BOOK SUGGESTIONS – 6.1.2013
1) Evgeny Morozov: To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological
Solutionism, 2013, 358pp. SCORE:
In the very near future, “smart” technologies and “big data” will allow us to make
large-scale and sophisticated interventions in politics, culture, and everyday life.
Technology will allow us to solve problems in highly original ways and create new
incentives to get more people to do the right thing. But how will such “solutionism”
affect our society, once deeply political, moral, and irresolvable dilemmas are recast
as uncontroversial and easily manageable matters of technological efficiency? What
if some such problems are simply vices in disguise? What if some friction in
communication is productive and some hypocrisy in politics necessary? The
temptation of the digital age is to fix everything—from crime to corruption to
pollution to obesity—by digitally quantifying, tracking, or gamifying behavior. But
when we change the motivations for our moral, ethical, and civic behavior we may
also change the very nature of that behavior. Technology, Evgeny Morozov
proposes, can be a force for improvement—but only if we keep solutionism in check
and learn to appreciate the imperfections of liberal democracy. Some of those
imperfections are not accidental but by design.
2) Marlene Zuk: Paleofantasy: What Evolution Really Tells Us About Sex, Diet,
and How We Live, 2013, 271 pp. SCORE:
An exposé of pseudoscientific myths about our evolutionary past and how we
should live today. We evolved to eat berries rather than bagels, to live in mud huts
rather than condos, to sprint barefoot rather than play football—or did we? Are our
bodies and brains truly at odds with modern life? Although it may seem as though
we have barely had time to shed our hunter-gatherer legacy, biologist Marlene Zuk
reveals that the story is not so simple. Popular theories about how our ancestors
lived—and why we should emulate them—are often based on speculation, not
scientific evidence. Armed with a razor-sharp wit and brilliant, eye-opening
research, Zuk takes us to the cutting edge of biology to show that evolution can
work much faster than was previously realized, meaning that we are not biologically
the same as our caveman ancestors. Contrary to what the glossy magazines would
have us believe, we do not enjoy potato chips because they crunch just like the
insects our forebears snacked on. And women don’t go into shoe-shopping frenzies
because their prehistoric foremothers gathered resources for their clans. As Zuk
compellingly argues, such beliefs incorrectly assume that we’re stuck—finished
evolving—and have been for tens of thousands of years. She draws on fascinating
evidence that examines everything from adults’ ability to drink milk to the texture of
our ear wax to show that we’ve actually never stopped evolving. Our nostalgic
visions of an ideal evolutionary past in which we ate, lived, and reproduced as we
were “meant to” fail to recognize that we were never perfectly suited to our
1
environment. Evolution is about change, and every organism is full of trade-offs.
From debunking the caveman diet to unraveling gender stereotypes, Zuk delivers an
engrossing analysis of widespread paleofantasies and the scientific evidence that
undermines them, all the while broadening our understanding of our origins and
what they can really tell us about our present and our future.
3) Jim Bell: The Space Book: From the Beginning to the End of Time, 250
Milestones in the History of Space and Astronomy, 2013. SCORE:
We live in a truly golden age of astronomy and space exploration that may allow us
to unravel some of the biggest mysteries of all: How did the Universe begin? Are there
other Earth-like planets out there? Are we alone? The Space Book is a gateway into
these kinds of questions—and more—for anyone interested in the worlds beyond
our planet. Expanding the series that began with the highly successful volumes The
Science Book and The Math Book, astronomer and planetary scientist Jim Bell
presents 250 of the most groundbreaking astronomical events, from the formation
of galaxies to the recent discovery of water ice on Mars. Beautiful photographs or
illustrations accompany each entry. Open the book to any page to discover some
new wonder or mystery about the Universe around us.
4) Ben Carson: America the Beautiful: Rediscovering What Made this Nation
Great, 2012, 195 pp. SCORE:
What is America becoming? Or, more importantly, what can she be if we reclaim a
vision for the things that made her great in the first place? In America the Beautiful,
Dr. Ben Carson helps us learn from our past in order to chart a better course for our
future. From his personal ascent from inner-city poverty to international medical
and humanitarian acclaim, Carson shares experiential insights that help us
understand ... what is good about America ... where we have gone astray ... which
fundamental beliefs have guided America from her founding into preeminence
among nations Written by a man who has experienced America's best and worst
firsthand, America the Beautiful is at once alarming, convicting, and inspiring. You'll
gain new perspectives on our nation's origins, our Judeo-Christian heritage, our
educational system, capitalism versus socialism, our moral fabric, healthcare, and
much more. An incisive manifesto of the values that shaped America's past and must
shape her future, America the Beautiful calls us all to use our God-given talents to
improve our lives, our communities, our nation, and our world.
