Moises Naim – The end of power
the book, written pre-Trump, pre-Brexit and pre-Cambridge Analytics, underemphasizes the risk of large-scale orchestration of fringe groups to undermine nation states; thereby making the author’s call for stronger institutions feels a bit besides the point.
Merve Emre-The personality brokers
MBTI is more fascinating than expected, from its amateurish origins and its lack of scientific underpinning to its unlikely longevity and commercial success.
Don Norman – The design of everyday things
Elegant book full of fascinating examples of design thinking.
The need for concentration for though-intensive tasks is not disputed, but somehow the author (a university professor himself) structurally over-values academic work versus non-academic endeavours.
Daniel Dennett – From bacteria to Bach and back
Caleidoscopic overview of Dennett’s ideas, but it would benefit from an more thorough justification of its antropocentric perspective (compare: Frans de Waal).
Steven Pressfield – The war of art
Well written plea for taking ownership – and action.
The book fits neatly in the trend to call out gender inequality, but unfortunately it has limited practical solutions to offer.
Frans de Waal – Mama’s last hug
Especially interesting are the behavioral experiments, reminiscent of the line of argument in Moral Tribes
David Wallace-Wells – The uninhabitable earth
The book clearly illustrates that climate change is the prisoner’s dilemma ‘par excellence’
Sabine Hossenfelder – Lost in math
The author stresses that following negative results of experiments, theories are typically watered-down just to the extent that they are untestable – reminiscent of Bruno Latour’s “social constructionof scientific facts”
The book starts as more-or-less scientific research into drivers of success, but ends as motivational self-help literature.
Jan-Benedict Steenkamp and Laurens Sloot – Retail disruptors
Generally solid overview of retail business economics using hard discounter in grocery as case examples, but the authors could not risist the urge to make overly general assertions.
John Carlin – Dawn of the code war
Overly chauvinistic and politically correct story of how intelligence and cyber crime are convering, written boringly – I eagerly await the Michael Lewis version…
Joan DeJean – The age of comfort
Contains fascinating details on the construction of early water closets.
Carlo Rovelli – The order of time
Remarkably intuitive and enlightening expose of a deep and complex subject; in the audio version even more appealing due to the warm yet solemn reading by Benedict Cumberbatch.
Ajay Argawal, Joshua Gans, Avi Goldfarb – Prediction machines
The authors see AI as just a new option for the division of labor which, although it can have rather dramatic consequences, does not support apocalyptic GAI fearmongering.
Anad Giridharadas – Winners take all
Giridharas key argument is that elites only support change to the point where their privilege is not endangered.
When a a big tech investor like McNamee argues for stricter regulation it makes the argument more convincing.
Shoshana Zuboff – Surveillance capitalism
There is a tendency in critiques of ‘big tech’ to underestimate the long-term resilliance of mankind; although that does not render the argument invalid.
Meridith Broussard – Artificial Unintelligence
Great effort to democratize AI and peel off some layers of mistique that harm public debate (althought the case against technochauvinism seems at times a bit too shallow).
