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This reviewer agreed with almost everything she read in this 2011 book; Fred Pearce, a British science/environment writer, has managed to very closely replicate her views on population, fertility, causes, the role of policy and immigration. That's remarkable (hence the remark). It also told...

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This is the third Gary Klein book your reviewer has read, and is the second one that she perceives to be a general assault on the love of rules and data-based decision making that permeates business life, government and much professional activity. Klein asserts he is not the enemy of such...

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This isn’t a self-help book, though it looked to this reviewer as if it was inside the cover of one. Rather, Professor Gilbert of Harvard University writes about supposed deficiencies of the human brain, though always within a context of how vital these are to survival. And survival is...

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This reviewer loves cities. She has lived in three since leaving her native New Zealand, visits dozens of them a year, and makes her home of 16 years in the middle of London. Edward Glaeser, a second generation immigrant economist at Harvard University, loves them as well. Your reviewer found...

The Strategic Role of the Emotions

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Evidence abounds of the existence of behaviour which is contrary to material best interest, stuff that one would be better off not doing, either altruistic or all-round destructive, and sometimes described as irrational. Such behaviour is sufficiently common that few are surprised by it. And...

How to Get Things Right.

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Atul Gawande's title may have been a gamble in respect of this book's success, because as he says on page 173 "We don't like checklists". Not (just) because they are not much fun, but because someone whose skill lies in performing complex or difficult tasks probably also regards them as...

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The future is very female according to Hanna Rosin. And so is the present too, more than is generally appreciated. She claims to be neither feminist (for trumpeting women over men) not anti-feminist (for suggesting the struggle for equality is over), but her choice of title will ensure that...

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Container ships are the "invisible industry that brings you 90% of everything"--a reference to the fraction of trade that moves by sea. Rose George, a writer and journalist, became the last officially allowed passenger on a British flagged merchant vessel of Maersk, a Danish company whose...

Fifty Years of Economic Folly--And the Stark Choices Ahead

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Dambisa Moyo's book is about economics, specifically growth, and is adorned with brush strokes that paint a rising China (followed by the other three BRIC countries, Brazil, Russia, India) overtaking the west (or just the US) in size, clout, and several kinds of agenda-setting....

The Remarkable Ways We Gain Insights

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The world is a competitive place. Species perish, organisations fail, and stuff kills folks. On the upside, some people excel, some firms flourish, and societies make permanent advancements. Examining part of how the latter side happens is the quest of Gary Klein, a research...

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Hi all. It's been a while since I posted here last. I've completed a review of Richard Carrier's "On the Historicity of Jesus" and put it on my website here: http://members.optusnet.com.au/gakuseidon/Carrier_OHJ_Review.html I've given a short extract of my review below. Any...

The Moral Limits of Markets

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The sub-title that Debra Satz, a professor of ethics at Stanford, gave to this was copied by Michael Sandel, similarly employed at Harvard, in "What Money Can't Buy" a year or so later. Your reviewer loved the latter, and this steered her to the present volume, which is more encompassing...

The Art of Outsmarting Almost Everyone

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There is a spoiler at the end of the prologue to this, which is that humans are predictable when they try to be random. Though, this reviewer was more intrigued in the opener to learn of Claude Shannon's 'Ultimate Machine', which she swiftly you-tubed. She's a fan of that already. Anyway,...

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Catherine Hakim, a British social scientist, refers to "erotic capital" as the fourth personal asset. The first three are economic capital (money, wealth), human capital (expertise, education, intelligence) and social capital (slightly ill-defined networking and influencing capability,...

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More than a bit reminiscent of "Being Wrong" (by Kathryn Schultz) to this reviewer, but predating it by a while, this book offers a theory for why mistakes get not just made but entrenched. Or rather, the incidence of mistake itself is not much touched, as if it were a random outcome. But...