Keenan's Book Reviews: Search results for 2016

Happy Easter. May God bless you and keep you as you celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ our savior, who died for our sins and rose again to give us a new, everlasting life.

Sunday, July 10, 2016

New & Interesting Stuff July 10, 2016

A Slight Trick of the Mind by Mitch Cullin

Energy & Transportation News

I Am Spock by Leonard Nimoy

The Imperial Cruise by James Bradley

In Memory Yet Green by Isaac Asimov

Jeremiah

New & Interesting Stuff May 7, 2016

Reckless by Chrissie Hynde

Rising Tide by James M. Barry

Sunday, April 17, 2016

New & Interesting Stuff Apr. 17, 2015

Energy, Transportation & Water News

The Engineer’s Lament (Malcom Gladwell, The New Yorker)

General Epistles

New & Interesting Stuff Easter 2016

Psalms

The Real World of Sherlock Holmes by Peter Costello

Technology in World Civilization by Arnold Pacey

12 Coolest Water Storage Tanks in New England (Tata & Howard)

The Wright Brothers by David McCollough

You Can, You Will by Joel Osteen

By the way, if you haven't filed your 2015 U.S. tax return, it is due tomorrow, April 18, 2016.

Saturday, November 24, 2018

Smarter Faster Better by Charles Duhigg

You may be like me in the sense of wanting to get more done and falling short. I realize I can’t do all the things I imagine I might do. There aren’t enough hours in life for it and I can let much of it go. However, there are some things that are important to me. It bothers me that I make so little progress on them.

Journalist Charles Duhigg considers this problem of productivity in Smarter Faster Better. Rather than turning to standard self-help fare, he sought out scientifically supported strategies.

For instance, there is a lots said in self-help books about motivation. Duhigg makes the interesting point that motivation can be learned. We can learn to push ourselves to make decisions and take action.

That is a neat concept. If you see motivation as a skill, you can quit beating yourself up and accept that you are not good at motivating yourself yet. Instead, you can focus on improving the skill. You can reward yourself for the effort—however imperfect—and seek lessons to do better next time.

You might start with Duhigg’s tip to think of what it feels like to be in control and how good it is. The memory, and the positive emotion attached to it, may be the boost that gets you moving. Also ask yourself why you are doing something; uncover why it is meaningful to you.

You can learn to pay attention to the right things at the right time, too. Productive people have good mental models that help them ignore the noise and see the details that make a difference. You can develop these models by telling yourself stories throughout the day about what you expect, why you expect it and how your experience matches or varies from the tale.

This imagination can help you make decisions. We can’t know the future, but if we accept uncertainty and imagine the possibilities—good and bad—we can make good guesses.

Another bit of advice from Duhigg is that when you learn something new, you should do something with it. In the last chapter of the book, he recaps by showing how he used the strategies to get his research and writing done.

Charles Duhigg also wrote The Power of Habit.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

A Mind for Numbers by Barbara A. Oakley

The Big Thing by Phyllis Korkki

Future Bright by Martin E. Martinez

The Genius in All of Us by David Shenk

Get Smart! by Brian Tracy

Learn Better by Ulrich Boser

Level Up Your Life by Steve Kamb

Mindset by Carol S. Dweck

The Organized Mind by Daniel J. Levitin

The Procrastination Equation by Piers Steel

Rapt by Winifred Gallagher

Duhigg, Charles. Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets to Being Productive in Life and Business. New York: Random House, 2016.

Saturday, June 10, 2017

Get Smart! by Brian Tracy

Results matter. According to Brian Tracy, results batter most; if you’re getting bad results it doesn’t matter much what your intentions were. If you want to change your results, you need to change your behavior. Changes in behavior start with changes in thinking. In Get Smart!, Tracy outlines the thinking habits and practices of successful people.

In general successful people have these thinking habits:

-they take a long-term view,

-they make time to think without distractions,

-they gather information and learn constantly,

-they have written goals,

-they focus on results,

-they stay positive,

-they are flexible and willing to stop activities that are no longer working,

-they are creative,

-the focus on what their customers really want, and

-they emulate the habits of other successful people.

