Scott J. Pearson’s Book Review

The Storyteller’s Secret: From TED Speakers to Business Leaders, Why Some Ideas Catch on and Others Don’t

By Scott J. Pearson | July 8, 2018 by Scott J. Pearson

by Carmine Gallo(c) 2016. Having spent five years in medical school, I tend to see the world through data – through facts and figures and not stories. My reading this book proves that I am still interested in the power of stories. Gallo uncorks the power of a narrative through a bunch of stories (some religious, some business-oriented, some humanitarian, all moving). Each chapter provides a report of one person’s life experiences. Skillfully, Gallo starts…

Presentation

TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking

By Scott J. Pearson | June 23, 2018 by Scott J. Pearson

The Official TED Guide to Public Speakingby Chris Anderson I grew up paying attention to my school teachers and to Southern Baptist preachers. There was a gap in what I heard. I heard lots of reason-based presentations at school. I learned in detail how the world worked (nature and humanity). I learned to think, to question, and to present myself as a reasonable human being. However, at church, I learned something different. I learned the…

Doing the Right Things Right

By Scott J. Pearson | June 19, 2018September 24, 2024 by Scott J. Pearson

by Laura Slack AudiobookThis book’s title borrows from Peter Drucker’s famous distinction that management is doing things right and leadership is doing the right things. In the introduction, Slack says that she aspires to update Drucker’s work on the executive worker for the Internet age. She does just that, incorporating advice for new situations throughout her work while remaining true to Drucker’s principles. That being said, she is no Drucker. Drucker’s strength is focusing on…

Biography-Memoir Science

Isaac Newton

By Scott J. Pearson | June 16, 2018 by Scott J. Pearson

by James GleickCopyright 2003 Sir Isaac Newton ranks among history’s greatest geniuses. For inventing modern physics. For overturning Aristotle’s hegemony upon thought. For co-inventing calculus (as an introduction to physics). For being more into theology and alchemy than physics. His treasure-trove of personal writings – kept hidden until near the middle of the twentieth century – show this man to be, like Luther before him, the last of the great medievalists who birthed the movement…

Biography-Memoir Science

Galileo

By Scott J. Pearson | June 12, 2018 by Scott J. Pearson

by Bertolt BrechtCopyright 1966 This book, as the introduction delineates, was originally written in Fascist Germany whose attitude towards science and knowledge in general paralleled the ignorance of the Papacy in Galileo’s era. Then in a post-atomic-bomb world with two superpowers on the brink, Brecht adapted this play into a new set of concerns about the “fruit” of knowledge. As such, in our era of Trumpian ignorance and North Korean nuclear ambition (two parties who…

Books Science Visualization

Resources to Explore

By Scott J. Pearson | June 11, 2018 by Scott J. Pearson

Leadership Management-Business

Out of the Crisis

By Scott J. Pearson | June 11, 2018September 24, 2024 by Scott J. Pearson

by W. Edwards DemingCopyright 1982. Deming’s Fourteen Points Create constancy of purpose toward improvement of product and service, with the aim to become competitive and to stay in business, and to provide jobs. Adopt the new philosophy. We are in a new economic age. Western management must awaken to the challenge, must learn their responsibilities, and take on leadership for change. Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality. Eliminate the need for inspection on a mass basis…

Politics

The Age of Reason

By Scott J. Pearson | June 9, 2018 by Scott J. Pearson

by Thomas PaineOriginally published 1794 in the setting of the French Revolution. Thomas Paine, the author of the famed Common Sense in 1776, extends his critique of Western culture from government to religion in this treatise. In it, he appeals for Deism based upon Nature instead of a religion based upon revelation. Like his contention that originally humans were free without a monarchy, he contends that humans originally had no Word of God and thus relied…

Science

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

By Scott J. Pearson | June 7, 2018 by Scott J. Pearson

by Thomas S. KuhnThird EditionCopyright 1962, 1970, 1996. This is a book that I’ve wanted to read ever since college. I was reading it when I started medical school, but studies soon overtook me. It’s a history of science. Rather, it’s a philosophical theory on how science progresses through history. From Newton and chemistry to Darwin and quantum mechanics, it tells the story of how science moves forward. This progress is, as Kuhn tells it,…