BookList
Introduction
I've happened on a number of books that I found just exceptional. They are so good that I go around telling everyone I know to read them! I even bought a few folks copies of some of them.
It is hard to find really great books. I follow the best seller's lists, but they aren't always things I like. And I thought, heck, if I've found some books that I really, really liked, maybe some of my friends and acquaintances might have a similar list. Why not share my list with them and ask them for some recommendations.
My tastes may not coincide with yours, so I provided a little bit of an idea of what the book is about and why I liked it so much. You should be able to tell from reading that whether it is something that would be of interest to you. Remember, this is just a list of the best of the best, and why I thought so.
But fair is fair - if you have some books that excited you in the past year or so, please share the titles with me. Thanks!
Non Fiction
Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahnemann.
I found this an amazing bit of research, full of great insights into how humans operate. The author is a psychologist, who happened to win the Nobel Prize for economics by identifying exactly how people actually make economic decisions. The short hand is: "we are not rational animals". We have two major functions in our brain - the FAST brain and the SLOW brain. The fast brain is that automatic function which leaps up immediately. It has been honed by evolution to be almost instantaneous and automatic. We have very quick responses to everything in our environment. If it is a threat, we are immediately on alert. Most of our decisions are actually of this type. It's a gut call, a feeling, an emotion, an instant response like, dislike - whatever - we are definitely not in charge of that.
Our slow brain is where we actually think and solve more complex problems. It is our "rational" part. The slow brain is just that - slow. And it tires easily. Normally, we just go with the fast brain. Even when we stop to analyze we are predisposed to find evidence to support the fast brain. Going counter to its intuitions is a lot of work, and potentially dangerous.
This has serious implications for many parts of human behavior. For example, economists generally post a homo economicus who makes purely rational decisions in markets and purchasing. But virtually no one is making really rational decisions. The Austrian school, or the libertarian approach is the worst. They seem to posit a guiding hand of rationality in every "free" human decision - which does not exist. The book actually mentions this school in the final chapter.
The chapter on investing is worth the price of the book. He makes a great case that the market and investment decisions are simply crap shoots. I dropped my managed portfolio based on this, and have saved a few thousand dollars a year. You want to track the market - it is impossible to beat it. Warren Buffett has done it consistently, and some research has indicated how he did it. Your best hope to participate in that is to buy Birkshire Hathaway!
Cultures and Organizations, by Geert Hofsted
This is the best book I have read in 10 years, bar none. It is a study of IBM employees in 75 different countries, and how their cultural views of the world differ. I stumbled on this while reading some things about screen design in a computer journal. I had just returned from a trip to Tanzania, and I was fascinated by the profound difference in worldview that I encountered there. I've written more about that elsewhere. See "On an East African World View". This book is a scientific study of exactly that - how different peoples see different views of reality.
For a more detailed description, go here: Cultures and Organizations Book Review.
Books on Economics and Development
After we visited Africa, I started reading things on development. I am trying to make sense of how these countries differ so much in their level of development. Then we visited Nicaragua - another whole world. Not quite as poor as Africa, not the same culture at all, not quite the same problems. I started life as a philosophy student, then a moral theologian, then a laywer, then an IT expert. For a while I thought psychology was the key to understanding things, and then it was sociology -- but it I did it all over, I would start with economics, and skip that other "stuff".
Guns, Germs and Steel was a start in this direction, but it deals primarily with geography and stuff like that. But it was an eye opener.
Wealth and Poverty of Nations takes it further, and adds culture, a lot more history, and some economics. And he has great stories that I love.
Development as Freedom takes it furthest for me. This is a clear presentation of exactly what development is, and what it is for, and what makes it happen. The author is a Nobel Prize winning Economist, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. He clearly presents what economics has learned about what fosters development, precisely as it enhances human freedom. It's a book about human justice, fundamentally.
The Soul of Capitalism then gives us some hope. It presents all of the things going on today that are moving Capitalism forward, understanding the need to solve the fundamental problems we face. People are doing it as we speak - and we can help.
