Scott J. Pearson’s Book Review

Interviewing & Selecting High Performers: Every Manager’s Guide to Effective Interviewing Techniques

By Scott J. Pearson | January 4, 2025January 4, 2025 by Scott J. Pearson

This book was recommended to me as a solid work about the fundamentals of the hiring process. It delivered what was promised. It’s not a book focused on a recent management trend, but instead is a work built upon classical psychology – the art of reading people quickly and effectively. It attempts to minimize the amount of bias that interviewers inevitably put into an interview and maximize the observed items that interviewers extract from an…

Meharry Medical College

By Scott J. Pearson | January 1, 2025January 1, 2025 by Scott J. Pearson

Soon after Emancipation, large efforts were required to meet the needs of formerly enslaved people. A medical college was founded in Nashville as a department of Central Tennessee College to train black doctors to address the needs of the underserved blacks across the country. Now called Meharry Medical College almost 150 years later, the school continues to educate healthcare professionals and advance “the worship of God through service to man.” This book chronicles its history…

Biography-Memoir Politics

The Art of Power: My Story as America’s First Woman Speaker of the House

By Scott J. Pearson | December 31, 2024December 31, 2024 by Scott J. Pearson

Social media has exposed what many women knew implicitly: Broad misogyny in American society is real… especially when a woman has a platform or power. Nancy Pelosi, the first woman Speaker of the US House of Representatives, has been a target for decades. Because she comes from a progressive district in San Francisco, she’s labeled as out of touch with most Americans. Her deep, religious faith rarely receives media airing. In this memoir, she demonstrates…

Presentation Visualization

Beautiful Evidence by Edward Tufte

By Scott J. Pearson | December 30, 2024December 30, 2024 by Scott J. Pearson

Edward Tufte’s books on data visualization are nothing short of legend among us information geeks. A political scientist by training, he demonstrates how well-conceived visualizations can effectively communicate insights and how shortcomings can create catastrophes. He continues his famous series on visual imagination with this book on the intersection of data and art. He shows how displays of evidence can move readers much like art and how poorly constructed displays can inhibit good judgment. Tufte’s…

Presentation

Just My Type: A Book About Fonts

By Scott J. Pearson | December 22, 2024December 22, 2024 by Scott J. Pearson

Most of us became aware of fonts first through using the computer. Open up any word processing program, and you have dozens of options available for self-expression. Before personal computing, Microsoft Windows, and Apple computers, most of us had little clue about the world of fonts. We knew text presents itself differently in, say, movies, newspapers, and magazines. Recently, ubiquitous computing – and especially the Internet – have made different type faces a pervasive part…

History

Somewhere Toward Freedom: Sherman’s March & the Story of America’s Largest Emancipation

By Scott J. Pearson | December 18, 2024December 18, 2024 by Scott J. Pearson

In the American Civil War, General Tecumseh Sherman’s march through the South is nothing short of legendary. Growing up in South Carolina, I heard about and witnessed the effects of how he set the secessionist state ablaze in retribution. The fall of Atlanta also carries a special place in history: It was a major victory on Lincoln’s resume before the midterm elections, and Gone with the Wind forever dramatized (albeit in a biased manner) how…

HIV/AIDS Religion-Philosophy Society

Hidden Mercy: AIDS, Catholics & the Untold Stories of Compassion in the Face of Fear

By Scott J. Pearson | December 16, 2024December 16, 2024 by Scott J. Pearson

American religion has bifurcated along ideological lines in recent decades. Some voices trumpet a moralistic approach while others trumpet a compassion-driven approach. Some of the early splitting can be observed in the story of how the church treated those afflicted by AIDS in the 1980s. Moralistic voices today still seem to hold the loudest places in the Christian church, but compassionate approaches can be seen everywhere. Journalist Michael O’Loughlin records some of those stories before…

Religion-Philosophy Society

Revolutionary Nonviolence: Organizing for Freedom by James M. Lawson, Jr.

By Scott J. Pearson | December 11, 2024December 11, 2024 by Scott J. Pearson

In hindsight, concepts about nonviolence indeed have proven the most revolutionary ideas from the twentieth century. The century itself was marred by mass violence – two World Wars, communist revolutions, the invention of the atomic bomb, and a Cold War threatening imminent destruction. Yet nonviolence exploited its foothold. Mahatma Ghandi used nonviolence to lead India to independence from the British Empire. Polish protestors used nonviolence to usher in the fall of communism. And civil-rights protestors…

Biography-Memoir History

The Last Founding Father: James Monroe & a Nation’s Call to Greatness

By Scott J. Pearson | December 10, 2024December 10, 2024 by Scott J. Pearson

Virginians seem to dominate the early pantheon of American presidents. Four of the first five presidents were Virginians by birth. The last of these four – and the last president from the generation of founding fathers – is James Monroe. Most American high school students learn to associate his name with the “Monroe Doctrine” – the contention that Europe should not further colonize the Americas. While this position is perhaps his most lasting legacy, this…