A quite exhilirating romp through the results of various scientific studies on human psychology. What makes us tick & how we react under certain circumstances is analysed in regard to the evidence, & most often this evidence runs contrary to widely accepted views on what we're supposed to do. Never mind any other pseudo-scientific self-help books, this one is based on hard facts & as such is a cut above.
Concise, witty & informative discussion on a lack of numeracy in most people. It explores the reasons why people may shy away from numbers & it details some of the principles that most people would find useful & should probably become more familiar with, & thereby shows that they are not all that difficult. I enjoyed the discussion on how maths should be taught in schools as well as the mental challenge posed by some of the (few & straightforward) proofs detailed. Another one that most people should have a quick read through on their path to enlightenment!
Weighty & detailed tome describing stone-age man's cultural transition from hunter-gatherer to farmer societies across several regions of the world. The individual treatment of the world's regions at times leads to a bit of repetition when certain cultural patterns were repeated across those regions. I felt this was especially noticeable when presenting some of the low-level archaeological evidence, although this was perhaps due to my lack of deep interest in archaeology than any failing of the book's. However I also didn't immediately warm to the author's device of inserting a modern-day traveller into the vignettes that were described in order to translate the archaeological evidence into what the contemporary society would have been like. Due to the scale of the subject matter (the development of human civilisations across the globe) I appreciate why it was done & eventually felt that I would have been lost without the perspective it afforded. The book also did a really good job of capturing the genuine intrigue over how humans populated & settled certain continents & it attempted to interpret these puzzles using the evidence found in the archaeological record. It also highlighted the immense scale over which the cultural transitions occurred, sometimes tens of thousands of years passed without any discernable 'progress'. There was also an important thread that ran through the book as to what progress is & why it wasn't inevitable that we ended up where we are now. Ultimately though, for me, the book could have narrowed its focus & described more richly the societies under consideration but although large the book did keep my interest until the end.
No less than a winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature & I can see why because this is a wonderful, gripping & at times harrowing book about one man's struggle with himself & an anonymous central authority & the brutal but asinine bureaucrats that mete out its imperial justice. It also provides a historical perpsective on why empires inevitably fail as some citizens 'go native'. Not bad for a book of 176 pages!
My first reading of an old classic using Amazon's Kindle device, a device which has grown on me the more I played with it. The well-known story had me gripped from the start & I enjoyed the way the dog's consciousness was conveyed without becoming overly anthropomorpic & sentimental.
Concise and because of it, mind-blowing analysis of human culture & civilisations & how they risk destroying themselves through stupidity, greed & ignorance of history's lessons & 'progress traps'. The description of the millennia of human history before the present day made me appreciate for the first time how relatively tiny a timespan our current culture has existed for, & how inconsequential it would be for the planet's history if it ceased to exist. The description of the fall of the Easter Island civilisation after they cut down the last tree on the island resonated hugely in light of our continued preoccupation with reducing biodiversity as much as possible. The only downside was a slight tendency by the author to stray somewhat into polemical, particularly towards the end.
A spooky old tale that introduces Lovercraft's classic mythology which has since spawned a whole genre. I read it using Stanza on my iPhone & enjoyed the book & the 'app', especially as both are free. The suspense builds up nicely although the ending gives you nothing more profound than a curiosity to read more because I felt there was no closure or gore-splattered finale.
Compelling but grim read about the destruction of the world's predators by humans and the potentially devasting affect their absence has on the ecosystems they once inhabited. The book is almost exclusively about North America and it spends the first few chapters exploring the implications of detailed studies carried out in the Pacific Northwest, & the scientists involved. It also introduces the theory that humans were responsible for the extinction of the Palaeolithic megafauna around the globe & what might done in North American to help remedy it. Ultimately though after it had stated its main premise the book ended up being more valuable in providing sources for further reading rather than in much else it had to say. Granted there isn't much positive to be said about the continued human extermination of any predators worthy of the name, though I remain an eternal optimist that things might change!
Comprehensive text describing Microsoft's preferred layered architecture with plenty of diagrams, suggestions & cross-references. It should be standard reading for every .NET architect and developer as its lessons are easily digested. However the book was spoiled somewhat by poor quality-control with frequent grammatical & spelling mistakes.
A very engaging and slightly different angle on the current environmental 'challenges' that the world, & humankind faces. It is the first book I've read that challenged my quixotic assumption that there will be one fine day, when humans & all other organisms will be able to coexist happily & that the gates to all the zoos will then be thrown open so that their inhibitants can run free to re-stock newly pristine wildernesses. This isn't going to happen. On the other hand the author does provide some (there aren't many out there) uplifting descriptions of how things might be different, & often of how things once were, however this is soon coloured with descriptions of mounting evidence that since the stone age humans have laid waste to any natural resources they've come across. Therefore the one clear thought I had on finishing this book is "this isn't going to end well", but if you can face up to that, it's a fantastic read with a wealth of cross-referenced material.
If Marcel Proust, a famously meticulous & prolix author, were to write a computer book & then carefully remove all his erudition, colourful extended metaphors & aristocratic wit & replace them with some coloured diagrams & tables, then in my mind's eye, it would probably be a book not unlike this one. I found it difficult to get to the end of a paragraph without drifting off & thinking about something else (which didn't happen with Proust), let alone absorbing much of anything from the seemingly endless chapters. As an example of needless complexity, which I had been warned about after reading a previous book, this book has not been bettered in my experience, though the Concepts, Technology, and Design book by the same author comes close! The book discusses that apparently SOA services should be designed with eight fairly simple design principles in mind; principles which most software developers will be comfortable with. However this book takes over 500 pages to describe them and yet within all the waffle it does not even describe any practical instructions for how to apply them in the real world (because this forms another book) - though I did skip through the case studies so clues might have been there. Nevertheless I struggled through to the end, skipping various repetitive sections (& as mentioned the case studies), in the hope it would get better (it didn't) & again (as with the previous book) wondered who this is aimed at. Though I did realise why the unworkable nature of the SOA described within has lead to recent "SOA Is Dead" articles, because no company with a profit to make could contemplate such a lengthy & heavyweight, & apparently quite inflexible, process within a modern 'agile-centric' business.
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Surprisingly gripping account of the US trial of intelligent design in opposition to Darwin's evolution. The author does a good job of describing hours of legal proceedings without it becoming a boring read whilst also emphasizing the human interest element within the story.
Scurrilous & salacious spoof autobiography of a world famous chimpanzee who sets about scandalizing many icons of Hollywood's so-called Golden Era as he tells his story. Hugely enjoyable it offsets the brazen humour with a touching brotherly love story between Cheeta & his co-star, Johnny Weismuller; its pathos & sense of loss is such that it puts many a human life story to shame.