Scott J. Pearson

Guide to Software Projects for Business People

By Scott J. Pearson | November 14, 2020November 14, 2020 by Scott J. Pearson

The business of making software is fairly unique. Software does not follow a traditional assembly-line process, but still borrows from many sources of theory to guide its production. Some projects follow a “waterfall” plan, and others follow an “agile” methodology; a wide array of differently named tests populates discussions. Crosby seeks to unify disparate voices such as these in one place and so to inform us of the business-side of software development. The author is…

Biography-Memoir

Jew(ish): A Primer, a Memoir, a Manual, a Plea

By Scott J. Pearson | November 8, 2020November 8, 2020 by Scott J. Pearson

The author, a British journalist, was born into a Jewish family yet feels somewhat estranged from his Jewish heritage. He spends much of his career chronicling the alleged anti-Semitism of certain leading members of Parliament. He restlessly ponders the depths of whether being Jewish matters in a society where assimilation is easy and where discrimination is looked down upon. Greene is at his best when he probes into how anti-Semitism can take root on the…

Society Software-Technology

The Tangled Web We Weave: Inside The Shadow System that Shapes the Internet

By Scott J. Pearson | November 1, 2020November 1, 2020 by Scott J. Pearson

First, I must confess my biases. I develop software (browser- and mobile-based) for a living. I have committed my career to bettering the US healthcare system, both research and medical. I understand how the Internet works, in highly technical (and boring) detail. I work in a non-profit research university lab but willingly work with for-profit products. I mention this because Ball’s main audience in this work seems to be the general public and not me.…

History Humanities

The History of Jazz

By Scott J. Pearson | October 29, 2020October 29, 2020 by Scott J. Pearson

As chronicled in this work, jazz is currently experiencing a resurgence as artists all over the world are using its elements to launch new musical sounds. Gioia captures this momentum by updating his celebrated second edition by Oxford University Press into a new third edition. In so doing, he continues to push forward scholarship about jazz while providing a tour de force of its history to interested readers. In nearly 600 packed pages, Gioia analyzes…

Psychology Society

Whistling Vivaldi: How Stereotypes Affect Us and What We Can Do

By Scott J. Pearson | October 20, 2020October 20, 2020 by Scott J. Pearson

This book was written in 2010 and covers how individual psychology affects society concerning race, gender, mental illness, age, and other differences. Its intended audience seems to consist primarily of Americans. However, it seems like the United States has travelled a long journey since 2010, since the beginning of the Obama era. That journey seems to have spanned places both on and off the beaten path towards social equality. After finishing this book, I’m left…

Healthcare History Science

The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic–and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World

By Scott J. Pearson | October 12, 2020October 12, 2020 by Scott J. Pearson

This book, over a decade old, tells the history of one of London’s worst cholera epidemics. It also tells of how John Snow and Henry Whitehead found the cause for the epidemic and transformed how cities managed cholera epidemics and epidemics in general. Knowledge, reason, and data triumphed over ignorance. In his telling, Johnson describes a variety of topics in depth – a telling that informs and inspires modern readers. During the early Victorian era,…

Religion-Philosophy

Lysis by Plato

By Scott J. Pearson | October 11, 2020October 11, 2020 by Scott J. Pearson

Plato’s Dialogues famously represent the earliest serious inquiry written into universal human problems that plague us still. This work is not usually included in those major works though its format is still of a dialogue. Many scholars do not find that this inquiry into friendship deserves a serious place, likely a reflection of the place friendship holds in our culture. Or it could be because this work concludes that friendship is ultimately undefinable, yet people…

Software-Technology

Software Engineering at Google: Lessons Learned from Programming Over Time

By Scott J. Pearson | October 8, 2020October 8, 2020 by Scott J. Pearson

Relatively little is known about how to organize/manage software projects so that they come to a successful, on-time resolution that lasts the test of experience. This is the field of software engineering, and over the last two decades, Google has mastered this art. They share their hard-wrought wisdom in this book. Many developers, like me, wish they could undertake several internships at leading companies like Apple, Google, Microsoft, or Facebook. They could learn the tricks…

Fiction-Stories

The Last Correspondent by Soraya M. Lane

By Scott J. Pearson | October 6, 2020October 6, 2020 by Scott J. Pearson

This tale, told from the perspectives of three female protagonists during World War II, exalts the inner strength of war correspondents/journalists, especially women. In fictionalized form, it tells of the courage it takes to report on war as it really happens. It speaks to the obstacles that must be overcome as well as the emotional toll that reporting can take. The note at the end shows how Lane borrowed from real-life history to inspire her…

Management-Business Science

Diversity in the Workplace: Eye-Opening Interviews to Jumpstart Conversations about Identity, Privilege, and Bias

By Scott J. Pearson | September 30, 2020September 30, 2020 by Scott J. Pearson

Issues exposing unconscious bias have gripped my home country, the United States of America. Books like this help us address these issues in quiet pages before they escalate onto the street. Williams collects interviews from a diverse group of people in the workplace. Together, these can serve as ways for workers to understand their colleagues nearby. She groups these interviews into five parts: Race, women, LGBTQ+, age and ability, and religion and culture. The latter…