There are 109 item(s) tagged with “society” on this site.
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“This book is pretty funny. I have to ask why it even exists. Actually, I don’t have to ask that; it exists because people love a hero. They love someone to fight their battles and attack people they don’t like in their stead. What’s interesting is that this book was published in 2005. I’d like to…”
“I bailed out on this book at exactly the halfway point (50% on the nose, according to my Kindle). I had such high hopes, but the book was essentially just a recitation of the lives of the people who lived at 740 Park Ave. Chapter after chapter was a dissection of these people’s lives, to the point…”
“An interesting look at the world in 1913, before the Great War. The book doesn’t mention the looming war, and that’s kind of the point. It goes city-by-city, discussing what was happening in each, on the eve of World War 1. The result is…interesting. The book paints the picture of the world as a…”
“A showdown is looming on American Idol which I think is going to be pretty interesting to watch. The top two contenders – the two I firmly believe will fight it out in the last episode – could not be more opposed in terms of lifestyle. We have… Danny Gokey , a widowed church music director from…”
“A thoroughly enjoyable book discussing the five Nordic countries – Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, and Denmark – and their supposedly unassailable credentials as the utopia of the world. The author is an Englishman, married to a Danish woman and living in Denmark. He deconstructs the myth of…”
“This book was written in 1985. The author died in 2003, and this is a second edition published posthumously in 2005. I don’t know if anything was changed, but it has an introduction by the author’s son (also an NYU professor, I gather). The author doesn’t like television, and he argues for about…”
“This is probably the most comprehensive, raw perspective of the early years of the AIDS crisis. A couple contextual notes – First, this book was written back in 1987, when the AIDS epidemic was still raging. Second, the author was gay (he died of AIDS in 1994). Those two facts are important,…”
“ It comes from the ancient Greek word ‘nomos,’ which means ‘custom’ or ‘law.’ The prefix ‘a-’ means this is the opposite of that. ”
“ Good overview of the enduring ‘principles’ of a community. Lots of examples from CrossFit, interestingly. ”
“I had to stop reading this. I gave it fully 100 pages, but just couldn’t figure it out. I don’t know what the point of the book is. It’s some kind of metaphysical treatise about…something. Given the title, I assume the writer was trying to explain how we develop some higher level of awareness, but…”
“I have a romantic view of social clubs, especially those in London. I think I get it from James Bond novels. I love the idea of upper class Englishmen having a whisky at ‘the club’ while debating politics or other matters of world importance. This book is a wonderfully readable history of those…”
“wonderful book. presents a wire-ranging looking at the big data phenomenon, specifically on the technological and societal changes that have occurred to bring it about, and what this means to the future. things like: Our sample sizes are increasing. For many applications, we’re able to poll n =…”
“I’m not really a Conservative, but I do a fair amount of conservative reading. With that perspective, this is a well-written and thoughtful book. Its basic premise is this: Liberal policies have hurt people, especially the poor. Disadvantaged Americans are no better off than when LBJ’s ‘War on…”
“I am a Democrat. I like to think of myself as liberal, but sometimes I think I just say this to be contrarian. Sure enough, this book has me thinking I’m much more conservative than I say I am. I read this because I’ve been looking for years for a clear elucidation of conservative values. I have…”
“This is a weird one. This is both a review of this book, and experiment in reading style and strategy. I decided to try something new with this book: I decided to give it one hour of my time, and see how much I could get out of it. If you search for ‘how to read like a graduate student,’ you’ll…”
“The Cult of the Dead Cow was an early hacker group, formed in the 1980s. This book tells its story over the years and where everyone ended up. It’s…scattered. There are a lot of people, and the scope is large. The book is essentially trying to follow a fractured group of people over 40-some-odd…”
“This is essentially a long-form rant against the fact that (1) people think they’re experts when they’re clearly not, and (2) they tend to look down on actual expertise and distrust experts. It was both inspiring and infuriating. The author writes well, but he offered no solutions. So, take it for…”
“Classic book (in its fifth edition) about how new ideas spread. I like how Rogers has a set of ‘generalizations’ about his ideas. These are things that might not be proven by statistics but feel generally correct. A lot of network theory, but a very good read. Just the right mixture of density and…”
Not graduating from high school causes people to judge you, for all sorts of reasons.
If we had to re-make cities from scratch, would they have downtowns?
