CC blog

August 2010 Books (nonfiction)

These reviews all appeared originally at my blog http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/technology_and_learning

I'm collecting them here, so my addled brain will have a place to look back and remember what I read - as the digital book world means my books no longer keep me company.

Mary Roach's "Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void" is the perfect book for anyone who is curious about the ins and outs (literally) of space travel.
We learn:

    •    How astronauts urinate and defecate in space, and how this process has changed from the early Apollo missions to the space shuttle to the space station.
    •    How sex in space would work, and if anyone has ever given it a shot.
    •    How space food is produced and consumed, and why we would not want to have NASA take over our campus dining services.
    •    What an astronaut really does in the 99% of the time she is not in space, and what NASA (and the Russian and Japanese space agencies) look for in a potential recruit.
    •    How astronauts train, getting used to the rigors of zero gravity (think Vomit Comet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vomit_Comet), the boredom, and the need to spend 24 hours a day with your co-workers without ever being able to leave.
    •    Why Mary Roach thinks manned space exploration should continue, and why spending the $500 billion or so to get to Mars is a good investment.

I'm a big fan of Mary Roach's books. She has covered sex (Bonk), death (Stiff), and ghosts (Spook). The only problem with "Packing for Mars" is that the title is too long. 
And in the category of, "oh what a small world we live in", it turns out that Mary Roach grew up in the small town in which I now reside. Mary, you are welcome to stay at the house if you ever want to come and visit.

Grade:  A-

I decided to read Sheena Iyengar's new book, The Art of Choosing, after watching her TED Talk.
The opportunity to give a TED Talk must rank just below inclusion in the Oprah book club. Does anyone know just how big the book selling boost is for authors appearing on TED?

Sheena Iyengar is best known for her jam experiment. This is the experiment that Barry Schwartz made famous in his 2004 book, The Paradox of Choice. In the experiment, Iyengar found that shoppers were much less likely to purchase a jar of jam when presented with many choices (at a tasting booth), in comparison with shoppers who were invited to sample only a few varieties. The conventional wisdom that more choice is always beneficial does not always seem to hold true.

Iyenagar's choice research has been influential in my world of course design and learning technology. We understand that it is often preferable to limit the number of tools available to faculty in a learning management system, as installing every extension or building block may cause instructors to choose to entirely forgo the use of any tool (such as discussion boards or wikis). As the learning management system has ballooned into a central campus portal, the need to constantly "edit down" non-core learning functions continues to grow. An increasing number of campus stakeholders may request links in the LMS (everything from events to athletics), requests that we need to weigh against the costs of diminishing the utilization of tools that promote active learning.

The Art of Choosing fits nicely into a growing body of behavior economics, brain research, and cognitive psychology that explores the limits of our own decision making abilities. Dan Ariely and Jonah Lehrer have written some of the best books in this tradition. One of my big take-aways from The Art of Choosing is that we may be poor decision makers, but our difficulties in choosing are often culturally influenced. Iyengar is much better at conducting cross-cultural studies on choice and behavior than other researchers in this field, perhaps a result of her growing up as a child of immigrants.

What factors would convince you to choose to take the time to watch Iyengar's TED Talk? Have any of you made the choice to read The Art of Choosing?

Grade:  B+

Q. Why don't Yugo's sustain much damage in a front-end collision?

A. The tow truck takes the impact.

Q. Why does a Yugo have rear a window defroster?

A. To keep your hands warm as you push it.

--from "The Yugo: The Rise and Fall of the Worst Car in History" by Jason Vuic.

What can this great book about the sad and untimely demise of Yugo teach us about higher education?

Linking the Yugo to Higher Ed Economics:

    •    Cars are one of those categories where over the past five decades costs have come down significantly, while quality has gone consistently up. We can buy a much more reliable, safer, better performing, roomier, and longer lasting car for the same (real) dollars today than at any time in the past. Higher ed has clearly gone in the other direction. The Yugo story is perhaps the exception to this rule. Is the Yugo a cautionary tale about the wisdom of going for the "cheapest" educational structure?
    •    Even though the Yugo was a terrible car, we also learn from Vuic's delightful book that (at least initially) the Yugo was a popular car. People were lined up at the dealerships with cash in hand, ready to plunk down deposits. At $4,000, the Yugo created its own category of cheap transportation. Is there a similar latent demand for really affordable higher education? Or does the Yugo prove that "cheap" and "quality" are not compatible?
    •    The Yugo was so cheap because it was built on a very old (Fiat) design, and put together (badly) by very low-paid workers. Can I send my girls to an Eastern European country to go to college? The University of Ljubljana, the largest university in Slovenia with 64,000 students, might be a reasonable option for my kids when they leave home in 2015 and 2017.
    •    The Yugo did not have to be so bad. One of the take home messages of Vuic's book is how incompetent the American Yugo ownership and management was. Rather than investing dollars in the car's quality, the Yugo America founders paid themselves big salaries, plowed the money into other businesses, and rode around in helicopters. Would things have been different if those dollars were spent on the car? They also spent tons of money on advertising, money today that could be saved with smart use of the web. So maybe an educational provider that does not spend money on advertising or marketing, and keeps management costs down, could provide a quality educational start-up for a reasonable cost.

Any Yugo owners out there?

Grade:  B+

July 2010 Books

The Most Powerful Idea in the World: A Story of Steam, Industry, and Invention by William Rosen

originally from:  http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/technology_and_learning/the_most_powerful_idea_in_the_world

In William Rosen's masterful new book, The Most Powerful Idea in the World: A Story of Steam, Industry, and Invention, the most powerful idea is not the invention of the steam engine. Rather, the title refers to the development of the concept that ideas can be property, and that through the availability of patent law and capital, individuals tinkerers can become industrial scale innovators.

Rosen notes that: "From 1700 to 2000, the world's population has increased twelvefold - but its production of goods and services a hundredfold". (page 316) Will the innovations around digital technology, from cheap and powerful mobile computing devices to robust cloud based applications, bring about a commensurate rise in productivity as the industrial revolution? The steam engine allowed the cost of energy to come down rapidly, through its original use as the power source to pump out coal mines to its subsequent use in locomotives to bring down the costs of transporting coal. Today, it is less clear if digital technologies can bring about similar improvements in the productivity of education (increased access and quality at reduced costs), that the steam engine did for energy productivity in the 18th and 19th centuries.

It is ironic that the very intellectual property protections that catalyzed the willingness of inventors and entrepreneurs to invest their energy and money into the steam engine that are perhaps retarding innovations in education. Much of our current economic prosperity is built on the concept that ideas are property, yet many of the barriers to extending learning at low cost run up against this principle. Efforts to extend the infrastructure and content of learning outside of the marketplace, through open source and open educational content, have failed to significantly bring costs down or increase access.
Are we in the midst of an educational revolution powered by technology? Or are we grafting new technologies on old structures, changing education only at the margins?

Grade:  A-

The Secret Life of the Grown-up Brain: The Surprising Talents of the Middle-Aged Mind by Barbara Strauch

originally from:  http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/technology_and_learning/the_grown_up_brain_and_us

What if the real purpose of education should be to prepare our brains to function well throughout our lifespan? What if our explicit goals shift from creating brains that can operate well in the economy (or whatever other institutional missions we promote), to the goal of fostering cognitive reserves? What if promoting healthy brains was the best mechanism for creating productive citizens, and all the other values we believe in as educators and educational institutions were best served in service of the brain?
I'm starting to come to the conclusion that the brain, our brains, is a theme that should cut across all disciplines. That we should put the brain at the center of our educational system for purely selfish and self-interested reasons, namely that we all need do whatever we can to insure that we experience successful brain aging.

The Secret Life of the Grown-up Brain: The Surprising Talents of the Middle-Aged Mind, by Barbara Strauch is a wonderful book. Strauch is a generous and wise author, writing about the middle-age brain through a combination of stories and science that seems well calibrated to the brains of her readers.

We learn that while the middle-age brain may not have the rapid processing power of its younger version, these deficits are more than made up for by increased abilities in judgment, expertise, and effectiveness. Our middle-age brains see the world in a more positive light and accurate light, and are much better at juggling all the demands that life throws at us.

The big revelation of "The Grown-up Brain" is that we have within our power to determine much of the course of our own brain aging. Through diligent mental and physical exercise, a reasonable diet, and a positive orientation towards our work and relationships we can significantly and dramatically protect our brains against cognitive slow-downs and dementia.

A prediction: Over the next twenty-years our colleges and universities will make a change from teaching to prepare for the job market to teaching to promote cognitive reserves. Innovative educational institutions will advertise a curriculum that is demonstrated to promote long-term cognitive health. We will begin to escape from the idea of economic scarcity, and start embracing the idea of lifetime cognitive scarcity - with educational programs designed to foster cognitive abundance.

This shift will require that the study of the brain become deeply embedded throughout all of our disciplines. We will talk about the brain when we think about teaching, learning and research. We will see our fitness centers and dining halls as tools to promote lifetime brain health. We will understand the mission of our institutions as providing our students the tools, habits, knowledge and fundamentals they will need to encourage and promote successful brain aging. Our rankings will be based on brain health related metrics, on the inputs that predict cognitive surplus. We will look back in disbelief at a time when our institutions took the brain for granted, and did not design our programs and environments explicitly to promote lifetime brain health.

Grade:  A-

How Pleasure Works: The New Science of Why We Like What We Like by Paul Bloom

originally from:  http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/technology_and_learning/questions_inspired_by_how_pleasure_works

• How come I did not know about Yale's Paul Bloom and was surprised to come across his beautiful book, How Pleasure Works: The New Science of Why We Like What We Like?
• When am I going to find the time to watch his Introduction to Psychology Class on the Open Yale Courses site?
• Who else in my learning and technology world is also reading this book, and how can I connect with them to discuss and share ideas?
• Why is it that Audible.com has such terrible social networking features around their audio books, not letting me see who else has downloaded "How Pleasure Works" and the books in their library?
• Does writing a book like How Pleasure Works that popularizes and synthesizes cutting edge academic research, much of which is done by the author, contribute to the academic career and reputation of the writer as much as a book aimed at a narrow scholarly audience?
• If reading "How Pleasure Works" provides so much pleasure (and I think opportunities for authentic learning), how come popular nonfiction academic books like this one are rarely features on course syllabi?
• What is the factor that determines if a nonfiction book will have an audio version, where other books I'd like to read, are available only in paper or e-book format?
• Where will the next great academic who can write for a popular audience come from and what are the conditions that encourage their development?

Grade:  B+

The Power of Pull: How Small Moves, Smartly Made, Can Set Big Things in Motion by John Hagel III, John Seely Brown, and Lang Davison

originally from:  http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/technology_and_learning/pushing_back_on_the_power_of_pull

I read The Power of Pull: How Small Moves, Smartly Made, Can Set Big Things in Motion for one reason: "John Seely Brown." If JSB writes something, I'm buying. If JSB gives a talk, I'm there (at least virtually). If JSB says to "jump", I'm saying "how far." You get the picture.

