Eugene's bookshelf: all en-US Tue, 28 Jan 2020 17:06:43 -0800 60 Eugene's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[Madeleine's World: A Child's Journey from Birth to Age Three]]> 2595804 262 Brian Hall 0395870593 Eugene 5 3.72 1997 Madeleine's World: A Child's Journey from Birth to Age Three
author: Brian Hall
name: Eugene
average rating: 3.72
book published: 1997
rating: 5
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date added: 2020/01/28
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days]]> 25814544
The startups that Google Ventures invest in face big questions every day: Where’s the most important place to focus your effort, and how do you start? What will your ideas look like in real life? How many meetings and discussions does it take before you can be sure you have the right solution to a problem? Business owners and investors want their companies and the people who lead them to be equipped to answer these questions—and quickly. And now there’s a sure-fire way to solve their problems and test solutions: the sprint.

While working at Google, designer Jake Knapp created a unique problem-solving method that he coined a “design sprint”—a five-day process to help companies answer crucial questions. His ‘sprints� were used on everything from Google Search to Chrome to Google X. When he moved to Google Ventures, he joined Braden Kowitz and John Zeratsky, both designers and partners there who worked on products like YouTube and Gmail. Together Knapp, Zeratsky, and Kowitz have run over 100 sprints with their portfolio companies. They’ve seen firsthand how sprints can overcome challenges in all kinds of companies: healthcare, fitness, finance, retailers, and more.

A practical guide to answering business questions, Sprint is a book for groups of any size, from small startups to Fortune 100s, from teachers to non-profits. It’s for anyone with a big opportunity, problem, or idea who needs to get answers today.]]> 274 Jake Knapp Eugene 0 to-read 4.18 2016 Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days
author: Jake Knapp
name: Eugene
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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date added: 2016/12/22
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Algorithm Design Manual 425208 486 Steven S. Skiena 0387948600 Eugene 0 to-read 4.31 1997 The Algorithm Design Manual
author: Steven S. Skiena
name: Eugene
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1997
rating: 0
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date added: 2016/11/29
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Martian 18007564
Now, he’s sure he’ll be the first person to die there.

After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he’s alive—and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive.

Chances are, though, he won’t have time to starve to death. The damaged machinery, unforgiving environment, or plain-old “human error� are much more likely to kill him first.

But Mark isn’t ready to give up yet. Drawing on his ingenuity, his engineering skills � and a relentless, dogged refusal to quit � he steadfastly confronts one seemingly insurmountable obstacle after the next. Will his resourcefulness be enough to overcome the impossible odds against him?

