The chapter comparing the early warning radar system at Fylingdales RAF station, the coastal chain of observation posts established by the Romans and a church window depicting Armageddon is worth the price alone.
A fair-minded analysis of the ever morphing worldwide labor force—an early entry in burgeoning popular literature on the gig economy.
I finished this stark but exuberant account not fearing for the future so much as amazed the world wasn’t already even worse.
In many ways, Rhodes achieves his purpose. He doesn’t make his advice explicit; in fact, early on, he pre-empts such expectations by stating, “You will not find many prescriptions in this book.” But the dedicated reader can discern important themes emerging over time that have obvious applicability to our current moment.
“The Perfectionists” succeeds resoundingly in making us think more deeply about the everyday objects we take for granted. It challenges us to reflect on our progress as humans and what has made it possible. It is interesting, informative, exciting and emotional...
“Gunflint Burning” is unexpectedly compelling, given that it’s mostly a dispassionate account of logistics. The text is full of acronyms. An incident commander is an IC; an operations section chief is an OSC. It’s wonky, but also a credible way to tell the story.
This is an exhausting, one-note book, but the tinny, grating note Pein repeatedly strikes may nonetheless be one the world needs to hear more often.
Charlotte and Ben are both thrust into unfair emotional situations. But as this wonderful novel unfolds they find out how the world works: its unfairness, to be sure, but also its gratifications.
His renunciation of tech’s tightening stronghold is consistently cogent, as is the viable, counterbalancing arsenal of pragmatic solutions that he provides at the end of the book.
These ideas—first introduced in the Harvard Business Review—will intrigue anyone who wants to channel the new power of the crowd.
An edifying and entertaining history of the rise of the computer age and the women who made it possible. A good choice for fans of Hidden Figures.
Freeman handles all of this material with the seriousness it deserves. If “Behemoth” can feel a little slow-going at times, that’s partly because of the knottiness of the history Freeman lays out, as well as his honorable refusal to resort to simplistic notions of grand progress or portentous doom.
Despite the book’s decidedly British flavor, its subject, food, is universal, and so should be its appeal.
While those problems are likely to be central to the future, this book is meant to introduce readers unfamiliar with science to the vast horizons it has already opened and where our journeys toward those frontiers might lead.
...particularly valuable in an age when history undergraduates often startle their teachers by their ignorance of basic facts...In Cannadine’s lucid account there is the occasional slip (the 1833 Irish Church Temporalities Act suppressed 10 bishoprics, not 18). And there’s one subject that he deals with cursorily at the very end...
Drawing on varied examples across centuries and continents, Roma Agrawal’s “Built” seeks to tell this untold history — for, as the author claims, the “engineered universe is a narrative full of stories and secrets.”
Levine’s arguments aren’t entirely persuasive, but readers will be forgiven for hereafter not wanting to entrust too much information to the likes of Google, Facebook, and Amazon, to say nothing of the feds.
“Brotopia” is a well-researched history of how Silicon Valley became a glorified frat house — beginning with a fascinating story about Lena Soderberg, a onetime Playboy centerfold, whose face and bare shoulders became the benchmark for image processing quality.
...Keen celebrates such startups as an online networking platform that connects former prisoners with job opportunities...Valuable insights on preserving our humanity in a digital world.
Waste, restoration, and efforts to use a scarce resource wisely: Doyle speaks well to issues that are as pressing today as in the first years of the republic.