The Power of Pull is one of those books that I'm happy I read but did not enjoy reading all that much. What is most instructive about The Power of Pull is that the book demonstrates how good ideas and clear thinking are necessary but not sufficient to engage us readers. What is missing from the book is precisely why I bought the book, the authors. The great ideas are filtered through a sort of omnipresent consultant speak, homo consultilis, instead of through the voice of any recognizable homo sapien. I know for a fact that the all 3 authors lead fascinating lives, but one would never know it from reading Pull.

Educators need to keep this lesson in mind. When we teach, we need to connect our disciplines to stories, and our stories to our students and ourselves. Dan Ariely does this masterfully in his latest book, The Upside of Irrationality, telling the story of his recovery from a horrific accident to help us understand the science of behavioral economics.

It is shame that the Pull authors allowed themselves to slip into consultant speak, as the ideas and lessons from Pull are worth pondering. The big argument of Pull is that a combination of globalization and digital technologies has fundamentally changed the rules of economics and employment, a big shift in which companies and institutions must draw ideas and people from the "edge" and leverage their talents to change the practices of the "core." People who will succeed in the uncertainty and turmoil of the digital economy will be those who can authentically follow their passions, connect with other passionate individuals, and re-skill themselves to compete and add-value in a globalized economy. Companies can no longer either create or forecast demand (push), but rather must offer a compelling product or service that "pulls" potential employees, partners, and customers in to mutually beneficial relationships.

I particularly like what Pull has to say about education:

"It's quickly dawning on us instead that our education was at best a thin foundation that needs to be continually refreshed in order for us to stay competitive". (page 12)

"Until relatively recently, most of us believed we had to invest considerable time and effort early in our lives navigation an educational system designed to transfer stocks of knowledge to us. As a reward for our diligence and persistence in school, we believed, these stocks of knowledge would serve us well throughout our lives". (page 52)

"We have to be willing to risk looking like we don't know the answer, or maybe the question. We've got to wean ourselves from the over dependence on expertise we've labored so hard to accumulate. To paraphrase Albert Einstein, we must avoid letting our education interfere with our learning". (page 117).

Good stuff. But I can't find much that is really all the new. A much better book about our economic and job future in a globalized and digital economy is Sonic Boom, by Gregg Easterbrook. Seth Godin has written extensively about finding our tribes and passions at work. Dan Pink's new book, Drive, is all about how intrinsic motivators always trump extrinsic ones in determining performance at work. Matt Ridley, in The Rational Optimist, explains how a globalized world organized around trade and open markets will mean greater prosperity for all of us. (You should really check out Ridley's TED Talk - "When Ideas Have Sex." And The New American Workplace provides in-depth case studies of companies that are able remain competitive through a results only workplace environment (ROWE) that allows creative people on the edge to be nurtured and thrive.

JSB - I hope your next book includes more of JSB.

Grade:  B-

Sonic Boom: Globalization at Mach Speed by Gregg Easterbrook

originally from:  http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/technology_and_learning/the_ed_tech_sonic_boom

Greg Easterbrook is making two big arguments in Sonic Boom: Globalization at Mach Speed.
Future Prosperity: Due to a combination of global trade, the spread of information technology, and the movement toward representative democracies, the 21st century will usher in unprecedented levels and diffusion of global prosperity.

Current Anxiety: The growth of prosperity will probably fail to make us happy. Instead, the ascendance of entrepreneurial capitalism and the rise of knowledge work at the expense of institutions, stability and security will make us all more anxious.

This seems to be a fair description of how life within the higher ed world will unfold as well. Would anyone trade the your college experience to the one that our kids will be able to receive? When I was in college the predominant instructional methodology was a lecturer talking at us for 50 minutes at a time. We had some great lecturers, and some lousy lecturers, and basically we accepted that this is how things were and we were lucky if we happened to take a course with a dynamic and passionate teacher.

Today, we are able to leverage a set of well-developed and stable technologies to build in pedagogically advanced active learning methods into a wide variety of courses and modes of instructional delivery. To be a great teacher it is no longer a prerequisite to be a dynamic and gifted lecturer. Rather, faculty can partner with learning designers, librarians, and teaching specialists to create dynamic, student-centered courses that allow students interact and create with the curriculum in ways that were impossible before the advent of technology enabled and supported classes.

However, these improvements in course quality made possible by the pairing of learning design methods and technology have brought with them a new set of challenges. Life was perhaps simpler back in the days when I first started to teach (in mid 1990s), when course design primarily meant crafting a syllabus. Yes, we had Scantron machines transparencies and PowerPoint, but we did not have the tools to enable active learning within a large course setting. We could make the lecture better at the margins, more class discussion - small groups etc., but the basic format of delivery was basically set. Today, students and progressive faculty I think expect that we can do better - and that every class is an opportunity to experiment with methods to encourage our students to transition from the passive to active mode. We know that learning is both social and requires engagement, we don't retain what we don't manipulate and create.

All these opportunities for improved teaching mean that we all end up spending more time on our classes and more time experimenting (and sometimes failing) with new teaching methods and tools. This shift also means that we need to shift resources and inputs into the teaching process, a change in the productivity equation that can (and should) disrupt the traditional economics of higher ed.
Easterbrook is convinced that the next few years will bring about opportunities and challenges that can scarcely be imagined, but will leave us all better off as individuals and as a society. I think we are in for a similar ride in higher ed.

Are any of you planning on reading Sonic Boom? I think that this would be an amazing book to teach a 1 credit mini course around. Easterbrook does a good job of reading his own work in the audiobook format. His last book, The Progress Paradox, is one of my all-time favorites. Sonic Boom is a terrific follow-up.

Grade:  A-

Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson

originally from:  http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/technology_and_learning/rework

The first book that I'm going to give to my learning and technology team is Rework, by the guys from 37Signals.

288 concise pages - or less than 3 hours in unabridged audio format. We need more books to be this good and this short.

37Signals is best known for its simple, cloud based project management tool Basecamp. I'm a Basecamp client, and have been using the tool productively for a few years now. If you have ever had to do a project with MS Project, or solely by e-mail and spreadsheets, than you will appreciate the simplicity, elegance, and flexibility of Basecamp.

The founders of 37Signals developed Basecamp to manage their own internal projects, only then realizing they had a service on their hands that other small teams would find useful. Basecamp requires no support from your central IT organization, no local hardware, and no expertise in project management. You can be up and running with a free 30 day trial in 60 seconds. Plans start at $24 a month.

Basecamp is not just a product but also a philosophy. Less features well done are better than many features that complicate a product. Offer services that are lightweight and agile, and resist the urge to meet the needs of every customer. Let your customer outgrow your product. Basecamp is the physical (or digital?) manifestation of the philosophy of work that 37Signals is selling in Rework. The company prides itself on keeping operations lean, costs down, working arrangements flexible, and paid marketing to a minimum. If you work for 37Signals you don't attend many meetings, don't write many strategic plans, and don't give many internal presentations. You are expected and encouraged to carve out quiet time for productive work, to share your work product early and often, and to be open to criticism. What you are not expected to do is work insane hours, sacrifice family or sleep time, or set unrealistic deadlines or goals.

It could be that 37Signals got lucky with Basecamp, and are falling into the fallacy of assuming that their work culture is an optimal culture because it produced Basecamp. The other products from 37Signals, Highrise (contact tracking), Backpack (Intranet), and Campfire (code sharing) have not enjoyed nearly the same level of success as Basecamp. We know from Leonard Mlodinow's book, The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives, that we all under-estimate the role of chance in our successes and failures. Nor is the advice in Rework particularly original. Experts like James O'Toole have long been recommending more flexible and less hierarchal workplaces.

What is different about Rework is that the founders of 37Signals are pitching their ideas at a level that can work with small teams on the sorts of projects and tasks that we all do. Anyone in charge of rolling out and supporting new learning technology services will benefit from reading Rework. You don't need a top-down re-org or permission from your leadership to make our products and team interactions more like those of 37Signals. We are all in some measure complacent in meeting cultures , reliances on committees, and the putting off of "shipping" new services until that mythical time the platform meets everyone's needs.

Rework should provoke a good discussion of how your team does things differently from how the team at 37Signals approaches tasks. In the end you may not decide to adopt all of the recommendations in Rework, but I guarantee that this book cause you to take a hard look at how your group operates.

Any Basecamp users want to jump in on the service? What do you think about the idea of writing a short book like Rework that spells out your work culture philosophy and the thinking behind the services you offer?

Grade:  B

June 2010 Books

June 2010 was a great book month. Everything gets an A-.  Book grade inflation or just great book options - you be the judge?

Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error by Kathryn Schulz

My mantra since reading Being Wrong is "I may be wrong about this".  Schulz is helping me embrace my inner mistake maker.  Who knew that I'd learn more and be more effective if I simply said "I was wrong" - without trying to come up with reasons or explanations.  This is a book with good ideas and a wonderful writer.  The writing may be more revelatory than the ideas (and the narration of the audiobook is simply divine), but the ideas are pretty good.  Making mistakes defines our humanity, and a tolerance for mistakes (in ourselves and others) is synonymous with maturity.  

Grade:  A-

Click: The Magic of Instant Connections by Ori Brafman and Rom Brafman

I clicked with this book.  The Brafman brothers bring the story of the power of instant connections home with a mix of great stories and a synthesis of the academic literature. 

Grade: A-

Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age by Clay Shirky

Thinking back on the hours of I invested watching Hogan's Heroes, Hawaii Five-O, Cheers, Magnum PI etc. etc. is always depressing.  Shirky calls TV watching our unpaid second-job.  According to Nielsen, the average American spends 34.5 hours a week watching TV.  That is about 1,800 a year.  Among young people, however, the time spent watching TV is going down - replaced by time spent creating and interacting on the Web.  The best decision my family ever made was to decide not to have cable, satellite or broadcast TV in our home.  TV is simply too tempting.  If I had TV I'd probably be watching now instead of writing this book review.  My brain loves to relax into TV - so does yours.  Shirky argues that by allowing us all to create, to push the "publish" button, the Web is making us smarter and more connected.  My hope is that Shirky turns his attention next to the implications of the cognitive surplus on higher education.

Grade: A-

The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home by Dan Ariely

Great book.  Much more personal than his first book, Predictably Irrational, the Upside of Irrationality helps us understand the benefits of our screwed up brains and illogical behaviors.  Ariely is one of those truly inspiring people.  His story of overcoming pain, of using pain to understand and explain the world, is an amazing motivator to all of us to stop whining about our own obstacles.  I think Ariely is a genius in a very particular way - a genius in the construction of experiments to test ideas.   A craftsperson of experimentation.   