Of course, Tracy elaborates on each of these items with additional details and suggestions.

Successful people also have habits that cut across many thinking practices. For instance, they take action; a great thought deserves to be put to use. The put most of their time and effort into the most valuable things they can do and try to eliminate activities that have low value. They take responsibility for themselves. They practice thinking and acting in ways that contribute to their success until it becomes a habit.

You can find these ideas in other places. However, Get Smart! has an advantage in that it is short an written in a style that is very easy to read. If you want thicker tomes to read, Tracy mentions several in the chapters of his book. If you want something you can read, digest, and put to use quickly, this is a good place to start.

Brian Tracy also wrote No Excuses.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

How to Fail at Almost Anything and Still Win Big by Scott Adams

How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life by Alan Lakein

The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

Tracy, Brian. Get Smart! How to Think and Act Like the Most Successful and Highest-Paid People in Every Field. New York: Tarcher, 2016.

Sunday, March 13, 2016

Women's History Month 2016

For Women’s History Month, I’ve listed below books by or about women (a few fictional), along with some other interesting links.

A Professor, a President, and a Meteor by Cathryn J. Prince

Ada's Algorithm by James Essinger

Double Your Brain Power by Jean Marie Stine

Esther

Fic by Anne Jamison

The Introvert's Way by Sophia Dembling

Make a Joyful Sound by Helen Elmira Waite

Mindset by Carol S. Dweck

Miss Leavitt's Stars by George Johnson

Miss Mizzou by J. B. Winter

On a Grander Scale by Lisa Jardine

The Power of Nice by Linda Kaplan Thaler & Robin Koval

Rapt by Winifred Gallagher

The Secret History of Wonder Woman by Jill Lepore

Small Move, Big Change by Caroline L. Arnold

The Solution by Lucinda Bassett

Switch on Your Brain by Caroline Leaf

Tech sector hiring more women, data shows... or is it? (@BonnieGrrl in Crave)

Waste and Want by Susan Strasser

Women's History Month Links 2013

Women’s History Month Links 2011

Saturday, January 26, 2019

The Revenge of Analog by David Sax

The joke about visions of the future that never panned out is usually, “Where is my flying car?” The proliferation and promises of digital technology over the last two or three decade might prompt us to pose some other questions such as, “Where is my paperless office?”

In The Revenge of Analog, journalist David Sax discusses how analog technologies are sometimes thriving in the digital ages. Some are making comebacks. Some never went away. Some are growing more popular because of digital technology, not in spite of it.

Sax looks at a lot of analog technologies. This includes vinyl records, paper and pen, tabletop games, books and brick-and-mortar stores.

Some of these have very interesting histories in how they have fallen, risen and interacted with digital technology. What I found most interesting in the book is the reasons analog persists. It is usually because it brings something that digital technology leaves out.

For instance, analog technology appeals to the senses. I know a lot of bibliophiles who love the smell of books, though it would not seem to be a pertinent feature. The IRL space is simply much richer that even the most detailed virtual space.

“There’s never going to be a virtual environment as completely engaging as the physical environment is,” computer game designer Bernie De Koven quoted in The Revenge of Analog

Analog is usually slow. Generally, a strength of digital is that it is almost always faster. We don’t always want fast. Sometime the slower pace, the pauses, helps us to take things in and savor them. For instance, when you listen to a vinyl record, you can’t skip songs at the touch of a button, you have to lift the needle and move it or even change records. You can’t listen to any songs you have in random order, but you have to listen to song on a single album in the order the artist or producer arranged them unless you introduce a lot of pauses as you interact with the discs and player.

Analog is limited. The digital world can be so rich with information and choices that it can be overwhelming. Paper and pen limits the size, colors and effects you can produce. These limitations help us hone in on the main issues quickly and get moving.

“People think limitations are bad things. But it moves the process forward, in a good way. You can easily get lost in the process. It’s easier to stick to a plan when you have limitations,” analog recording studio owner Chris Mara quoted in The Revenge of Analog

In the real realm of communication, analog is more intimate that digital. The ultimate analog communication is a face-to-face conversation, mediated by nothing but the air in between two people. We send off a lot of nonverbal signals when we speak, and we sense these signals from others, which gives us a more rich and nuanced understanding of what is said (and unsaid) than we can get from a text message or even over Skype or Facetime.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Learn Better by Ulrich Boser

The Organized Mind by Daniel J. Levitin

Sax, David. The Revenge of Analog: Real Things and Why They Matter. New York: PublicAffairs, 2016.

