Archive for the ‘Books’ Category

“The Long Tail: Why The Future of Business Is Selling Less of More”

Saturday, January 3rd, 2009

Right before Christmas break, I finished reading Chris Anderson’s book The Long Tail: Why The Future of Business Is Selling Less of More.  I’d heard about this book from various sources, such as my Wired Magazine subscription, and through related web-searches regarding concepts of non-gaussian distributions from Nassin Nicholas Taleb’s Fooled By Randomness and Benoît Mandelbrot’s The Mis-Behavior of Markets such as power-law distributions.  Suffice to say, this book held up to my expectations, and is still challenging the way I think.

The Long Tail is about how information technologies are transforming many markets, and about the true shape and character of market these technologies reveal.

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“Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America’s Energy Future”

Wednesday, November 26th, 2008

During this past month I got around to reading Jeff Goodell’s book “Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America’s Energy Future“.  I came across this book after reading “Power To Save The World: The Truth About Nuclear Energy“; it seems appropriate to read up on what’s actually powering us now, instead of the ideal power source.

Jeff Goodell is a contributing editor to both Rolling Stone and The New York Times.  He wrote the New York Times bestseller book “Our Story: 77 Hours That Tested Our Friendship and Our Faith“, which covered the Quecreek Mine accident of 2002.  From this writing experience, he became interested in the coal industry as a whole.  What he finds there is a grim reminder of America’s energy reality.

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“SYNC: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order”

Monday, November 3rd, 2008

I finally resumed and finished reading Steven Strogatz’s book “SYNC: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order“.

Dr. Strogatz is a professor at Cornell University, and has had a prolific career examining complex systems in diverse fields such as circadian rhythms, Josephson Junctions, and “small-world networks“.  This book captures many of the stories of progress in these and related fields of today’s progressive minds.

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“Power to Save the World: The Truth About Nuclear Energy”

Sunday, April 13th, 2008

I just finished reading Gwyneth Cravens‘ “Power to Save the World: The Truth About Nuclear Energy“.

Gweneth Cravens is a writer and journalist, and was a anti-nuclear activist. She met and debated the merits of nuclear power with Dr. D. Richard (Rip) Anderson over the course of many years, and eventually one day Rip asked her: “Why don’t you go on an American nuclear power tour?” This book is the result of that journey.

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