We get to follow a great man in the making in this autobiography by Gandhi. Like a mad scientist, and from an early age, he experimented with every area of his life to find essence of the soul. Being very limited in my knowledge about Gandhi, I expected a focus on religion in this book, […]
Thoughts on: “Stuffocation” by James Wallman
In the 1920 the United States was struggling with overproduction. There where two directions we could take from there, either we produce less or consume more. We choose the latter. —————————————— Instead of building things to last we started to built to break. Advertisement started manufacturing desire. Fantastic new products came to market and amazed […]
Thoughts on: ”The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin”
Benjamin Franklin was probably the most prominent character of the American Enlightenment. A scientist, politician, inventor, postmaster, civic activist, and one of the founding fathers of the United States of American. —————————————— The reason I like Franklin so much is his sense of wonder and curiosity about life and learning. This in combination with being […]
Thoughts on: “The Third Chimpanzee” by Jared Diamond
There is a 1.2 percent difference in DNA between humans and chimpanzees. But what is it that makes humans able to fly into space and create weapons so powerful that they can annihilate the earth as a whole? When did we separate into our own species and what triggered our evolutionary leap forward to become […]
Thoughts on: “At the Existentialists Café” by Sarah Bakewell
Time for a small break from the Top- 10 countdown before it reaches its crescendo. 😎 —— This became my first encounter with the modern existentialists thanks to a recommendation by @inside_brians_brain . In this book we get to know Sartre and de Beauvoir primarily – but also Camus, Heidegger, Merleau Ponty to name a […]
Thoughts on: “The Glass Cage” by Nicholas Carr
The book is about how bad automation erode skill and create unfulfilling jobs which in turn create a self-fulfilling prophecy where previously masterful people makes mistakes pitching in for failing automated systems – human errors that turn into arguments for even more automation. —- It’s easy to discard this books as technophobic but there is […]
Thoughts on: Deep Work by Cal Newport
A friend mentioned that this book might be of interest to me in a discussion we had about one of my favorite books this year; The Shallows by Nicholas Carr. —————- While Carrs book is centered around why distractions are bad for us and the science behind it, Cal Newport focuses more on the importance […]
New book Arrivals from the Mysterious Man Behind ‘Books on the Tub’
I Got a nice stack of books the other day from Mr. Books on the Tub. Have you read any of them? It was hard to choose which one to start with but I ended up with “The Glass Cage” from the author of “The Shallows”, Nicholas Carr. Which was one of my favorite books […]
Thoughts on: “King of the World” by David Remnick
You don’t have to be a big fan of boxing yo enjoy this book. Only a small percentage of it is spent on the actual boxing while he bigger chunk of it deals with the early career of Ali; him joining the Nation of Islam and racial tensions of the era. ———————- For me the […]
Thoughts on: “The Stranger in the Woods”
Christopher Knight was 20 years old when he one day walked into the woods, never to return to society again. It took 27 years for him to reemerge, not by his own choosing, but because he got captured by the police for stealing food. ————— He spent a third of a century alone in the […]