Scott J. Pearson’s Book Review

Servant Leadership: A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power & Greatness

By Scott J. Pearson | November 15, 2025November 15, 2025 by Scott J. Pearson

When observing the world, many see that true leadership does not reflect positions of power; rather, it reflects a quality of personal character. Robert Greenleaf looked at 1970s America and the 1970s world and observed a lack of leadership. We had educated talent out the wazoo, but lacked people able to usher in lasting, good change. He wrote this book to cultivate such leadership qualities in its readers. Leadership, to him, was of a servant’s…

Simply Managing: What Managers Do- and Can Do Better

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

Most contemporary management books from scholars tend to center on a central “secret of management” upon which an entire philosophy is built. Henry Mintzberg instead flips the idea on its head and observed dozens of managers from various industries in the field. Then he tried to describe what they were doing empirically. Then he made that into a framework. In this bottom-up approach, he observed managers doing all sorts of things throughout a day, without…

Biography-Memoir Religion-Philosophy

A Summer with Pascal

By Scott J. Pearson | November 10, 2025November 10, 2025 by Scott J. Pearson

I’m a huge fan of French polymath Blaise Pascal simply because he provokes thought. Besides his scientific and mathematical contributions, he died before forming his greatest philosophical work into a coherent defense of the plausibleness of Christianity. Instead, they were left as a series of fragments for us to ponder in the following centuries. Simply titled Pensées (or “thoughts”), they give us insight into the spiritual life of one of history’s greatest scientific geniuses. This…

Artificial Intelligence Science

AI for Scientific Discovery: Proceedings of a Workshop by the National Academies

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

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering & Medicine guide America’s federal research policies based on identifying challenges in the field. This 2024 workshop looked at opportunities within scientific research for artificial intelligence (AI) to contribute. It was led by national experts discussing use cases in their research and attempted to generalize based on those experiences. Most use cases were from American-based science, but AI in Africa was a recurring theme. Overall, the abundance of unique…

Artificial Intelligence Software-Technology

AI Engineering: Building Applications with Foundation Models

By Scott J. Pearson | November 4, 2025November 8, 2025 by Scott J. Pearson

It’s always daunting to pick up a technical book that’s over 500 pages long or 21 hours long. However, this book did not disappoint. Not every section, of course, addressed my particular needs. However, the entire treatise was clearly communicated with a broader technical audience in mind. That should be no surprise because Chip Huyen, besides being an AI expert, taught graduate school classes in AI at Stanford and writes science fiction as a side…

Leadership Management-Business

Fearless Change: Patterns for Introducing New Ideas

By Scott J. Pearson | October 30, 2025October 30, 2025 by Scott J. Pearson

I work in software research, so much of my professional life centers around introducing ideas into others’ organizations. I am always trying to anticipate roadblocks that they might have. While my own work environment is relatively open to change and dialogue, not everyone has that kind of workplace. The authors share dozens of strategies to help regular individuals lead change in their organizations. Two stipulations are clear for this book’s audience: Their organization must be…

Fiction-Stories

The Land of Sweet Forever: Stories & Essays by Harper Lee

By Scott J. Pearson | October 26, 2025October 27, 2025 by Scott J. Pearson

Most Americans have read Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird at some time throughout our lives. It’s the clearest account of Jim Crow’s effects on Southern American culture and of the power of a few upright people to fix it. Lee’s Alabama roots are well known, but she actually wrote the classic in New York City. Beforehand, she wrote a series of short stories with themes that forecast her great accomplishment. Posthumously, those stories have…

Software-Technology

Pair Programming Illuminated

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

Pair programming is a practice in software development whereby two programmers write code together. I’ve studied it from afar until recently. What happened is a colleague asked me to pair program with him. As his program manager from a coding background, we’ve been working with relative success and happiness for several months. I liked the process so much that I wanted to take a deep dive to explore problem areas and tricks of the trade…

HIV/AIDS Society

To Make the Wounded Whole: The African American Struggle Against HIV/AIDS

By Scott J. Pearson | October 21, 2025October 21, 2025 by Scott J. Pearson

To date, blacks in America continue to suffer disproportionately in proportion from HIV infections. HIV has always preyed most on those marginalized from society, and American blacks are included in that recipe. Although many associate HIV as a gay man’s disease, black women have come to suffer more in recent years. How are we to know and understand these stories? Dan Royles shares it through seven distinct angles. The perspectives include that of black sexuality…

Biography-Memoir Management-Business

Principles: Life & Work by Ray Dalio

By Scott J. Pearson | October 18, 2025October 18, 2025 by Scott J. Pearson

Ray Dalio became famous through founding and building his company Bridgewater Associates into an economic powerhouse over decades. Of course, many became interested in how he did it. This book narrates his personal story, but it does more. He ran his company through a series of principles as if it were a machine he and his associates built. This book also chronicles those principles at length to communicate Dalio’s and Bridgewater’s vision of how a…