Scott J. Pearson

From Knowledge to Power: The Comprehensive Handbook for Climate Science & Advocacy

By Scott J. Pearson | March 23, 2022March 23, 2022 by Scott J. Pearson

Climate science is a hot topic these days, and many books (like Bill Gates’ How to Avoid a Climate Disaster) provide introductions to the topic for a popular audience. Those books are written to be digested by the masses, but detailed academic work is often lacking in them. Enter Perona’s textbook. (He calls it a “handbook,” but it more resembles an interdisciplinary textbook.) He explains the nitty-gritty of the science and extends the reasoning from…

Biography-Memoir History Politics

The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, & the Golden Age of Journalism

By Scott J. Pearson | March 11, 2022March 11, 2022 by Scott J. Pearson

Kearns Goodwin sits among the best current American presidential historians, and her book takes an intriguing look at Teddy Roosevelt, his successor and Vice President William Taft, and the role a changing press played in their presidencies. Lifelong friends, they became bitter political enemies. Roosevelt ended up founding his own political party and running against Taft, the Republican nominee, in 1912. Woodrow Wilson ended up winning that election. Kearns Goodwin unpacks this story in award-winning…

Biography-Memoir Psychology

An Impossible Wife: Why He Stayed: A True Story of Love, Marriage, & Mental Illness

By Scott J. Pearson | March 10, 2022March 10, 2022 by Scott J. Pearson

A century ago, people with mental illness was handled through a sanitarium. Since the advent of helpful but imperfect medications in the latter twentieth century, however, many with mental illness now live in the community. As a result, they have to deal with stigma around their illness – both others’ and their own. Siddoway (simply Rachael in the tale) tells a true story of her parents and her family. She shows how hard their lives…

Management-Business Presentation

The Public Relations Handbook

By Scott J. Pearson | March 6, 2022March 6, 2022 by Scott J. Pearson

I do not work in the field of public relations but rather work with others that do. Thus, I have a vested interest in learning about their work without going through educational certifications. Further, I’m always eyeing ways to spotlight the positives of my work in an open and tactful manner to interested audiences. This compilation of articles by leading figures addresses a variety of core issues in PR and shows where the field has…

Fiction-Stories History Religion-Philosophy

Sunflowers Beneath the Snow

By Scott J. Pearson | February 27, 2022February 27, 2022 by Scott J. Pearson

As I write, Russian troops are invading the independent nation of Ukraine. This backdrop compelled me to hurry up to read this book for insight into the current conflict, and I am glad I did. It tells a complex tale of three generations of Ukrainian women trying to make a life amidst international strife. The coincidences are stultifying, but the author claims that the general narrative is true. The story reminds us of the enduring…

Software-Technology

PHP Web Services: APIs for the Modern Web

By Scott J. Pearson | February 22, 2022February 22, 2022 by Scott J. Pearson

I use a lot of web services in my work – both accessing others’ data and sharing my own. Upon embarking on these projects, I never had a formal introduction to APIs. In typical developer fashion, I just dove into the deep end and only then learned to swim. However, some of us don’t learn that way and require a written tutorial. Even those of us who do dive in without reading the print first…

Poetry

Call Us What We Carry: Poems by Amanda Gorman

By Scott J. Pearson | February 21, 2022February 21, 2022 by Scott J. Pearson

This review is less of a recapitulation of this work and more of a persuasive piece for you to buy and read it. Through her words, Gorman shows us what it means to be an American. Through her experiences – unabashedly black, unabashedly young, and unabashedly colored by the COVID pandemic – she weaves together a script that is unabashedly American and recalls moments in our history to point the way forward. She organizes her…

Presentation Software-Technology

On Web Typography

By Scott J. Pearson | February 19, 2022February 19, 2022 by Scott J. Pearson

Typography, or the science of fonts, has always been an important vehicle to communicate ideas. Printing presses used typography to achieve mass communication. In the age of Internet instantaneity, nothing has changed much as good fonts continue to be central means to convey concepts with the masses. Unfortunately, many users still default to a few common fonts like Helvetica/Arial or Times New Roman. In this book, Santa Maria seeks to free designers – and also…

Fiction-Stories History

A Train to Moscow: A Novel

By Scott J. Pearson | February 17, 2022August 13, 2023 by Scott J. Pearson

The protagonist Sasha is born into a Russian family in a provincial town around the time of the Second World War. During her youth, Stalinist communism tries to white-wash Russian history by avoiding difficult parts, like barbarous murders, the horrors of anti-German military campaigns, and betrayals of one’s neighbors to prisons. For the Party, World War II tells the story of glorious and miraculous Russian triumph over the world, without any complications. However, Sasha soon…

Fiction-Stories Society

Juneteenth by Ralph Ellison

By Scott J. Pearson | February 12, 2022February 12, 2022 by Scott J. Pearson

Juneteenth, of course, is the day that word of Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation reached the depths of Texas and marks the day when freedom was finally brought to all American slaves. Ralph Ellison, an African-American author of the outstanding and renowned Invisible Man, spent forty years compiling notes for this book. Eventually, death overtook him before a final version could be reached. Nonetheless, scholar John F. Callahan compiled this edition a few years after Ellison’s…