]]> 384 Andy Weir 0804139024 Eugene 0 to-read 4.41 2011 The Martian
author: Andy Weir
name: Eugene
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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date added: 2016/11/28
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Confessions of an Economic Hitman]]> 514964
Perkins writes that his economic projections cooked the books Enron-style to convince foreign governments to accept billions of dollars of loans from the World Bank and other institutions to build dams, airports, electric grids, and other infrastructure he knew they couldn't afford. The loans were given on condition that construction and engineering contracts went to U.S. companies. Often, the money would simply be transferred from one bank account in Washington, D.C., to another one in New York or San Francisco. The deals were smoothed over with bribes for foreign officials, but it was the taxpayers in the foreign countries who had to pay back the loans. When their governments couldn't do so, as was often the case, the U.S. or its henchmen at the World Bank or International Monetary Fund would step in and essentially place the country in trusteeship, dictating everything from its spending budget to security agreements and even its United Nations votes. It was, Perkins writes, a clever way for the U.S. to expand its "empire" at the expense of Third World citizens.]]> 303 John Perkins Eugene 0 to-read 3.89 2004 Confessions of an Economic Hitman
author: John Perkins
name: Eugene
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2004
rating: 0
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date added: 2016/11/22
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives]]> 694906 The Grand Chessboard presents Brzezinski's bold and provocative geostrategic vision for American preeminence in the twenty-first century. Central to his analysis is the exercise of power on the Eurasian landmass, which is home to the greatest part of the globe's population, natural resources, and economic activity. Stretching from Portugal to the Bering Strait, from Lapland to Malaysia, Eurasia is the ”grand chessboard� on which America's supremacy will be ratified and challenged in the years to come. The task facing the United States, he argues, is to manage the conflicts and relationships in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East so that no rival superpower arises to threaten our interests or our well-being.The heart of The Grand Chessboard is Brzezinski's analysis of the four critical regions of Eurasia and of the stakes for America in each arena—Europe, Russia, Central Asia, and East Asia. The crucial fault lines may seem familiar, but the implosion of the Soviet Union has created new rivalries and new relationships, and Brzezinski maps out the strategic ramifications of the new geopolitical realities. He explains, for example: Why France and Germany will play pivotal geostrategic roles, whereas Britain and Japan will not. Why NATO expansion offers Russia the chance to undo the mistakes of the past, and why Russia cannot afford to toss this opportunity aside. Why the fate of Ukraine and Azerbaijan are so important to America. Why viewing China as a menace is likely to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Why America is not only the first truly global superpower but also the last—and what the implications are for America's legacy. Brzezinski's surprising and original conclusions often turn conventional wisdom on its head as he lays the groundwork for a new and compelling vision of America's vital interests. Once, again, Zbigniew Brzezinski provides our nation with a philosophical and practical guide for maintaining and managing our hard-won global power.]]> 240 Zbigniew Brzeziński 0465027261 Eugene 0 to-read 3.95 1997 The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives
author: Zbigniew Brzeziński
name: Eugene
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1997
rating: 0
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date added: 2016/11/22
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Fooling Some of the People All of the Time, A Long Short (and Now Complete) Story, Updated with New Epilogue]]> 7663760
"Fooling Some of the People All of the Time" is an important call for effective government regulation, free speech, and fair play.]]> 448 David Einhorn 0470481544 Eugene 4 4.00 2007 Fooling Some of the People All of the Time, A Long Short (and Now Complete) Story, Updated with New Epilogue
author: David Einhorn
name: Eugene
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2007
rating: 4
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date added: 2016/10/27
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]]> Interpreter of Maladies 5439 Librarian's note: An alternate cover edition can be found here

Navigating between the Indian traditions they've inherited and the baffling new world, the characters in Jhumpa Lahiri's elegant, touching stories seek love beyond the barriers of culture and generations. In "A Temporary Matter," published in The New Yorker, a young Indian-American couple faces the heartbreak of a stillborn birth while their Boston neighborhood copes with a nightly blackout. In the title story, an interpreter guides an American family through the India of their ancestors and hears an astonishing confession. Lahiri writes with deft cultural insight reminiscent of Anita Desai and a nuanced depth that recalls Mavis Gallant.]]> 198 Jhumpa Lahiri 0618101365 Eugene 5 4.18 1999 Interpreter of Maladies
author: Jhumpa Lahiri
name: Eugene
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1999
rating: 5
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date added: 2016/10/27
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]]> <![CDATA[The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay]]> 3985 639 Michael Chabon 0312282990 Eugene 5 4.18 2000 The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
author: Michael Chabon
name: Eugene
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2000
rating: 5
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date added: 2016/10/27
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]]> Middlesex 929618 --back cover]]> 529 Jeffrey Eugenides Eugene 5 4.08 2002 Middlesex
author: Jeffrey Eugenides
name: Eugene
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2002
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2014/06/17
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]]> <![CDATA[The Holy Bible (King James Version)]]> 362172 1024 Anonymous 0452010624 Eugene 1
i wouldn't want to take credit for this either.]]> 4.02 1611 The Holy Bible (King James Version)
author: Anonymous
name: Eugene
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1611
rating: 1
read at:
date added: 2014/01/05
shelves:
review:
"by Anonymous"

i wouldn't want to take credit for this either.
]]> <![CDATA[What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets]]> 13221379
In What Money Can’t Buy, Michael J. Sandel takes on one of the biggest ethical questions of our time: Is there something wrong with a world in which everything is for sale? If so, how can we prevent market values from reaching into spheres of life where they don’t belong? What are the moral limits of markets?

