Biography
For some history reading over the summer I listened to the audio book "Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. The book is a massive (something like 36 CDs) and present an incredibly in-depth view into the political atmosphere surrounding Lincoln's rise to the Presidency.
A recent visit to the library reminded me that I haven't been reading many biographies lately. Having read a number of books dealing with game theory and decision theory, Pascal's name was on my mind and when I saw this book I picked it up. James Connor looks at the life of Blaise Pascal through the lens of theology in his book, Pascal's Wager: The Man Who Played Dice With God. Pascal, who only lived to 39, is widely known for his mathematical work in probability theory. He is less widely kn
In Revolutionary Spirits: The Enlightened Fatih of America's Founding Fathers, Gary Kowalski explores the spiritual background of a number of our founding fathers, including George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and James Madison. Kowalski has a rather plain bias, labeling our founding fathers at one point as "progressives". He painfully tries to make the argument that our founding fathers, contrary to popular belief, were not really all that religious.
This book is supposed to be about former Secretary of Treasury Paul O'neil, however the auther, Ron Suskind, doesn't do a very good job of hiding his true intentions of writing a disparaging commentary on the Bush Administration. The author goes to great lengths to point out the accuracy of the book from a factual perspective, however as is often the case with a biased author, the accuracy of the reported facts is often out-weighed by the obviously missing facts. Critics of the Bush Administra
The Google Guys are fascinating to a lot of people and of course since I am a software developer they are intriguing to me on many levels. David Vise does a very good job of unveiling the facts and providing some insight into the world of Google. There is a touch of sycophancy in the tone of the book so I read it with the proverbial grain of salt, however true to his journalistic roots, Mr. Vise did portray at least some of the darker side of Google. While I use Google on a daily basis and st