Grade:  A-

The Genius in All of Us: Why Everything You've Been Told About Genetics, Talent, and IQ Is Wrong by David Shenk

Sort of a companion piece to Gladwell's Outliers.  The two books go together well as Shenk is taking on an orthodoxy of thought around the gifted few - the geniuses.  Important for parents and educators to understand the potential in our kids and students to achieve if given means and motivation to practice. 

Grade:  A-

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Vintage) by Stieg Larsson

I finally got on the Larsson bandwagon.  Now reading book number 2.  Fun to participate in this weird reading cultural event.

Grade: A-

May 2010 Books

The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves by Matt Ridle

This book is almost too perfectly aligned with my core beliefs that the story of the world is one of progress.  The mental architecture that I place new learning is built around a narrative of progress.  The story is one technology driven change towards lower mortality, lower fertility, better nutrition, and better health.  My training in both demography and history has taught me to be weary of any talk of "better days or golden ages" - as I appreciate lower child mortality, the spread of democracy, and expanded access to education. 

So Ridley has written the book that conforms to almost all my prior beliefs - although he arrives at his conclusions by routes I probably wouldn't go.  First, Ridley is clearly leans libertarian.  He is suspicious of the role of government in promoting progress.  I'd be interested in how he explains away government led policies that are responsible for so much of the progress we have enjoyed, everything from sewer projects to social security, civil rights legislation to medicare, medicaid, and the recent health care bill.  I think Ridley does not give enough credit to the role of organized labor for contributing to spreading the benefits of capitalism to more people, nor does he seem to grasp the importance of government in supporting education at every level. 

His dismissal of global warming as a major concern will get lots of attention for being basically wrong-headed, and I'd agree that he oversells his case and therefore gets the actions that we should be taking basically wrong.  (My take…worry less, invest prudently).  I like that Ridley comes out as a fan of hydrocarbons and big oil (timely given the BP disaster), and his critique of ethanol is accurate and devastating.  But he misses the importance of investing in alternative energy as an engine to insure innovation, seemingly blinded by the idea of a zero sum game of social investments (which is strange as he rails against zero sum thinking).  I like a book where I agree with the conclusions but disagree with how the argument is derived.  This tells me that the fundamental truth of the progress story is intact - and where we need to argue and debate is around the means rather than the ends. 

Grade:  A-

The Great Reset: How New Ways of Living and Working Drive Post-Crash Prosperity by Richard Florida

In Florida's new book, The Great Reset: How New Ways of Living and Working Drive Post-Crash Prosperity, places like Phoenix represent much of what has gone wrong with the American economy and social arrangements over the past 40 years. Florida argues that we need to move away from the model of low-density, car based, and spread out suburbs that Phoenix embodies. This model, according to Florida, is both unsustainable (for environmental and economic reasons), and undesirable to the emerging "creative class" of workers. 

The great recession has refocused people's priorities away from owning the ever-larger home and the ever-bigger SUV towards a desire for economic agility and embeddedness in thick social/economic networks. This agility and embeddedness is best achieved in walkable cities and close-in (first ring) suburbs, ones served by mass transit and characterized by high proportions of educated knowledge workers. People want to rent rather than own, take high-speed rail and zip cars as opposed to garaging the big SUV, and be free to spend their energy on resources on human capital enhancing actives such as education, creative work, and the arts. 

note - originally published in A Phoenix Future?  http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/technology_and_learning

Grade A-

Crash Course: The American Automobile Industry's Road from Glory to Disaster by Paul Ingrassia 

Some day I'd like to teach a course on industries that implode.  I hope we are not talking about higher education in this course, although we should probably learn from the music industry, newspapers, and the American car industry.  Ingrassia's book is the best description I've read on the rise and fall of the former Big 3.  Could have things been different?  One lesson I took from "Crash Course" is that a fuel of failure is insularity.  The car industry failed to take in new ideas because it failed to listen to any voices of outsiders.  These voices included first the competition, and next their customers.  What sets this book apart is how even-handed Ingrassia is in assigning blame.  The unions do not get off any easier than management.  Should our government have saved G.M. and propped up Chrysler (to hand over to Fiat)?  Will the American auto industry recover to be able to compete effectively?  Ingrassia is fairly positive on both these questions, and I find myself somewhat hopeful as well. 

Grade:  A-

The Untold History of the Potato by John Reader 

The best of "one subject / one food" books that I've read (and I try to read them all).  The way my brain works is that I understand the world best through a narrow lens.  The potato is a narrative in which it is possible to hang the major changes of civilization, including the move from subsistence to surplus farming, industrialization, and migration.  Did you know that China is now the largest grower of potato's?  Or that it was the potato that allowed Europe to finally escape the Malthusian trap of population growth and starvation?  Wonderful, amazing and beautiful book.  Since reading I've considerably upped my potato consumption (a great source of vitamins and energy with little poor effects).

Grade:  A-

The Bagel: The Surprising History of a Modest Bread by Maria Balinska

A short book for bagel lovers and those interested in understanding how Jewish history and the bagel are intertwined.  My bagel consumption has increased with my knowledge of both my people's history and my families staple brunch food.  Not a wonderful book in terms of scale, sweep, or narrative alacrity.  But the best bagel book I know about - which makes it worth reading for that reason alone.

Grade:  B

The Hamburger: A History by Josh Ozersky

The last of my "history of the world as seen through this food" book this month - and while cannot compare the majesty of the potato book, the hamburger is a worthy addition to this library.  This books seems to come out of a series of concise books on the role of specific foods in culture and history.  The hamburger story provides a window into the changing food production systems and eating habits of Americans, as well as the rise of the industrial fast-food system that was largely built around the hamburger.  

I first experienced White Castle in college in St. Louis, a place that required minimal dollars and sobriety.  If I had known the White Castle was the first mass market hamburger chain I might have thought of the experience of eating their mini burgers (sliders) somewhat differently.  The story of McDonald's is beautifully told - both as a case study in post WWII capitalism and for the larger economic and social implications of mass-produced food.  We have become so negative about McDonalds, with all of us reading the Omnivores Dilemma and Fast Food Nation (and watching Food Inc. and SuperSize Me etc.).   It was good to read a book that explained the rise of McDonald's and the other fast food hamburger joints as a part of a larger story - one that we should not condemn even if we choose not to participate.  Lovely writing, good length, and a necessary complement to our understanding of how we produce and consume our food.

Grade:  B+

The Male Brain by Louann Brizendine  

The companion book to The Female Brain (which I think helped me understand my wife, daughter, and mom - although they are yet to agree).  Being the owner of a male brain myself, I was pleased to receive an owners manual (seems a little late at 40 - but shoos complaining?  Turns out that all the ways my brain fails to help me make good decisions are understandable, if not excusable, by the mix of hormones and wiring that evolution has left my brain to cope with my environment.  My male brain changes as I age due to the effect of age related hormones and changes in biochemistry.  

Understanding the biological and hormonal routes of my emotions may help me recognize a gap between the reality I perceive the reality that those around may be interpreting.  Like most brain books, the central message is that we are dealing with an enormously complex apparatus that may not always cause us to act in our best interest (as evolution cares about passing on genes, not making us or those around us happy).  In the future I'm going to use my brain to think about the hormones and molecules being released at any given time when things start to fire wildly (causing stress, anxiety, anger, etc. etc.) - in an effort to recognize that with the passage of time the world may feel somewhat different.  

The Male Brain has been pretty well panned in the reviews I've read.  My advice is that if you are not a neuroscientist to start than you will get lots out of the book (I did).  Brizendine is a good writer and a good storyteller.  She may simplify - but simplification in this case advances rather than detracts from understanding.  

Grade:  B+

The Ask: A Novel by Sam Lipsyte

If you fall into any of the following categories please consider reading "The Ask".  Work in higher education.  Born between 1965 and 1975.  Want to laugh your ass off.  

You can read more thoughts on The Ask at my IHE blog - http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/technology_and_learning/an_ask_for_a_new_digital_model   

Grade:  A-

Next: A Novel by James Hynes

Another GenX sort of higher ed guy story.  A genre in which I can relate.  Nice companion to The Ask.  A good reminder to perhaps take ourselves and our institutions a little less seriously (as Hynes show the consequences for not doing so can be dire indeed).  Absorbing and smart - Next is a novel to be read first.

Grade:  B+

Lowboy: A Novel by John Wray

Lowboy is probably technically good (what do I know) but too depressing and mannered for my tastes.  Well-reviewed and well-crafted, not my idea of a good time.

Grade:  B-

The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook: A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal by Ben Mezrich

Originally published in my InsideHigher Ed blog http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/technology_and_learning/read_the_bad_facebook_book

This recommendation is only for people who work in higher education. Civilians should stay away.

I have 3 reasons why you should read The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook: A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal, by Ben Mezrich. (None of these reasons have anything to do with the book helping you figure out your Facebook privacy settings).

But before I jump into my 3 reasons to read the book, I'd like give you 3 reasons as to why this is not a good book:

Bad Book Reason 1 - Accuracy: You can pretty well assume that many (if not most) of the details in the book are inaccurate. Zuckerberg did not agree to be interviewed, so therefore all of the first person accounts that the narrative is based on will be largely self-serving and one-sided.

Bad Book Reason 2 - History: This would have been a much better book if Mezrich had done his homework better about the history of Internet startups and the technologies and companies that preceded Facebook. We learn little about either, although both are critical in understanding the rise and impact of Facebook.

Bad Book Reason 3 - Sociology: Mezrich's description of both campus and start-up life resemble neither reality that

I'm familiar with. It is as if he telling the story of someone else telling a story of college and company life, as opposed to actually going and spending time in either environment.

Now that I've told you the 3 reasons why this is a bad book - I want you to forget them all and read the book anyway.

Here are my reasons to read:

Reason to Read 1 - Lessons: Despite every shortcoming, I was left with a powerful feeling that we (people who work in higher education) should be doing everything we can to catalyze (fertilize?) the next Facebook. The Accidental Billionaires is really the story of a bunch of college kids who spent most of their time doing non-college type things (classes, studying, etc.), while devoting the bulk of their attention to their start-up ideas. This is not an original thought, but what if we could harness "the propensity to truck, barter and exchange" (Adam Smith) directly in our curriculum?

Reason to Read 2 - Therapy: As a survivor of the original dot-com bubble (1999 to 2001 with Britannica.com Education), this book helped me work through my own deep-seated psychological issues. Okay, maybe this is a slight exaggeration. But it was fantastic to revisit again the pure excitement of taking an idea, starting up a new business, and having people throw money at you.

Reason to Read 3 - Fun Factor: This bad book is a blast to read. Fast paced, absorbing, and often funny. If you keep your expectations low (the secret to happiness in all things), you will enjoy spending time with the Accidental Billionaires.

Have any of you read the book?

