Scott J. Pearson

The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart

By Scott J. Pearson | June 14, 2025June 14, 2025 by Scott J. Pearson

A standard part of contemporary American culture is the division of society into “red” and “blue” components. Whether concerning states, cities, or ways of life, American society has become more polarized. Instead of the regionalism before the Civil War, these separations often have broken down between a rural versus urban dynamic. Some cities are even considered “red” havens. Bill Bishop first made these observations about 20 years ago, and this book culminated to define the…

Fiction-Stories

This is Happiness: A Novel

By Scott J. Pearson | June 9, 2025June 10, 2025 by Scott J. Pearson

Noe, short for Noel, is a teenage orphan who recently moved from Dublin to live with his grandparents in a small Irish town. Just prior, he enrolled in a seminary with the thought of seeking a priestly calling, but dropped out. Instead, he is now trying to find direction in life. Suddenly, in his small community of Faha, it stops raining, and the sun comes out. The sun never stays out in this rainy realm…

Advanced JavaScript Unleashed: Master Advanced JavaScript Concepts like Prototypes, Symbols, Generators & More

By Scott J. Pearson | June 4, 2025June 4, 2025 by Scott J. Pearson

Like many web developers, I learned about modern JavaScript/ECMAScript soon after it came out in 2015. JavaScript is the programming language that has powered interactive webpages since Netscape Navigator was a thing. Now, it’s the world’s most used programming language for all sorts of non-browser-based applications, including mobile apps, web servers, and full-stack development. Therefore, understanding how it works and why it works becomes a priority for most software engineers. Grasping the implementation details can…

Society

My Own Words by Ruth Bader Ginsburg

By Scott J. Pearson | June 1, 2025June 2, 2025 by Scott J. Pearson

When a boy, I grew up a Republican in the conservative upstate of South Carolina. I knew about feminism from the news and school, but the history of struggle was not a central part of my household. In 1993, I heard of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s appointment to the Supreme Court by Bill Clinton, but she was not on my “team.” Therefore, I didn’t pay close attention. Only as an adult did my awareness and curiosity…

Fiction-Stories

Abscond: A Short Story

By Scott J. Pearson | June 1, 2025June 1, 2025 by Scott J. Pearson

Rami Ramanathan is a New Jersey teenager passionate about being the top-ranked tennis player in his age group. He is the only child of his surgeon-father and his stay-at-home mother. Suddenly, his family encounters grief, an emotion that Rami has not previously encountered, at least in as much depth, and that he has not seen his mother encounter. Death’s visit makes him grow up and see the world more clearly – as it is, not…

Religion-Philosophy Science Society

Science, Faith & Society: A Searching Examination of the Meaning & Nature of Scientific Inquiry

By Scott J. Pearson | May 28, 2025May 28, 2025 by Scott J. Pearson

In this book, philosopher of science and eminent chemist Michael Polanyi warns, scientific inquiry cannot exist without a society and a culture that supports it. That is, science’s light can be extinguished if society decides to stamp it out. The freedom to learn about nature requires not only economic supports but also cultural supports. Writing just after the conclusion of World War II, he argues that scientific progress in Europe needs the foundation of a…

Healthcare History HIV/AIDS

How to Survive a Plague: The Story of How Activists & Scientists Tamed AIDS

By Scott J. Pearson | May 25, 2025May 25, 2025 by Scott J. Pearson

Today, it’s easy to forget the days when an HIV diagnosis implied a death sentence within 24 months. Randy Shilts’ And the Band Played On tells the story of how the AIDS pandemic played out in the epicenter of San Francisco, and David France, in this book, tells how it played out in the other American epicenter of New York City. He tells how activists and scientists sometimes fought and sometimes collaborated to find how…

Leadership Management-Business Software-Technology

Leading Effective Engineering Teams: Lessons for Individual Contributors & Managers from 10 Years at Google

By Scott J. Pearson | May 19, 2025May 19, 2025 by Scott J. Pearson

This book fills a gap in literature about technology leadership. Many books on leadership exist; likewise, many books on approaching technology from the perspective of business leadership exist; however, not a lot of books talk about how to lead from a technologist’s angle. People working in software are usually really smart people. They know and respect “game” when they see competence and mastery in their field. But mentorship from books or from seasoned leaders is…

Software-Technology

AI & Machine Learning for Coders: A Programmer’s Guide to Artificial Intelligence

By Scott J. Pearson | May 12, 2025May 12, 2025 by Scott J. Pearson

I’m a tad suspicious about listening to books that are too deep in the weeds with code. If they’re about programming concepts, audiobooks can be suitable, but if they involve code like this one, I like to have a physical picture of the lines of code. However, I was pleasantly surprised that this book conveyed many ideas despite communicating code aurally, too. Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are huge topics today. I read…

Indie Presentation Visualization

Seeing with Fresh Eyes: Meaning, Space, Data, Truth

By Scott J. Pearson | May 6, 2025May 6, 2025 by Scott J. Pearson

I read anything that Edward Tufte writes. This “father of data visualization” has taught classes at Yale on the subject for decades. His books have also taught the reading public how to present data more effectively in the digital age. This work represents his fifth book. While his other books focus on getting the data right, this one’s subject meanders around transforming presentations into a form of art that provokes an audience response. I enjoyed…