5) Cheryl Strayed: Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, 2012,
311 pp. SCORE:
At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her
mother’s death, her family scattered and her own marriage was soon destroyed.
Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of
2
her life. With no experience or training, driven only by blind will, she would hike
more than a thousand miles of the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert
through California and Oregon to Washington State—and she would do it alone.
Told with suspense and style, sparkling with warmth and humor, Wild powerfully
captures the terrors and pleasures of one young woman forging ahead against all
odds on a journey that maddened, strengthened, and ultimately healed her..
6) Virginia Morell: Animal Wise: The Thoughts and Emotions of Our Fellow
Creatures, 2013, 260 pp. SCORE:
Noted science writer Virginia Morell explores the frontiers of research on animal
cognition and emotion, offering a surprising and moving exploration into the hearts
and minds of wild and domesticated animals. Did you know that ants teach,
earthworms make decisions, rats love to be tickled, and chimps grieve? Did you
know that some dogs have thousand-word vocabularies and that birds practice
songs in their sleep? That crows improvise tools, blue jays plan ahead, and moths
remember living as caterpillars? Animal Wise takes us on a dazzling odyssey into the
inner world of animals, from ants to elephants to wolves, and from sharp-shooting
archerfish to pods of dolphins that rumble like rival street gangs. With 30 years of
experience covering the sciences, Morell uses her formidable gifts as a story-teller to
transport us to field sites and laboratories around the world, introducing us to
pioneering animal-cognition researchers and their surprisingly intelligent and
sensitive subjects. She explores how this rapidly evolving, controversial field has
only recently overturned old notions about why animals behave as they do. She
probes the moral and ethical dilemmas of recognizing that even “lesser animals”
have cognitive abilities such as memory, feelings, personality, and self-awareness-traits that many in the twentieth century felt were unique to human beings. By
standing behaviorism on its head, Morell brings the world of nature brilliantly alive
in a nuanced, deeply felt appreciation of the human-animal bond, and she shares her
admiration for the men and women who have simultaneously chipped away at what
we think makes us distinctive while offering a glimpse of where our own abilities
come from.
7) Gabrielle Walker: Antarctica: An Intimate Portrait of a Mysterious
Continent, 2013, 350 pp. SCORE:
Antarctica is the most alien place on the planet, the only part of the earth where
humans could never survive unaided. Out of our fascination with it have come many
books, most of which focus on only one aspect of its unique strangeness. None has
managed to capture the whole story—until now.
Drawing on her broad travels
across the continent, in Antarctica Gabrielle Walker weaves all the significant
threads of life on the vast ice sheet into an intricate tapestry, illuminating what it
really feels like to be there and why it draws so many different kinds of people. With
her we witness cutting-edge science experiments, visit the South Pole, lodge with
American, Italian, and French researchers, drive snowdozers, drill ice cores, and
listen for the message Antarctica is sending us about our future in an age of global
3
warming.
This is a thrilling trip to the farthest reaches of earth by one of the best
science writers working today.
8) Marty Makary & Robertson Dean: Unaccountable: What Hospitals Won’t
Tell You and How Transparency Can Revolutionize Health Care, 2013, 256 pp.
SCORE:
Dr. Marty Makary is co-developer of the life-saving checklist outlined in Atul
Gawande's bestselling The Checklist Manifesto. As a busy surgeon who has worked
in many of the best hospitals in the nation, he can testify to the amazing power of
modern medicine to cure. But he's also been a witness to a medical culture that
routinely leaves surgical sponges inside patients, amputates the wrong limbs, and
overdoses children because of sloppy handwriting. Over the last ten years, neither
error rates nor costs have come down, despite scientific progress and efforts to curb
expenses. Why? To patients, the healthcare system is a black box. Doctors and
hospitals are unaccountable, and the lack of transparency leaves both bad doctors
and systemic flaws unchecked. Patients need to know more of what healthcare
workers know, so they can make informed choices. Accountability in healthcare
would expose dangerous doctors, reward good performance, and force positive
change nationally, using the power of the free market. Unaccountable is a powerful,
no-nonsense, non-partisan diagnosis for healing our hospitals and reforming our
broken healthcare system.
