Bertrand Russell: Love is Wise, Hatred is Foolish
“Love is wise, hatred is foolish.” — Bertrand Russell *** The British philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) gave us some of the more enduring developments in 20th-century philosophy. …
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What Is Love?
“Love requires you to be physically and emotionally present. It also requires that you slow down.” *** What better day is there than today to explore love? In Love 2.0, psychologist …
The Minimum Effective Dose: Why Less is More
“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry *** In pharmacology, the effective dose is the …
Abraham Lincoln’s Last Public Address
A few days before his assassination on April 15th, 1865 Abraham Lincoln gave his final public address. The Life and Writings of Abraham Lincoln does a good job setting the context. General Lee …
The Man Who Never Quit
When he was seven years old, his family was forced out of their home and off their farm. Like other boys his age, he was expected to work to help support the family. When he was nine, his mother died. …
The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right
It’s no secret that I’m a huge fan of Atul Gawande. A reader recently pointed out that I hadn’t covered his most recent book, The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right. I had …
The Optimism Bias: Imagining A Positive Future
In The Optimism Bias: A Tour of the Irrationally Positive Brain, Tali Sharot argues that we have a neurobiological basis for imagining a positive future. “Humans,” she writes, “do …
Talent Is Persistence
Kirby Ferguson is a New York based filmmaker who also writes. He’s also the man behind the Everything is a Remix video series, which is about influence and appropriation in the creative process. …
My Life In Middlemarch
Rebecca Mead has written a book like no other I’ve come across. My Life In Middlemarch is an irresistibly creative story about how her favorite book, George Eliot’s Middlemarch, changed …
26 Musings from Kierkegaard on What It Means to be A Human Being
I read the The Quotable Kierkegaard at the same time as Mike Tyson. Yes that Mike Tyson1. Apparently he loves the political incorrectness of philosophy. “I don’t really do any light …
Breakpoint: When Bigger is Not Better
Jeff Stibel’s book Breakpoint: Why the Web will Implode, Search will be Obsolete, and Everything Else you Need to Know about Technology is in Your Brain is an interesting read. The book is about …
Quiet: Why Introverts Have a Creative Advantage
In Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, Susan Cain looks at how our lives are shaped by personality. The book explores how where we land on the introvert-extrovert …
The Human Search for Meaning
“He who has a Why to live for can bear almost any How.” — Nietzsche Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl (1905-1997) is best known for his 1946 memoir Man’s Search for Meaning. The book sheds light …
Laws of Character and Personality
The Unwritten Laws of Engineering is a book for those engineers who have more obstacles of a personal nature in organizations than technical. First published as a series of three articles in …
11 Rules for Critical Thinking
A fantastic list of 11 rules from some of history’s greatest minds. These are Prospero’s Precepts and they are found in AKA Shakespeare: A Scientific Approach to the Authorship Question: All beliefs …
Daniel Kahneman’s Favorite Approach For Making Better Decisions
Picture this: You’re six months into your company’s ambitious expansion, and what seemed like a sure bet has turned into a nightmare. The market wasn’t just ok—it was poor. You made …