I put all of these into a separate document, as this one was growing unwieldy.
You can find it here: Books on Economic Development.
A People's History of the United States, by Howard Zinn
This book is a real eye opener. Howard Zinn is a teacher and historian. This book is well researched, and well written. It offers a view of the history of our country that you will not find in most history books. From Columbus to the acquisition of Mexico, through 2 world wars, Korea and Vietnam, this book sees history from the perspective of the people, not the leaders.
What I learned is that the people of the United States lived in conditions worse than most developing countries for most of our history. We all know now about the oppression and destruction of the Native Americans -- but I had never heard of most of the events described here. We somehow managed to clearly reject slavery and discrimination, but the memory of it tends to pale as time goes by, even for those of us alive during the racial turmoil of the 50's and 60's. And I had never heard the stories of how we acquired California and the Southwest from Mexico. I had never understood the rich and poor gap of the early colonies, or really understood how much this gap has grown in the last 20 years! I had never seen such a catalog of foreign interventions to protect American interests. I never understood the violence and despair that brought forth the labor movement, and how much we all owe to those who died for the right to organize. Somehow I had missed all of the trumped up excuses for military intervention that our government has used over the years. I had not heard that our free speech was so restricted that questioning government policy in time of war was punishable by prison, and still remains illegal to this day.
The book offers hope in one sense, and despair in another. Hope in that we have been worse off. In our history, we have had a severely oppressed underclass, the indentured servant, the share cropper, the hourly laborer with no rights and benefits. And we managed to overcome all of that. Despair in that we seem to be slipping back to a world controlled by the rich and powerful, with decisions made against our wishes, with decisions for violence escalating our national debt to the point where we are once again a debtor nation, at the mercy of our creditors abroad, especially in Asia. We seem to slipping back to an atmosphere where fear of terrorism is once again restricting our freedom of speech, and seems bent on reducing our way of life to that of a developing nation.
To read major excerpts from the book, go here: People's History Book Excerpts.
Here is a more recent set of articles by Howard Zinn.
Jesus Before Christianity by Albert Nolan, Sept. 2003.
This is one of those books that I wish I had read back when it was originally published in 1976.
As Harvey Cox says on the cover, "The most accurate and balanced short reconstruction of the life of the historical Jesus."
This is an outstanding book. I wish I had read it when it was first published. I am not much for "religion" as such, despite being Catholic on my parents' side, but this book hit me just right. This is the historical Jesus, based on the best scholarship of the New Testament. It reveals the shape and tenor of his time, and explains how he understood himself, and how his listeners heard him.
If you just read the gospels from our frame of reference, the impressions you form are not correct. For example, when Jesus speaks of the coming of the "Kingdom of God", most of us think he is referring to heaven. Or we think that "the coming judgment" refers to the end of time. Neither is true! And Gehenna is not a description of hell, but rather refers to the dump outside of Jerusalem. Lazarus is not in heaven when he confronts the rich man, but rather in Sheol, under the earth, together with the rich man. The "salvation" which Jesus spoke of was not to be delivered in the next life, but it was here and now. "Faith" is not a list of things to believe in, but a hope and trust in the ultimate victory of goodness and truth over evil. Jesus did not intend to establish a church of believers, but to change the world fundamentally.
The book is purely scripture driven. It offers no "theological" explanations, outside of some minor references to Greek influence on some of the later writers.
I particularly like how he explains what the early Jewish followers of Jesus must have meant by what we call the "Incarnation". Makes perfect sense to me. But you'll have to read the last chapter to find out what that is.
I liked this book so much I took extensive notes on it, so I could easily remember the significant parts. To further whet your appetite - you can get a copy of those notes here: Jesus Before Christianity Notes.
The Age of Spiritual Machines by Ray Kurzwell.If you take the trend line on our computers, and things like nanotechnology, and push them out a way, it's logical to assume at some point we will construct a computer brain even more powerful than the one that we inherited genetically. Kurzwell thinks this will happen in about 30 years. The implications of such a thing are profound.
