp humor,
the two make a solid case for consumerism being motivated by competitiveness
rather than conformity, while pointing out the hypocrisies and shortcomings
of "alternative" lifestyles, like the fascination with ancient non-Western
medicine as somehow nobler and purer than modern science. Their theoretical
underpinnings range from critiques of Freud to French postmodernism, and
they layer their philosophical arguments with personal experience (though
the use of "I" without identifying the writer as either Heath or Potter
becomes irritating). The authors tear into veterans of the '60s
counterculture repeatedly, and blaming the "all or nothing" approach of
would-be radicals who drop out for holding back progress. The arguments are
familiar, but Heath and Potter's sustained scrutiny of the premises from a
market perspective freshens them.
From Booklist
Although a more fitting title for this book might be Why Counter Culture
Becomes Consumer Culture, the authors adeptly and succinctly sum up 200
years of consumer culture. Within the first few chapters, this book
enlightens us enough to accomplish its goal while being quite an infectious
read as well as inspiration to forge ahead to analyze how average lifestyle
decisions affect the big picture of capitalism. (The book should not be read
without some note taking and, later, examining many of the references to
books, movies, and music.) Heath and Potter seek to make us realize how our
lifestyles and spending habits reverberate throughout every facet of our
lives. The lesson is, if one wants to participate in the consumer culture,
continue with the current lifestyle, but if one desires to be a genuine
rebel, move to the forest and become a hunter-gatherer like our ancestors
(and Ted Kaczynski).
______________________________________________________
A Spot of Bother
by Mark Haddon
paperback, Kindle, Audio
From Publishers Weekly
Recent retiree George Hall, convinced that his eczema is cancer, goes into a
tailspin in Haddon's (Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time)
laugh-out-loud slice of British domestic life. George, 61, is clearly
channeling a host of other worries into the discoloration on his hip (the
"spot of bother"): daughter Katie, who has a toddler, Jacob, from her
disastrous first-marriage to the horrid Graham, is about to marry the
equally unlikable Ray; inattentive wife Jean is having an affair—with
George's former co-worker, David Symmonds; and son Jamie doesn't think
George is OK with Jamie's being queer. Haddon gets into their heads
wonderfully, from Jean's waffling about her affair to Katie's being
overwhelmed (by Jacob, and by her impending marriage) and Jamie's takes on
men (and boyfriend Tony in particular, who wants to come to the wedding).
Mild-mannered George, meanwhile, despairing over his health, slinks into a
depression; his major coping strategies involve hiding behind furniture on
all fours and lowing like a cow. It's an odd, slight plot—something like the
movie Father of the Bride crossed with Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" (as skin
rash)—but it zips along, and Haddon subtly pulls it all together with
sparkling asides and a genuine sympathy for his poor Halls. No bother at
all, this comic follow-up to Haddon's blockbuster (and nicely selling book
of poems) is great fun.
From The New Yorker
Haddon's acclaimed debut novel, "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the
Night-Time," brilliantly imagined the inner world of an autistic teen-ager.
Here the hero is similarly uncommunicative and detached, this time because
of a stiff upper lip. George, recently retired, thinks talking is
"overrated" and greets the death of a friend with relief "that they would
not be playing squash again." Obsessed with his own mortality, he barely
registers the dramas around him: his wife is having an affair, his daughter
is marrying a man she's not sure she loves, and his son is afraid to bring
his boyfriend to the wedding. Haddon has a deft comic touch, but he pushes
his characters too hard toward epiphanies, and in the end this antic farce
is merely affable, without surprises.
______________________________________________________
The Lassa Ward: One Man's Fight Against One of the World's Deadliest
Diseases
by Ross Donaldson
hardcover, paperback, kindle
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Donaldson is a medical cowboy, chasing viruses in Africa,
but also a UCLA medical prof and ER doc. This book is a wild and
extraordinary memoir of his 2003 summer in Sierra Leone as a naïve medical
student studying Lassa fever (a close cousin of the Ebola virus). Donaldson
gives passionate and powerful reportage on a struggling clinic treating
villagers and refugees from neighboring war-torn Liberia suffering from the
devastating and often fatal illness. What inspired the adventure was the
work of Dr. Aniru Conteh (who died in 2004), the hero at the heart of the
story, whose Lassa ward served thousands. despite the lack of equipment,
medicine and staff. For a week, Donaldson, untried and unsure, was left to
treat the desperately ill patients alone—a test that turned a frightened
student into a caring, if not altogether confident, young doctor. Despite a
slow start, this astounding story of the seemingly insurmountable barriers
to public health in a Third World country revs up into an irresistible tale
of discovery, courage and kindness.
______________________________________________________
Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe
and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity
by James C. Hansen
Kindle, hardcover, Audio
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space
Studies, lays all the cards on the table in this thorough, detailed analysis
of the history, science and politics of climate change, a Silent
Spring-style warning cry that predicts "a rough ride" for our grandchildren.
Using numerous charts and graphs alongside accessible explanations, Hansen
presents copious climate data for a broad audience. After discussing the
recent history of global warming science, from the Climate Task Force of
2000 to his up-to-the-minute carbon dioxide limit of 350ppm, Hansen provides
recommendations for achieving greenhouse gas reduction, as well as
strategies for reducing or eliminating fossil fuel use: "For the sake of our
children and grandchildren, we cannot allow our government to continue to
connive with the coal industry in subterfuges that allow dirty-coal use to
continue." The most significant step, he says, would be creating a cost
structure that escalates cost as carbon emissions increase. With
of-the-moment discussion of topics such as climate vs. weather (addressing
in particular the cool U.S. summer of 2009), cap-and-trade vs.
fee-and-dividend, and climate change politics as well as activism, this is
certain to be as controversial as it is informative. Hansen's message is
stirring as well as urgent, and should be required reading for anyone
involved in public policy.
Review
“Rich in invaluable insights into the geopolitics as well as the geophysics
of climate change, Hansen’s guaranteed-to-be-controversial manifesto is the
most comprehensible, realistic, and courageous call to prevent climate
change yet. It belongs in every library.”—Booklist (starred review)
“Here Hansen takes off the gloves … As the author writes, we’re simply out
of time. With urgency and authority, Hansen urges readers to speak
out—taking to the streets if necessary—to protect the Earth from calamity
for the sake of their children and grandchildren.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred
review)