In recent decades, market values have crowded out nonmarket norms in almost every aspect of life—medicine, education, government, law, art, sports, even family life and personal relations. Without quite realizing it, Sandel argues, we have drifted from having a market economy to being a market society. Is this where we want to be?In his New York Times bestseller Justice, Sandel showed himself to be a master at illuminating, with clarity and verve, the hard moral questions we confront in our everyday lives. Now, in What Money Can’t Buy, he provokes an essential discussion that we, in our market-driven age, need to have: What is the proper role of markets in a democratic society—and how can we protect the moral and civic goods that markets don’t honor and that money can’t buy?]]> 256 Michael J. Sandel 0374203032 Eugene 5 -Moneyball has made baseball slower through pitching changes and less exciting with batters more willing to settle for walks and less eager to attempt steals.
-Studies have shown if you incentivize someone raising money for a cause through a % cut, s/he raises less $
-Pay someone to lose weight (market solution) and s/he will quickly gain it right back after the monitoring period ends

Sandel uses real world examples to counter the idea that we should blindly apply markets to all walks of life: advertising invading public and personal spheres, investors betting on life/death outcomes, paying to avoid ALL lines (publicly sponsored performances, organ donation, congressional hearings). You won't agree with every instant he points out has a potential moral dilemma and he can come off a bit nostalgic in his arguments. Still, I recommend this book for anyone who is either passionate about market-based solutions and is looking for an alternate perspective, or for someone who feels that we are, as Sandel puts it, are becoming not only a market-based economy but also a market-based society, and is looking for the right arguments to voice his opinion.]]> 3.91 2012 What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets
author: Michael J. Sandel
name: Eugene
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2012
rating: 5
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date added: 2013/07/17
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I'm a huge proponent of using economic theory as a lens to examine non-economic aspects of life (Gladwell books, Moneyball, Freakonomics, Kahneman work). Sandel rightly questions whether the end goal of this approach - sometimes efficiency for effiency's sake - can compromise our morals, and degrade or corrupt the very good(s) we are dealing with.
-Moneyball has made baseball slower through pitching changes and less exciting with batters more willing to settle for walks and less eager to attempt steals.
-Studies have shown if you incentivize someone raising money for a cause through a % cut, s/he raises less $
-Pay someone to lose weight (market solution) and s/he will quickly gain it right back after the monitoring period ends

Sandel uses real world examples to counter the idea that we should blindly apply markets to all walks of life: advertising invading public and personal spheres, investors betting on life/death outcomes, paying to avoid ALL lines (publicly sponsored performances, organ donation, congressional hearings). You won't agree with every instant he points out has a potential moral dilemma and he can come off a bit nostalgic in his arguments. Still, I recommend this book for anyone who is either passionate about market-based solutions and is looking for an alternate perspective, or for someone who feels that we are, as Sandel puts it, are becoming not only a market-based economy but also a market-based society, and is looking for the right arguments to voice his opinion.
]]> Play It As It Lays 428 Play It as It Lays captures the mood of an entire generation, the ennui of contemporary society reflected in spare prose that blisters and haunts the reader. Set in a place beyond good and evil - literally in Hollywood, Las Vegas, and the barren wastes of the Mojave Desert, but figuratively in the landscape of an arid soul - it remains more than three decades after its original publication a profoundly disturbing novel, riveting in its exploration of a woman and a society in crisis and stunning in the still-startling intensity of its prose.
]]> 231 Joan Didion 0374529949 Eugene 3
The setting is 60s California & Nevada. Book follows a failed model-turned-actress and her downward spiral as she deals with abortion, tormenting lovers and ex-lovers, an abusive husband, a mentally sick 4 year old daughter.

Didion's details are vivid and her characters thorough. Themes include: rattlesnakes, emptiness, driving to forget, moral disquietude, cheating, loss, distance, disillusionment.]]> 3.94 1970 Play It As It Lays
author: Joan Didion
name: Eugene
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1970
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2009/03/16
shelves:
review:
A quick, depressing read.

The setting is 60s California & Nevada. Book follows a failed model-turned-actress and her downward spiral as she deals with abortion, tormenting lovers and ex-lovers, an abusive husband, a mentally sick 4 year old daughter.

Didion's details are vivid and her characters thorough. Themes include: rattlesnakes, emptiness, driving to forget, moral disquietude, cheating, loss, distance, disillusionment.
]]> <![CDATA[Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets (Incerto)]]> 38315 Fooled by Randomness is a standalone book in Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s landmark Incerto series, an investigation of opacity, luck, uncertainty, probability, human error, risk, and decision-making in a world we don’t understand. The other books in the series are The Black Swan, Antifragile,and The Bed of Procrustes.]]> 368 Nassim Nicholas Taleb 0812975219 Eugene 5 4.08 2001 Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets (Incerto)
author: Nassim Nicholas Taleb
name: Eugene
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2001
rating: 5
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date added: 2008/05/11
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable]]> 242472
A black swan is a highly improbable event with three principal characteristics: It is unpredictable; it carries a massive impact; and, after the fact, we concoct an explanation that makes it appear less random, and more predictable, than it was. The astonishing success of Google was a black swan; so was 9/11. For Nassim Nicholas Taleb, black swans underlie almost everything about our world, from the rise of religions to events in our own personal lives.

