Between the World and Me is a tremendous book, which is why it is surprising that it took me nearly a month to write this review. Part of it is that life happens and it is difficult to keep up with everything. Other times, it is the worry that any review can never do enough justice to the book or the subject. But as I try to write it today, I realize that the book has imprinted certain feelings on me of anger and guilt. […]
What Does “Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman” Have to Do with Leadership?
I found the book Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman by the eponymous Richard Feynman from a coworker. This list was on a reading list for a strategy or leadership class, which was an interesting topic. I knew of Richard Feynman, but never really knew too much about his work in physics or his personality. But I knew he was famous and was awarded the Nobel Prize. So I sought out to read this book to see what messages of leadership he had. What I got […]
Where’d You Go, Bernadette? is a Question I Didn’t Really Need Answered
Bee, Bernadette, and Elgin are three idiosyncratically named family members of a very idiosyncratic family. Bee is arguably precocious, arguably angsty, certainly adolescent, and well beyond her years. She’s a brilliant child with a bright future and a good heart. Elgin is incredibly busy, rather aloof, and growing more and more tired of his wife. But he’s brilliant, and behind Samantha 2, one of the most hyped (fictional) Microsoft products that allows you to control robots with your brain. Bernadette is agoraphobic, misanthropic, neurotic, but […]
Finding a Needle in a Stack of Needles
When reading this book, I could not help but think about torture techniques that use water in drastically different ways. There’s the act of waterboarding, where you place a towel over a person’s face and then pour water on top of them. This mimics the sensation of drowning. Then there’s the Chinese water torture, where someone is strapped to a chair and a solitary drip of water falls upon a person’s forehead taking nearly hours between each drop. The drops become a stab into the […]