Saturday, April 29, 2017

Suggestible You by Erik Vance

Journalist Erik Vance grew up in a Christian Science home. Though he no longer adheres to the religion, he believed that he experienced and heard many true stories of seemingly miraculous healing. The not miraculous, but still amazing source of these improvements in health may be in the brain. Vance recounts his search for answers in Suggestible You.

Our brains are hard at work predicting what will happen next; we are constantly expecting. What we perceive, and how our brain reacts is powerfully affected by expectation. Our expectations are shaped by suggestion. Though suggestion has many forms, at the heart of each is a story. It doesn’t have to be an actually true story; it just needs to be plausible and resonant.

One area where the power of suggestion is apparent is the placebo effect. Our bodies produce chemicals that can make us feel better, and sometimes it just takes a good suggestion to get it to do so. A placebo is such a suggestion. Placeboes contain no drugs that should be effective and can take many forms such as a pill, a shot, a fake surgery or even the presence of a professional who seems competent and caring. Placeboes work so well that on certain type of diseases that they are better that many treatments.

The effectiveness of placeboes presents a problem for medical researchers. How do you sort out the effect of a treatment from the placebo effect? Modern medical research requires testing to show that a treatment is more effective that a placebo. In the United States, the law requiring such studies was introduced by Senator Estes Kefauver, who readers of this blog may know from his anti-comic book hearings.

There is also a nocebo effect, essentially the brains response to a suggestion that makes us sick. Noceboes are connected to fear, so they are in a sense supercharged in comparison to placeboes.

Vance looks into other ways suggestions can affection or brains, particularly hypnosis and false memories. Science provides some answers for how these things work. Placeboes seem to be tied to chemicals released by the brain, though there seem to be several at work and they may represent only a few of the ways placeboes my work in our incredibly complex brains. Hypnosis is not the same as placebo and its workings remain mysterious.

Suggesting affects us in ways outside of health. Marketers are particularly interested in our suggestibility. Our expectations can influence the way food tastes and our perceptions of value.

Vance finds hope in the still incomplete science of how expectation affects our health. Those who are susceptible to placebo or hypnosis (not necessarily the same people) may have a host of options for coaxing out the healing powers of their own bodies. Better understanding of how these things work may help us make better treatments for those who are less susceptible. He envisions a day when placeboes and hypnotism may be treatments medical professionals apply in much the way the use drugs or surgeries.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Change Your Brain Change Your Body by Daniel G. Amen

How to Fail at Almost Anything and Still Win Big by Scott Adams

Timeless Healing by Herbert Benson with Marg Stark

Vance, Erik. Suggestible You: The Curious Science of Your Brain’s Ability to Deceive, Transform, and Heal. Washington, DC: National Geographic, 2016.

Sunday, February 25, 2018

Black History Month Links 2017

The Big Roads by Earl Swift

The Explorer King by Robert Wilson

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

Rising Tide by James M. Barry

Black History Month Links 2016

Black History Month Links 2015

Black History Month Links 2013

Black History Month Links 2012

Black History Month Links 2011

Black History Month Links 2010

Saturday, April 7, 2018

The Irresistible Introvert by Michaela Chung

Introverts can feed out of place, in especially in the United States and other places where extroverted characteristics are celebrated and introverts are often misunderstood. Michaela Chung considers how introverts can make their own way in the word in her book The Irresistible Introvert.

Introverts are not antisocial or shy. We (yes, I’m an introvert) like people. In comparison to extroverts we tend to be more introspective, needful of solitude and quiet and slow. Some introverts are highly sensitive people (I think I fall into this group, too).

Chung doesn’t say there is a right or wrong way, there is a place for both extroverts and introverts and all the blends in between. Her point is that in extroverted cultures introverts need to find ways to be comfortable being themselves.

