When it comes to pandemics – the worst version of an epidemic – the flu virus (influenza) still strikes the most fear in officials of public health. It is highly contagious and leaves us with few options to counteract. The year 1918 had the worst attack of the flu worldwide. In this book, Barry traces the history of what happened in that year and extracts lessons for us to follow in our age. The 1918…
I often use slow times of the year to read psychologically oriented books that apply to my life. This Christmas, I picked up this book that deals with leadership and being up-front with emotions in the workplace. This book’s author served in the military before getting a PhD in sociology. Her topic of interest is vulnerability as a leadership trait. The influx of women into the American workplace has changed workplace dynamics. This book –…
Jill Ker Conway has left us with quite a trilogy of autobiographies. In so doing, she has divided her life into thirds – growing up on the Australian outback, coming of age in North-American academe, and gaining a feminist voice as president of the elite Smith College. This work examines her experiences at Smith College. She poured her soul into learning to articulate an authentically feminine institutional voice in a world of coeducation. Instead of…
I picked up this highly regarded work because I like books that put an interesting spin on meaning-of-life issues and religion in general. I had heard that this book was ranked as one of the greatest 100 books written in English in the twentieth century. It did not disappoint. The author Greene was a Englishman who travelled in Mexico – the setting of this novel. He wrote about a “whisky priest” – an alcoholic. The…
Colin Ware directs a Data Visualization Research Lab at the University of New Hampshire. His education is broad and interesting: He holds degrees both in computer science and the psychology of perception. He is a (the?) leading expert on integrating neuroscience and psychology with computer graphics. Most computer graphics books teach how to make things that look cool. This book takes a different tact and discusses why things look cool in terms of the brain’s…
Few things seem further from North America than Australia. Not only is it half-a-world away, but the culture varies dramatically. Conway grew up in the back-country of Australia where she often did not regularly see other families and neighbors were tens-of-miles away. That simple start, told as well as it is in this book, sparks the reader’s interest. The fact that she ended up at Harvard by the end of the book should pique even…
While alive, Zinsser was our era’s guru on writing. Besides bestselling On Writing Well, he left us with a cadre of lesser-known works on how to communicate effectively. This work chronicles how to write educational pieces and is replete with examples from a variety of fields, ranging from music to geology and from physics to art. Zinsser’s authority is relatively unquestioned in the popular sphere. I do question whether his writing principles are indeed universal,…
Jill Ker Conway, the first female Vice President of a Canadian university, details her journey from her arrival in Boston as a Fulbright Scholar to her acceptance of the role of president of Smith College. In this tale, she serves as an inspirational figure not just to women but to all with great challenges to overcome. Conway was the daughter of a determined yet domineering mother in the Australian outback. As such, her flight to…
Alain Locke is a name that even most educated African Americans don’t know. In the early twentieth century, he was the first African American Rhodes Scholar selected to study at Oxford. He pursued a career as a philosopher, received a PhD from Harvard, and taught at Howard University, the premier black institution in America. Most importantly, he helped spark the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and onward. He birthed the concept of the New Negro…
Professor Gates is perhaps best known to the American people for being invited by President Obama to the “beer summit” on the White House lawn. More notably, he is an esteemed professor at Harvard and author of many works of literature. This work is his most accessible and, perhaps, his most entertaining. Simply, this work memorializes his childhood in West Virginia as his small hometown overcame segregation. Gates’ telling is memorable for its wittiness and…