Grade:  B-

April 2010 Books

The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050 by Joel Kotkin

I have a category of books that I want my Dad to read.  These books share the theme "the world is getting better, not worse - and the future is brighter than the past".  My Dad begs to differ.  He is wrong, but he is entitled to his misguided views.  (The next book on this list will be The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves by Matt Ridley  - other books include The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse by Gregg Easterbrook  and The Birth of Plenty : How the Prosperity of the Modern World was Created  by William J. Bernstein

Kotkin grounds his optimism in solid demographics (my Dad's profession - one reason why I'm so excited to hear from him where Kotkin gets it wrong).  Kotkin's basic argument is that the United States will reap a demographic dividend of relatively high fertility and immigration rates, one that will result in growing demand for goods and services and an expanding pool of talent, energy and innovation.  This growth will be centered in our increasingly vibrant and diverse suburbs, but even the old industrial cities will benefit as their low costs drive in-migration. 

Kotkin takes the "anti-suburb and anti-growth" pundits head-on, noting (accurately) that people choose to move to suburbs for amenities such as good schools and good housing.  Jobs and culture tend to follow the people, a cycle that increases both productivity and brings new opportunity.  The description of Manhattan, Boston, and San Francisco has "luxury cities" is priceless - with Kotkin arguing that the new cities (concentrated in the South West spread all over) may get less cultural attention but will be the places of opportunity for our children and their immigrant neighbors. 

Grade:  A-

Next Stop, Reloville: Life Inside America's New Rootless Professional Class by Peter T. Kilborn


People who work in academia tend to have little understanding about how the rest of the world makes a living.  I'm doubly worse, haven grown up in an academic household.  I'll never forget my first non-academic job (for Britannica.com during the bubble), when I was shocked that people actually worked all summer.  So I particularly cherished each page of "Next Stop, Reloville"  (yes page…sadly no audiobook version is available) - an amazing piece of long-form reporting that brings into focus the invisible class of "relo's".  A "relo" is a worker (or their family) who relocates for work.  The culture in corporate America is to move employees from job-to-job-to-job, in promotions that often require a move to another city.  Whole communities in and around of Atlanta, Phoenix, Dallas and many other places have become "relo" destinations, prized for their affordable real estate, business friendly tax structures, and proximity to growing markets.  Climbing the ranks of corporate America usually means being willing to relocate every 5 to 7 years, bringing spouses and kids in tow.  At the highest levels, relocation may mean an international move as well.  These people are largely invisible because nobody track their aggregate movements, and the "relo's" themselves often do not lay down deep enough roots in a community to cause much disruption when they leave.  This is a terrific book - combining sociology, economics, and history - essential for understanding how professional and family life have changed in response to larger economic forces.

Grade:  A-

This Book Is Overdue!: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All by Marilyn Johnson


Some Takeaways - originally published at my IHE blog.  http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/technology_and_learning/some_takeaways_from_this_book_is_overdue

I think if I were an academic librarian the book might be somewhat annoying. Johnson's strength and her weakness is that she is not a librarian, rather a librarian groupie. She has an outsider's appreciation for the librarian profession and the workings of a library. As an outsider, however, I think she misses some (if not most) of the big issues, challenges, and trends facing the discipline. This goes doubly so for the world of academic libraries. I hope that Johnson's passion and respect will inspire someone embedded in an academic library to write an account of this world for the non-specialist reader.

--The more time I spend thinking about the library world the more I realize how little I know and understand. I'm not sure if my lack of understanding is due to my own limitations of perspective (coming from a teaching and technology background), or due to some inherent insularity of library culture. An example of my own lack of knowledge about library culture and structure is how struck I was by Johnson's description of the growing cadre of disruptive librarians. These are librarians, some of whom are academic librarians, who are engaged in challenges to the library and institutional status quo using online tools such as blogging and social media platforms. What surprised me is how much more diverse (and sometimes radical) librarians are compared to both my image and my colleagues in computing. The fact that librarians are so engaged in rethinking their profession and institutions probably would not come as a surprise to any librarian, but to an outsider this is an eye-opening notion. You will have to tell me if this observations means that librarians should be spending more time talking and engaging to non-librarians about their ideas and plans for change and re-invention, or if non-librarians need to spend more time hanging out with our colleagues (at library conferences, library blogs etc.).

--My other big takeaway from This Book is Overdue is a new appreciation of the centrality of the moral code that motivates librarians. I had not fully grasped the degree to which librarians are dedicated to the the non-market distribution and availably of information. Nor had I fully understood the central librarian ethic of privacy and confidentiality. Does academic computing have anything comparable in terms of outlook and orientation. We have debates about open source, transparency, and open curriculum - but I don't think we have anything close to the cohesive philosophy that peoples access to information should not be dependent on resources, status or position that seem to be universal amongst librarians.

For those of you thinking about reading This Book is Overdue, I'll warn you that the first half of the book is much better than the second. Again, I hope that my academic librarian colleagues do read the book, if only to discuss and make plans to write a better one.

Grade:  B

The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis

Now I finally understand the sub-prime mortgage meltdown.  I mean, I understood that in general too many people took out mortgages they could not afford, and when housing prices stopped going up each year that many of these people could not refinance or sell and therefore could not pay their loans.  What I did not understand, prior to reading The Big Short, was the credit default swap and how Wall Street and the big insurance companies got themselves in so much trouble that they needed to be bailed out.  This is a fun book to read because Lewis is at the top of his game as a storyteller.  In lesser hands, the people profiled in the book to advance the sub-prime meltdown narrative would not have been nearly as compelling.  With Lewis telling the tale, however, we learn about the antecedents of the great recession through the personalities of a marginalized and somewhat anti-social group of traders and analysts whose outsider status let them see what nobody else saw, and make millions in the process.  This is really a story of how sometimes the outsider, willing to go against the conventional wisdom and the customs of the dominant elite, are able to over turn entire systems while shedding sunshine on uncomfortable realities.  I'm going to make it a point to seek out the eccentrics in higher ed, and listen to what they have to say.

Grade: A-

The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science by Norman Doidge


A worthy addition to the brain bookshelf.  Not quite as good as Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School by John Medina , on par with Welcome to Your Brain: Why You Lose Your Car Keys but Never Forget How to Drive and Other Puzzles of Everyday Life by Sam Wang and Sandra Aamodt.  The stories of our brains plasticity will, well, blow your mind.  The fact that so much of what science thought about how our brains worked turned out to be wrong tells us how difficult it is to understand those 3 pounds sitting inside of our skulls.  The idea that our brain's inherent neuroplasticity holds out hope for greater wisdom and intelligence as we age is a hopeful one, while at the same time we must recognize our brain's unhelpful tendencies to form patterns of thought that are sub-optimal.  Doidge has a good story to tell, he understands the science, but is somewhat limited by his skills as a storyteller.  The story of our changing understanding of the brain is one that deserves to be told by our very best writers.

Grade:  B

The City and the City by China Mieville

My colleague Laura Librarian recommended this book,  thank you.  The whole category of speculative fiction is not one that I knew existed.  She compared it to The Yiddish Policemen's Union: A Novel by Michael Chabon.  Apparentely Mieveille has a loyal following, and has a pretty interesting background. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Miéville

The City is challenging and rewarding - a book that takes some time to get one's head around (at least for me).  A novel set in a counter factual but seemingly real world of geopolitics, customs (and sometimes technology), calls into question some beliefs about how the world is set-up.  Part police procedural, part social commentary, and part something else (sci fi?), this novel is impossible to characterize, difficult to put down, and hard to get out of my head. 

Grade:  B+

Solar by Ian McEwan

'It's a catastrophe. Relax!'  - originally published at my IHE blog - http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/technology_and_learning/it_s_a_catastrophe_relax

So Nobel laureate Michael Beard assures us all of the the inevitability and consequences of global warming, in Ian McEwan's smart and hilarious new book Solar.

Sometimes I feel faintly embarrassed, spending all this time and energy on learning technology while doing nothing to contribute solutions to the world's most pressing problems: hunger, poverty, climate change etc. etc. Shouldn't we be talking about more important matters than Blackboard and the iPad?

I guess with a stretch we could argue that education is the key to progress, and advances in education are increasingly catalyzed by technology, ergo our work in educational technology is driving progress. Ridiculous, I know. We do what we do because nothing is more fun than working where learning and technology meet - if any improvements come out of our work then this is a nice benefit.

How do we get authors who are somewhere in the same ballpark of McEwan to turn their attention from global warming and theoretical physicists to educational technology and learning technologists? McEwan clearly studied up on his physics and climate change facts to write Solar, making the story of the 5 time divorced, seductive and corpulent Dr. Beard simultaneously fantastical and educational. We need a novelist to tell our story.

Grade:  B+

March 2010 Books

Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard by Chip Heath and Dan Heath

If you are in the business of change management this is the book for you.  Want to alter the status quo?  Want to build new things?  The Heath brothers are great.  I wrote about this book on my IHE blog , as Switch is a good read for people in learning technology.  The Heath brothers have the popular nonfiction, synthesis, storytelling, and research based conclusion format down.  Entertaining and illuminating.  Quick and satisfying.  

Grade:  A-

False Economy: A Surprising Economic History of the World by Alan Beattie 

If you like reading the Economist (and I do), you will love False Economy.  Popular economic history in all the best ways.  The big question is always, why are some countries so rich and some countries so poor?  Beattie takes on this big question, answering lots of smaller questions along the way.  His basic answers have to do with choices and institutions, a thesis he explores while teaching us why Argentina did not get rich, oil is more trouble than it is worth (usually), why cocaine is not grown in Africa, and why we pay so much for Peruvian asparagus (and subsidize rich American peanut growers).   

Grade A-

Juliet, Naked: a novel by Nick Hornby

Nick Hornby is one of my favorites.  The prince of lad lit.  Juliet find Hornby back in top form - and surprisingly writing in the voice of a young woman (at least for half the book).  As an obsessive blogger I enjoyed having my tribe skewed, and as a guy I can't argue with any of Hornby's observations about the shortcomings of our gender.  Bad long-term relationships, reclusive rock-stars, complicated families, museum politics and small English coastal cities - Hornby keeps it all light, balanced and delightful.

Grade:  B+

Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin 

It seems whatever Godin is selling I'm buying.  Gotta give him credit for that.  My advice for Linchpin is to make it through the first half of the book - as the second half is really where the action is. Stick it out.  Godin might have something to sell, but that does not mean he is wrong.  His basic point that, that the economy has ripped away any security of careers or institutions, and that we need to change our outlook towards work, is probably exactly right.  The question is what do we do with this knowledge.   I like Godin allright, some folks may hate him, I think he is worth reading to generate a great discussion.

Grade:  B

Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism by Ha-Joon Chang

Would have made an excellent Atlantic article - not enough for a book.  It is good that Chang challenges the conventional wisdom of the Washington consensus on free-trade.  As an Economist reader I'm happy to my assumptions challenged.  The best chapters are routed in history - not argument.  I very much enjoyed hearing a first-hand account of the risk of South Korea, from one of the world's poorest countries to one of the wealthiest - and the policies that allowed this transformation.  This story is particularly interesting to me as my in-laws are Korean immigrants.  But Chang does not have enough new to say for a whole book, and ends up repeating himself and his argument far too often.  