9) Thomas Sowell: Intellectuals and Race, 2013, 192 pp. SCORE:
Intellectuals and Race is a radical book in the original sense of one that goes to the
root of the problem. The role of intellectuals in racial strife is explored in an
international context that puts the American experience in a wholly new light.
The views of individual intellectuals have spanned the spectrum, but the views of
intellectuals as a whole have tended to cluster. Indeed, these views have clustered at
one end of the spectrum in the early twentieth century and then clustered at the
opposite end of the spectrum in the late twentieth century. Moreover, these
radically different views of race in these two eras were held by intellectuals whose
views on other issues were very similar in both eras. Intellectuals and Race is not,
however, a book about history, even though it has much historical evidence, as well
as demographic, geographic, economic and statistical evidence-- all of it directed
toward testing the underlying assumptions about race that have prevailed at times
among intellectuals in general, and especially intellectuals at the highest levels. Nor
is this simply a theoretical exercise. The impact of intellectuals' ideas and crusades
on the larger society, both past and present, is the ultimate concern. These ideas and
crusades have ranged widely from racial theories of intelligence to eugenics to
"social justice" and multiculturalism. In addition to in-depth examinations of these
and other issues, Intellectuals and Race explores the incentives, the visions and the
rationales that drive intellectuals at the highest levels to conclusions that have often
turned out to be counterproductive and even disastrous, not only for particular
racial or ethnic groups, but for societies as a whole.
4
10) Nicco Mele and Sean Runnette: The End of Big: How the Internet Makes
David the New Goliath, 2013, 320 pp. SCORE:
How seemingly innocuous technologies are unsettling the balance of power by
putting it in the hands of the masses—and what a world without "big" will mean for
all of us. In The End of Big, social media pioneer, political and business strategist,
and Harvard Kennedy School faculty member Nicco Mele offers a fascinating,
sometimes frightening look at how our ability to stay connected—constantly,
instantly, and globally—is dramatically changing our world. Governments are being
upended by individuals relying only on social media. Major political parties are
seeing their power eroded by grassroots forces through online fund-raising.
Universities are scrambling to preserve their student populations in the face of less
expensive, more accessible online courses. Print and broadcast news outlets are
struggling to compete with citizen journalists and bloggers. Our traditional
institutions are being disrupted in revolutionary ways, some for the better. But, as
Nicco Mele argues, the benefits of new technology come with unintended
consequences. In The End of Big, Mele examines: How fringe political forces enter
the mainstream and gain traction using everyday technology—with the enormous
potential to undermine central power
What happens when investigative journalism is replaced by ad hoc bloggers, mobile
video, and instantaneous tweets…and whether they challenge or simply enable
power Why Web-based micro-businesses are outcompeting major corporations, and
what innovations will alter the way we work, own things, and pay for goods and
services. The collapse of traditional party politics, and the rise of a new kind of
democracy, one which could produce dynamic and effective leaders…or
demagogues
How citizen initiatives can replace local and state government functions, such as
safety regulations, tax collection, and garbage pickup, and do so cheaper, faster, and
better. Mele argues that unless we exercise caution in our use of these new
technologies, we risk a dark and wildly unstable future, one in which our freedoms
and basic human values could be destroyed rather than enhanced. Both hopeful and
alarming, The End of Big is a thought-provoking, passionately argued book that
offers genuine insight into the ways we are using technology, and how it is radically
changing our world in ways we are only now beginning to understand.
11) Nortin Hadler and Tom Weiner: The Citizen Patient: Reforming Health
Care for the Sake of the Patient, Not the System, 2013, 245 pp. SCORE:
Conflicts of interest, misrepresentation of clinical trials, hospital price fixing, and
massive expenditures for procedures of dubious efficacy--these and other critical
flaws leave little doubt that the current U.S. health-care system is in need of an
overhaul. In this essential guide, preeminent physician Nortin Hadler urges
American health-care consumers to take time to understand the existing system and
to visualize what the outcome of successful reform might look like. Central to this
vision is a shared understanding of the primacy of the relationship between doctor
5
and patient. Hadler shows us that a new approach is necessary if we hope to
improve the health of the populace. Rational health care, he argues, is far less
expensive than the irrationality of the status quo.
