This is a story of the effects of improper incarceration of America’s black men. It is also a love story. The reconciliation of these two themes births a plot with several twists and turns, right down to the Epilogue. Jones provides us with a fresh tale with interesting food for thought. My only additional wish is for more. I wish that there were some other theme that played itself out in these pages and interacted…
Why should one read this almost 900-page biography of this American hero? Douglass penned several autobiographies of his own. Why is this work needed and important enough to be read in its entirety? First, the writing and depth of research are marvelous. Blight considers and presents detailed arguments about the finer points of Douglass’ life. Each chapter is replete with scores of endnotes for further reading. Second, the topic is timely, especially to America. Race…
Any work by William Faulkner is going to be heady, confuse sometimes, and be filled with long, descriptive prose. Light in August, one of Faulkner’s earlier works in Yoknapatawpha county, Mississippi, is no exception. In it, he compares the plight of the American negro in the early-twentieth-century South to the sufferings of Jesus Christ while interweaving several points-of-view into a coherent tale. Joe Christmas (whose initials suggest that he is a Christ figure) is a…
Do conversations ever catch you off-guard? Do you ever feel unprepared for conversations that pop up spontaneously yet seem to matter a lot and to affect dramatically the course of our lives? These situations often occur in families and in businesses, and this book attempts to prepare us better for handling those weighty situations. This book came recommended to me as a part of a book club at my workplace. I can see why. It…
Successfully resolving conflict is one of the most important tasks in management and leadership. Schwarz, a Harvard-educated organizational psychologist, teaches us how to do just this in this well-received book. Its success can be demonstrated by the fact that it now resides in its third edition. (This review only applies to the second edition.) Schwarz tells us how to be not just a facilitator but a skilled facilitator of discussion within organization. He consults with…
This work was published in 2004 – a lifetime ago for the field of software design. It tackles issues relevant in 2004 but are standard practice today. Its basic message – learn not just the software but also the domain – is an important one, but most of the insights has been absorbed into computer-programming praxis over the last fifteen years. Its strength is in delineating how the programmer is to relate to the domain…
For those in the software industry, DevOps is a word we have encountered in the past few years without knowing precisely what it means. It’s generally a movement to break down silos in between Development teams and Operations teams within organizations – all with an eye to enhance the business. In this work, Viktor Farcic interviews a bunch of people with the primary question, “What is DevOps?” They all center around this same definition. To…
Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales is a classic that most high schoolers read excerpts from in high school. Burton Raffel here offers a new, full-length translation. The translation mostly succeeds (at least in oral format) as it conveys the sense of the work fairly well. While reading, it struck me how essentially medieval Chaucer’s setting is. While he is often talked about as one standing at the cusp of an enlightened England, his roots are thoroughly planted…
How does marketing work in an era where things go viral on the Internet and social media dominates our national discourse? Jonah Berger, a professor at the Wharton School of Business, has an understanding of how it can work and a philosophy of how you can use it to promote your work. Using terms like “social currency” and established concepts like social status, he describes how online marketing can work in a way that is…
Have you ever not had the right words to approach a situation at work? This work, from the Canadian Institute of Cultural Affairs, explains open-ended ways to approach conversations at work. It does so in a way such that the inquirer acknowledges her/his ignorance with a situation. This essentially post-industrial and postmodern approach allows teams of knowledge workers to appreciate everyone’s wisdom as they come to a consensus. This book is divided into two parts:…