Consider a book-Books worth reading

The full title is "The Right Side of History : How Reason and Moral Purpose Made  the  West Great" It's hard for me to have a really objective opinion about this, I listen to Ben's podcast almost on the daily and I genuinely like the guy.  The big takeaway from the book is that western culture (American Heritage) is built both on Athens and Jerusalem. On Athenian Reason and Judeo Christian morality. Anytime culture deviates from those roots, disaster ensues. The argument itself is appealing to me, but I didn't feel like it needed an entire book to be explained; in some ways, I think time might be better spent reading the authors he references (Plato, Russo, Locke, Thomas Aquinas, Maimonides, Jefferson, etc.). However, if you haven't read much from those enlightenment authors, then this could be a good intro! My main problem with the book is that the central argument suffers from tangent and reference fatigue. Shapiro brings in points of interesting Jewis...

There are basically two things worth remembering here. First, much of what we do is done on autopilot (estimated 40%). This is illustrated by the brain virus victim who could not learn new conscious things but could still develop new habits including knowing where to get food, how to solve a memory game, and find his way back to his house. Second, habits are made of cue's routines and rewards. If you want to change a habit, focus on changing the routine, but keep the other two the same.  This book can be entirely summed up in a paragraph. Sure, You're missing a lot of the emotional appeal of the stories, but for the most part, they aren't that interesting or illustrative. (If you want a slightly more extensive summary, this one is decent) The book definitely falls into the popular genre, not the scientific. While Duhigg draws on science regularly the language is elementary (referring to "brain scanners" instead of FMRI). That being said, the two points out...

My bitter feelings about this book might be partially due to the fact that when I put it on hold at the library, I thought I was getting Carnegie's original book. This one is not that. After I read the original I might have better things to say about this one. That being said, I don't find anything overwhelmingly wrong with the principles outlined. Most of them are good common sense stuff. That's the problem though. The only reason to write a book about common sense is if you can provide uncommon insight or make it uncommonly compelling. This reading does neither. Based on a summary comparison it seems like this book addresses the same principles as the original; I can only imagine Carnegie told a more compelling story with them. As far as the "digital age" content in the book, there are a few lines that I think are worth remembering such as the study in the "Smile" chapter that talked about people who are seen smiling in social media pictures have l...

This is a well known and heavily cited volume. One of my favorite books, Steven Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People draws heavily on the philosophy Frakle outlines here. When people talk about there experience with this book, I've noticed they tend to focus on the human stories. For example, the SS commander casually pointing to the left or the right, dividing a line of prisoners who would live from the line that would be burned that night. Frankle happened to be trying to stand up straight so as to hide a bag he was carrying, this likely saved his life. But these stories (and there are several of them) are not the point of the book. Frankl doesn't dwell on the serendipitous, or the gruesome, or the inspiring. They are only included to illustrate a grand intellectual wrestle that he seeks to convey to the reader. He views his own suffering and that of his friends with clinical detachment. This quotation carry's a good representation of the flavor of writin...