Taking a critical view of how medical treatment, health-care finance, and attitudes
about health, medicine, and disease play out in broad social and political settings,
Hadler applies his wealth of experience and insight to these pressing issues,
answering important questions for citizen patients and policy makers alike..
12) Jon Meacham: Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power, 2012, 800 pp. SCORE:
In this magnificent biography, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of American Lion
and Franklin and Winston brings vividly to life an extraordinary man and his
remarkable times. Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power gives us Jefferson the
politician and president, a great and complex human being forever engaged in the
wars of his era. Philosophers think; politicians maneuver. Jefferson’s genius was that
he was both and could do both, often simultaneously. Such is the art of power.
Thomas Jefferson hated confrontation, and yet his understanding of power and of
human nature enabled him to move men and to marshal ideas, to learn from his
mistakes, and to prevail. Passionate about many things—women, his family, books,
science, architecture, gardens, friends, Monticello, and Paris—Jefferson loved
America most, and he strove over and over again, despite fierce opposition, to
realize his vision: the creation, survival, and success of popular government in
America. Jon Meacham lets us see Jefferson’s world as Jefferson himself saw it, and
to appreciate how Jefferson found the means to endure and win in the face of rife
partisan division, economic uncertainty, and external threat. Drawing on archives in
the United States, England, and France, as well as unpublished Jefferson presidential
papers, Meacham presents Jefferson as the most successful political leader of the
early republic, and perhaps in all of American history. The father of the ideal of
individual liberty, of the Louisiana Purchase, of the Lewis and Clark expedition, and
of the settling of the West, Jefferson recognized that the genius of humanity—and
the genius of the new nation—lay in the possibility of progress, of discovering the
undiscovered and seeking the unknown. From the writing of the Declaration of
Independence to elegant dinners in Paris and in the President’s House; from
political maneuverings in the boardinghouses and legislative halls of Philadelphia
and New York to the infant capital on the Potomac; from his complicated life at
Monticello, his breathtaking house and plantation in Virginia, to the creation of the
University of Virginia, Jefferson was central to the age. Here too is the personal
Jefferson, a man of appetite, sensuality, and passion. The Jefferson story resonates
today not least because he led his nation through ferocious partisanship and cultural
warfare amid economic change and external threats, and also because he embodies
an eternal drama, the struggle of the leadership of a nation to achieve greatness in a
difficult and confounding world.
6
13) Jared Diamond: The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn From
Traditional Societies?, 2012, 512 pp. SCORE:
Most of us take for granted the features of our modern society, from air travel and
telecommunications to literacy and obesity. Yet for nearly all of its six million years
of existence, human society had none of these things. While the gulf that divides us
from our primitive ancestors may seem unbridgeably wide, we can glimpse much of
our former lifestyle in those largely traditional societies still or recently in existence.
Societies like those of the New Guinea Highlanders remind us that it was only
yesterday—in evolutionary time—when everything changed and that we moderns
still possess bodies and social practices often better adapted to traditional than to
modern conditions. The World Until Yesterday provides a mesmerizing firsthand
picture of the human past as it had been for millions of years—a past that has
mostly vanished—and considers what the differences between that past and our
present mean for our lives today. This is Jared Diamond’s most personal book to
date, as he draws extensively from his decades of field work in the Pacific islands, as
well as evidence from Inuit, Amazonian Indians, Kalahari San people, and others.
Diamond doesn’t romanticize traditional societies—after all, we are shocked by
some of their practices—but he finds that their solutions to universal human
problems such as child rearing, elder care, dispute resolution, risk, and physical
fitness have much to teach us. A characteristically provocative, enlightening, and
entertaining book, The World Until Yesterday will be essential and delightful reading.