“Absolutely, one of the best books I’ve read in years. Enraging in places, it’s one of those books where you watch the protagonist suffer, and make choices you don’t really understand because you’re not as deep into the situation as they are. But, in the end, you have some appreciation for how they…”
“Almost everybody has heard of ‘The 10,000 Hour Rule,’ which says it takes 10,000 hours of practice to master anything. I actually read the original study (PDF) last year. But I’ve often wondered about the limits of this theory. Does there exist people who simply will never master something, no…”
“This book was recommended by a friend. This friend is a social, religious, and political conservative, with very specific opinions on the separation of genders. I did not want to like this book. But, in the end, I agreed with far more than I disagreed with. The book is very well-written. The first…”
“This is a book about how we don’t like reality anymore. We like the illusion of reality. As a society, we’re addicted to farce. It’s almost hilarious that this was written in 2009. If only the author had seen what was coming. He talks about ‘the illusion of literacy,’ by contrasting it against…”
“This book makes the case that (1) the world is better now on almost every quantifiable dimension than at any other time in its history, and (2) this is because of the decline of religion. Pinker’s main point is that religion is bad and makes the world a worse place, and the improvement in life over…”
“I gave this book every chance, I really did. I didn’t abandon it, but I skipped around a lot. It’s purportedly about postmodernism . Or, perhaps about a history of how we ended up postmodern? I wasn’t sure. Each chapter was basically a history of many things, often pop-culture. I would read a…”
“As human beings, we chronically suffer from what I call ‘Gratifying Narrative Syndrome,’ or a desire to confirm narratives that we find emotionally or psychologically gratifying. You see these all the time – stories and paradigms that click with us for some reason, and that we very much want to be…”
“ I didn’t write a ‘review’ of this book, but I wrote an article about it for Boing Boing: The long, slow death of our watering holes ”
“I own 25% of Blend Interactive , which is a significant percentage. This chunk of ownership binds me to this company, in the sense that I see the company as a sort of extension of myself in many ways. I’m not a minor owner – I’m a significant part of the day-to-day operations, and my input goes a…”
Thoughts on middle-age male friendship, or the lack thereof.
“This is likely the definitive account of The Panama Papers – the massive data leak from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca. It also covers some other sensational data leaks, like SwissLeaks and Offshore Leaks. It’s good, no doubt. But it’s confusing, and there’s no real way around that. There…”
“Appropriately, I started this book just after having returned from five days in New York City. I was there for a two-day conference in Brooklyn, but I stayed in Tribeca, and spent some time walking the streets of that neighborhood and Soho. Between those sojourns and the subway to Brooklyn each…”
“This is about all the problems faced by women, mostly in the Third World. Unpaid labor, domestic abuse, child marriage, genital cutting, etc. Fundamentally, the book is about women’s equality, and I commend Gates for revealing considerable details about her marriage to Bill. She goes on for many…”
“Honestly, I didn’t totally get this book. The basic premise is that there are ‘narratives’ that drive economics. There are stories or explanations of things that we believe, and that cause economic things to happen. Some examples, from the book: Sellers can go into panic mode The Gold Standard is…”
I’m not against nudity in media, so long as it has a point.
“This is a theory that humans are inherently peaceful and are corrupted by modern society and economic systems. It’s mainly attributed to the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who wrote in his Discourse on the Origin of Inequality : …nothing is so gentle as man in his primitive state, when…”
The human condition is universal.
“As I write this, America is embroiled in the Ukrainian impeachment crisis. The claim is that Donald Trump withheld military aid to Ukraine in exchange for a political favor – he wanted them to investigate Joe Biden’s son, who is (or was) likely to be Trump’s democratic opponent in the 2020…”
“This is a long novel about a peasant in Colombia in the 1800s. He tries to travel to the ocean, but gets stuck and starts a town. The town grows over the following century, and the book tells the history of all the people that followed him, and what happened. A key point: the town is slightly…”
“My daughter bought me this for my birthday. She had read the back of it at the bookstore, and ‘thought I would find it interesting.’ It was riveting. It’s actually a fairly nondescript story of abuse, but it’s intense. The author is currently an attorney in San Francisco. The book begins with her…”
“I read this book for the pure titillation level, because I’m fascinated by high society in general and New York culture in particular. And the book delivered on that level – there are some horrifying anecdotes where of a woman trying to fit into Upper East Side mommies. Women who use Birkin bags as…”
“I didn’t get this book for about the first third of it. Then I figured out what it was all about – It’s about all the hidden things in life that we ignore from day to day. Where our food comes from, where are energy comes from, where our garbage grows, what’s in outer space, etc. We live in a…”
“This was a good book, though not quite what I expected. I guess I didn’t expect anything, but the introduction didn’t quite set the book up for what it was. The intro discusses a radio show replay the author heard. It was an episode of ‘Command Performance’ that happened right after V-J day back in…”
“This book is undoubtedly interesting, but it’s a bit meandering. The basic idea is that…things (anything, apparently), ‘scale’ according to universal laws. Meaning, as something gets bigger, it grows less linearly along different axes, and this is a very predictable phenomenon. For example, an…”
“This book caused quite a stir when it was published in 1994. This is the quote that upset a lot of people: The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there isn’t one. The author was basically saying that evangelical Christians have stopped thinking rationally about anything. Unfortunately, it was…”
“This is a short manifesto from the late 60s in which the (female) author proposes killing or sterilizing every male human in the world, because men are the source of everything bad. …that’s it. That’s the point. Historically, the biggest debate about the book seems to be whether or not the author…”
“A lovely analysis of why stories matter so much to us. the book dissects the concept of ‘story’ into these areas: Author Audience Journey Character World Detail Voice Platform Immersion The author provides lots of examples of each, from both the creative arts and the business world. I’m having…”
“I like David Brooks. I like how he writes. It flows nicely. And this is good, because this book doesn’t really go in a straight line. It meanders. It wanders around a point, completely unfocused. ‘The First Mountain’ we climb is superficial success – money, job, romance. ‘The Second Mountain’ is a…”
Improving the plight of the working poor can be a trickier problem than you think.
