Plato’s Dialogues famously represent the earliest serious inquiry written into universal human problems that plague us still. This work is not usually included in those major works though its format is still of a dialogue. Many scholars do not find that this inquiry into friendship deserves a serious place, likely a reflection of the place friendship holds in our culture. Or it could be because this work concludes that friendship is ultimately undefinable, yet people…
Relatively little is known about how to organize/manage software projects so that they come to a successful, on-time resolution that lasts the test of experience. This is the field of software engineering, and over the last two decades, Google has mastered this art. They share their hard-wrought wisdom in this book. Many developers, like me, wish they could undertake several internships at leading companies like Apple, Google, Microsoft, or Facebook. They could learn the tricks…
This tale, told from the perspectives of three female protagonists during World War II, exalts the inner strength of war correspondents/journalists, especially women. In fictionalized form, it tells of the courage it takes to report on war as it really happens. It speaks to the obstacles that must be overcome as well as the emotional toll that reporting can take. The note at the end shows how Lane borrowed from real-life history to inspire her…
Issues exposing unconscious bias have gripped my home country, the United States of America. Books like this help us address these issues in quiet pages before they escalate onto the street. Williams collects interviews from a diverse group of people in the workplace. Together, these can serve as ways for workers to understand their colleagues nearby. She groups these interviews into five parts: Race, women, LGBTQ+, age and ability, and religion and culture. The latter…
The author Ali-Karamali is the daughter of immigrants from India, a Stanford graduate, a corporate lawyer in America, and is trained Islamic Law. A patriotic American, she seeks to describe why modern Islam, in the main, is not a threat to American values. She attempts, and for the most part succeeds, to present Islamic (shariah) law as a peaceful force for universal social justice in world history. Obviously, this is a politically laden topic in…
Eudora Welty, master of the American short story, needs no introduction. Her writing chronicles life in Mississippi before and during the Depression era. This memoir was originally given as three lectures at Harvard University in April, 1983. Together, they constitute a repository of our knowledge of Welty’s upbringing and early adulthood – and importantly, her literary influences. Welty focuses on her family history and varied inspirations for her characters. Through her family and travels, she…
Elizabeth Blackwell, MD, is well known as the first woman doctor in America. Less well known is her sister Emily in becoming a physician. Emily followed Elizabeth’s path through the hardships of initially not receiving a degree despite doing the work. They co-founded a women’s hospital in New York City along with a women’s medical college. Today, around half of all medical students are female. Their careers are the Blackwell sisters’ legacies. Florence Nightingale saw…
Johnny Cash is both a great and an enigma to most music fans: So much public yet so much unknown. His combination of country and folk music with a deeply baritone voice entertained audiences for nearly 50 years. The timelessness of his takes on American life reached for the heavens. Anyone who can elicit praise from Bob Dylan for musical acumen deserves to be remembered. Hilburn unearths Cash’s life in this in-depth biography. Though both…
I did not know what to expect when I picked up this book. I hoped for something thoughtful and self-aware, something becoming of an MD. Fortunately, Hassouri did not disappoint. She shows an incredible, heartfelt openness that transcends her education and professional training. In many ways, this memoir can be used as an exemplar of supportive parenting. Likewise, it can be used as a guide of how to be rigorously honest in one’s writing. She…
Throughout recorded time, humans have wondered about the afterlife and its relationship to this life. Tolstoy takes a spin on that and focuses on the interface between the two. What exactly happens as one approaches death? Few have experienced near-death, but no one has experienced death fully. What is dying like? Tolstoy provides his answer in this short depiction of a Russian lawyer Ivan Ilych. He lives a normal, even boring, life and suddenly gets…