Scott J. Pearson’s Book Review

How to Break Web Software: Functional & Security Testing of Web Applications & Web Services

By Scott J. Pearson | March 29, 2025March 28, 2025 by Scott J. Pearson

This almost 20-year-old book describes the then-most common weaknesses of Internet software. Although some of the referenced technologies are outdated, a majority of the principles are still relevant in 2025. SQL injection, cross-site scripting, and the need to sanitize input parameters remain hot issues in web security for developers. Other items bring eye rolls to developers who have been around the bush – Internet Explorer, to name one. Although this book isn’t going to suddenly…

Organizational Culture & Leadership, 5th Edition

By Scott J. Pearson | March 28, 2025March 28, 2025 by Scott J. Pearson

“Culture” has become a trendy word in today’s business talk. Many popular books espouse it as a cure-all to every organizational malady. Much hype certainly permeates those book, but Edgar Schein’s work cuts through the hype with an academic lens. Known as the father of the field of organizational culture, Schein describes his early explorations about it with the now-defunct DEC and how his ideas expanded with later work. As a result, this 5th edition…

Healthcare History Science

Making Medical Doctors: Science & Medicine at Vanderbilt since Flexner

By Scott J. Pearson | March 25, 2025March 25, 2025 by Scott J. Pearson

This book is nearly forty years old, and like any forty-year-old history, it deserves an update. But like any good forty-year-old history, the stories that are told still transmit knowledge and wisdom. As a Vanderbilt Medical Center employee, I found the history of the medical center’s refounding in 1925 enlightening as it set a direction that continues to this day. Before the era of government-funded biomedical research, most research was funded by private endowments from…

Software-Technology

Fundamentals of Software Architecture: An Engineering Approach

By Scott J. Pearson | March 20, 2025March 20, 2025 by Scott J. Pearson

Software architects guide development teams during projects from design to completion. It’s a notoriously nebulous field where the only goal is to build successful software… whatever that means and whatever that takes. Like any ill-defined field, getting from point A to point B requires skill and wisdom. That skill and wisdom evolves over time as the field evolves. Mark Richards and Neal Ford attempt to provide a guide to being a software architect without tying…

Society

A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf

By Scott J. Pearson | March 15, 2025March 20, 2025 by Scott J. Pearson

Much as it’s hard to critique a William Shakespeare or a Mark Twain, it’s hard to critique Virginia Woolf. She pioneered women’s literature in the early twentieth century and helped lay its foundation for an incredibly successful, bustling marketplace in today’s world. Despite nagging misogyny, women writers receive deserved respect because of Woolf’s proposals to let women’s genius work. So in one sense, this book offers a distilled, timeless essay worthy of historical study for…

Leadership Management-Business Program Management

Designing Matrix Organizations That Actually Work: How IBM, Procter & Gamble, and Others Design for Success

By Scott J. Pearson | March 12, 2025March 12, 2025 by Scott J. Pearson

I work in software at a research lab in an academic medical center. We produce new software to address large problems, locally and globally. Although our organization’s formal structure is hierarchical, our informal structure very much resembles a matrix – not uncommon in research labs. In business, a matrix organization occurs when people report to more than one manager. In my work, most teams I’m near are cross-functional. I recently moved from a developer role…

Psychology

Autonomy & Rigid Character

By Scott J. Pearson | March 8, 2025March 8, 2025 by Scott J. Pearson

Rigid thinking is a huge problem in contemporary America. Politically, inflexibility and a lack of dialogue are holding democracy back. Socially, many of us are so stretched that we are unable to entertain new ideas. When rigid, we become defensive and dug in. We are unwilling to admit when we’re wrong. Relationships can decay. At its worst, these behaviors snowball into psychopathologies like compulsions, obsessions, paranoia, and even schizophrenia. Although David Shapiro’s book was written…

Society

The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity & Love

By Scott J. Pearson | March 5, 2025March 5, 2025 by Scott J. Pearson

bell hooks is a well-known black feminist author. She notes that dealing with the fundamental feminist problem of patriarchy requires helping men find better ways through life. She also notes that many men are themselves hurt by patriarchy. Men are often held back from their best lives because of shortsighted stereotypes of masculinity. In this book, she offers her reflections on how to help men heal from a culture of domineering and to enhance their…

Software-Technology

Writing Effective Use Cases

By Scott J. Pearson | March 3, 2025March 3, 2025 by Scott J. Pearson

The first thing I noticed is that this book is almost 25 years old. That’s an eternity in computer science, especially in a non-mathematical subject. It was written under the “waterfall” paradigm of software development, before agile took over most of the software engineering world. Instead of a page or two, waterfall specifications could require a binder of dozens, if not hundreds, of pages. This book describes “use cases” instead of the “user stories” that…

Society

Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics

By Scott J. Pearson | March 2, 2025March 1, 2025 by Scott J. Pearson

I heard of bell hooks years ago, but have put off reading her for some time. I recently began to work alongside a mostly female team at my job, so I’m reading several feminist texts to appreciate their life and work experiences better. After reading this short work, I wish I would have read her sooner because her perspective was so healing! I liked it so much that I immediately purchased another book of hers,…