Why do we not acknowledge the phenomenon of black swans until after they occur? Part of the answer, according to Taleb, is that humans are hardwired to learn specifics when they should be focused on generalities. We concentrate on things we already know and time and time again fail to take into consideration what we don’t know. We are, therefore, unable to truly estimate opportunities, too vulnerable to the impulse to simplify, narrate, and categorize, and not open enough to rewarding those who can imagine the “impossible.�

For years, Taleb has studied how we fool ourselves into thinking we know more than we actually do. We restrict our thinking to the irrelevant and inconsequential, while large events continue to surprise us and shape our world. In this revelatory book, Taleb will change the way you look at the world, and this second edition features a new philosophical and empirical essay, “On Robustness and Fragility,� which offers tools to navigate and exploit a Black Swan world.

Taleb is a vastly entertaining writer, with wit, irreverence, and unusual stories to tell. He has a polymathic command of subjects ranging from cognitive science to business to probability theory. Elegant, startling, and universal in its applications, The Black Swan is a landmark book—itself a black swan.]]> 480 Nassim Nicholas Taleb 1400063515 Eugene 4
not as good as fooled by randomness by the same author
]]> 3.96 2007 The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
author: Nassim Nicholas Taleb
name: Eugene
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at: 2007/01/01
date added: 2008/05/11
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review:
summary: you can't fundamentally prove anything because it's feasible that it will be disproved in the future. or, expect the unexpected. or, leptokurtosis=$, mothafuckas!

not as good as fooled by randomness by the same author

]]> <![CDATA[The Theory of Moral Sentiments (Texts in the History of Philosophy)]]> 709667 446 Adam Smith 0521598478 Eugene 4


]]> 4.06 1759 The Theory of Moral Sentiments (Texts in the History of Philosophy)
author: Adam Smith
name: Eugene
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1759
rating: 4
read at: 2003/01/01
date added: 2008/05/11
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Summary: sympathy is an innate emotion that fosters good will towards fellow man. or, a lite version of the golden rule naturally occurs. but don't worry: we're all still relatively selfish and greedy.




]]> <![CDATA[Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking]]> 40102 The Tipping Point a classic, Blink changes the way you'll understand every decision you make. Never again will you think about thinking the same way.

Malcolm Gladwell redefined how we understand the world around us. Now, in Blink, he revolutionizes the way we understand the world within. Blink is a book about how we think without thinking, about choices that seem to be made in an instant - in the blink of an eye - that actually aren't as simple as they seem. Why are some people brilliant decision makers, while others are consistently inept? Why do some people follow their instincts and win, while others end up stumbling into error? How do our brains really work - in the office, in the classroom, in the kitchen, and in the bedroom? And why are the best decisions often those that are impossible to explain to others?

In Blink we meet the psychologist who has learned to predict whether a marriage will last, based on a few minutes of observing a couple; the tennis coach who knows when a player will double-fault before the racket even makes contact with the ball; the antiquities experts who recognize a fake at a glance. Here, too, are great failures of "blink": the election of Warren Harding; "New Coke"; and the shooting of Amadou Diallo by police. Blink reveals that great decision makers aren't those who process the most information or spend the most time deliberating, but those who have perfected the art of "thin-slicing" - filtering the very few factors that matter from an overwhelming number of variables.]]> 296 Malcolm Gladwell 0316010669 Eugene 5 3.97 2005 Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
author: Malcolm Gladwell
name: Eugene
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2005
rating: 5
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date added: 2008/05/07
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse]]> 191230
Detailing the emerging science of “positive psychology,� which seeks to understand what causes a person’s sense of well-being, Easterbrook offers an alternative to our culture of crisis and complaint. He makes a compelling case that optimism, gratitude, and acts of forgiveness not only make modern life more fulfilling but are actually in our self-interest. An affirming and constructive way of seeing life anew, The Progress Paradox will change the way you think about your place in the world–and about our collective ability to make it better.]]> 400 Gregg Easterbrook 0812973038 Eugene 3
]]> 3.62 2003 The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse
author: Gregg Easterbrook
name: Eugene
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2003
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2008/03/09
shelves:
review:
In his TMQ article on espn.com, Easterbrook intersperses thoughts on the environment, politics, media and other non-football related topics. They are usually well thought-out and I thought I'd give his book a whirl. I'm only a quarter way into the book and so far nothing profound, just fun stories and facts about the material progress of the lower/middle class over the last century.


