Chronicles, Volume One by Bob Dylan My rating: 0 of 5 stars Bob Dylan is perhaps the best popular American songwriter/poet in the past century. Dylan, as he admits in this memoir/autobiography, was not the best student in high school, but he taught himself how to write by imitating the lyrical and musical work of the best folk artists of the day. Although Dylan is known for his social conscience, in this work, he eschews…
Army of None: Autonomous Weapons and the Future of War by Paul Scharre My rating: 4 of 5 stars This book, written by a non-technologist with extensive military experience, describes the intersection of artificial intelligence with United States military affairs. It uses terms like “autonomy” and “semi-autonomy” extensively. Autonomous weapons are weapons that can identify their own targets. Semi-autonomous weapons can track pre-identified targets (that is, targets previously identified by humans). Semi-autonomous weapons are currently…
Theories of Career Development by Samuel H. Osipow My rating: 3 of 5 stars This textbook provides a summary of the field of career development theories in psychological and occupational practice. I read it because I am working with a career-development group in my work, and I wanted a summary of where the field has been in the past. This book’s primary audience is twofold: career counselors and researchers. As such, it summarizes the progression…
Foundation by Isaac Asimov My rating: 3 of 5 stars Asimov is obviously quite brilliant. His books took a “quantum leap” forward in the integration of science and literature in the 1950s. His success can be seen in the fact that his books do not seem all that impressive today. Indeed, stories about nuclear power, holograms, and power through knowledge are normal today – thanks in no small part to books like the Foundation. Like…
Platform: The Art and Science of Personal Branding by Cynthia Johnson My rating: 4 of 5 stars Johnson claims expertise in the field of digital marketing. Working in the world of software and playing in the world of writing, I can benefit from learning how to leverage the digital world in better selling myself and my work. This book certainly taught me a few things. For one, Johnson is great at analyzing how to take…
James Madison and the Making of America by Kevin R.C. Gutzman My rating: 4 of 5 stars James Madison was a genius. He was the main crafter of the United States Constitution and its main defender/expositor in the Federalist Papers. He saw human and governmental problems more deeply than anyone else in his era. We have him to thank for our world’s embrace of democracy and self-government. Nonetheless, he might not succeed as a politician…
You Are A Writer by Jeff Goins My rating: 0 of 5 stars This book is a short introduction into the mindset and practices that writers today can succeed with. It places a principle that writers are mainly designed to write. Nonetheless, there are also other marketing, technology, and networking skills that can help writers, like me, to succeed financially in their ventures. Goins takes the position opposite of Hemingway and stereotype that writers ought…
A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway My rating: 0 of 5 stars This memoir, published posthumously, covers Hemingway’s early days in Paris, right after he decided to leave journalism to become a writer of fiction. He was married, a father, constantly writing, friends with some very intelligent and very successful writers (Gertrude Stein and Scott Fitzgerald), and – to use his words – “very poor and very happy.” In this series of short essays, he…
I, Robot by Isaac Asimov My rating: 0 of 5 stars This book from the 1950s is one of the most respected works of science fiction in the English language. It tells the story of how “robots” (what we’d probably now call computers and artificial intelligence) end up taking over the world. Fortunately, Asimov’s dystopian tale has ended up not becoming true – in the timespans described by the book, at least. Computers are often…
Poems on Slavery. by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow My rating: 4 of 5 stars This collection, published in 1842, vividly describes the predicament of slavery. It makes a case of natural philosophy of why slavery is immoral. Works like Longfellow’s began to sway the northern U.S. towards the the emancipation of slaves and the abolition of slavery (through the bloody carnage of the Civil War, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, and the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution). What…