Scott J. Pearson

Unmasking Adult Autism: The Brain & the Person

By Scott J. Pearson | December 17, 2023December 17, 2023 by Scott J. Pearson

Is autism a diagnosis with a fixed treatment, or is it a part of the wider human condition, to be treated humanistically? As autism’s prevalence continues to rise, society debates how to do this. In this book, Curtis Youngblood clearly comes down on the humanistic side. Through life experience, he contends that more attention needs to be paid towards helping people to live with autism practically rather than divining some yet-unknown cause or causes. This…

History

Race & Reunion: The Civil War in American History

By Scott J. Pearson | December 16, 2023December 16, 2023 by Scott J. Pearson

David Blight is an eminent, Pulitzer-Prize-winning historian interested in the role of race in American history. Many think that American attitudes about race were “solved” by the Civil War and the emancipation of slaves. Those battles were won by the Union and not the Confederacy, right? This book seeks to chronicle how in the 50 years after emancipation (until around World War I), southern states and the promotion of “Lost Cause” ideology won a place…

Research-Education Writing-Communication

Publishing in Academic Journals

By Scott J. Pearson | December 10, 2023December 10, 2023 by Scott J. Pearson

Initially, this book left me with mixed feelings, but further research overturned those as misplaced. It clearly offers advice and insights into writing and publishing successful academic papers. The author clearly speaks from a lifetime of experience and from learning by trial and error. Although the content is brief, it is power-packed with actionable items. There’s not much fluff in this presentation. I grew concerned that she refers to Publish or Perish software numerous times…

Psychology Society

Homophobia: How We All Pay the Price

By Scott J. Pearson | December 2, 2023December 2, 2023 by Scott J. Pearson

I grew up as a Southern Baptist with a lot of structural homophobia around me. Homosexuality was viewed as an irrefutable sin, and nothing else in the Biblical narrative could say otherwise. Over the years, I’ve questioned much about the religious tradition I was handed. I am still a Christian, but my faith takes a much different form that values education, a lack of bias, and a role for history in religion. In fact, now,…

Leadership Management-Business

Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works

By Scott J. Pearson | November 30, 2023September 24, 2024 by Scott J. Pearson

This book is known as a classics on strategic planning and the role of strategy in business. It speaks from the point of view of leadership over Procter & Gamble’s (P&G) numerous businesses. The company identified its organization to be weak in understanding strategy, and it sought to inculcate strategic thinking into its leadership. Although this book references a few other corporations, it consists largely of case studies around how P&G succeeded using strategy. The…

Research-Education

Measuring & Improving Research Impact

By Scott J. Pearson | November 26, 2023November 26, 2023 by Scott J. Pearson

Most, if not all, in academia aspire to make a meaningful difference inside universities and in the larger world. This sounds simple enough, yet even defining what constitutes a “meaningful difference” can become difficult. Additionally, scarce resources can make pressure to perform intense. Some professors cynically see dissemination of research a marketing game that does not add real value. In this book, Anne-Wil Harzing argues that efforts to enhance impact play a critical role, and…

Biography-Memoir Writing-Communication

The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr

By Scott J. Pearson | November 25, 2023November 25, 2023 by Scott J. Pearson

Memoir has become a popular field in recent decades. The novitiate often thinks that anyone can write about their own life. The experienced one knows that this task is actually incredibly hard, both in penning the work and in emotionally admitting truth to yourself. Bestselling memoir author and writing professor Mary Karr writes about values and practices she finds helpful. Importantly, she cites other authors alongside her own experience to ground her work not just…

Healthcare Research-Education

Fundamentals of Clinical Trials, Fifth Edition

By Scott J. Pearson | November 24, 2023November 24, 2023 by Scott J. Pearson

In the past century, clinical research has grown dramatically as the number of questions about healthcare has increased. The current paradigm of evidence-based medicine describes the practice of prescribing medicines based on their tested strength instead of an individual’s limited experience. Of course, to make such judgments, a rich bed of research evidence needs to exist, and this book succinctly describes how such questions are investigated for eventual dissemination. This book’s language is succinct and…

Biography-Memoir Personal Essays

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin

By Scott J. Pearson | November 19, 2023November 19, 2023 by Scott J. Pearson

Written during the early days of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, James Baldwin’s biographical essays teach Americans what it’s like to be a black man in our society as it emerged from Jim Crow. Even sixty years later, it still resonates with me as I seek to understand my African-American young mentee. Certainly, much progress has been made as reading these essays shows, but Baldwin shows even then what progress we can still…

Biography-Memoir Society Software-Technology

The Worlds I See: Curiosity, Exploration & Discovery at the Dawn of AI

By Scott J. Pearson | November 16, 2023November 16, 2023 by Scott J. Pearson

Artificial Intelligence (AI) finds its place all over newspapers and magazines these days. It’s seen as a field ripe for economic impact. Few, however, have followed this field over prior decades when progress quite wasn’t so quick. Stanford professor Fei-Fei Li is one of the researchers who helped lay the foundation for modern AI. Here, she tells her personal story alongside the story of this field. She reminds us that human considerations should never voyage…