The Great Stagnation: How America Ate All the Low-Hanging Fruit of Modern History, Got Sick, and Will (Eventually) Feel Better
Tyler Cowen, 2011
Quick read. Interesting comments on the idea that technological innovation has slowed, which has stagnated the U.S. economy since the 1970’s. Has the ring of truth to it. I would recommend it and I will read the follow-up, Average is Over: Powering America Beyond the Age of Stagnation, soon.
Mathletics: How Gamblers, Managers, and Sports Enthusiasts Use Mathematics in Baseball, Basketball, and Football
By Wayne Winston, 2012 edition
I met Wayne in October 2013. I knew that I had one of his books about operations research, but didn’t know much about him. After meeting with him and doing a little research on my own, I’ve learned that he has written an infinite number of books and that he is very skilled at Excel and at sports analytics (among many other things). This book gives intuitive ways to model sports questions and perform analysis with Excel. Example questions include:
-Should we go for the one-point or two-point conversion?
-Should we foul at the end of a basketball game in which we are up 3 points?
-How do different baseball ballparks affect game outcomes?
I’m not a huge fan of analysis in Excel, but Wayne is a wizard at it. I prefer to do a lot of customized number crunching via a programming language (Python/R/Matlab), as opposed to massaging Excel to get what I want. However, this book gave me a lot of ideas for future analysis. It’s kind of a tough read, in that it has 51 chapters over 340 pages and starts/stops thoughts pretty quickly. There are also a lot of editing mistakes in my version, which can sometimes be confusing if you’re not paying attention. I read Mathletics over the span of about 8 months, starting and stopping frequently. I’m glad I finished it, though, because some of the best chapters are in the last part of the book.
On The Market: Strategies for a Successful Academic Job Search
By Sandra Barnes, 2007
Written for grad students, this book discusses the finer points of crafting a great job application and finding the best teaching/research fit at your first job as a professor. I found Chapter 3 (Maximizing the Grad School Experience), Chapter 4 (The Application Process, especially the section about the Application Packet), and Chapter 5 (The Teaching Portfolio) to be the most useful. I had never heard of a teaching portfolio before reading this book. When I get to year 3 or 4, I will probably re-reference this book to ensure I have all my material ready for a job hunt. Highly recommended for grad students looking for academic postings.
Remember, publish or perish.
The Gate Thief
By Orson Scott Card, 2013
This is the second book in the Mither Mages trilogy. Card is more well known for his Ender’s Games series, but I’ve enjoyed this trilogy. It is a rehashing of the Greek/Norse/Egyptian/etc. gods of mythology set in the modern era when the gods know they have weak magical powers but the vast majority of earth does not know the gods still exist.
The story follows one of the mages who has the ability to restore the powers of all the gods on earth. He hesitates to do this because he knows the gods will rekindle their wars from long ago and enslave/harm the normal people of the world. However, as the story goes on, a more sinister and more ancient war comes to light that overshadows the gods’ inter-tribal qualms. The book ends with the main character facing a deadly encounter with the main enemy in this ancient war, and it sets the stage for an epic final novel.
The book is somewhat fast-paced but is slowed by Card’s need to describe the other worlds involved in the story and to explain the powers of the mages. That kind of hinders the book, but is probably a necessary evil. Additionally, it gets a little too deep into teenage hormones and humor, as the main character is high school aged. Besides those two faults, it’s a pretty good read. This is the 17th book written or co-written by Card that I have read.
Queueing Methods for Services and Manufacturing
Randolph W. Hall, 1991
I am reading 4-6 books at any given moment. They range from easy fiction reads to dense technical books, and I read the book that matches my mood and attention span at the time. This summer, I added textbooks to my reading rotation. This is the first textbook I’ve read outside the bounds of a structured class.
This book provides a good overview of options available to diagnose and fix queueing issues. Whether queues are perpetual, predictable, or stochastic, the book discusses them at length. It’s written more for practitioners than academics, in that there are practical diagnostic tools and suggestions for improvement instead of theorems and proofs. There is a good discussion of Little’s Law and steady-state analysis, for those interested in introductory stochastic analysis of queueing systems. I think this is a good book for practitioners and perhaps analytical MBAs, but I don’t know if it dives deep enough into the theoretical backing to be extremely useful for academics. I am glad I read it to get a stronger queueing background, though, and I will reference some of its simpler results and its results on steady-state approximations.
Earth Afire: The First Formic War
Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston, 2013
Ender’s Game, written by Orson Scott Card in 1985, is probably still my favorite book. Highly recommended. I read it for freshman English class at St. Xavier High School. Ender’s Game tells the story of the Second Formic War—a war waged by children against an alien species threatening Earth. I don’t want to give spoilers for Ender’s Game —you should read it!— so I’ll stop there.
Earth Afire is the second book in what is most likely a trilogy of books describing the First Formic War. Earth Unaware was the first book, which I read a couple years ago. Earth Afire follows Card’s tried and true method of having multiple competing storylines involving personal struggle and determination that eventually coalesce. Like many books in the Ender’s Game universe, Earth Afire uses at least one storyline that involves an intelligent, precocious child. We also see the initial efforts of Mazer Rackham, the hero of The First Formic War in Ender’s Game.
Overall, a pretty good book. Not the best in the series by a long shot, but a good read nonetheless. I would have had certain storylines be more realistic to the probable actions of the non-major characters, but that’s okay. A very interesting book series keeps on keeping on.
