Scott J. Pearson

Writing Effective Promotion Applications

By Scott J. Pearson | March 27, 2024March 27, 2024 by Scott J. Pearson

Academic life is tough because one’s professional impact is hard to put into numbers that determine success. Results extend beyond the bottom line into many intangible factors. A lot of data are involved. And there are nit-picky relationships with colleagues that will last beyond the promotion decision. Research, teaching, and service can combine into an uncomfortable triad that doesn’t always yield fruit. In this book, Anne-Wil Harzing, a professor at Middlesex University London, offers career…

How to Write & Publish a Scientific Paper

By Scott J. Pearson | March 23, 2024March 23, 2024 by Scott J. Pearson

For any scientist, communication is a central part of the game. Yet most scientists did not major in English, nor did they receive great educational training about the field. Usually, they were focusing on their science. To compound matters, most graduate programs not at top research centers provide sparse resources to educate researchers. To supplement such a linguistic shortcoming, this book, laudably in its ninth edition, seeks to introduce the field to the scientific community.…

Healthcare History Society

A Good Time to be Born: How Science & Public Health Gave Children a Future

By Scott J. Pearson | March 23, 2024March 23, 2024 by Scott J. Pearson

The life-or-death fate of children has changed dramatically over the past 200 years due to research, medicine, and public health. Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln famously grieved the loss of their child in the White House years ago, but they were hardly alone. Rather in that era, losing a child, often due to illness or mishaps, was pretty much normal though still tragic. Today, such an experience is the exception, and we are all better…

Fiction-Stories

Foster by Claire Keegan

By Scott J. Pearson | March 21, 2024March 21, 2024 by Scott J. Pearson

This short story tells a first-person account of an Irish child sent to live with relatives in the countryside. At the outset, she does not know whether she will ever return home again. She quickly discovers that her new guardians are kind and affectionate in a way that her parents never were. She grows to feel at home there… until something terrible happens to make her see her situation for what it is. Then her…

Management-Business Software-Technology

The Software Hiring Handbook: The Software Developer’s Guide to Conducting a Job Interview

By Scott J. Pearson | March 14, 2024March 14, 2024 by Scott J. Pearson

As Michael Kahn states in this book’s introduction, there exist many guides to giving interviews generally along with guides to being interviewed about software development, but there are few guides to giving interviews specifically to developers. This 2006 book tries to fill that niche. It is short and certainly not comprehensive – as if that were even possible. But it advances wisdom that people like me need in finding a software developer, especially for the…

Fiction-Stories Society

Giovanni’s Room: A Novel

By Scott J. Pearson | March 10, 2024March 10, 2024 by Scott J. Pearson

This tale, set in Paris, tells a sad story of an American man whose girlfriend is traveling on vacation in Spain. He meets an Italian bartender Giovanni and falls in love. At the time, such love is illegal in America, and while not illegal in France, it is culturally shunned. Renowned author James Baldwin captures what such social oppression can do to an innocent, loving relationship in that era. It ostensibly details a romantic tragedy…

Economics Society

The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich & Poor in an Interconnected World

By Scott J. Pearson | March 5, 2024March 5, 2024 by Scott J. Pearson

The economic gap between the rich and poor has increased in recent decades, yet the access to technology in many ways democratizes the world. Increasingly, many of the rich don’t find much meaning in just earning another dollar. Here, Jacqueline Novogratz shares her tale of receiving a business education but not aspiring to Wall Street. Instead, she went to Africa and saw the potential to introduce capitalistic motivations for the greater cause of human happiness.…

Fiction-Stories

Lovers at the Museum: A Short Story

By Scott J. Pearson | March 3, 2024March 3, 2024 by Scott J. Pearson

This well-written short story, set in Spain, shares a shocking scenario. Before the opening of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, a bride is found inside and asleep with a naked man. The thing is, the man is not her groom, and they do not know each others’ names. How did they break in? And why are they together in the first place? A police detective peels the metaphoric onion, layer by layer, but uncovers…

Fiction-Stories Society

Small Things Like These

By Scott J. Pearson | March 2, 2024March 2, 2024 by Scott J. Pearson

This book deserves to be the next A Christmas Carol in the English language. Surely, even Charles Dickens cannot outdo Claire Keegan. In this work, she touches on themes of religious hypocrisy in the Roman Catholic church in Ireland. The message of Christmas and of the Christian Gospel, with their themes of oppressed things becoming great, is juxtaposed against an entrenched church beholden to money, power, and a corrupt socioeconomic system. This month of March,…

Biography-Memoir Religion-Philosophy

I Take My Coffee Black: Reflections on Tupac, Musical Theater, Faith & Being Black in America

By Scott J. Pearson | February 25, 2024February 25, 2024 by Scott J. Pearson

This book opens with a heavy moment of racial stereotyping of an innocent black male as suspect, even criminal. Then it introduces us to that man’s life story. Hardly nefarious, author Tyler Merritt has overcome numerous challenges to embrace life today. With loads of humor and empathy, he lets readers know what it feels to be him. He is entangled at times with fame, but in the long run, he learns to be authentically himself.…