He traces the current technology, extrapolates its growth, and poses some projections about what is going to happen.
Personally, I found it exciting and interesting. It is like looking at the next stage of evolution. Others have found it disturbing and dangerous, and want all experimentation in this direction to cease. Bill Joy of Sun is one of these folk. He published a piece in Wired that said, "The Future Doesn't Need Us" - humans will be obsolete. I think it is still online somewhere if you want to read it. It was here last time I looked:
My theory is this. An ant has about 200 neurons. We have about 10 billion. Ants are pretty intelligent. They even seem to communicate. Ever try to talk to one? Not many folks have. If we do manage to construct an entity that is smarter than us by the same factor we are from the ant, what are the odds they will care what we are doing? I don't think they will be any risk to us - there are more interesting things in the universe. And, I can't see myself stopping such an eventuality from occurring. It just has too much potential.
eXtreme Programming Explained, by Kent Beck.
You have to be into programming and systems to like this one. This is the ultimate "lite" methodology. Everything Ken says in this book makes perfect sense, except I used to go out of my way to make sure that no one that worked with me ever did any of these things. I think I was wrong and he is right. This book and this process have gotten a lot of attention, and have a lot of potential. There are simple rules here, simple steps, easily understood, but with genius potential in terms of improving the quality and productivity of any software project. It does seem to work only on fairly small projects - 12 to 15 folks max.
Why Christianity Must Change or Die, by John Shelby Spong.
I grew up a very committed Catholic. During the 60's, I wandered among some authors like John A T Robinson who opened my eyes to some of the limitations in the beliefs of our Christian traditions. I also fell among the "death of God" folk, and studied a bit of comparative religion. The result was a great awakening for me, and the need to choose another profession than the one I had originally set off on. Bishop Spong has taken that same path, although kicking and screaming. He is striving to understand Christianity in the light of a non-Theistic world. He does a masterful job of exploring just how one can accept the current world view and still strive to remain a believer. He says we are in exile -- moving from the traditional Christian belief system to a new perspective, from which we cannot return, only move forward. If you are ready for the same journey, this is a wonderful guide.
Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goldman.
It has been a while since this was written, and since I read it, but it still rings in my memory as a significant event. This is a popularization of some very good research on just how much of our human tendencies are driven by the biology. it is not deterministic of behavioristic in any sense. Rather it just points to the constraints or tendencies that our biology lays down. A couple of examples from the book might illustrate this.
One study addressed the social awareness skills of a bunch of pre-schoolers. They tested these little people for how well they understood the social relationships among their group. They discovered that about 20% of them knew just how things operated in their group at a conscious level. They knew who was in charge, who went with whom, etc. They seemed to be born with this kind of awareness.
Then they sat these little people down and gave them some training on social relationships, what to look for, etc. They came back later and tested them again. This time 80% of them knew what was going on, but about 20% still had no clue. There is something to that Pareto thing. Some of us are just born paying attention to this relationship thing, some of us can be educated to be alert to it, and some of us are simply not going to get it. My wife is in the first group, and I happen to belong to this latter group.
I another study, they ran an experiment with some college students. They blindfolded them, ran them through a maze, took them into a room at the end of the maze. They removed the blindfold, and asked them what way they were facing, relative to the direction they were when they went into the maze. Then the replaced the blindfold, and then asked them to describe the contest of the room!
It's 80 / 20 again, along gender lines! 80% of the men knew what direction they were facing, 20% of the women. 80% of the women could describe the room in great detail, and only 20% of the men. My wife and I belong to the majority groups in this case. I navigate everything by north and south, while she points to the little house on the corner. Scientists think the genetics for this adapted from the need of the males to forage out and find food, and then navigate back. They have discovered that hamsters share this same male, female split on navigating.
At any rate, it's a fun book, and it opens new windows on our understanding of the human.
