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robla

robla@sfba.club

Joined 10 months, 3 weeks ago

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Review of 'Arguing with Zombies: Economics, Politics, and the Fight for a Better Future' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

I loved Krugman's writing ever since I bought the softcover Peddling Prosperity when it was new, and I'm pretty sure I paid full retail price for it. I've subscribed to the New York Times in no small part because Krugman is a columnist there. Mind you, that wasn't the full price digital New York Times subscription. I have to decide if I want to renew once the bargain basement annual rate that I received expires.

But anyway, this "book" is worth an Audible credit if you liked Krugman's columns over the past couple of decades. The articles are not strictly chronological, but organized in sections leading up to the January 2020 publication. Not much about COVID-19 in this book, but Krugman uses what he said 15 years ago to point out that the present day was part of the predictable progression. He's not wrong, but hearing a figurative "see! …

J. D. Vance: Hillbilly Elegy (2016) 3 stars

Review of 'Hillbilly Elegy' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

I was going to grudgingly give this book 4 stars, but I settled on 3 stars. Vance is a very good storyteller, and the audiobook was worth an Audible credit. I first learned about Hillbilly Elegy in the months prior to the 2016 election. The scathing review that [a:Sarah Smarsh|3314241|Sarah Smarsh|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1523224716p2/3314241.jpg] wrote convinced me to hold off: "Dangerous idiots: how the liberal media elite failed working-class Americans (The Guardian)". Her review convinced me that 1) I didn't need to read Hillbilly Elegy and 2) I wanted to read Smarsh's book if/when it came out (and it came out in 2018, and I really liked it).

My friends eventually convinced me to read it (or rather, listen to it). Vance is a more concise and organized storyteller than Smarsh, but Smarsh seems like a more trustworthy journalist. As many critics have pointed out about Vance, he seems …

Review of 'Heartland' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

I had a hard time deciding how many stars to give this book. This felt as intimate (and almost as invasive) as reading someone's diary, and it feels mean to give Smarsh's deeply personal telling of her family's incredible story anything less than 5 out of 5 stars. But reviewing a living person's diary on a book review site is just weird. In fact, reading a living person's diary is just weird. And listening to the audiobook of the author reading their diary is really weird. That was my initial experience: it was weird.

For anyone who is looking for the raw, personal experience of a girl growing up in rural Kansas, this is a fantastic book. Of course, minimizing this as "diary" of "girl" is really unfair; Smarsh provides an incredibly detailed and intimate biography of her mother, and her mother's mother as told from her adult perspective. …

Review of 'The Fifth Risk' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Highly recommend. One can wait for the movie; after all, Barack and Michelle Obama bought the film rights, and they seem to be planning a Netflix series based on the book. However, as of March 2021, it might be a while before we see anything come of that.  As a layperson's explainer for "what do all of those 'federal employees' do?", the book is unbeatable.  Plus, it's a good sales pitch for NOAA.

Alfred P. Sloan: My Years with General Motors (1990) 3 stars

Review of 'My Years with General Motors' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

Too many words ;-) It's not conversational easy reading like contemporary business books. It's a pain to read it. However, it's a really good lesson in leadership. Sloan clearly didn't believe in pulling rank or letting himself get lobbied to make stupid business decisions by division leaders within GM. One of the central conflicts described in the book is the conflict over whether GM should bet big on copper-cooled engines (e.g. Chevrolet_Series_M_Copper-Cooled), which was (pardon the pun) the hot new technology of the day. It's been so long since I've read the book that I don't remember all of the details, but the short answer is that GM minimized the investment in copper-cooled engines due to GM's willingness to allow for decentralized experimentation.

Microsoft was clearly modeled after Sloan's GM, which I believe played a pretty substantial role in their first few decades of success. In many ways, I …

Dick Richards: Artful Work  (1997, Berkley Trade) 5 stars

Review of 'Artful Work ' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

I read this book during the first Internet bubble, and found it really resonated with me. It will likely resonate the most with artistic people who find themselves trapped executing ideas that don't make sense.

As a business consultant, Richards was brought into organizations trying to infuse spirit and enthusiasm, and (to his horror) observed many examples of managers trying to make their people reflect the larger organization: cheerful on the outside, dead on the inside.

In one example, he finds (unsurprisingly) that a person selling nutritionally-empty breadsticks:

A product manager once told me, “I just can’t get excited about selling those damn pizza sticks. They are vastly overpriced and have zero nutritional value. I won’t let my kids eat them. So I am going through the motions, doing the best I can, and hoping this job doesn’t last much longer.” (p. 23-24)



In a more cheerful example, he talks …