It looked much more interesting when I saw his talk at Authors@Google. However, I found it rather monotonic. Some of the ideas were interesting, but got boring fast.
-
« Home
Pages
Links
-
RSS Feeds
Category Archives: Books
Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle by Daniel L. Everett
16-Aug-10I’ve always been interested in learning languages. That’s why I was interested in this Dr. Everett‘s book when I saw his talk on FORA.tv. The linguistic details on this obscure Amazonian language was a bit too much for me, but the whole process of how he tried to learn the language and the culture was [...]
The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One by David Kilcullen
14-May-10Another book I was made aware of through “Authors@Google” talks… This book gives a pretty good idea of what was wrong about the initial approach of the U.S. in Iraq and how and why the “Surge” worked. I think it was somewhat long since it’s a mixture of Mr. Kilcullen‘s personal accounts and field studies [...]
No wonder this book as been a best-seller for a long time. The book has a very good combination of academic and personal essay styles. Very easy to read and very convincing. Dr. Robert Cialdini explains, out of curiosity from his personal experiences and his academic research, what makes people agree to the “compliance agent”, [...]
Reading this book was more like reading a Ph.D paper. Besides, the idea seems interesting, but the arguments and evidence weren’t there to me. Quite disappointing.
The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite by David Kessler
22-Oct-09Dr. Kessler talks about a subject that I have been struggling with for my entire life. While some of the biological research results he talked about were interesting and enlightening, I am not sure if his proposed solutions are anything new (and they are quite generic). I doubt we’ll see “The End of Overeating” anytime [...]
The Numerati by Stephen Baker
21-Sep-09I thought the organization of the chapters were interesting. Some stories were interesting. However, ultimately, this book by Stephen Baker felt too light on details for me.
I liked the fact that the book by Richard Weissbourd had a strong emphasis on the morality (as compared to the happiness). It’s something that I also feel that is lacking in the fast-paced, low-birth-rate world of today. The book had an interesting section on the affects of the “Americanization” of the immigrant children on [...]
As a person who enjoys movie and technologies in audio-video entertainment, I really enjoyed this historical overview by Scott Kirsner. The main thread of his storytelling is the struggles between the innovators and the “preservationists” (or “status quo”), and mostly focused on the triumphs on the innovators’ part. And I think that was the only [...]
Another pickup from Fresh Air and TED. Also, Dan Ariely sometimes does guest appearance on Marketplace. This book has some similarities to Freakonomics, but it was more about the social experiments that he and his colleagues have done. They are showing that we are irrational often times and the irrational behaviors are predictable (or statistically [...]