The Believing Brain: From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths by Michael Shermer Even though this book is about beliefs, it has a huge whopping load of science, especially neurology and psychology. It doesn’t address specific beliefs so much as describe how people form conjectures …
Tag: psychology
Feb 24
Book Review: Quiet, the Power of Introverts In a World that Can’t Stop Talking
Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain This book brings up some interesting, important, and little-discussed ideas about introversion, the greatest of which is that introversion is a valid personality type rather than a flaw which should be corrected. Cain begins the book in this way, defensively, …
Sep 25
Book Review: Drive
Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel H. Pink Drive, by Daniel Pink, is (as its title suggests) a book about what motivates people. Since I’ve read books that mention this book (Better by Mistake) and books that this book uses in its bibliography (Stumbling on Happiness, Outliers) I kept my expectations …
Sep 15
Book Review: Better by Mistake
Better by Mistake: The Unexpected Benefits of Being Wrong by Alina Tugend Is it a good sign or a bad sign when the author references mostly books that I’ve already read? On one hand, it’s bad because it indicates that maybe this sub-genre (popular science) is panned out for me. On the other hand, the …
Aug 13
Book Review: War
War by Sebastian Junger I bought this book on spec, mostly because of the strength of Junger’s other book THE PERFECT STORM, the book by which all other maritime disaster accounts are held up to (and usually found lacking). In WAR, Junger takes on the war in Afghanistan. He follows a platoon for fifteen months …