memoir – Scott J. Pearson’s Book Review

My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey

By Scott J. Pearson | September 5, 2026September 5, 2026 by Scott J. Pearson

What is it like to go through a stroke? Additionally, what’s it like to observe your own stroke if you’re an elite brain scientist? Those two storylines are what Jill Bolte Taylor offers in this short memoir. For those not yet exposed to the internals of how the brain works, it offers an accessible tutorial. Many readers are not accustomed to understanding how different regions of the brain function together to provide a coherent experience…

Biography-Memoir Software-Technology

Source Code: My Beginnings by Bill Gates

By Scott J. Pearson | May 16, 2026May 16, 2026 by Scott J. Pearson

Among computer programmers, Bill Gates is still a controversial figure for his business practices. Many coders love writing code and despise how business folk interfere with our products. Of course, some of that view neglects how business folk pay our bills, too. Bill Gates, more than anyone else, deserves credit for turning writing code into a profession with a paycheck. This memoir unlocks his personality which guided the founding of Microsoft. Well-known to us programmers…

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…

Biography-Memoir

10 Little Rules for a Double-Butted Adventure

By Scott J. Pearson | February 7, 2025February 7, 2025 by Scott J. Pearson

A lot of people live under the rubric that life conditions us and forms us by teaching us fixed truths about ourselves. However, recent scientific discoveries have taught us that the brain continues to adapt (i.e., learn and re-form) throughout one’s entire life – a property called neuroplasticity. Therefore, our spiritual lives and self-image can grow so long as we live. Author Teri Brown and her new husband Bruce discovered this life principle as they…

Biography-Memoir Religion-Philosophy

Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner & Saint

By Scott J. Pearson | October 27, 2024October 27, 2024 by Scott J. Pearson

Because of its followers, Christianity has gotten a bad wrap. Perhaps that’s just in recent years, but I know enough to suspect that it’s always been so. To put people in the pews, many pastors have appealed to minor parts of the Bible while omitting parts that would make its followers uncomfortable. Like the fact that Jesus hung out with prostitutes. Or that God’s loving forgiveness of humanity is absolute. Or that the first Christian…

Biography-Memoir Leadership Science

Breaking Through: My Life in Science

By Scott J. Pearson | August 30, 2024September 24, 2024 by Scott J. Pearson

First, who is Katalin Karikó? She is the primary scientist who showed how mRNA can be synthesized to create a vaccine. Why is that important? This technology enabled the COVID19 vaccines, which recently carried the world out of a pandemic. So Karikó’s impact and legacy are tremendous. What’s more is that she has a meaningful, inspiring life story that overcame the odds both in her native Hungary and in the halls of academe in America’s…

Biography-Memoir Science

Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! Adventures of a Curious Character

By Scott J. Pearson | May 7, 2024May 7, 2024 by Scott J. Pearson

Dick Feynman was a Nobel laureate and professor of theoretical physics at Cornell and Cal Tech. Like many accomplished people, he had a unique reputation and a magnanimous spirit. In the classroom, his students revered him for his interesting stories. This memoir, written towards the end of his life, records his reflections on his life with the same zeal that won his students’ hearts. To be frank, some of his stories tend towards the anti-feminist…

Biography-Memoir Writing-Communication

The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr

By Scott J. Pearson | November 25, 2023November 25, 2023 by Scott J. Pearson

Memoir has become a popular field in recent decades. The novitiate often thinks that anyone can write about their own life. The experienced one knows that this task is actually incredibly hard, both in penning the work and in emotionally admitting truth to yourself. Bestselling memoir author and writing professor Mary Karr writes about values and practices she finds helpful. Importantly, she cites other authors alongside her own experience to ground her work not just…

Biography-Memoir Family Psychology

Words with My Father: A Bipolar Journey Through Turbulent Times

By Scott J. Pearson | October 26, 2023October 26, 2023 by Scott J. Pearson

Those of us with bipolar disorder understand firsthand the upheavals this mental illness can exert on a life. Before diagnosis, moodiness can lead to a lack of linearity in life. Diagnosis typically only comes after a crisis. Self-awareness can grow after diagnosis, but medications and therapy cannot fully “cure” this disease. Many stories in this genre focus on hardships and a general lack of life control – not exactly fodder for inspiration. Into this millieu,…

Writing-Communication

To Show & To Tell: The Craft of Literary Nonfiction

By Scott J. Pearson | October 20, 2023October 20, 2023 by Scott J. Pearson

Writing about yourself seems like an incredibly easy task at first. Doing so in a way that captures the attention of an audience, however, is in truth quite difficult. Augustine of Hippo wrote his psychologically probing Confessions at the end of the fourth century CE and opened up the world of conveying a message with one’s life story. Ambitious authors have been doing so ever since, and the rate of personal nonfiction writing is only…