On Human Nature by Edward O. Wilson, 1979.
Another of those books I wish I had read when it was first written. Edward O. Wilson has done a huge survey of the research on human beings and societies to come up with this attempt to unify the biological and social sciences. The basic idea is that there are things that are pretty well biologically driven in us -- the results of evolution. We can resist them and work with them, but we cannot afford to ignore them. It is Wilson's hope that understanding our biological tendencies, we can fashion a code of moral values that will support our human species into the future. P. 204.
Some of my "Rules of Thumb" come from this source. Wilson has identified some basic traits that seem implicit in human biology, that we encounter in all individuals and their societies. The following are some of his insights:
On Aggression. "Human beings are strongly predisposed to respond with unreasoning hatred to external threats and to escalate their hostility sufficiently to overwhelm the source of the threat by a respectably wide margin of safety. Our brains do appear to be programmed to the following extent: we are inclined to partition other people into friends and aliens . . . . We tend to fear deeply the actions of strangers and to solve conflict by aggression." P. 122-123.
Sex and gender. There are some traits that seem laid down in the biology. "In general, girls are predisposed to be more intimately sociable and less physically venturesome. . . . By the age of six months, girls also pay closer attention to sights and sounds used in communication than they do to non-social stimuli. Boys of the same age make no such distinction." P. 134. " . . . most of the pleasures of human sex constitute primary reinforcers to facilitate bonding." P. 147. Not procreation as such, according to natural law theory!
Homosexuality. The prohibition of homosexuality is similarly based on a mistaken view of nature. "There is, I wish to suggest, a strong possibility that homosexuality is normal in a biological sense, that it is a distinctive beneficent behavior that evolved as an important element of early human social organization. Homosexuals may be the genetic carriers of some of mankind's rare altruistic impulses." P. 149.
Tribalism. We are tribal beings. "Most and perhaps all of the ... prevailing characteristics of modern societies can be identified as hypertrophic modifications of the biologically meaningful institutions of hunter-gatherer bands and early tribal states. nationalism and racism, to take two examples are the culturally nurtured outgrowths of simple tribalism." P. 95.
Religion. "The predisposition to religious belief is the most complex and powerful force in the human mind and in all probability an ineradicable part of human nature". P. 176.
Genetic Diversity. "I believe that a correct application of evolutionary theory also favors diversity in the gene pool as a cardinal value. If variation in mental and athletic ability is influenced to a moderate degree by heredity, as the evidence suggests, we should expect individuals of truly extraordinary capacity to emerge unexpectedly in otherwise undistinguished families, and then fail to transmit these qualities to their children. . . . Since each individual produced by the sexual process contains a unique set of genes, very exceptional combinations of genes are unlike to appear twice even within the same family." P. 205. If we want to foster truly great humans, then foster the diversity in the gene pool.
Universal Human Rights. Because we are mammals, we are strongly driven to some measure of equality and cooperation in our society. So human rights must be a foundation part of any moral code. P. 206. As the Catholic Church is wont to say, we are social beings, living in community.
Stages of moral maturity. Lawrence Kohlberg defines six stages of ethical reasoning. "The child moves from an unquestioning dependence on external rules and controls to an increasingly sophisticated set of internalized standards, as follows:
simple obedience to rules and authority to avoid punishment,
conformity to group behavior to obtain rewards and exchange favors,
good-boy orientation conformity to avoid dislike and rejection by others,
duty orientation, conformity to avoid censure by authority disruption of order and resulting guilt,
legalistic orientation, recognition of the value of contract,s some arbitrariness in rule formation to maintain the common good,
conscience or principle orientation, primary allegiance to principles of choice, which can overrule law in cases where the law is judged to do more harm than good." (P. 173-174.)
The most intense human emotions: (P. 207)
enthusiasm and sharpening of the sense from exploration;
exaltation from discovery;
triumph in battle and competitive sports;
the restful satisfaction from an altruistic act well and truly placed;
the stirring of ethnic and national pride;
the strength from family ties;
and the secure biophilic pleasure from the nearness of animals and growing plants.
