After a reasonably insightful chapter describing Alibaba’s strategy, the book slides into an enumeration of facts that illustrate the way in which China’s government steers private enterprise.
Do not start a restaurant, unless there is nothing else you can do
Entertaining and endearing, despite the writers (sometimes painful) personality flaws
Psychologically, the Greek gods can be characterized as tantrum-prone children with a sex drive
Carefully crafted and highly entertaining.
AI increasingly constrains the domain of human creativity, similar to how science has constrained Faith
Marcus de Sautoy – The creativity code
Surprisingly up-beat considering its message and packed with nice examples.
Like in other instances of decolonization, forming the USA has been a murky affair largely dependent on chance
Colin Woodard – American nations
The book is more about political realities than about cultures, with little attention given to the role of black people (apart from them being enslaved).
A bunch of anarchists and misfits was able to defy the most powerful nations of the world for a surprisingly long time
Colin Woodart – The republic of pirates
Captivating narrative which juicy details on naval warfare practices and life on board.
Cyber warfare is getting increasingly sophisticated and the USA can no longer contain the threat of Russia and other foreign powers
At some points the investigative journalism is not fully convincing, but it conveys the message effectively.
Be curious, try stuff, reframe problems, know the process, and ask for help
Bill Burnett and Dave Evans – Designing your life
Five not terribly original self-realization tools, creatively reframed in designer language.
It is the responsibility of white people to end discrimination and assure racial equality
Layla Saad – Me and white supremacy
The “just shut up and listen”-attitude is refreshing, but will not convince anyone who is not already on the reader’s side and even antagonize many potential supporters of her cause.
Corporate executives don’t have a clue about what customers and employees experience
Martin Lindstrom – The ministry of common sense
This marketing guy can’t stop whining about his 1st world problems (and when pushed by his editor to deliver another bestseller decided to to make it into a book, together with his ghost writer).
Fishermen tend to kill the thing they love
Everything you always wanted to know about the economic, cultural, historical, and culinary significance of cod.
There is an important distinction between being Agile and having agility
Jonathan Smart – Sooner Safer Happier
The book’s premise sounds so blatantly obvious that one wonders why (in many organizations) there is still an issue.
“Art is just a container you poor yourself into”
Jerry Saltz – How to be an artist
What is good advice for life is typically also good advice for art, and vice versa.
Never trust data scientists, in particular when they do not have data
The writer never really succeeds in making the Simulmatics story seem important, partly because due to endless digressions about the bad marriages of the men who founded the company and partly because she avoids any substantial assessment of the actual models they used.
Seneca and his friends have a lot of practical advice for navigating life
Ward Fransworth – The practicing Stoic
there is no reason to get too excited about this book.
Truly understanding strangers is difficult, but failing to do so may cause grave harm to individuals as well as society as a whole
Malcolm Gladwell – Talking to strangers
Gladwell once more makes his well known point that prejudice is often subconscious and institutionalized (cf. also Blink), this time inspired by a BLM atrocity.
It is a miracle that databases actually work, considering all the things that can go wrong
Martin Kleppmann – Designing Data-intensive applications
Surprisingly readable for a text of this sort of technical depth
Folk tales about vampires and werewolves are based in an exaggerated fear for rabies
The detailed synopsis of (what seems like) every book, play, or movie that ever mentioned rabies gets boring pretty fast.
Kill Powerpoint, have to 2-pizza teams, and get your core values straight
Colin Brayer and Bill Carr – Working backwards
Somehow, there is no mention of pee bottles or other excesses concerning operational staff in the book.