]]> <![CDATA[Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA]]> 970488
Now Pulitzer Prize–winning author Tim Weiner offers the first definitive history of the CIA—and everything is on the record. LEGACY OF ASHES is based on more than 50,000 documents, primarily from the archives of the CIA itself, and hundreds of interviews with CIA veterans, including ten Directors of Central Intelligence. It takes the CIA from its creation after World War II, through its battles in the cold war and the war on terror, to its near-collapse after September 11th, 2001.

Tim Weiner’s past work on the CIA and American intelligence was hailed as “impressively reported� and “immensely entertaining� in The New York Times.

The Wall Street Journal called it “truly extraordinary . . . the best book ever written on a case of espionage.� Here is the hidden history of the CIA: why eleven presidents and three generations of CIA officers have been unable to understand the world; why nearly every CIA director has left the agency in worse shape than he found it; and how these failures have profoundly jeopardized our national security.]]> 514 Tim Weiner 038551445X Eugene 4 3.93 2007 Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA
author: Tim Weiner
name: Eugene
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2007
rating: 4
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date added: 2008/03/09
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review:

]]> American Pastoral 11650 Pulitzer Prize Winner (1998)

In American Pastoral, Philip Roth gives us a novel of unqualified greatness that is an elegy for all the twentieth century's promises of prosperity, civic order, and domestic bliss. Roth's protagonist is Seymour 'Swede' Levov—a legendary high school athlete, a devoted family man, a hard worker, the prosperous inheritor of his father's Newark glove factory—comes of age in thriving, triumphant post-war America. And then one day in 1968, Swede's beautiful American luck deserts him.

For Swede's adored daughter, Merry, has grown from a loving, quick-witted girl into a sullen, fanatical teenager—a teenager capable of an outlandishly savage act of political terrorism. And overnight Swede is wrenched out of the longed-for American pastoral and into the indigenous American berserk. Compulsively readable, propelled by sorrow, rage, and a deep compassion for its characters, this is Roth's masterpiece.]]> 432 Philip Roth Eugene 4
]]> 3.93 1997 American Pastoral
author: Philip Roth
name: Eugene
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1997
rating: 4
read at: 2008/02/06
date added: 2008/02/06
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review:
A microcosm of the post-WW2 American dream coming to fruition and subsequently decaying. Plot takes a while to unfold and there are some drawn-out sequences in the middle of the book. Last 100 pages are occasionally riveting and harrowing. Characters are crafted well, but (intentionally) are mostly Good or Evil. Biggest gripe i had was that Roth doesn't let you analyze for yourself - every player's innermost thoughts are laid out on the table and scrutinized by Roth.


]]> The Time Traveler's Wife 14050 537 Audrey Niffenegger 0965818675 Eugene 5 3.90 2003 The Time Traveler's Wife
author: Audrey Niffenegger
name: Eugene
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2003
rating: 5
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date added: 2007/07/09
shelves:
review:

]]> Hearts in Atlantis 228134 THEY ACTUALLY HAPPENED.

No matter the format, Stephen King's work is spellbinding because the author himself is spellbound. The first hugely popular writer of the TV generation, King published his first novel, Carrie, in 1974, the year before the last U.S. troops withdrew from Vietnam. Images from that war -- and protests against it -- had flooded America's living rooms for nearly ten years. In Hearts in Altantis, King mesmerizes readers with fiction deeply rooted in the Sixties, and explores -- through four defining decades -- the haunting legacy of the Vietnam War.

As the characters in Hearts in Atlantis are tested in every way, King probes and unlocks the secrets of his generation for us all. Full of danger, full of suspense, and most of all full of heart, Stephen King's new book will take some readers to a place they have never been able to leave completely. (back cover)

]]> 673 Stephen King 0671024248 Eugene 4 3.76 1999 Hearts in Atlantis
author: Stephen King
name: Eugene
average rating: 3.76
book published: 1999
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2007/07/09
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]]>