Grade:  B-

February 2010 books

The Marketplace of Ideas: Reform and Resistance in the American University (Issues of Our Time) by Louis Menand 

I originally wrote this review for my IHE blog.  http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/technology_and_learning/on_the_marketplace_of_ideas

3 Reasons to Read Menand's The Marketplace of Ideas:

• Reason 1: If we want to change the academy we first need to understand it. The Marketplace of Ideas situates the current governance and major challenges of academic institutions within their historical context. The absence of pedagogical training in graduate school has deep roots in how our Ph.D. granting research institutions and the training of faculty members evolved. Learning technology can provide a catalyst for change, but only if we fully grasp how the current system came into being and what supports the continuation of the status quo.

• Reason 2: Menand writes beautifully. The audiobook is read by Michael Prichard, a master of the art form.

• Reason 3: The book is concise. 4 hours and 7 minutes in audio format. 176 pages. We should have more short books on big topics. The length of the book, combined with the elegance with which it is written, means that most of us can actually get it read. The Marketplace of Ideas would make the perfect choice for a book club discussion sponsored by your teaching and learning center.

The critique I'd offer for The Marketplace of Ideas is that Menand spends almost all of his time looking backwards instead of to the future. The opening up of higher education to new paradigms of learning and a new set of digital tools has the potential to disrupt what has been created. The open learning movement, online education, and the development of learning platforms around constructivist learning theory are but three examples. It is not clear to me that the institutions that have historically led the way in shaping the norms and structure of higher ed. will continue to do so in the future. Rather, our community colleges, online units and for-profit institutions institutions might be where we find successful innovations and new models that better meet the changing demand for higher education. Certainly the new models that the 'non-elite' institutions of higher learning are experimenting with are an important part of the story in understanding the direction of higher education.

These critiques, however, should not discourage you from reading the book. In fact, I suggest using The Marketplace of Ideas as a starting place for a faculty / academic librarian / academic technologist / administrator discussion on the past and future of your institution.

Grade:  A-

In CHEAP We Trust: The Story of a Misunderstood American Virtue by Lauren Weber

Perhaps the recession and the breaking of the economic contract between employers and employees has spawned a new sub-genre of anti-consumption.  Weber's book is best read as a companion to Shell's, "Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture" and Anderson's "Free: The Future of a Radical Price".  Weber's main message is that consumerism is a choice, and the consumer industrial complex is a creation and not a given, and that in understanding both the history and psychology of spending we can choose to opt-out.  Easier said than done - but learning about individuals and groups who have made this choice in the past makes contemplating voluntary cheapness more appealing.  

Grade:  A-

Fly by Wire: The Geese, the Glide, the Miracle on the Hudson by William Langewiesche

Every time I read one of Langewiesche's "pilot books" I feel much calmer about flying.  Going on a commercial airline flight is about the safest thing we can ever do.  Particularly if we are flying on a big modern jet.  The story of how the career of an airline pilot has morphed from a high-status / high-pay profession to one barely paying professional wages is particularly dispiriting.  Apparently, nobody likes working for the "legacy" carriers - one of the reasons why nobody likes flying them either.  If you think you know the whole story about that famous landing in the Hudson (I did), than you are in for a treat.  Langewiesche uses this freak event to tell a much bigger, and much more important, story about how airplanes and the airline business has changed.  

Grade:  A-

The Magicians: A Novel by Lev Grossman 

I can think of no reason not to read this book.  Who doesn't want magic to be real.  Who wouldn't like to escape from the human struggles so as to fight bigger battles.  Who wouldn't want to be a goose - if only for a little while.  Who amongst us are the magicians?

Grade:  A

Under the Dome: A Novel by Stephen King

1074 pages.  The biggest impression that this book leaves is its bigness.  If any book ever cried out to be Kindled (Kindleized?) or Ipadded it is the Dome book.  I couldn't quite figure out a comfortable position to work with it.  Too heavy to hold above my head in bed.  But reading on one's stomach is maybe a younger persons tactic?  Sitting in a chair was okay until my arms tired.  A workout and a story - all in one.  Oh - the story.  I haven't read King since the Stand (1,141) pages.  Reading "Dome" is a similar physical achievement to King's earlier masterpiece.  If Dome doesn't quite live up to the Stand - it is still an enjoyable town to be trapped in.  King goes fast enough to divert - although I never quite understood how these folks got themselves in their predicament.  Who wouldn't love a local politician / used care salesman / biggest crystal meth producer in the NorthEast.  The dome seems like the least of this town's problems.  Try passing a local property tax budget to fund your schools, that is where you will locate the horror.

Grade:  B

January 2010 books

Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin

Revisiting the HOPE that Obama's election inspired may not be the ideal recipe for emotional well-being post the recent Massachusetts Senate loss, and the dimming prospects for health care reform due to Republican filibustering.  Don't worry - take the plunge.  If you though (like I did) that you know basically all their is to know about the 2008 presidential race than you are in for a pleasant surprise.  These reporters, writing at the "in-between' area between reporting and history, give us the inside and unvarnished scoop. 

This is a story about the people, not policies.  The flawed, the ambitious, the crazy, the mean, the brilliant, and the dim-witted. Candidates are like all of us, except more so in everything.  You will have renewed faith in Obama's abilities, renewed thankfulness that the election did not go to any of the other candidates, and a renewed wonder that anyone would be willing to ever run for president. 

I think Hilary actually comes off quite well in the book (her campaign not so much).  So I'm going to predict here that in 2012 Hilary and Biden will swap jobs, and that Hilary will be elected to the top gig in 2016. 

How did someone as basically solid as McCain pick someone so obviously unqualified for (any) high office as Palin?  (The answer….desperation).   The chapters on Palin are hilarious - worth the read alone.  On the other hand the reporting on John Edwards and his wife (and mistress etc. etc.) is just depressing.

An instant classic. 

Grade:  A-

Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel H. Pink

Drive got trashed by the Economist  - you should read it and make your own judgements. 

Drive falls squarely in the "strengths" literature - a field I know best from the work of Marcus Buckingham.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Buckingham  The basic premise is familiar.  Traditional management strategies of incentives and sanction (rewards and sticks) are at best ineffective and at worst counter-productive in motivating performance.  Effect motivation needs to be intrinsic.  People need to do work that is meaningful, and they need be given both autonomy and responsibility for their jobs.  Workplaces (and educational environments) are best set-up to focus on results rather than means.  People will perform well if their job (or education's) matches their strengths (passions) - efforts by management to focus on and correct weaknesses are bound to fail.

Personally, I find this philosophy both correct and liberating.  Drive is a book that I hope is read and discussed in both higher ed. and in other workplaces.  

Grade:  B+

Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town by Nick Reding


Methland should be read as a companion piece to Caught in the Middle: America's Heartland in the Age of Globalism - the micro results of the macro trends that have decimated once thriving agricultural and manufacturing towns in the midwest.  As Reding tells the story, meth is a symptom of a larger economic and social story rather than a cause.   True, meth addiction and the meth economy feeds the beast of social decline and dysfunction, but the roots of meth's rise as the working class drug of choice, and the states inability to deal with either the producers or the addicts is structural.  Reding's reporting strategy is personal and visual.  We meet the people on all sides of the meth epidemic as full drawn and realized personalities.  Anyone who reads Methland will have a hard time thinking about crystal addiction, manufacture or distribution as one only of personal failure.

Grade:  B+

Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan by Jake Adelstein

I like the idea of Tokyo Vice better than the actual book.  The set-up is great.  American guy (my age) goes to college in Japan and stays on to join the countries biggest newspaper as a crime reporter.  In the process he illuminates aspects of Japanese culture and society that have been previously hidden to non-Japanese, including (but not limited to), the Japanese newspaper culture, and the Japanese crime culture, the Japanese strip club / prostitution / vice culture.  The problem is that this book would have been much better as a novel than a piece of non-fiction.  Adelstein, I'm guessing, was simply too constricted by real life (namely a real life spouse and children) to either get really dirty and go native in the Tokyo vice scene, or to tell about it if he did indeed descend into the moral darkness.  What is interesting about the story, and precisely the part that Adelstein hints at but always seems to shy away from, is the raunch, sin, violence and sex.  We really don't think the story of a Japanese crime boss getting a liver transplant stateside is all that interesting.  What is fascinating is seeing a gaijin penetrate, and succumb, to the temptations of hookers, strippers, drugs, booze, thugs, and story telling that should be a Tokyo vice reporters life.  We want to know more about the underside of Japan from a perspective (American, male) that we can relate. 

Grade:  B

December 2009 books

Trade-Off: Why Some Things Catch On, and Others Don't by Kevin Maney

A book that everyone working in the educational technology industry should read.  Where does your companies products or services fall along the fidelity (quality) and convenience spectrum?  Four-year residential colleges are a high fidelity / high cost experience - with bundled learning, living, and socializing.  University of Phoenix aims to be a high convenience provider.  Maney argues that companies need to choose to specialize in fidelity or convenience, or they will fall into the "fidelity belly" where their products and services are neither loved or required.  Expensive products or services (high fidelity) need to be ten times as good as convenient (cheap or free) services to survive.  Newspapers gutted themselves by laying off reporters and closing branches, therefore diminishing their fidelity.  We all need to make hard choices and trade-offs, and figure out where the product/service we deliver meets the demands for fidelity or convenience.

Grade:  A-

Manhood for Amateurs: The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father, and Son by Michael Chabon

Fatherhood is about constant failure.  We will be impatient when we should be wise.  Focussed on trivial matters when we should be hanging out with our kids.  Talking when we should be listening.  Distracted when we should be focussed.   Chabon is one of my favorite novelists, a beautiful and funny writer.  His stories of growing up in a divorced household in the 1970s rang true to my own (although Chabon is about 6 years older) - we  both swam through endless amounts of pop culture crap.  His attempts to create a stable and invigorating home life (4 kids and a writing spouse) provide a funny roadmap and mirror the rest of us amateur dads, husbands, and guys.

Grade:  A

Googled: The End of the World As We Know It by Ken Auletta

Googled is best when Auletta uses his extensive knowledge of the media world to analyze how Google is disrupting the news, advertising, and entertainment businesses.  I wish Auletta knew as much about education as he does about newspapers and media, as it would be fascinating to speculate how Google will disrupt academe.  I was less interested in the exhaustive biography of the company, its founders, its executives, and its early history (although all of this is well told).  Googled is worth reading because Auletta is able to look at the emergence of Google from the perspective of the newspaper execs, telecom managers, ad men, and technology companies whose businesses have been swept away and along by the Google tsunami. 