14) David Schoenbaum: The Violin: A Social History of the World’s Most
Versatile Instrument, 2012, 708 pp. SCORE:
The life, times, and travels of a remarkable instrument and the people who have
made, sold, played, and cherished it. A 16-ounce package of polished wood, strings,
and air, the violin is perhaps the most affordable, portable, and adaptable
instrument ever created. As congenial to reels, ragas, Delta blues, and indie rock as it
is to solo Bach and late Beethoven, it has been played standing or sitting, alone or in
groups, in bars, churches, concert halls, lumber camps, even concentration camps,
by pros and amateurs, adults and children, men and women, at virtually any latitude
on any continent. Despite dogged attempts by musicologists worldwide to find its
source, the violin’s origins remain maddeningly elusive. The instrument surfaced
from nowhere in particular, in a world that Columbus had only recently left behind
and Shakespeare had yet to put on paper. By the end of the violin’s first century,
people were just discovering its possibilities. But it was already the instrument of
choice for some of the greatest music ever composed by the end of its second. By the
dawn of its fifth, it was established on five continents as an icon of globalization,
modernization, and social mobility, an A-list trophy, and a potential capital gain. In
The Violin, David Schoenbaum has combined the stories of its makers, dealers, and
players into a global history of the past five centuries. From the earliest days, when
violin makers acquired their craft from box makers, to Stradivari and the Golden
Age of Cremona; Vuillaume and the Hills, who turned it into a global collectible; and
incomparable performers from Paganini and Joachim to Heifetz and Oistrakh,
7
Schoenbaum lays out the business, politics, and art of the world’s most versatile
instrument.
15) Sheryl Sandberg: Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, 2013, 240
pp. SCORE:
Thirty years after women became 50 percent of the college graduates in the United
States, men still hold the vast majority of leadership positions in government and
industry. This means that women’s voices are still not heard equally in the decisions
that most affect our lives. In Lean In, Sheryl Sandberg examines why women’s
progress in achieving leadership roles has stalled, explains the root causes, and
offers compelling, commonsense solutions that can empower women to achieve
their full potential. Sandberg is the chief operating officer of Facebook and is
ranked on Fortune’s list of the 50 Most Powerful Women in Business and as one of
Time’s 100 Most Influential People in the World. In 2010, she gave an electrifying
TEDTalk in which she described how women unintentionally hold themselves back
in their careers. Her talk, which became a phenomenon and has been viewed more
than two million times, encouraged women to “sit at the table,” seek challenges, take
risks, and pursue their goals with gusto.
In Lean In, Sandberg digs deeper into
these issues, combining personal anecdotes, hard data, and compelling research to
cut through the layers of ambiguity and bias surrounding the lives and choices of
working women. She recounts her own decisions, mistakes, and daily struggles to
make the right choices for herself, her career, and her family. She provides practical
advice on negotiation techniques, mentorship, and building a satisfying career,
urging women to set boundaries and to abandon the myth of “having it all.” She
describes specific steps women can take to combine professional achievement with
personal fulfillment and demonstrates how men can benefit by supporting women
in the workplace and at home. Written with both humor and wisdom, Sandberg’s
book is an inspiring call to action and a blueprint for individual growth. Lean In is
destined to change the conversation from what women can’t do to what they can.
16) Emily Raboteau: Searching For Zion: The Quest for Home in the African
Diaspora, 2013, 320 pp. SCORE:
A decade in the making, Emily Raboteau’s Searching for Zion takes readers around
the world on an unexpected adventure of faith. Both one woman’s quest for a place
to call “home” and an investigation into a people’s search for the Promised Land, this
landmark work of creative nonfiction is a trenchant inquiry into contemporary and
historical ethnic displacement. At the age of twenty-three, award-winning writer
Emily Raboteau traveled to Israel to visit her childhood best friend. While her friend
appeared to have found a place to belong, Raboteau could not yet say the same for
herself. As a biracial woman from a country still divided along racial lines, she’d
never felt at home in America. But as a reggae fan and the daughter of a historian of
African-American religion, Raboteau knew of "Zion" as a place black people yearned
to be. She’d heard about it on Bob Marley’s Exodus and in the speeches of Martin
Luther King. She understood it as a metaphor for freedom, a spiritual realm rather
8
than a geographical one. Now in Israel, the Jewish Zion, she was surprised to
discover black Jews. More surprising was the story of how they got there. Inspired
by their exodus, Raboteau sought out other black communities that left home in
search of a Promised Land. Her question for them is same she asks herself: have you
found the home you’re looking for? On her ten-year journey back in time and around
the globe, through the Bush years and into the age of Obama, Raboteau wanders to
Jamaica, Ethiopia, Ghana, and the American South to explore the complex and
contradictory perspectives of Black Zionists. She talks to Rastafarians and African
Hebrew Israelites, Evangelicals and Ethiopian Jews, and Katrina transplants from
her own family—people that have risked everything in search of territory that is
hard to define and harder to inhabit. Uniting memoir with historical and cultural
investigation, Raboteau overturns our ideas of place and patriotism, displacement
and dispossession, citizenship and country in a disarmingly honest and refreshingly
brave take on the pull of the story of Exodus.
