Andrew

Truly fantastic

Revisado: 08-21-16

Despite being recorded in 2004, this is a superlative course. Highly recommended for the linguistically curious.

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How not to be Malcolm Gladwell

Revisado: 06-17-15

Ever since The Tipping Point came out, there have been hundreds of non-fiction books that purport to describe the secret workings of some phenomenon. Most of these are actually pretty darn good. This book, however, is almost a satire of the Gladwellian approach.

The issue is the overarching message – that asking the right questions is the key to success. It's way too broad of an idea to make work. To marshall evidence, the author casts such a wide net as to be useless. Any development from the past century has been repeated and recast as an example of asking the right question. This is correlation without causation.

Evidence counts if the protagonists did the thing you are advocating. Not in this case. Instead, the examples are merely *descriptive* – one way to understand these innovators is to look at the questions they were implicitly asking – not *prescriptive* – you should ask questions the way they intentionally did.

He should have asked himself, "In what circumstances are questions NOT appropriate?"

His answer, it seems, is "never." The resulting advice really is that generic – "ask more questions." And his evidence is even more generic – any example of a successful innovation is shown to come from someone who asked the right questions. A completely useless insight.

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Written by a journalist, not a storyteller

Revisado: 05-16-15

Business writing is admittedly very hard. There are only so many ways to describe the challenges and successes that a company encounters. Stock price, acquisitions, and internal affairs are all important. But the author makes the mistake of relying on only these to tell his story. It's really just "this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened." Journalism, not storytelling. Read this book if you are fascinated by Amazon, but don't expect to be engrossed.

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A superb "you are there" memoir

Revisado: 05-10-15

This is no comprehensive guide to fatherhood, but that's not the point. It's a memoir of raising one, then two, then three children – as a well-intentioned yet awkward father capturing – in exquisite detail – the craziness of fatherhood.

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The best parenting book on Audible

Revisado: 05-09-15

This is a parenting book, masquerading as a lecture. It's fantastic.

Chapter 24 has a summary of all the great tips.

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Most of it is fluff

Revisado: 01-18-15

The first few chapters are helpful about creativity, but it would've been better as a white paper. It seems she does not have enough content to fill a full-length book.

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Great prep for a 2-week trip to Italy

Revisado: 09-13-14

History with context!

The professor has a superb job putting everything in context. Italy is such a complex place which such a diverse set of historical drivers, and so it's tough to do right.

Most tour guide histories are just a list of "then this happened, then this king did this."

In contrast, this professor ably articulates the trends and particulars, so that the names, places, and events make sense.

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My favorite part of visiting Italy

Revisado: 09-13-14

I've done 3 of the "Walk and Talk" series -- Rome, Venice, and Florence -- and they were my favorite part of my trip to Italy. You get such a great sense of the city and how people lived.

The subject matter emphasizes architecture and location history, which I happen to love. It's not dry; the narrators share tons of interesting details about art, archways, street names, neighborhoods, and awesome miscellanea you'd never otherwise notice

Each title has 4 walks for that city, each with a 45-minute audio track that takes you on a walk they say lasts 2 hours. I found each took me about 75-90 minutes, with the talking speed at 1.5x. But you can also take it slow and hop in and out of shops along the way, too.

If you use these on your trip, here are some tips:

1. You often need to enter buildings, so take the walks between 9am-12pm or 2-5pm. Many churches and museums are closed outside of these hours. (Better yet, check the hours of the main sites ahead of time; some museums are closed on Mondays, for instance.)

2. Print the associated PDF maps, 1 for each person in your group. It's nigh impossible to follow the directions without them.

3. If you have a few days in Rome/Venice/Florence, consider doing the walks first to get a sense of the city and to help you decide which sights you want to see. You get recommendations about special restaurants to check out, local stores, or out-of-the-way museums to visit. However, if you're only in one of these cities for a day or two, you might want to just head right to the main attractions.

4. Be prepared to spend 2 to 8 euros to enter each of the various churches and museums along the walk; these are always worth it, and usually don't take more than 10-to-30 minutes to see each.

5. I found that a familiarity with Italian history -- specifically Florentine, Venetian, and Roman history -- was helpful in putting some of the factoids in context. The Great Courses series "Italians Before Italy" has great lectures about these cities' history.

Though the content is from 2006 or earlier, it was 95% accurate. Occasionally a store or restaurant mentioned wouldn't be there, or a museum has re-arranged its exhibits, but otherwise no issue. No surprise, I guess; these cities have stayed largely the same for 400+ years, so what's an extra decade?

Each walk is about 5,000-10,000 steps (according to my pedometer), so it's a good workout.

Happy walking!

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My favorite part of visiting Italy

Revisado: 09-13-14

I've done 3 of the "Walk and Talk" series -- Rome, Venice, and Florence -- and they were my favorite part of my trip to Italy. You get such a great sense of the city and how people lived.

The subject matter emphasizes architecture and location history, which I happen to love. It's not dry; the narrators share tons of interesting details about art, archways, street names, neighborhoods, and awesome miscellanea you'd never otherwise notice

Each title has 4 walks for that city, each with a 45-minute audio track that takes you on a walk they say lasts 2 hours. I found each took me about 75-90 minutes, with the talking speed at 1.5x. But you can also take it slow and hop in and out of shops along the way, too.

If you use these on your trip, here are some tips:

1. You often need to enter buildings, so take the walks between 9am-12pm or 2-5pm. Many churches and museums are closed outside of these hours. (Better yet, check the hours of the main sites ahead of time; some museums are closed on Mondays, for instance.)

2. Print the associated PDF maps, 1 for each person in your group. It's nigh impossible to follow the directions without them.

3. If you have a few days in Rome/Venice/Florence, consider doing the walks first to get a sense of the city and to help you decide which sights you want to see. You get recommendations about special restaurants to check out, local stores, or out-of-the-way museums to visit. However, if you're only in one of these cities for a day or two, you might want to just head right to the main attractions.

4. Be prepared to spend 2 to 8 euros to enter each of the various churches and museums along the walk; these are always worth it, and usually don't take more than 10-to-30 minutes to see each.

5. I found that a familiarity with Italian history -- specifically Florentine, Venetian, and Roman history -- was helpful in putting some of the factoids in context. The Great Courses series "Italians Before Italy" has great lectures about these cities' history.

Though the content is from 2006 or earlier, it was 95% accurate. Occasionally a store or restaurant mentioned wouldn't be there, or a museum has re-arranged its exhibits, but otherwise no issue. No surprise, I guess; these cities have stayed largely the same for 400+ years, so what's an extra decade?

Each walk is about 5,000-10,000 steps (according to my pedometer), so it's a good workout.

Happy walking!

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Good for novices only

Revisado: 07-05-11

Fareed Zakaria is funny on The Daily Show. In this book, he is not funny, nor entertaining, nor particularly insightful. I suppose if you have not been paying attention to the news and don't realize that India (and China) is something of a large country, you may be surprised by what Fareed has to say. I was not.

Blech.

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