Grade:  B+

Caught in the Middle: America's Heartland in the Age of Globalism by Richard C. Longworth

I hope that this book is being included in the curriculum of a range of courses at Washington University in St. Louis (where I majored in history and graduated in 1991).  Longworth asks, "is anyone dying to move to St. Louis?"  Longworth is a longtime Chicago journalist with an important story to tell about the failure of the Midwest to compete in a globalized economy.  States, cities and towns that fail to attract creative people, knowledge workers, and the educated and industrious foreign born are doomed to marginality and irrelevance.  The political organization of Midwest states has hampered a regional approach to education and economics, insuring that the loss of high-paying / low-skills manufacturing jobs lead only to the death of communities.  Where other regions have been able to diversity and reinvent themselves, most Midwestern cities fail to make the hard choices to invest in education, culture and advanced industries (such as biotech or green engineering), preferring instead to try to hold on to dying industries (such as manufacturing) with ever larger tax subsidies and rebates.  The U.S. can't simply write-off the Midwest (for one thing the Midwest contains the largest concentration of institutions of higher learning in the U.S.), we must learn from the regions failures, widely apply it successes, and invest in insuring that the left-behind cities like Detroit and Cleveland receive the attention and investment they deserve.

Grade:  A-

Slackonomics: Generation X in the Age of Creative Destruction by Lisa Chamberlain


My wife and I were both born in 1969.  We are firmly Generation X'ers.  We've been active perpetrators and victims of the dot-com and housing boom and busts.  Slackonomics might not be a great book - but it is a good enough book - and I recommend it to anyone born between 1965 and 1975.  We are children of the divorce and internet revolution.  The rise of the PC and the Web, the demise of the stable job or predictable career, and the erosion of middle-class wages.  Entertainment is way better then it was for us growing up in the 1970s - we have Netflix and premium cable.  We spent maybe a million hours growing up as latch-key kids watching bad television (did I really watch re-runs of Hawaii Five-O after school each day?) - today our kids spend maybe as much time on YouTube and with their iPods.  It was our generation that was supposed to ride the advantages of a baby bust - both more educated then any previous generation with a multitude of available jobs left opening by the retiring boomers.  It didn't quite work out that way - we got the economic (bubbles, recessions) and social stocks without the jobs.  But we are lucky in that our priorities and aspirations are pointed towards our families and our creativity, as we have seen the dangers of relying on employers and institutions.   Keep your expectations for analytical and economic analysis low, and enjoy hearing our story.

Grade:  B

The Delivery Man: A Novel by Joe McGinniss Jr.


Beautiful Children: A Novel by Charles Bock

For some reason my December fiction reading centered around dysfunctional family live in Las Vegas.  Drugs, sex, absent parents, strippers....what else can you recommend in the genre?

Grade:  B for both

November 2009 books

Crude World: The Violent Twilight of Oil by Peter Maass
http://bit.ly/50xZFh

This is not a typical "end of oil and the economic apocalypse is coming" type book.  Yes, Maass believes that we will see the end of the oil age in our lifetimes, but he sees this development has mostly a good thing.  Maass develops a compelling case for the "resource curse" by detailing the oppression, corruption, and stagnation present in oil rich countries.  From Nigeria to Saudia Arabia, Russia to Venezuala, countries most blessed with large oil deposits are cursed by high unemployment, structural inequality, violence, and unsustainable development.  American oil companies, U.S. consumers, and the U.S. government has been complicit in all the evils done in the name of petroleum extraction.  I wonder if a more balanced and nuanced story could be told about the impact of oil on our world?  I wondered how much oil has supported "good" economic growth as well as "bad" consumption.  But overall Maass' indictment of oil, oil industries, and oil regimes provides a compelling set of reasons (as if we needed any more reasons) to reduce our dependency on oil through incentives (taxes), conservation, and research. 

Grade: A-

SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
http://bit.ly/7N1Xpx

No points for originality, but reliably smart and entertaining.  I'm a sucker for academic theory and academic research packaged into narratives for the non-specialilst.  Economists and evolutionary psychologists seem to take up the most room on the bookshelf (and have sort of merged with behavioral economists), although primatologists and sociologists may be poised to make a run.  Does Levitt have any book length ideas inside of his head?  Dubner is a good writer and journalist, I wonder if their partnership has run its course.  Don't get me wrong.  I super-recommend SuperFreakonomics.  Read, enjoy, and bow down to the wisdom of incentives, the wisdom of the economist.

Grade:  B+

The Fourth Star: Four Generals and the Epic Struggle for the Future of the United States Army by Greg Jaffe and David Cloud
http://bit.ly/6kUaX2

I first blogged about this book at my ed. tech blog:  http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/technology_and_learning/learning_from_the_military  Briefly, I think it is important to understand the military because the armed forces provide a case study in institutional change.  The Generals profiled in this book had to overturn an entrenched military culture (overwhelming force etc.) with a new model (population protection) in order to have a chance to prevail in Iraq.  In education we need to replace a model of knowledge scarcity with that of knowledge abundance.  And as this book makes clear, we are not as smart, hard-working or disciplined as our nation's top military commanders. 

Grade:  B+

Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know by Alexandra Horowitz
http://bit.ly/8Lm4Ph

Don't read this book unless you live with a dog.  If a dog is part of your family, then I recommend that you read it together.  Understanding your dog from her perspective will make you both happier.  And when you read the book please do not take it out of the library, but spring for the audio, digital or dead tree version.  We want the author to get the money, as she deserves some tangible rewards for being brave enough to break convention and make the study of the house dog a legitimate field of scientific inquiry.  The best parts of the book debunk the myths of dog training (the Dog Whisperer does not come off very well) by diving into the biology and evolutionary history of our canine companions.  For instance, wolves (who share a common ancestor with dogs) do not live in hierarchical but familial packs.  And if you want to understand your dog, you have to get on your hands and knees and smell the world. 

Grade:  B

When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present by Gail Collins
http://bit.ly/6ODNku

I think the world of 1960 will be as far away to my daughter's experience as 1560 is for me.  It is hard to believe how far we have come in terms of equality and attitude about gender in the past 50 years.  Perhaps the most important social change in my Mom's lifetime.  We are all the beneficiary of the hard work done by the heroines of the women's movement.  I am grateful that my girls will have choices not limited by their gender.  There is not much new or groundbreaking in this book, but the story is both important and well-told.

Grade:  B

October 2009 books

October is the month where Amazon finally linked its Audible subsidiary to its main Amazon book search.  In theory this should make finding Audible books much easier, as the Audible site continues to be as atrocious (slow, poorly organized, anti-intuitive) as the Amazon site is wonderful.  But....the linking is unreliable.....inexplicably sometimes Audible editions don't show up.  Still - a step in the right direction.  Oh Amazon....are you too distracted by e-readers to give proper attention to Audible?

Say Everything: How Blogging Began, What It's Becoming, and Why It Matters by Scott Rosenberg

Will change how you think about the Internet, blogs, and what it means to be a writer.  Sure, the history of blogging is interesting - and Rosenberg narrates this story beautifully.  But the true value of the book lie in the authors arguments about the significance of blogging.  This is the book that convinced me that the best thing we can do in higher education and learning technology is to get every student their own public blog.  This is a book that helped me understand the beauty of a world where the pleasures of publishing are open to all of us.  The power to self-publish, to blog, will over time be seen as important as the printing press and the mass spread of literacy.

Grade:  A

What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures by Malcolm Gladwell

A pleasure from start to finish.  Why:  A) Gladwell reads his essays, and Gladwell reads just about as well as he writes.  B) If you love Gladwell books: Outliers, Blink, Tipping Point (as I do) then you will love this book as well.   C) If you gave up your New Yorker subscription (or are just hopelessly behind) here is your chance to read Gladwell's favorite essays from the magazine.  D) Gladwell basically invented (at least in my lifetime) the popularizing of social science research.  As such, the world is a much better place.

Grade:  A-

That Old Cape Magic by Richard Russo

Russo is back to form.  Funny and smart book about long marriages, aging parents, academia, real estate, and the Cape.  What else is there?

Grade:  A-

The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific by J. Maarten Troost

The narrator, Simon Vance http://bit.ly/3scvfd, moves this book from mildly diverting to something closer to wonderful.  The story of the slacker boyfriend accompanying accomplished partner to remote Pacific Island is a classic of the literary form.  Probably a big hit among the development economist set.  Think I'll have to read the rest of the Troost/Vance oeuvre.

Grade:  B+

True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society by Farhad Manjoo

Got this on a $4.95 Audible sale....happy I did.  Probably would not have read otherwise because of the lack of buzz.   Manjoo's big story that the diffusion of media and the disruption of the Web has eroded the enforced moderation of the Cronkite / NYT dominated mediascape will not come as a new story to anyone half-way paying attention.  But he tells the story well, supports his arguments with evidence, and writes well enough to keep the reader (listener) engaged. 

Grade:  B

Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives by Nicholas A. Christakis and James H. Fowler

Would have been much better if the author had not read his own book.  Author read books seldom work (unless you are Malcolm Gladwell) -  reading for audio is as much of an art as writing the book.  The book?  I recommend Connected even though it is not a great book.  The essential truth of the power of networks, and the science done by the authors to tease out their salience, are both sound and ground-breaking.  Methodologically strong and epistemologically important.  We need to think about our worlds from the perspective of networks.  Connected proves that not every good academic can write a popular book based on their work.  Can't blame them for trying.  Advice...buy in paper....skim through...and share the ideas.

Grade: B-

September 2009 books

We're starting to have more opportunities to talk to each other about what we are reading.  The Library has organized a great "What Are You Reading" lunchtime series (thanks Laura!).  More of us are posting quick reviews on the Visual Bookshelf app on Facebook.  

Wouldn't it be great if the LIbrary Web pages had a social element...a place where we could post  and search for reviews from local people.  Sort of like what Amazon does...but totally local.  I care a great deal about what the people I work with are reading and what they think about their books.   How could we make this happen?

Okay...the books:

Good Book: The Bizarre, Hilarious, Disturbing, Marvelous, and Inspiring Things I Learned When I Read Every Single Word of the Bible by David Plotz

The perfect book if you are:  a) Biblically illiterate, b) want to know more about the roots of your religion, and c) are too lazy to actually read the Bible.  Since I hit on all three of these criteria I definitely quality - I'm thinking of buying copies for my whole family.  We could discuss Plotz's book at Passover.  Actually, I'm more convinced then ever that I need to sit down with the Bible as a route into my heritage.  I got so much out of Good Book because I know so little about the Good Book.  Stunningly little.  Plotz is funny, smart, irreverent, generous, and argumentative.....all the things that my people pride ourselves on.   This book came out of "Blogging the Bible on Slate" - perhaps one of the few instances of any redeeming qualities for blogging.

Grade:  B+ 

An Edible History of Humanity by Tom Standage 

Nothing beats books that tell the history of the world through something we can get our minds around.  I love books that take narrow subjects to tell huge stories.  Standage is a master of this craft.  If you love reading about food and love big history then this book is a 5 start treat.  