The Firm
By John Grisham, 1991
Fast-paced lawyer drama, with additional threat of death by the mob. Fast read because you won’t want to put it down. That’s probably why they made it into a movie, but I haven’t seen the movie. Will probably interrupt your daily work cycle and make you less productive. You’ve been warned.
John Grisham was given an honorary degree at my UNC graduation. He has had a very interesting life and is a great speaker, though his speech to us was very short. E.O. Wilson gave the commencement speech.
Halfway to Heaven: My White-knuckled- and Knuckleheaded- Quest for the Rocky Mountain High
By Mark Obmascik, 2009
While in Colorado for a recent trip, I read Halfway to Heaven. It’s an amusing narrative about the trials and tribulations of hiking all of the 14,000 foot peaks in Colorado—of which there are over 50. The hikes were primarily done in summer, which did not give much guidance for our May trip that saw 4+ feet of snow from the trailhead to the peak for every mountain of interest for us. And the snowy climbs Obmascik describes only worsened my anxiety—slides, avalanches, and post-holing. Nonetheless, it is a very interesting book that gives a great idea of mountain customs, etiquette, and concerns. You’ll learn about the people who hiked all the 14ers in less than 2 weeks, the woman who wants to be photographed naked on each peak, and the modern-day prospectors that still camp out and mine the Rockies, hoping to strike it rich. Recommended for anyone that enjoys hiking, climbing, the Rockies, and/or adventure narratives.
The Midwest: God’s Gift to Planet Earth
By The Employees of Raygun, LLC, 2012
Possibly the greatest book ever written. To be honest, there are so many great things about the Midwest in this book that I had to take a year-long break to recuperate in the middle of reading it.
The Midwest spans from Ohio in the east to Kansas and the Dakotas in the west. The area anchors this country and is home to most of the major developments of the last 150 years.
Let’s focus on just one state: Ohio, where I lived for 22 years. Birthplace of aviation (the Wright brothers, John Glenn, Neil Armstrong). Mother of presidents. The dominant swing state in the country, having voted for the winning presidential candidate every election since 1964. Site of America’s great naval beat-down of Canada: “We have met the enemy and they are ours”. A state so dedicated to technological progress that it is willing to pollute a river so much that it repeatedly catches on fire. Host of the country’s best amusement park and biggest college. Modern home of Victoria’s Secret, Wendy’s, Macy’s, Proctor and Gamble, and Hustler. And that’s just one of the Midwest’s states. Each of the others has their own awesome quirks.
The Midwest is so damn nice. The people are friendly, often comically so. The weather is fair and balanced, at least in Ohio and Indiana. Big cities are available, but so are tons of beautiful, open spaces. Chock full of history and promising an impressive future.
While this tome is a tour de force of Midwestern awesomeness, the most interesting part may have been the comparison to China. China is a burgeoning economic power that seems to create the vast majority of the world’s products. “One example of China’s dominance is Foxconn, the Chinese factory that turns out 40% of the world’s smart phones from a facility that employs somewhere between 200,000 and 400,000. The scale seems staggering, but in proportional terms, Foxconn is still one quarter the size of Henry Ford’s River Rouge plant in 1930.” China is where the Midwest was 100 years ago. We were an industrial giant— cars, planes, industrial equipment— at the same time that we were innovating farming and politics. The Midwest created more World War II material— guns, munitions, food— than the rest of the world combined. The Midwest had to deal with the spoils of prosperity: environmental damage and pollution, corruption, income inequity, slums and crime, the decline of local craftsmen. While China may be the manufacturing sweetheart for all the products that we design today, it too will have to overcome major growing pains in the future. Staggering pollution. Labor unrest due to a populace growing smarter and wealthier. If China is lucky, it will follow the Midwest’s guide to handling success.
From Gutenberg to Zuckerberg
by John Naughton, 2011
This book gives nine rules for understanding the role of the internet in creating and spreading disruptive innovations:
1. Take the Long View
2. The Web Is Not the Net
3. For the Net, Disruption Is a Feature, Not a Bug
4. Think Ecology, Not Just Economics
5. Complexity Is the New Reality
6. The Network Is Now the Computer
7. The Web Is Evolving
8. Copyrights and “Copywrongs”: Or, Why Our Intellectual Property Regime No Longer Makes Sense
9. Orwell vs. Huxley: The Bookends of Our Networked Future?
It is a fairly quick read, and much of the material will be familiar to the internet-savvy. However, I think it does have some good insights. One thing that interested me was the evolution of market share in new technological innovations. When the telephone was introduced, many small phone networks were created until Bell/AT&T offered better service and took over the market. When radio was introduced, there were many broadcasters all seeking to share information. After some years, a handful (or less) of advertisers and broadcasters came to dominate the popular soap opera radio programs. Three network providers quickly came to dominate television in the second half of the twentieth century. When computers started to become useful, many hardware providers vied for market share. But the market was dominated by Microsoft and Apple by the 1990’s. And the internet? Are we moving from an era of many content providers to an era dominated by a few companies? Google, Facebook, YouTube, Yahoo!, Baidu (Chinese search engine), Wikipedia, QQ (Asian internet portal), LinkedIn, Bing, and Twitter get the most traffic. Do they get a majority of the traffic? A significant majority? It seems these companies get more and more traffic each day as more and more people accept their service or join their network. While I understand that networks increase in value as more and more people join them, it does seem troubling that a small number of companies/networks hold the key to the future evolution of the internet.