17) Dan Baum: Gun Guys: A Road Trip, 2013, 352. SCORE:
Here is armed America—a land of machine-gun gatherings in the desert,
lederhosened German shooting societies, feral-hog hunts in Texas, and Hollywood
gun armories. Whether they’re collecting antique weapons, practicing concealed
carry, or firing an AR-15 or a Glock at their local range, many Americans love guns—
which horrifies and fascinates many other Americans, and much of the rest of the
world. This lively, sometimes raucous book explores from the inside the American
love affair with firearms. Dan Baum is both a lifelong gun guy and a Jewish Democrat
who grew up in suburban New Jersey feeling like a “child of a bitter divorce with
allegiance to both parents.” In Gun Guys he grabs his licensed concealed handgun
and hits the road to meet some of the 40 percent of Americans who own guns. We
meet Rick Ector, a black Detroit autoworker who buys a Smith & Wesson after
suffering an armed robbery—then quits his job to preach the gospel of armed selfdefense, especially to the resistant black community; Jeremy and Marcey Parker, a
young, successful Kentucky couple whose idea of a romantic getaway is the Blue
Ridge Mountain 3-Gun Championship in Bowling Green; and Aaron Zelman, head of
Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership. Baum also travels to New Orleans,
where he enters the world of a man disabled by a bullet, and to Chicago to interview
a killer. Along the way, he takes us to gun shows, gun stores, and shooting ranges
trying to figure out why so many of us love these things and why they inspire such
passions.
In the tradition of Confederates in the Attic and Among the Thugs, Baum brings an
entire world to life. Written equally for avid shooters and those who would never
touch a firearm, Gun Guys is more than a travelogue. It gives a fresh assessment of
the heated politics surrounding guns, one that will challenge and inform people on
all sides of the issue. This may be the first book that goes beyond gun politics to
illuminate the visceral appeal of guns—an original, perceptive, and surprisingly
funny journey through American gun culture.
9
18) Andrew O’Hagan: The Atlantic Ocean: Reports From Britain and America,
2013, 368 pp. SCORE:
"A brilliant essayist, [O'Hagan] constructs sentences that pierce like pinpricks.” —
Publishers Weekly, starred review
For more than two decades, Andrew O’Hagan has been publishing celebrated essays
on both sides of the Atlantic. The Atlantic Ocean highlights the best of his clear-eyed,
brilliant work, including his first published essay, a reminiscence of his workingclass Scottish upbringing; an extraordinary piece about the lives of two soldiers, one
English, one American, both of whom died in Iraq on May 2, 2005; and a piercing
examination of the life of William Styron. O’Hagan’s subjects range from the rise of
the tabloids to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, from the trajectory of the Beatles
to the impossibility of not fancying Marilyn Monroe. The Atlantic Ocean — an
engrossing and important collection.
19) Gabrielle Reece: My Foot is Too Big for the Glass Slipper: A Guide to the
Less Than Perfect Life, 2013, 203 pp. SCORE:
You’re not alone. In 1997, Gabrielle Reece married the man of her dreams—
professional surfer Laird Hamilton—in a flawless Hawaiian ceremony. Naturally, the
couple filed for divorce four years later.
In the end they worked it out, but not without the ups and downs, minor hiccups,
and major setbacks that beset every modern family.
With hilarious stories, wise insights, and concrete takeaways on topics ranging from
navigating relationship issues to aging gracefully to getting smart about food, My
Foot Is Too Big for the Glass Slipper is the brutally honest, wickedly funny, and
deeply helpful portrait of the humor, grace, and humility it takes to survive the
happily ever after.