Grade:  A-

American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson by Joseph J. Ellis

When I need to get away from learning technology I retreat to the 18th century.  Ben Franklin is my usual companion....but I'm down with the whole band of brothers.  Reading about our revolution and our revolutionaries reminds me that our country has faced much longer odds and much bigger challenges in our past.  Reforming health care and education may be tough, but nobody is going to get hanged by the British if we fail.  My time with Thomas Jefferson mostly came in relation to Ben Franklin's years in France or familiar stories about the writing of the Declaration of Independence.    Ellis' book is great because he does not try to be exhaustive (an impossibility) but focuses on the character and times of Jefferson.  

Grade:  B+

The Scarecrow and The Brass Verdict  by Michael Connelly

Connelly is among my top 5 favorite crime and police procedural writers.  Both prolific and entertaining, Connelly's books are always strongly plotted with good detail and appealing characters.  Beach books you can read all year round.

Grade:  B+

August 2009 books

Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy and Why it Matters for Global Capitalism by George A. Akerlof and Robert J. Schiller

Apparently influential in the Obama administration.  Good to see the basics of behavioral economics being applied to a macro-economic book.  Helped me get a better sense of why I paid too much for my house, why some folks are still poor, why jobs seem harder to come by, and why the folks making economic policy often seem like dumb apes.  Well written and informative.  Makes a good argument for the benefits and limits of capitalism and the necessity of regulation to protect our investments and jobs.

Grade:  A-

The Science of Fear: Why We Fear the Things We Shouldn't--and Put Ourselves in Greater Danger by Daniel Gardner

Put this book on the syllabus of our reading on why we screw up basic decisions, make poor judgements, fail to predict the future, and are afraid of all the wrong things.  Should be read by journalists everywhere who write about disease and violence, and us folks who read and watch these stories.  A good cognitive and theoretical summary of the academic literature on risk and behavioral economics.  Written with style and humor.

Grade:  A-

Butchers Hill: A Tess Monaghan Novel by Laura Lippman 

The 3rd, and best so far, Tess Monaghan Baltimore murder mystery.  I'm reading these in order, having bought the lot used on Amazon.  Lippman is getting a little darker, and Tess continues to intrigue with her weird mix of bravery and poor decision making.  Baltimore is really a great character in these books....made me want to visit the Charm City.  

Grade: B+

Create Your Own Economy: The Path to Prosperity in a Disordered World by Tyler Cowen

Not as good as "Discover Your Inner Economist" -but worth a read.  Sort of feels like an extended blog post - but nothing really wrong with that as Cowen as some interesting things to say.  The core of the book is an argument as to why folks on the autistic spectrum are our new profits, or at least reasons why their cognitive styles are well suited to our information economy and why their brains and behaviors should be honored and understood.  Cowen is in love with information, with lists, and with the Web tools that let us play in this information.  

Grade:  B

Waiter Rant: Thanks for the Tip--Confessions of a Cynical Waiter (P.S.) by Steve Dublanica

From the blog http://waiterrant.net/ - an insiders tour of the life and culture of a waiter at a high-end restaurant.  Dublanica has some tales to tell and some advice to give.  He is not nearly a good a writer as Bourdain (the book owes much to Kitchen Confidential), but the book is enjoyable and mildly informative.  Mostly I'm amazed at the level of substance abuse (and just pure abuse) that are part of a food servers life.   It does make sense, as waiters work crazy hours, work around alcohol, and are paid in cash.  Waiters generally live in the moment, are working towards something else (acting, writing, blogging), and are under-appreciated and under-paid.  I'll never tip pre-tax again.

Grade:  B

Moscow Rules (Gabriel Allon) by Daniel Silva

The Gabriel Allon books that come before were:  The Kill Artist, The English Assassin, The Confessor, A Death in Vienna,  Prince of Fire,  The Messenger, and the The Secret Servant.  I recommend reading them in order.  Allon is a Mossad assassin, art restorer and learning technologist (okay, I made up one of these things).  Great characters.  Moral clarity.  Some good action.  Topical plots.  Always well researched, with an eye for getting the details right.  Not very humorous.  I'll keep reading.

Grade:  B+

Fearless Fourteen (Stephanie Plum, No. 14) by Janet Evanovich

Mind candy.  They all blend together in a hazy goop of New Jersey crime, big hair, fugitives, and exploding cars.  This is what I imagine my life would have been like if my Dad would have stayed in Linden.  

Grade:  B 

July 2009 books

Free: The Future of a Radical Price by Chris Anderson

I loved "Free" for 3 reasons:

Reason 1:  Anderson is a terrific storyteller.  Free is one of those books where you learn some, think some, and have fun during the ride.  The main argument for Free is that the economics of digital goods pushes the price of these goods to their marginal cost of production, which in the case of digital copies is close enough to zero to set that price at free.  Further, the price of free enables all sorts of businesses and opportunities, providing opportunities for new business models, profits and services.  

Reason 2:  The growth of free has all sorts of implications for higher education.  Nowadays a lifelong learner can receive a wonderful education from Web content ranging from TED talks to lectues on iTunesU and YouTube/EDU.  Educational content is now free.  This forces us in higher education to rethink our own value propositions and where we exist in a digital economy built around abundance of quality curricular and lecture content as opposed the scarcity model that traditional lecturing/courses is built upon.  

Reason 3:  Anderson made the unabridged audio edition of Free available for free on Audible and some other outlets.  This price encouraged a bunch of us at Dartmouth to read the book together, generated some great discussions and debate.  Having the book freely available to our community proved to be an excellent argument for the library overcoming the scarcity of digital books to have them available to our community.  I admire Anderson to no end for putting his money where his mouth is and offering the digital copy at the price of production.  I'd gladly pay more in Educause conference fees to listen Anderson keynote one of our conferences.

Grade:  A

Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture by Ellen Ruppel Shell

Cheap is the perfect companion to Free.  Or maybe the antidote to Free.  Where Anderson sees a bright future for free, Ruppel Shell reminds us of the high cost of cheap.  These costs range from the loss of decent paying jobs for producers to the environmental damage that allows cheap furniture, food, and manufacturing goods to come to market.  We probably didn't need one more book on the dangers of the cheap industrial food complex, but Ruppel Shell puts trends in food in the larger context of the migration away from quality across the consumer basket.  The chapter on Ikea alone is worth the price of admission.  My only quibble is that perhaps the author over-sold her case.    

We have realized some benefits from the cost of some things dropping, from computers to bandwidth (see Anderson), her case would have been strengthened by an exploration of cheap done right.  Still, this Free and Cheap should be read together, the first book getting us drunk on the limitless future and the second book sobering us up on the high costs that we are all paying.

Grade:  A-

The American Future: A History by Simon Schama

You know those questions that go "if you could have dinner with anyone, who would it be?".  Well...I think I'd choose Simon Schama.  Or maybe a roadtrip.  Schama is one of those historians who both have something to say about how we live now and the depth of knowledge to ground his thinking by weaving stories from our past.  One part sociology, one part history, all very smart and engaging.  The American Future should be read in conjunction with watching the BBC documentary of the same title, narrated by Schama.  Reading the book while watching the documentary does wonderful things for the brain in terms of reinforcing the concepts and stories with images.  It helps the stories stick.  

Schama's basic premise is that the election of Obama represents the culmination of an American journey towards our nation struggling to live up to our founding myths.  Only American could produce the horror of the civil war, segregation and institutional racism while holding the promise of electing an African American to the highest office.  This American Future beautifully chronicles our redemption, placing the biggest story of our times firmly within our American narrative.   

Grade: A

Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World by Tracy Kidder 

Jim Kim, MD/PhD is the 17th President of Dartmouth College, and with Paul Farmer the protagonist of Kidder's tale of a couple of doctor anthropologists who succeeded in changing how the public health community thinks about caring for the poorest of the poor.  I read this book for a Dartmouth book club, the best sort of experience as we were in part reading into the future values and culture of our institution (as college President's deeply and truly set the tone).  We came away with something like wonder that Dartmouth would have the foresight and creativity to recruit someone like Dr. Kim who has been so willing to challenge the status quo.  

Farmer and Kim, and the organization they started Partners in Health, were at best a marginalized group running on a suspect ideology within the public health industry.  The fact that they were able to change the thinking of how to treat TB patients (basically by demonstrating that the very poor can follow drug regimens), coupled with the success Dr. Kim had in bringing down the price of a range of medications for the poor, is truly an amazing and inspirational tale.  This book makes the best possible case that Dr. Kim is the right person at the right time to challenge the accepted wisdoms in higher education and on our campus and lead our institution into the future.

Grade:  A-

Future Hype: The Myths of Technology Change by Bob Seidensticker 

This book could have been called "Why Ray Kurzweil is an idiot and the singularity is not near".   Seidensticker sets out to inject some reality into utopian fantasies of a world of abundance driven by technological change.  His main thesis is that technological change of the late 20th century (the computer, the Internet, etc.) has had no where near the impact on society and individual lives as either the industrial revolution of the late 18th and early 19th century, or the introduction of technologies in the 19th century such as the railroad, the telegraph, and the telephone.  Even compared to 100 years ago when both the automobile went into mass production and Wright brothers first began to fly today technologies only marginally alter the social order.   

The second argument is that technological change is not exponential, rather it is mostly linear and built upon years of previous technologies.  Moore's law only has narrow implications to the digital world, with exponential drops in price and increases in capacity for storage, memory or bandwidth only filtering down into smaller changes in our lives.  I think that Seidensticker over sells his case, and therefore his main arguments are weakened.  Yes, we need to place todays technical changes within their historical contexts, but it is also true that the people living in the late 19th century were seldom fully aware of the impacts that their technologies would have on their lives and communities.  

In the 15 or so years I've been in the labor market I've seen technology completely alter how we think about and construct education, and I'm sure that most people in their own professional lives would say the same thing.   While I disagree with Seidensticker's main conclusions I still recommend the book, as we need to make sure that we ground our visions of the future in both skepticism and knowledge of our history.

Grade:  B

the academic library and Free

At least 3 of the authors of CC Blog are reading Free: The Future of a Radical Price, by Chris Anderson.  We've had some great conversations, discussions relevant to how we think about our models or technology to catalyze active learning.

Just today we hear about Microsoft's plan to introduce a free online Office service to compete with Google Docs.  If nothing else, Free is certainly topical.  (Actually...it is a great read). 

The reason we are all reading the book at once is that we all took advantage of Audible's and Anderson's offer to download Free for free.  The price eliminated the barrier to download the book, and jumped reading Free for all of us to the head of our cue.  

Academic libraries seem to want to distinguish between "scholarly" and "popular" books....choosing to purchase the former and marginalize the latter.  Since audiobooks, or any digital books, are seen as "recreational" reading then academic libraries choose not to invest in making this format available to their community.  

