Rating: 7.7/10. The Culture Map by Erin Meyer: Decoding How People Think, Lead, and Get Things Done Across Cultures Book about how cultures differ across the world, categorizing differences among cultures along eight dimensions. Cultural differences can often lead to misunderstandings without either side realizing it. This is especially important in management where your words…
Category: Nonfiction
The Nomadic Developer by Aaron Erickson Erickson
Rating: 7.3/10. The Nomadic Developer: Surviving and Thriving in the World of Technology Consulting by Aaron Erickson Erickson Book about technology consulting firms, how their business works, and how to succeed in one. Essentially, consulting companies sell the hours of their consultants to clients. The sales team tries to add work to the “backlog” to…
Better Healthcare Through Math by Sanjeev Agrawal and Mohan Giridharadas
Rating: 8.2/10. Better Healthcare Through Math: Bending The Access And Cost Curves by Sanjeev Agrawal and Mohan Giridharadas Book about healthcare scheduling and operations written by a pair of consultants specializing in healthcare schedule optimization. Efficiency in healthcare is an important problem to tackle because the demand for healthcare will only increase in the next…
Beyond the Trees by Adam Shoalts
Rating: 7.4/10. Beyond the Trees: A Journey Alone Across Canada’s Arctic by Adam Shoalts Book by Canadian Explorer Adam Shoalts who takes a journey by canoe into the Canadian Arctic over a span of 5 months, starting from the west side of the MacKenzie River in Yukon, all the way to Baker’s Lake in Nunavut….
This Is an Uprising by Mark Engler and Paul Engler
Rating: 8.0/10. This Is an Uprising: How Nonviolent Revolt Is Shaping the Twenty-First Century by Mark Engler and Paul Engler Book about the mechanics and strategies of protests: a common misconception that protests and uprisings are spontaneous, but in reality they involve careful planning. The book studies the strategy behind successful nonviolent protests and what…
In Pursuit of the Traveling Salesman by William J. Cook
Rating: 8.5/10. In Pursuit of the Traveling Salesman: Mathematics at the Limits of Computation by William J. Cook Book about the Traveling Salesman Problem, written by a University of Waterloo professor and a leading researcher on this topic. The TSP is NP-hard, meaning there’s no efficient algorithm to solve it for all cases (unless P…
Retail Therapy by Mark Pilkington
Rating: 7.7/10. Retail Therapy: Why the Retail Industry is Broken – and What Can Be Done to Fix It by Mark Pilkington Book written by a retail executive from the UK, about the business of retail. The first section discusses the decline of numerous retail chains during the 2010s, such as the downfall of Toys…
Notes on the Piano by Ernst Bacon
Rating: 7.1/10. A collection of relatively short essays about classical piano, each approximately 10 pages long, by an American pianist and composer. All these essays are independent, each exploring a different aspect of the subject, and are organized into five distinct sections: The Performer: talks about the role of the performer in interpreting the composer’s…
Like, Comment, Subscribe by Mark Bergen
Rating: 8.3/10. Like, Comment, Subscribe: Inside YouTube’s Chaotic Rise to World Domination by Mark Bergen Book about the history of YouTube, from its inception to the present day, covering its ups and downs, as well as the controversies it faced. As YouTube exploded in popularity, right now hundreds of hours of videos are uploaded every…
The Nurture Assumption by Judith Rich Harris
Rating: 7.4/10. The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do by Judith Rich Harris Book about parenting, arguing for the thesis that parents essentially have no effect on how children turn out. Except in cases of extremely severe abuse, parents have no effect on children, after accounting for factors like genetics. Culture…
Video Making for Beginners by TechEd Publishers
Rating: 6.8/10. A short self-published book about the basics of filmmaking. Before making a film, you need to decide on the story you want to tell, who is the target audience, and what you hope to accomplish with the film. Write an outline first, then progress to a more detailed storyboard and script, making notes…
Fashionopolis by Dana Thomas
Rating: 7.4/10. Fashionopolis: Why What We Wear Matters by Dana Thomas Book about fast fashion and its negative effects. We are used to buying a lot of cheap clothes without thinking too much, but fast fashion has a lot of negative effects on the environment and workers in developing countries. Fashion is very fast-paced and…