20) Nassim Nicholas Taleb: Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of
Chance in Life and in the Markets, 2008, 307 pp. SCORE:
Now in a striking new hardcover edition, Fooled by Randomness is the word-ofmouth sensation that will change the way you think about business and the world.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb–veteran trader, renowned risk expert, polymathic scholar,
erudite raconteur, and New York Times bestselling author of The Black Swan–has
written a modern classic that turns on its head what we believe about luck and skill.
This book is about luck–or more precisely, about how we perceive and deal with
luck in life and business. Set against the backdrop of the most conspicuous forum in
which luck is mistaken for skill–the world of trading–Fooled by Randomness
provides captivating insight into one of the least understood factors in all our lives.
Writing in an entertaining narrative style, the author tackles major intellectual
issues related to the underestimation of the influence of happenstance on our lives.
10
The book is populated with an array of characters, some of whom have grasped, in
their own way, the significance of chance: the baseball legend Yogi Berra; the
philosopher of knowledge Karl Popper; the ancient world’s wisest man, Solon; the
modern financier George Soros; and the Greek voyager Odysseus. We also meet the
fictional Nero, who seems to understand the role of randomness in his professional
life but falls victim to his own superstitious foolishness.
However, the most recognizable character of all remains unnamed–the lucky fool
who happens to be in the right place at the right time–he embodies the “survival of
the least fit.” Such individuals attract devoted followers who believe in their guru’s
insights and methods. But no one can replicate what is obtained by chance.
Are we capable of distinguishing the fortunate charlatan from the genuine
visionary? Must we always try to uncover nonexistent messages in random events?
It may be impossible to guard ourselves against the vagaries of the goddess Fortuna,
but after reading Fooled by Randomness we can be a little better prepared.
21) Nassim Nicholas Taleb: The Black Swan: Second Edition: The Impact of the
Highly Improbable: With a new section: "On Robustness and Fragility", 2010,
437 pp. SCORE:
A black swan is an event, positive or negative,that is deemed improbable yet causes
massive consequences. In this groundbreaking and prophetic book, Taleb shows in a
playful way that Black Swan events explain almost everything about our world, and
yet we—especially the experts—are blind to them. In this second edition, Taleb has
added a new essay, On Robustness and Fragility, which offers tools to navigate and
exploit a Black Swan world.
22) Rachel Maddow: Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power, 2012,
265pp. SCORE:
I think this book should be required reading for every American who can vote and is
also able to read . Written with bracing wit and intelligence, Rachel Maddow's Drift
argues that we've drifted away from America's original ideals and become a nation
weirdly at peace with perpetual war. To understand how we've arrived at such a
dangerous place, Maddow takes us from the Vietnam War to today's war in
Afghanistan, along the way exploring Reagan's radical presidency, the disturbing
rise of executive authority, the gradual outsourcing of our war-making capabilities
to private companies, the plummeting percentage of American families whose
children fight our constant wars for us, and even the changing fortunes of G.I. Joe.
Ultimately, she shows us just how much we stand to lose by allowing the scope of
American military power to overpower our political discourse.
11
23) Walter Isaacson: Benjamin Franklin: An American Life, 2004, 563 pp.
SCORE:
Benjamin Franklin is the founding father who winks at us, the one who seems made
of flesh rather than marble. In this authoritative and engrossing full-scale biography,
Walter Isaacson shows how the most fascinating of America's founders helped
define our national character. In a sweeping narrative that follows Franklin's life
from Boston to Philadelphia to London and Paris and back, Isaacson chronicles the
adventures of the spunky runaway apprentice who became, during his 84-year life,
America's best writer, inventor, media baron, scientist, diplomat, and business
strategist, as well as one of its most practical and ingenious political leaders. He
explores the wit behind Poor Richard's Almanac and the wisdom behind the
Declaration of Independence, the new nation's alliance with France, the treaty that
ended the Revolution, and the compromises that created a near-perfect
Constitution. Above all, Isaacson shows how Franklin's unwavering faith in the
wisdom of the common citizen and his instinctive appreciation for the possibilities
of democracy helped to forge an American national identity based on the virtues and
values of its middle class.
