Reviews and Comments

This book comes up so often I kind of can't believe I haven't read it yet. I don't expect to need a sales pitch about the benefits of unions, but what I would hope to get from this book (or others out there) is a better understanding of organizing. Both in terms of practical steps but also how to pick battles (and deemphasize others), how to take care of yourself in the process, and other more conceptual topics.

Just saw this mentioned in the context of Black History Month and the teaser at least makes it sound very interesting. I wonder if the whole concept of "first aid" as a medical intervention is to some extent newer than we usually assume.

This book describes the plants (and some other things like geology and animals) of San Bruno Mountain, a park nestled between San Francisco, San Francisco Airport, and Daly City. San Bruno Mountain contains more species than most pieces of land its size and features diverse microclimates, for example from the foggy west to the drier parts near the bay, or from shaded canyons to exposed mountaintops.

This book is up to date, contains beautiful photographs, and great information on what is found on the mountain.

Only glanced at it so far, but noticed chapters on early math in China, India, and other places.

Have only glanced through it so far but loved the section on all the mathematical (or semi-mathematical) references in Moby Dick.

I saw a photo online of a pumpkin sourdough bread and I could more or less envisage how the recipe would go but checked this book just to be sure. Sure enough, the book had a recipe similar to what I was thinking, suggested it could be made with parsnips instead of pumpkins (which I might try sometime, not something I would have even thought of), and suggested adding nutmeg (which is perhaps slightly more obvious, but a nice prompt). And that's just one of 240 recipes.

Hard for me to be objective about this one as it is a fictionalized account of me and people I know. But it is a warm family story set in a beautiful vacation area of eastern Canada.

Recommended by Elisabeth Hendrickson as a Deming-related quality resource more recent than Deming's works themselves.

Recommended to me by someone who does longsword dance and Morris dance.

One of a short list of Morris dance related novels.

Recommended on the Soft Skills Engineering podcast. Sounds like the book that invented or popularized the phrase "fall in love with the problem". The podcast called it a handbook for product managers, but also well worth a read for engineers.

Apparently this is a political science classic. If I remember right the context was intensity of political opinion compared with number of people with an opinion (enthusiasm gap and all that).

Saw this at a @berkeleymorris@sfba.social rehearsal and, well the title at least has me intrigued.

The story of the Luddites gets thrown around so much that I suspect it would be interesting to find out about it in more detail. I'm guessing I'll be surprised about who I find to be the sympathetic characters and who I don't.

Having already listened to the Revolutions podcast (from the same author), the most interesting part of the book for me was the period between the fall of Napolean and the revolution of 1830. This period is often seen as a quiet interlude between major events, and I suppose in some way it is, but this book makes it clear that the struggle between liberals and conservatives in France was actively underway then and Lafayette was in the middle of a decent amount of it. Of course the book covers the rest of Lafayete's life too but that period was the most fascinating for me.