FullReviews Index

And Then There's This
Harper's editor Bill Wasik recounts his 2003 experimenation with flash mobs and later with Internet-based viral culture in And Then There's This, an examination of how nanostories live and die in the blink of an eye.

Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software
Emergence is the ability of low-level components to self-organize into a higher-level system of sophistication and intelligence. Known by many names - collective phenomenon, bottom-up behavior, self-organization, and decentralization - it is a fascinating phenomenon that Steven Johnson approaches from numerous angles in his 2001 book, "Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software."

The Other Side of Desire
It would be easy to pick up 'The Other Side of Desire' voyeuristically, enticed by the word “desire” and the beautiful, possibly slightly bruised, blossom on the cover. However, Daniel Bergner is a journalist with a knack for drawing readers into the lives of the people he portrays. You may begin with a sense of titillation and danger, but you’ll end with a far more complex view of human desire and the ways it can draw people in like a moth to flame.

Freakonomics : A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
Which is more dangerous, a gun or a swimming pool? What do schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers have in common? Why do drug dealers still live with their moms? These may not sound like typical questions for an economist to ask. But Steven D. Levitt is not a typical economist. He studies the stuff and riddles of everyday life, and his conclusions regularly turn the conventional wisdom on its head. Thus the new field of study contained in this book: Freakonomics.

Naked Economics
'Naked Economics' delivers what it promises to: a basic understanding of core economic principles. And more than that, it’s a good read. If you’re like me and just want to wrap your head around what’s going on in today’s economy, there’s no better place to start than 'Naked Economics.'

Outliers
In 'The Tipping Point,' Malcolm Gladwell dissected the phenomena of social epidemics; and in 'Blink,' he discussed the nature of split-second decision-making. In 'Outliers,' Gladwell, the founding father of pop-sociology, examines high-achieving individuals and questions what makes them different from everyone else.

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
In 'Blink,' Malcolm Gladwell revolutionizes the way we understand the world within. 'Blink' is a book about how we think without thinking, about choices that seem to be made in an instant - in the blink of an eye - that actually aren't as simple as they seem.

The Tipping Point
Malcolm Gladwell's bestseller, 'The Tipping Point,' has exhibited such enormous staying power on the bestseller lists that one supposes that Gladwell harnessed the very principles of social epidemics that he outlines therein. 'The Tipping Point' purports to answer two questions, "Why is it that some ideas or behaviors or products start epidemics and others don't? And what can we do to deliberately start and control positive epidemics of our own?"

Simplexity
Jeffrey Kluger introduces us to the new scientific discipline of 'Simplexity' - the notion that seemingly complex things can be more simple than they appear and that, alternately, seemingly simple things can be more complex than they appear. Kluger draws on research in fields including economics, biology, cosmology, chemistry, psychology, politics, and the arts to see patterns that make our world both full of complexity and reducible — with the right point of view — to simplicity.

American Nerd: The Story of My People
In 'American Nerd,' Benjamin Nugent delves into the subculture and history of the nerd, from 'Pride and Prejudice' through the debate and anime nerds of the present day. Nugent walks a fine line between sociological study and personal memoir as he recalls the Dungeons and Dragons sessions of his youth. 'American Nerd' is an engaging exploration into the archetype, for those who care to make the trip.

Microtrends: The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow's Big Changes
Mark Penn is known for his ability to detect relatively small patterns of behavior in our culture - microtrends that are wielding great influence on business, politics, and our personal lives. Only one percent of the public, or three million people, is enough to launch a business or social movement. In Microtrends, Penn identifies more than 70 microtrends in religion, leisure, politics, and family life that are changing the way we live.

The Ghost Map
A thrilling historical account of the worst cholera outbreak in Victorian London-and a brilliant exploration of how Dr. John Snow's solution revolutionized the way we think about disease, cities, science, and the modern world.

Surviving Justice: America's Wrongfully Convicted and Exonerated
On September 30, 2003, Calvin was declared innocent and set free from Angola State Prison, after serving 22 years for a crime he did not commit. Hitting the streets without housing, money, or a change of clothes, exonerees across America are released only to fend for themselves. In the tradition of Studs Terkel's oral histories, Surviving Justice collects the voices and stories of the exonerees for whom life is forever framed by extraordinary injustice.

What the Dormouse Said
John Markoff's What the Dormouse Said is the story of the political, social, and cultural forces that shaped the personal computer in the 1960s and early 1970s. The epicenter of this activity was the area around Stanford University, which offered the confluence of cutting-edge science and countercultural passion, and its driving force was what would one day come to be known as the Hacker Ethic - the notion that sharing information on freely should be the foundation and goal of all computing.

A History of the World in 6 Glasses
"A History of the World in 6 Glasses" by Tom Standage presents an original, well-documented vision of world history, telling the story of humanity from the Stone Age to the twenty-first century through the lens of beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea, and Coca-Cola.

The Long Emergency
With his classics of social commentary The Geography of Nowhere and Home from Nowhere, James Howard Kunstler has established himself as one of the great commentators on American space and place. Now, with The Long Emergency, he offers a shocking vision of a post-oil future. The Long Emergency tells us just what to expect after we pass the tipping point of global peak oil production and the honeymoon of affordable energy is over, preparing us for changes of an unimaginable scale.

The Clumsiest People in Europe
No matter who your ancestors were, and where they had the misfortune of living, Victorian children's book writer Mrs. Mortimer had something nasty to say about them. Their faults, according to Mrs. Mortimer, might have amounted to anything. The Irish "are very kind and good-natured when pleased, but if affronted, are filled with rage." In Italy, "the people are ignorant and wicked." In Sweden, "Nothing useful is well done ... The carpenters and the blacksmiths are very clumsy in their work."

Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game
The Oakland Athletics have a secret: a winning baseball team is made, not bought.Billy Beane, general manager of the Athletics, is putting into practice on the field revolutionary principles garnered from statisticians. In "Moneyball," Michael Lewis's irreverent reporting takes us from the dugouts and locker rooms-where coaches and players struggle to unlearn most of what they know about pitching and hitting-to the boardrooms, where we meet owners who begin to look like fools at the poker table.