“The basic gist of this book is that the world is made up of (1) hierarchies, like governments and corporations; and (2) networks, like terror networks, the Freemasons, and old college buddies. We tend to think that power resides in hierarchical networks, but often the power is in the networks….”
“Interesting book on resisting the drive for self-improvement. Discusses how trying to improve ourselves can be toxic and lead us into constantly thinking that we’re not worthy. The book encourages people to be happy with what they have, rather than constantly thinking that it’s not enough. It was…”
“I had trouble with this book. It’s an examination of how trends move through cultures and are used to gain status. But, weirdly, it’s almost too basic. The author starts with a long-winded explanation of ‘status’ …which will surprise no one. It’s one of those things we all know, and I’m just not…”
“ Vaguely interesting book about how people spend their money on ‘luxury’ items in order to publicly denote a certain level of social class. Lots of figures, graphs, etc. Not 100% of the point that it was trying to get at, honestly. ”
“Wonderful book that just confirmed what I already knew – political polarization is out of control, and the only way to fix it is from the bottom up. Sasse is a Republican senator from Nebraska. He’s also an outspoken critic of Donald Trump. He wrote this book in 2018, right in the middle of the…”
“This is simply the text of David Foster Wallace’s famed commencement speech given at Kenyon College a few years before he took his own life. What’s interesting is the format – it’s a tiny book (the speech is fairly short), and each sentence is on it’s own page. Seriously – an entire page is each…”
“Marriage is a bundle. It is, all at once, a contract, a romance, and a spiritual institution. But I don’t think it’s going to stay this way. Marriage is actually three structures, layered on top of one another. As it’s most basic level, marriage is a contract . When you get married, you are…”
“Let’s get the format out of the way: this book is presented as a conversation between a Christian Black man and a Jewish woman. The man is a sportscaster and the woman is a Jewish activist. It is supposedly their dialectical about the struggles of being Jewish in the world today. Some years ago,…”
“ Wonderful book form of a classic, 80-year-old essay from Harpers. One of my favorite pieces of writing. Not all who wander are lost, and we fail to appreciate the shocking number of innovations discovered by people who were just kinda screwing around… ”
“Here’s an article which has reinforced a paradigm that I think gets ignored too often by the environmentally conscious: when considering an optional you find lacking, always consider the alternative or the default, and weigh the option against that . Because, no matter how much you don’t like…”
“An entertaining and well-researched examination of the ‘club economy’ – a world where ‘club promoters’ worked ‘models and bottles.’ There exists a job where you get models to nightclubs to just…exist. It turns out that rich men spend stupid amounts of money in the presence of attractive women, so…”
“What can you say about this book that has been said a million times? it’s many things in one: a novel, a history, a philosophy, etc. I enjoyed reading it. It took me 50 days of fairly consistent reading – 30-60 minutes per day. The chapters are quite short, taking maybe five minutes, so I always…”
“Wonderfully complete history of Reddit, from the childhood lives of founders Alexis Ohanian and Steve Huffman, through the (ultimately tragic) life of Aaron Swartz. The book has short chapters, and is mainly episodic – each chapter covers some moment in the history of Reddit, and they’re all there:…”
“The title promised a discussion about how the 60s ‘shaped’ the personal computer industry, but I just didn’t see it. The book is a history of technology and how the seminal figures of that period interacted with culture, but it didn’t show me how society ‘shaped’ the industry, as much as the…”
“This is the story of class in America. Specifically the ‘lower’ class. In contrast to the Utopian image of Colonial America, the early years of the country were marked with extreme poverty. Before the slave trade geared up, most of the people sent to the New World were poor white people,…”
“An in-depth look at the geopolitics and geo-economics of the world. The author goes around the globe and explains each country’s situation, historically, geographically, politically, and economically. What’s interesting is that a lot of the book is not actually about geography, but that’s the…”
“I’m not totally sure why this book was written. I can’t quite figure out the point. I especially take issue with the title. I don’t feel like they ever really supported that. The authors are both communication professors, and the book has a very academic air about it. It’s a broad survey of the…”
“I was thinking about marketing this week while I was on a trip, and two things occurred to me that I find distasteful about the discipline. I’m not claiming all marketing is like this, but I’d call it a majority, certainly. Marketing is often about lying. A lot of marketing is simply overstating…”
“Last year, I had lunch with a friend. She is very much on the Left, politically. I mentioned that I thought Bill Gates was a great humanitarian. She responded in a way that unsettled me (I’m paraphrasing). Sure he gives a way a lot of money, but we really need to examine how the world let someone…”
“I feel guilty saying that I ‘read’ this book, because I abandoned it after about 100 pages. I just didn’t understand what the author was getting at. This bothers me, because I enjoyed Guns, Germs, and Steel , which is Diamond’s more famous work. The first chapter was a long discussion of his…”