That is Chung’s theme: introverts should accept themselves. If you are an introvert, embrace your strengths and stop trying to fit into an extroverted mold. Be kind to yourself. Make room in your life for the quite time, solitude and thinking that you need.

Of course, introverts are social beings. We enjoy connecting with others. We like deep conversation and close friends.

For many of us, this area of connection and communication can become a source of discomfort as our style clashes with the prevailing extroverted style. In the latter part of the book, Chung shifts to showing how introverts can find ways to open up, form friendships and communicate in ways that play to their strengths.

Introverts aren’t likely to work the room the way extroverts do. We can, we just find it exhausting. Chung’s advice often touches on this issue of energy. With a little planning, introverts can manage their energy in social situations. Introverts can be spots of calm and warmth in a crowd that attracts others. They can trade awkwardness and tiredness for self-possession and intriguing allure.

Chung draws frequently on the experiences of introverts including herself. Many of these experiences resonated with me. If you’re an introvert you might enjoy the book simply because you can see someone else understands your experience. You might find some of Chung’s advice helpful, too.

I you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The Emotional Energy Factor by Mira Kirshenbaum

The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman

The Highly Sensitive Person by Elaine N. Aron

The Introvert's Way by Sophia Dembling

Quiet by Susan Cain

Chung, Michaela. The Irresistible Introvert: Harness the Power of Quiet Charisma in a Loud World. New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2016.

Wednesday, May 27, 2020

Lift by Daniel Kunitz

Trends in fitness in the 2000s have given to new sports, such as the CrossFit games, and new athletic entertainments in the form of American Ninja Warrior. Daniel Kunitz traces the rise of this new fitness culture, which he calls New Frontier Fitness or NFF, in his Lift.

Kunitz goes back to the ancient Greeks, who revered physical beauty and fitness and considered it the obligation of citizens (only men were citizens) to keep themselves in good shape in order to serve and defend their nation. The Greek word for this training was askesis.

The English word asceticism has it root in askesis. While we now associate it with self-denial, the Greeks associated it with purposeful self-discipline. Participants in NFF have embraced this old-fashioned asceticism, training purposefully with benefits that spill into all areas of life.

As an aside, Christian asceticism is often associated with self-denial, sometime extreme, for the purpose of penance. When I read Paul’s writing on denial of self, I see it described in the context of disciplining oneself with the purpose of living a higher life. He even uses athletes as an example. He is not denigrating athletes for training for a worthless prize. He is reminding Christians that they have and even more important calling that deserves at least an equal commitment and effort.

Of course, few cultures since then have reveled in physical achievement. Exercise at times has been considered dangerous to health. Weightlifting too much resembles labor, a task for lower-class people that wealthy and middle-class people were reluctant to embrace. Even when exercise became more acceptable, starting in the 1960s and taking off in the 1980s, the focus was often on appearance.

NFF is not concerned with appearance. It is concerned with performance. If one trains to perform well, appearance will take care of itself.

Because of this focus on function, NFF eschews many of the machines found in gyms. Exercises resemble tasks one might actually perform, though with greater intensity intended to push skill and physical capacity. NFF participants train like an athlete, constantly reaching to do better, not to look better but to live better. As Kunitz says several times, they are “training for life.”

From a historical point of view, Lift covers a lot of the same ground as Making the American Body by Jonathan Black. However, Kunitz is specifically intending to give context to NFF and its influence on how people think about being fit today.

Though Kunitz is a professional writer, he is also a fan of NFF. He practices CrossFit, which he discusses in the book, and Olympic lifting. He also talks to people who train in other functional regimes like parkour and sweatier forms of yoga.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The Age of Edison by Ernest Freeburg

Arthur & George by Julian Barnes

Empires of Light by Jill Jonnes

Mr. America by Mark Adams

The Power Makers by Maury Klein

The Real World of Sherlock Holmes by Peter Costello

The Ten-Cent Plague by David Hajdu

Kunitz, Daniel. Lift: Fitness Culture, from Naked Greeks and Acrobats to Jazzercise and Ninja Warriors. New York: Harper Wave, 2016.

Monday, November 14, 2016

Thanksgiving Links 2016

I have much to be thankful for this year, even in the midst of morning. I hope you have much to celebrate and enjoy.

