psychology - Book Reviews

Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams

One of the scarier books I've read lately. Not regularly getting 8 hours of sleep a night? Prepare for cancer, Alzheimers, traffic fatalities, and more! UC Berkeley prof Matthew Walker is basically the Malcom Gladwell of sleep.

3-stars

12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos

I don't get what all the fuss is about. Peterson's book is a ultimately just a grab-bag of old-school self-help advice. He tries to do too much and in too short of a book, but his ideas are not particularly radical.

3-stars

Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter

If you can get past the nuttery, Adams makes clear recommendations for how to apply insights from behavioral psychology to develop a "weapons-grade" persuasion capability. The main takeaway is that we're way less rational than we think we are and that visual persuasion is most powerful.

5-stars

Ranger Games: A Story of Soldiers, Family and an Inexplicable Crime

In preparation for my "Year of Crime" reading theme for next year, I've been looking for some books on true crimes. I saw an ad for "Ranger Games" in The Atlantic and picked it up on a whim. Ben Blum immediately swept me up into his

3-stars

The Doors of Perception

Best known for his "Brave New World," Aldous Huxley also made his stamp on the counter-culture with his notorious mescalin book, "The Doors of Perception". In it, he brings us along on one of his mescalin trips and takes frequent detours into the worlds of art,

3-stars

The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry

"The Psychopath Test" quixotically flits between psychological research, Scientology, mental asylums, corporate raiders, and Douglas Hofstadter's "Goedel, Escher, Bach" as Jon Ronson explores our society's relationship with madness. I chose this book because I've long suspected that a fair bit of psychological research is not particularly

2-stars

What I Learned Losing a Million Dollars

I have mixed feelings about giving "What I Learned Losing A Million Dollars" a 2 star rating. One one hand, it's full of (admittedly entertaining) cavalier boasting and rambling. On the other, my return-on-investment from reading this book could be huge if I follow his advice and don't

2-stars

Just Babies: The Origins of Good and Evil

"Just Babies: The Origins of Good and Evil" is superficial breakneck survey of recent anthropological and behavioral studies of morality. Bloom's wry humor and vivid exposition make this a fun and interesting read, but he fails to make good on the promise of the book's title. Frustrating. And

fiction

A Whole New Mind

"A Whole New Mind" takes one reasonable idea and then panders and blathers for six hours about it. This is a book that should have been a tweet. It's a shame because this could have been an interesting book - the question of "what do humans do

3-stars

Civilization and Its Discontents

My grandfather studied psychoanalysis at Hopkins. At the end of years of training, he gave it all up and switched to a more quantitative approach to psychology. As Freud himself says, "It is not easy to deal scientifically with feelings" and Grandpa decided that the Freudian approach was

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review

The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists

"The Game" is a surprising and irreverent look at pickup artists and how they operate. Sometimes it was hard to tell whether this was BS or not - but a few of my friends have had pretty good results! There are a bunch of tactics in here like