It is hard to see yourself. More specifically, it is hard to see your biases in the context of the great sweep of history. It takes a concerted effort to realize your faults and failings when they are part of your identity. Books on raising children have been around a very long time and this is another one. Everyone has an opinion on what is best for a child, what they need. Lythcott-Haims has somewhat inverted this by writing about what kind of adults we are producing and working backwards to identify what we are doing wrong. This is very satisfying both logically and practically.
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2022-08-22
How to Raise an Adult by Julia Lythcott-Haims
2022-08-22
Nose Dive by Harold McGee
This is a book about chemistry. Actually, one could say that it’s about chemicals and only one specific group of chemicals at that. It is essentially a catalog of chemicals that you can smell. This is exactly as exciting as it sounds. The book is, on the whole, dry and repetitive, like a reference book. And yet, between the surprisingly comprehensive and thorough lists and tables, there is a wealth of fascinating information from chemistry to biology to botany to geology to history and anthropology. By looking at the world through its smells, it is necessary to take a broad view. McGee has undertaken a monumental task with patience and thoroughness and the result is a curious but unmistakably valuable book. Where else can you find answers to all those questions you never knew you had?
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2022-07-13
When the Uncertainty Principle Goes to 11 by Philip Moriarty
This is obviously a labor of love. A primer on quantum mechanics built on analogies to Heavy Metal. This is a flavor of popular science that I wholly support. It’s fuzzy on the details, and some of the metaphors are stretched far enough to fully outrage the sticklers, but it squarely translates the incomprehensible into the realm of everyday experience. This is, in my experience, the essence of human learning and understanding. Alas that Mr Moriarty’s insight does not extend to his writing. The book is, on the whole, forgettable and confusing.
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2022-03-15
The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman
This is perhaps the seminal work on product design, usability, interfaces, and all sorts of things that I like to notice and (occasionally) denigrate mercilessly. I cannot use some brands of microwave oven without cursing their makers’ makers, so I was excited to finally read this book. Norman provides a framework and vocabulary for understanding design which is important and impressive considering how very much is encompassed by the notion of “Design”. The examples give a clear picture of the problem and the difficulties faced by designer and user. Unfortunately, Norman does not get much farther than that.
Beyond the framework and vocabulary, the book didn’t tell me much that I didn’t already know. There wasn’t much meat to the book, the writing was meandering and unstructured, and Norman always seemed to stop short of asking the really interesting questions. This was surprising because issues of design can generally be distilled down to questions about human behavior which is endlessly fascinating. Whenever an interesting question appeared, I found Norman’s analyses lacking in imagination. This left a small amount of useful content that, uncharitably, could have fit in one chapter which leaves a lot of book without much to say.
Overall, I found the book to be disappointing: significant perhaps but disappointing.
2022-03-15
Measurement by Paul Lockhart
This is the book that could replace most every textbook used in grade school math. It brings the reader from geometry to differential calculus in an astonishingly smooth progression. Let me say that again because you weren’t paying attention: Lockhart leads you, in plain language, from the most basic concepts of line and shape, all the way to differential ever-loving calculus in a single svelte volume. And this progression is more than a series of lectures, this is a book on Mathematics: each concept leads logically to the next, each answer leads to the next question. And you, the reader, are doing the asking and answering. It feels inevitable and effortless. This is Truth without pretense. Lockhart does not waste time (his or yours) on arbitrary definitions or vocabulary. He knows that understanding a thing is more important than knowing the name of a thing.
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2022-03-15
How to do Nothing—Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell
This book may not be what you expect. Odell challenges fundamental aspects of our society, and she deliberately does not use the patterns she seeks to disrupt. This book is not a tight, efficient proof of thesis. It is a meandering conversation, almost a stream of consciousness. Odell does not force her ideas upon the reader. She thinks out loud; following where history and experience lead.
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2022-01-03
Naming Nature: The Clash Between Instinct and Science by Carol Kaesuk Yoon
Roughly speaking, this is a history of the field of taxonomy. This is not a scientific text, but it is a text about science, and science is done by people, and people are flawed biased stubborn creatures (also clever, so very clever). It is a delight to see how this problem of classification changed and coalesced over time, and all the drama and controversy that went with it. Scientists are as dysfunctional as everyone else, perhaps more so in some regards. Yoon shows us how messy progress is.
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