T.S. Eliot was one of the great poets in the English language during the twentieth century. He grew up in St. Louis and after graduating from college, moved to England. He loved his new country so much that he eventually became a subject of the English king. He wrote noted poems and plays over his lifespan. He also worked as a banker and as an editor for a publishing firm. The author of this biography…
In this book, the author Kahneman shares with us his essential philosophical insights which propelled him to a Nobel Prize. He describes the foundation in neuroscience and psychology which changed his view of how we ascertain something’s value to us. This changed the way that many economists see how the public chooses one choice over another. Traditional economic theory places a dollar value on an economic choice. So for instance, would you rather have $45…
The greatest work of verse by the great American/English poet T.S. Eliot was not in a poem (though some readers of The Waste Land might disagree). It is surely Murder in the Cathedral. In a short play, Eliot shows his mastery of the British form of Church and State. In so doing, he sends a message that those who do not practice justice shall some day receive vengeance. The story of the 12th-century Archbishop of…
I first read these essays while a senior at college. Now, about twenty years later, I reread them in a study on the English poet TS Eliot. Eliot uses language very carefully, as any poet should, but he is a poet approaching the world of an anthropologist. Further, he writes in an era (pre- and post-World-War-II) in which European culture was pulled apart at the seams and remade again. Eliot himself is an American transplant…
This work, written about four decades ago, tells the true tale of how a team of computer engineers built a new computer. In an era contemporaneous to Apple Computer’s founding, Data General computers built affordable new computers for the masses. A group of engineers built a new circuit board that eventually pushed itself to the forefront of the market. This book is about engineers and the culture of engineering more than anything else. It’s about…
This work is a sequel to Kim’s other novel The Phoenix Project. Although the books fit together, they need not be read together. In other words, both books are self-standing. This work – essentially about dealing with the software industry in an age of constant change – does an even better job than The Phoenix Project at highlighting how businesses can adapt to and thrive in the digital era. The book is set in an…
With the advent of the Internet and social media, word-of-mouth marketing has come into its own. Word of mouth was always a potent force offline, but online, its force has only amplified. The trouble, I find, is the excess noise. Yes, everybody’s doing it, and your product’s survival is at stake. What can make your product thrive via word of mouth? Baer and Lemin offer some answers with their concept of Talk Triggers. Talk Triggers…
O’Connor wrote about the strange world she found herself living within in twentieth-century rural Georgia. Her characters were exceedingly strange, even grotesque. However, as her stories unfolded, the reader got inside these characters’ world-views. Indeed, they became relatable and empathy for their condition grows. Wise Blood is no exception for this trend. This work is O’Connor’s first great work. She tells the story of the relationships between several characters who, to say the least, are…
116 Books Read; 38,852 Pages ReadThis year, I set a goal for myself to read and review 100 books. That averages to about 2 per week. My average book size lies between 300 and 400 pages, so I had to read about 700 pages a week. I read more on Saturdays and Sundays than Monday through Friday. I don’t plan on keeping up this intense schedule down the road. (There is much more to life…
This work, written while Southern blacks were still oppressed by Jim Crow, chronicles what it was like to come of age in mid-twentieth-century America as a black man. The title is apt: The main character, whose name is never disclosed by the author, feels as though he is invisible to the world. This is true not only in the American South but also in the American North. Eventually, he learns to embrace this invisibility and…