yale-bookclub - Book Reviews

The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium

Gurri explains how the internet and social media make the failures of government policies overwhelming apparent and are eroding the legitimacy of our ruling institutions and elites, opening our society up to a nihilist death spiral.

4-stars

The Power

With high-voltage satire, Alderman turns the world on its head - forcing us to recognize the violence and indignity suffered by women in our modern world as we watch the men of hers fall prey to the same dynamics.

4-stars

A Strangeness in My Mind

This is a great work of literature (winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize). Although the subject matter is mundane - the life of the yogurt/boza seller Mevlut in Istanbul - Pamuk uses this ordinary backdrop to compose a moving meditation on loneliness in the modern world. The novel is

fiction

Submission

Brutal, philosophical, terrifying, and bigoted? Houellebecq's "Submission" describes the Muslim Brotherhood's demographic/religious takeover of France. Published on the same day as the Charlie Hebdo shooting, Submission is a violent condemnation of the moral relativism/bankruptcy of leftist multicultural Europe and its impotence in the face of massive

3-stars

Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World

"Team of Teams" was not bad for a celebrity business book. McChrystal effectively managed a remote workforce of thousands through his daily Operations & Intelligence meetings - I'm going to try to implement some of his ideas in SilviaTerra's weekly meeting. But really, the most interesting (and controversial)

3-stars

Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies

3 stars. A great overview of some of the research and political/existential issues around the creation of a superintelligent system. He describes various paths to potentially creating an superintelligence, including some surprising ones like whole brain emulation and eugenics.