24) John Gertner: The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American
Innovation, 2012, 413 pp. SCORE:
In this first full portrait of the legendary Bell Labs, journalist Jon Gertner takes
readers behind one of the greatest collaborations between business and science in
history. Officially the research and development wing of AT&T, Bell Labs made
seminal breakthroughs from the 1920s to the 1980s in everything from lasers to
cellular elephony, becoming arguably the best laboratory for new ideas in the world.
Gertner's riveting narrative traces the intersections between science, business, and
society that allowed a cadre of eccentric geniuses to lay the foundations of the
information age, offering lessons in management and innovation that are as vital
today as they were a generation ago.
25) Christopher Hitchesn: God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.
2009, 305 pp. SCORE:
In the tradition of Bertrand Russell's Why I Am Not a Christian and Sam Harris's
recent bestseller, The End of Faith, Christopher Hitchens makes the ultimate case
against religion. With a close and erudite reading of the major religious texts, he
documents the ways in which religion is a man-made wish, a cause of dangerous
sexual repression, and a distortion of our origins in the cosmos. With eloquent
clarity, Hitchens frames the argument for a more secular life based on science and
reason, in which hell is replaced by the Hubble Telescope's awesome view of the
12
universe, and Moses and the burning bush give way to the beauty and symmetry
of the double helix.
26) Richard Rhodes: Hedy's Folly: The Life and Breakthrough Inventions of
Hedy Lamarr, the Most Beautiful Woman in the World, 2012, 249 pp. SCORE:
Rhodes is the author of 2 superb books: The Making of the Atomic Bomb, and Dark
Sun, about the H-Bomb.
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Rhodes delivers a remarkable story of
science history: how a ravishing film star and an avant-garde composer invented
spread-spectrum radio, the technology that made wireless phones, GPS systems, and
many other devices possible.
Beginning at a Hollywood dinner table, Hedy's Folly tells a wild story of innovation
that culminates in U.S. patent number 2,292,387 for a "secret communication
system." Along the way Rhodes weaves together Hollywood’s golden era, the history
of Vienna, 1920s Paris, weapons design, music, a tutorial on patent law and a brief
treatise on transmission technology. Narrated with the rigor and charisma we've
come to expect of Rhodes, it is a remarkable narrative adventure about spreadspectrum radio's genesis and unlikely amateur inventors collaborating to change
the world.
27) Nate Silver: The Signal and the Noise: Why so Many Predictions Fail – but
Some Don’t, 2012, 515 pp. SCORE:
Nate Silver built an innovative system for predicting baseball performance,
predicted the 2008 election within a hair’s breadth, and became a national sensation
as a blogger—all by the time he was thirty. The New York Times now publishes
FiveThirtyEight.com, where Silver is one of the nation’s most influential political
forecasters.
Drawing on his own groundbreaking work, Silver examines the world of prediction,
investigating how we can distinguish a true signal from a universe of noisy data.
Most predictions fail, often at great cost to society, because most of us have a poor
understanding of probability and uncertainty. Both experts and laypeople mistake
more confident predictions for more accurate ones. But overconfidence is often the
reason for failure. If our appreciation of uncertainty improves, our predictions can
get better too. This is the “prediction paradox”: The more humility we have about
our ability to make predictions, the more successful we can be in planning for the
future.
In keeping with his own aim to seek truth from data, Silver visits the most successful
forecasters in a range of areas, from hurricanes to baseball, from the poker table to
the stock market, from Capitol Hill to the NBA. He explains and evaluates how these
13
forecasters think and what bonds they share. What lies behind their success? Are
they good—or just lucky? What patterns have they unraveled? And are their
forecasts really right? He explores unanticipated commonalities and exposes
unexpected juxtapositions. And sometimes, it is not so much how good a prediction
is in an absolute sense that matters but how good it is relative to the competition. In
other cases, prediction is still a very rudimentary—and dangerous—science.
Silver observes that the most accurate forecasters tend to have a superior command
of probability, and they tend to be both humble and hardworking. They distinguish
the predictable from the unpredictable, and they notice a thousand little details that
lead them closer to the truth. Because of their appreciation of probability, they can
distinguish the signal from the noise.
With everything from the health of the global economy to our ability to fight
terrorism dependent on the quality of our predictions, Nate Silver’s insights are an
essential read.
14