Book Reviews: Catching up (Nonfiction)
by rrusczyk, Nov 8, 2009, 11:34 PM
I'm way behind on my book blogging, so I'll catch up tersely.
Nurture Shock: New Thinking About Children by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman. This collection of research over the last 10-20 years about child development was fascinating. Should be required reading for new parents and school administrators. I'd seen a lot of these studies in the press earlier, but it's great to have them all in one place. Among other points, they address the importace of sleep, the wide variation in the timing of intellectual development, and the effect of praise.
Create Your Own Economy by Tyler Cowen. This book is by one of my favorite economist bloggers, but it's not nearly as good as his blog. The book was pretty scattered, and to the extent it could be said to be about something, it was about how the internet has changed the way we consume information, and how skills that people in the autistic spectrum have are becoming more important as a result. The former message is, well, obvious. The ability of autistic people to make contributions to society is not something I need to be convinced of -- I've seen enough students at AoPS, and enough others in my time involved with high-performing math folks in the autistic range to know that they have a lot to offer.
The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates by Peter Leeson. The author introduces various concepts in economics by discussing why pirates' actions were rational. The book is a short, fun, read, but even at it's short length, is still pretty repetitive. This might have been a better long article in an appropriate magazine. I do think that this is the way to teach economics in high school (I might replace "pirates" with dating, and expect to get fired by the end of the year).
Longshot: The Adventures of a Deaf Fundamental Mormon Kid and His Journey to the NBA by Lance Allred. The title pretty much tells the story. The book was laugh-out-loud funny at times. A bit over-long, but his story is, um, larger than life...
Born on a Blue Day: Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant by Daniel Tammet, who knows more digits of pi than you do. Another memoir, also a bit too long. The most interesting part of this book was his discussing how he relates numbers to colors and shapes.
American Dream by Jason DeParle. The author tracks the progress of three women as they work through the changes made to Welfare under the Clinton administration, and includes some discussion throughout about the recent political history of the welfare issue. As you'd expect, the book is plenty depressing. I thought the author was very fair in his addressing the various issues -- usually these sorts of books are outright condemnations of whatever political view the author disagrees with. The author is honest about expecting the welfare-to-work changes made under Clinton to be a disaster, but also very honest about his experiences researching this book unmooring a lot of his convictions about the welfare issue (including the effects of the welfare changes). The book doesn't offer much in the way of solutions, which I think enhances the honest feeling of the book. I can't help but think that anyone who carefully studies abject poverty in the United States and doesn't come away feeling hopeless is too blinded by ideology to be taken seriously. (My first step would be to end the war on drugs, but this book shakes my faith that this would be any more than a small step in the right direction.)
Cold: Adventure in the World's Frozen Places by Bill Streever. The author jumps back and forth between his experiences stromping around cold places and historical notes including explorers of cold regions (who were, to a man, stark raving mad in my book), people getting caught in cold weather or dumped in cold seas, and geologic commentary. The book is not as overtly political as the reviews I've read claimed (I think those reviewers are swayed by the fact that the political preaching is all near the end of the book), but the political preaching was pretty tiresome coming on the back of what was otherwise fairly interesting (though the author's experiences were notably less interesting than the various historical notes he relays -- if you could get an abridged version of this book that had nothing that happened after 1950, that would be a great read).
Nurture Shock: New Thinking About Children by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman. This collection of research over the last 10-20 years about child development was fascinating. Should be required reading for new parents and school administrators. I'd seen a lot of these studies in the press earlier, but it's great to have them all in one place. Among other points, they address the importace of sleep, the wide variation in the timing of intellectual development, and the effect of praise.
Create Your Own Economy by Tyler Cowen. This book is by one of my favorite economist bloggers, but it's not nearly as good as his blog. The book was pretty scattered, and to the extent it could be said to be about something, it was about how the internet has changed the way we consume information, and how skills that people in the autistic spectrum have are becoming more important as a result. The former message is, well, obvious. The ability of autistic people to make contributions to society is not something I need to be convinced of -- I've seen enough students at AoPS, and enough others in my time involved with high-performing math folks in the autistic range to know that they have a lot to offer.
The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates by Peter Leeson. The author introduces various concepts in economics by discussing why pirates' actions were rational. The book is a short, fun, read, but even at it's short length, is still pretty repetitive. This might have been a better long article in an appropriate magazine. I do think that this is the way to teach economics in high school (I might replace "pirates" with dating, and expect to get fired by the end of the year).
Longshot: The Adventures of a Deaf Fundamental Mormon Kid and His Journey to the NBA by Lance Allred. The title pretty much tells the story. The book was laugh-out-loud funny at times. A bit over-long, but his story is, um, larger than life...
Born on a Blue Day: Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant by Daniel Tammet, who knows more digits of pi than you do. Another memoir, also a bit too long. The most interesting part of this book was his discussing how he relates numbers to colors and shapes.
American Dream by Jason DeParle. The author tracks the progress of three women as they work through the changes made to Welfare under the Clinton administration, and includes some discussion throughout about the recent political history of the welfare issue. As you'd expect, the book is plenty depressing. I thought the author was very fair in his addressing the various issues -- usually these sorts of books are outright condemnations of whatever political view the author disagrees with. The author is honest about expecting the welfare-to-work changes made under Clinton to be a disaster, but also very honest about his experiences researching this book unmooring a lot of his convictions about the welfare issue (including the effects of the welfare changes). The book doesn't offer much in the way of solutions, which I think enhances the honest feeling of the book. I can't help but think that anyone who carefully studies abject poverty in the United States and doesn't come away feeling hopeless is too blinded by ideology to be taken seriously. (My first step would be to end the war on drugs, but this book shakes my faith that this would be any more than a small step in the right direction.)
Cold: Adventure in the World's Frozen Places by Bill Streever. The author jumps back and forth between his experiences stromping around cold places and historical notes including explorers of cold regions (who were, to a man, stark raving mad in my book), people getting caught in cold weather or dumped in cold seas, and geologic commentary. The book is not as overtly political as the reviews I've read claimed (I think those reviewers are swayed by the fact that the political preaching is all near the end of the book), but the political preaching was pretty tiresome coming on the back of what was otherwise fairly interesting (though the author's experiences were notably less interesting than the various historical notes he relays -- if you could get an abridged version of this book that had nothing that happened after 1950, that would be a great read).
February 2012
January 2012