Psalms

My selections from 2014

My selections from 2012

My selections from 2011

My selections from 2010

Thanks to all our followers. If you decided to read a book based on one of the reviews you saw on this site, please comment on the post and let us know what you thought of the book.

Saturday, May 7, 2016

New & Interesting Stuff May 7, 2016

Ecclesiastes

Energy & Water Roundup

Hedy's Folly by Richard Rhodes

London's Great Stink heralds a wonder of the industrial world

New & Interesting Stuff Apr. 17, 2015

Song of Solomon

The Writings

Wednesday, April 28, 2021

The Power of Fifty Bits by Bob Nease

Our brains handle an amazing amount of information. Almost all of it happens without our conscious awareness. Our conscious mind has a narrow bandwidth of about 50 bits per second according to engineer and designer Bob Nease.

The result of this narrow bandwidth is that much of human behavior is characterized by inattention and inertia. In his book The Power of Fifty Bits, Nease suggests that we accept the limitation of our brains and design things in a way that help us make and stick to good decisions.

Nease has practice in designing such systems. As the chief scientist at Express Scripts, he and his team looked for ways to get people to use less expensive drugs and pharmacies, refill prescriptions on time and stick to treatment regimens. He calls the techniques he developed “fifty bits design.”

Because our brains have so much information to handle, they use shortcuts. These shortcuts are not always adaptive to modern life. They are still geared toward tribal life in a dangerous wilderness.

He focuses on dealing with these shortcuts. We feel a lot of pressure to fit in; we follow social norms and go along to get along. We are very averse to loss. We seek to enjoy rewards today and push off losses as long as possible. As a result, it is easy to have good plans and intentions, but hard to actually change our behavior.

Nease offers strategies to interrupt, circumvent and utilize these strong tendencies to turn people’s good intentions into actions. You can interrupt a process briefly to require a choice between options. You can ask people to commit now to actions in future situations. You can make the desirable choice the default and require action to change it. You can get attention by inserting a message where people will already be looking. You can frame choices in more compelling ways. You can make a good choice a side benefit of doing a fun or desirable activity. In all things you can make good choices easier to implement and bad choice a little harder.

It is hard to do justice to these strategies in a few words. Nease provides examples from his own work and from the research of others. He also provides insight into which strategies are best suited to certain situations and how they can be used together to greater effect. He also considers some ethical considerations of using fifty bits design.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

IBM and the Holocaust by Edwin Black

The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

The Procrastination Equation by Piers Steel

Nease, Bob. The Power of Fifty Bits: The New Science of Turning Good Intentions into Positive Results. New York: HarperCollins, 2016.

Keenan's Book Reviews

Sunday, March 13, 2016

New & Interesting Stuff March 13, 2016

Monday, November 14, 2016

New & Interesting Stuff November 14, 2016

Saturday, December 10, 2016

New & Interesting Stuff December 10, 2016

Sunday, March 27, 2016

New & Interesting Stuff Easter 2016

Sunday, July 10, 2016

New & Interesting Stuff July 10, 2016

Sunday, April 17, 2016

New & Interesting Stuff Apr. 17, 2015

Sunday, February 21, 2016

New & Interesting Stuff Feb. 21, 2016

Saturday, November 24, 2018

Smarter Faster Better by Charles Duhigg

Saturday, June 10, 2017

Get Smart! by Brian Tracy

Sunday, March 13, 2016

Women's History Month 2016

Saturday, February 18, 2017

New & Interesting Stuff February 18, 2017

Saturday, January 26, 2019

The Revenge of Analog by David Sax

Saturday, April 29, 2017

Suggestible You by Erik Vance

Sunday, February 25, 2018

Black History Month Links 2017

Saturday, April 7, 2018

The Irresistible Introvert by Michaela Chung

Wednesday, May 27, 2020

Lift by Daniel Kunitz

Monday, November 14, 2016

Thanksgiving Links 2016

Saturday, May 7, 2016

New & Interesting Stuff May 7, 2016

Wednesday, April 28, 2021

The Power of Fifty Bits by Bob Nease

Other Book Review Blogs