He continued to develop these thoughts, and added some traits later on. In an article published in the New York Times at the start of the new millennium, he listed these as basic traits:
a tendency toward hierarchy;
a tendency toward, emphasis upon and deep personal concern about status and recognition;
a great value placed individually upon self-esteem as part of individual integrity;
a desire for a substantial degree of personal privacy, including personal space;
deep sexual bonding and deep parental bonding with both types of bonding having numerous and complex manifestations in cultural life including national soccer teams.
Fiction
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson.
I like everything Stephenson writes, but this one is exceptional. It's all about computers and cryptography, but it is brilliantly written, funny, fully of history and amazing things. It starts during the Second World War, and describes some of the more interesting things surrounding the code breakers back then, and the invention of the first computers. While it does that, it also moves to the present, and the creation of a crypt of information in the Pacific, with modern cryptography, computers, people, etc., that all descended from the folks in the earlier stuff. It keeps flipping back and forth, and reads like a mystery, historical novel, and computer nerd thing all wrapped in one. He writes amazingly well, and I was sorry when the book ended. Just brilliant.
The Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson.
Stephenson has done it again, and 3 times! This is a 3 volume set, historical novels, set in England, Europe, US and many other parts of the world, from 1650 - 1700. These are brilliant, amazing, intriguing, interesting, and exciting! It is a great adventure tale, full of historical facts and characters. It recounts world exploration, the development of the financial markets, the state of England, France and US from an uncommon perspective, with a continual thread of cryptography and financial dealings that is just captivating. I can't say enough positive about them.
But, watch out, they are heavy books, each running about 900 pages. But I am always disappointed to get to the last page and find no more to read.
There are 3 volumes:
Quicksilver
The Confusion
The System of the World
The author also provides a web site, with references by page, where readers can comment and ask questions, and he provides some answers.
Be careful if you want to buy the paper back version. They have issued it in much more than 3 volumes, with different names.
Stephenson has also penned 2 fiction works under a pen name - both well worth reading, with good plots and some brilliant ideas - but not quite in the same league as these others. Look up Stephen Bury, and the books are Interface and Cobweb.
http://www.metaweb.com/wiki/wiki.phtml
Science Fiction
I've been addicted to science fiction since 7th grade when they let me into the adult part of the library! I read almost everything written by Verne, Wells, Clark, Bradbury, Asimov and friends. These are a few of the more recent ones that I found just exceptional:
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson.
This is the same guy who wrote Cryptonomicon above, but this one is his true classic. Everyone that reads science fiction should read these two. This one is the epitome of virtual reality. It has crazy ideas on social change and future problems, an exciting story, interesting tale, but just full of the implications of virtual reality in our future.
Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson.
This one is as good as Snow Crash, but it is all about nanotechnology. And that is what the future is all about. It is another great story of good and evil, social change, problems in society and technology, and what the potential and dangers of nanotechnology. But a brilliantly written, fun book.
The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell.
This author is an anthropologist, who turned to science fiction to explore some of the things that happen when two radically different cultures clash. She was particularly fascinated by the impact of the Europeans on the native Americans. So she set out to explore that kind of thing in a fictional setting between very different cultures. The book is about the first human venture to another populated planet -- funded by the Jesuits! But of course, if there are intelligent beings there, we must bring them the Word.
The characters are all amazing, the historical projections very insightful, and the cultural differences are extremely thought provoking.
The book is also written as a mystery, slowly working to reveal what actually happened on that journey, now that a sole survivor has returned. Chapters alternate between the present and the journey itself, until the two timelines come together.
Children of God by Mary Doria Russell.
This is a sequel to "The Sparrow", taking the primary protagonist back to the planet to discover the full impact of the cultural intervention. It has the same structure, same fine characterization, same profound understanding of cultural anthropology. I liked it very much as well.
Last revised on ... July 30, 2007