In our previous post we discussed the Next Big Sort, the one that is happening right now under the noses of sociologists and demographers. That the country is re-sorting itself 20 years after The Big Sort is not as interesting as what this sort will mean for the United States and for the people who [...]
Friends, this book review is reprinted here with the gracious permission of the Society of Gilbert Keith Chesterton, in whose flagship magazine, Gilbert!, this review can be found in the Jan/Feb 2021 edition. Please become a member of the Society, which I am sure you will find intellectually and spiritually fulfilling. Visit www.chesterton.org for information [...]
The video linked below titled Children in Serbia 1920 is haunting. A few thoughts about it after watching several times: First, these children were most likely dressed in their traditional Serbian cultural outfits for the camera, which was very likely the first time they were ever pictured. This technology was rare even on American farms, [...]
I was very intrigued when I read Georgie Ann Geyer's Buying the Night Flight. This woman traveled alone in a man's world from Egypt to Russia to Cambodia to Cuba in her rise as a foreign correspondent. In reading her autobiography I got the sense of her interaction with her environment and the delicacy it [...]
Well, it happened again...I have to find space on my reading list by taking off a book to make room for a book that needs to go on it. My own rule is that to keep the list on one piece of paper (front and back), if I want to add a title to the [...]
Roy Baumeister (professor of social psychology at Florida State) and John Tierney (long time science correspondent for the New York Times) call Willpower the greatest human strength in the book's very subtitle. A bold statement, and a challenge to hook both the professional who wants more willpower or the one who thinks he has [...]
Everyone finds them on occasion -- those long lost or never known gems of books that offer profound common sense that we all know we should use, try to use, or actually do use every day. While reading through Maria Popova's outstanding web site, I was so intrigued by her review of William Beveridge's [...]
Island of the Lost By Joan Druett Every now and again, a person ought to be reminded that there have gone before us men and women in far worse circumstances than those we face and who not only survived, but brought others with them through hardship. But we should also [...]
A Voyage Long and Strange by Tony Horwitz Nixonland by Rick Perlstein Who Writes The Narratives Of What We Believe? Have you ever wondered how it is that we come to accept certain versions of history and what we believe about ourselves and those we associate with? I’m not talking [...]
The Making of Tomorrow by Raoul de Roussy de Sales Men of Responsibility by Dirk U. Stikker One of the truths of sociology and business is that we tend to think that what happens today will happen tomorrow and that what we see today somehow happened yesterday and the day [...]
Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card “Whatever your gravity is when you get to the door, remember — the enemy’s gate is down. If you step through your own door like you’re out for a stroll, you’re a big target and you deserve to get hit. With more than a [...]
The Age of Battles by Russell F. Weigley One of the most oft-heard comments about history is that those who fail to learn from it are bound to repeat it. I would say that is true only if people actually learned anything from history. Therein lies the hardest part. How [...]
The Return of Martin Guerre by Natalie Zemon Davis How do we know what we know about history? At some point all of us ought to have wondered how we know what we know about what happened in the past. I first wondered about this concept one day back in [...]
Hope is Not a Plan edited by Thomas Mowle Upon returning from Baghdad in December of 2004, Tom Ruby stayed in touch with several of his colleagues from the Coalition staff, both civilian and military. They collaborated on a project to bring the inside story of the workings of the [...]
The Pope and the CEO by Andreas Widmer Former Swiss Guard and now internationally known CEO, Andreas Widmer discusses lessons he learned directly from Pope John Paul II while serving in Pope’s personal guard. […]
Stone’s Fall by Iain Pears The real life murder of an Oxford professor in 1663 and its surrounding circumstances doesn’t sound like one of those plots that people immediately think of as the basis for a great novel. But Iain Pears’s Instance at the Fingerpost was a classic that hooked [...]
The Difference by Scott Page Lots of people have heard about the concept of the Wisdom of Crowds. When I read the book of that name by James Surowiecki in 2004, it kinda threw me for a loop. All throughout my professional career up to that point, I had worked [...]