In reading Free, and then debating the authors arguments, my colleagues and I are engaging work that is crucial to our jobs.  The book is a springboard to think about different models of sharing and communicating our services.   

The fact that Free was free allowed us to all co-read and therefore catalyze these conversations tells us something about what we are missing in not having the digital audio format (the format that many of us prefer) available for loan from our library. Digital books should make the marginal cost of providing simultaneous reading a value added service that libraries could provide, an idea that remains rooted firmly a fantasy.

When the price of an audiobook is normally paid by us individually, rather then spread across the institution, then this price becomes a barrier to conversation.

In an age of information abundance the scarcity that libraries could overcome for their constituents would be to facilitate services like groups having the opportunity to concurrently read and discuss books from the collection.  Free is a price that would allow and encourage this behavior.  

We can all learn some things Anderson's experiment with free.

Audible subscribers can download Anderson's Free for free

As an Audible subscriber I was able to download Anderson's latest Free: The Future of a Radical Price for zero dollars and zero cents (and 0 credits).

The same book in abridged format is $13.22 or 1 credit (as abridging is expensive).

On Amazon the price is $17.19.

Gladwell as a provocative (and I think somewhat wrong-headed) review in the New Yorker.

I'm sure we will have a lively discussion about where "free" and "open" come together.  Many of us on campus have become big believers in giving away on the Web as much as what happens on campus as possible.  We want to publish and share our lectures, our talks, our articles, dissertations, learning objects, data sets, training materials etc. etc.

Where ever you fall on Anderson's central thesis, you have to admire his willingness to put his money where his mouth is and give away the digital audio version for (about) the cost of the raw materials. 

What are you waiting for....go and get your book!

books June 2009

The Illustrious Dead: The Terrifying Story of How Typhus Killed Napoleon's Greatest Army by Stephan Talty

Captivating.  I loved this book so much I immediately went to Netflix and ordered the 2 available documentaries on Napoleon's 1812 invasion of Russia.  Also tried to convince my wife that our family should trace Napoleon's route for a family vacation (still working on her).  This is a part of history that I did not know well.....and I had no idea that typhus played such a major role in Napoleon's defeat.  Books that combine disease and history are a particular love of mine, and this is one of the best examples.  Talty is a wonderful writer, masterfully evoking the horrid details of the retreat from Moscow and the larger role that disease has had in shaping human history.  Highly recommended.

Grade:  A

Hella Nation: Looking for Happy Meals in Kandahar, Rocking the Side Pipe, Wingnut's WarAgainst the GAP, and Other Adventures with the Totally Lost Tribes of America by Evan Wright

This is the sort of book we should be assigning in our sociology classes.  Wright is an ambassador to the marginalized, an embedded reporter with America's freaks, degenerates, and psychopaths.  We spend time with right wing movie producers, anarchists, alcoholic skate board punks, and HIV positive porn stars.  Durkheim taught us that by defining deviance we construct what is normal.  Hella Nation would work well in the classroom as our students could engage in systematic study of social organization and structure through the entertaining lens of drug addicts and white supremacists.  These essays were originally published in Vanity Fair and Rolling Stone, and the book does not always hang together in terms of narrative (an editor willing to cut would have helped out as well).  Despite its flaws I'd nominate Hella Nation to our curriculum.

Grade: B

Welcome to Your Brain: Why You Lose Your Car Keys but Never Forget How to Drive and Other Puzzles of Everyday Life by Sandra Aamodt and Sam Wang

Overview of the big topics, concepts and science of our brains.  Useful as a companion to other books on the brain and behavior as a way of condensing and consolidating the range of materials.  Well written but seldom insightful, grounded in research but not in any big ideas or new breakthroughs.  Enjoyably short chapters and chunked materials, studies and descriptions familiar from other works.  Nothing new or ground breaking, but a competent and pleasurable journey through the biology and behavioral research on our evolved brain.

Grade:  B

University Publishing Confronts Its Future

There's a great article from the Inside Higher Ed website about the field of academic publishing, entitled "Change or Die?," by Scott Jaschik. 

The article is a summary of presentations and discussion from the annual meeting of the Association of American University Presses where the hot topic concerned, naturally, the ability of university presses to survive in the current economic and social environment.

One quote early on is from Beth Jacoby, collection development librarian at York College of Pennsylvania who states, "Students will use heavily anything that can be accessed by a computer," and follows up on the notion of "easy access" by describing the preference of students to not use "online resources that have extensive systems to limit use or that ask for a lot of verification." York College has gotten rid of 85% of its print reference collection.

Another, more "radical," though I think spot-on, observation is from Michael Jensen, director of strategic Web communications for the National Academies Press, which already publishes more than 4,000 books in free, digital form. He believes that, "[S]cholarship must be 'de-linked from print publication,' such that books are 'the exception' and no longer the norm for disseminating new scholarship...book publishing is essential to promote and spread great new intellectual ideas, [but] print distribution hurts the environment...and charging...limits readership."

I think this is true not only for academic publishing but for the publishing industry in general, especially in light of Joshua Kim's article yesterday and in relation to digital publishing. Why do I need to purchase three versions of a book in order to read it on my terms (paper, digital, and audio)? The digital and audio distribution forms are some of the cheapest for the industry, in terms of overhead, yet their pricing competes with print editions, with no sharing options, no resale, and almost no discount channels when the book is no longer a NYT best seller.

Jensen thinks that university presses will need to survive via "value-added" services, such as print-on-demand, and institutional support. The publishing industry at-large should be looking at value-added services as well, instead of charging more for less and taking away end-user rights.

I'm reminded of a start-up service of which I've become quite fond. It is called "Good Old Games" at http://www.gog.com.  The premise is that they work with game publishers to make available computer games that are, generally, out of print. The games have all the necessary patches and upgrades applied and are tested and guaranteed to work on contemporary PC systems (XP and Vista compatible). They are sold and distributed completely online with prices ranging from $5.00 ~ $10.00, with weekly specials. What's more, though, is that all the games are sold completely DRM-free, and most come with extras, such as game soundtracks, original artwork, wallpaper files, avatars for other services (IM, Twitter, etc.), and strategy guides. Plus, there is a customer community providing ratings and reviews, too, along with the nostalgia factor. All of THAT is value-added!

some questions about Amazon, audiobooks and e-books for my academic librarian colleagues

I'm reading a great book called "The Illustrious Dead: The Terrifying Story of How Typhus Killed Napoleon's Greatest Army" by Stephan Talty

The questions I have for my academic library colleagues are not about Napoleon, or the Emperor's invasion of Russia in 1812, or Typhus (although I'd love to chat about these topics), but about how I got this book to read.

Question 1:   Why do I need to pay Audible.com $229.50 for a Platinum Yearly plan to get my audiobooks (equal to 24 credits or $9.56 a book) instead of being able to check this audiobook out of my academic library?

Question 2:  If I also wanted to be able to read the book on my Kindle why do I need to pay Amazon a further $14.85 for the e-book edition rather then checking the e-book out of my academic library?

Question 3:  Why is it that if I wanted the paper edition that my academic library would either have it on the shelves, or inter-library loan it for me within a couple of days (or buy a new copy) if the paper edition was not in the collection?

The thing is that both my brain and schedule make audiobooks far more attractive then paper books.  While I'd have a hard time arguing that The Illustrious Dead is essential to my work at the College, I would say that many (if not most) of the books I read are important in my work.  I tend to think if my brain and schedule make audiobooks essential if I'm going to keep up with reading that some of our students are in the same situation.  Would course books be more read if students could read them while multitasking?  Would our students read more books in their majors if they could read them while exercising, or waiting for the shuttle, or walking between classes? 

The academic library seems to be a wonderful organization for delivery of paper books, and less wonderful for supporting reading.  It's the old Railroad analogy - were railroads in the train business or the transportation business?  Are academic libraries in the paper book business or the reading and information business?

Having to purchase audiobooks from Audible (or e-books from Amazon) means that it is difficult to share books.  Books are much better when more people read them, as I want to talk to people about the books.  I don't want to keep my audiobook.  Once I read it I want to pass it along, I want to have it shared.  But I'm forced to buy the audiobook, when really I just want to borrow it.

I understand that academic libraries are, at least partially, about building a collection.  But if the collection building is at the expense of devoting resources to securing books in formats that folks want to consume them in (audio, e-book) then it seems that this is not a great trade-off.  I worry that our academic libraries have ceded too much ground to Amazon.  Amazon owns Audible.com and basic has a monopoly on the audiobook business.  Through the Kindle device, format and Kindle store Amazon control the e-book vertical market. 

Academic libraries, particularly working in a consortia, could serve as counterweight to the power of Amazon.  I've seen a great deal of concern from academic libraries over the Google Book scanning project, but very little about Amazon controlling the audio and e-book market.  Could some of this energy and resources be devoted to digital books, including audiobooks? 

My academic library is better then any bookstore.  And all the books are available equally to the whole community.  But academic libraries are loosing ground to Amazon and Audible in the format that I most want to consume books.  And the gap seems to be growing. 

Libraries make scarce resources abundant for everyone in the community.  Audiobooks and e-books are scarce.  I'm lucky in that I can pay $10 a week per audiobook.  If I couldn't (if I were a student say) then I'm sure I'd be doing a great deal less reading.

books I'd recommend for my brother Max's new Kindle DX

My brother Max just graduated from Duke. 

For graduation we all chipped in and got him a Kindle DX.  

Max was wondering what would I recommend has the first set of books to put on his new Kindle. 

http://maxmasnick.com/

Here are my recommendations (in rough order in when I read them, latest one on top):

• Nudge by Thaler and Sunstein
• How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer
• Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
• Supercrunchers by Ian Ayers
• Hot, Flat and Crowded by Thomas Friedman
• The Drunkards Walk by Leonard Mlodinow
• The Omnivore's Dilemna by Michael Pollan
• The Long Tail by Chris Anderson
• The Birth of Plenty by William Bernstein
• Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert
• Social Intelligence by Daniel Goleman
• Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely
• Discover Your Inner Economist by Tyler Cowen
• Kluge by Gary Marcus
• The Ape in the Corner Office by Richard Conniff
• The Progress Paradox by Gregg Easterbrook
• The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki

What would you recommend?

These are the books that have most influenced my thinking over the past few years.  The challenge in putting together this list was not putting books in, but leaving books out.  I'm sure I've left out some important works.

In looking over the list the main themes that I can draw out are:

1. Our brains have evolved to guide behavior that is often less then optimal.
2. The sweep of history is positive and defined primarily by an increase of wealth and well-being, largely driven by technological innovation.
3. Any effort to understand the current and emerging social structure requires a good grasp of history, theory, and science.

Max, most of all I'd want to tell you that despite graduating in the worst economy and job market since the Depression I'd still argue that we are living in the best of times. 

These books tell me that we have the potential to understand our brains, our cultures, and our history, and over the long run this knowledge will contribute to a future that is brighter then what came before.