Blink I usually don’t cluster books by the same author together (unless they are a series), and under normal circumstances I would have read Blink so soon after reading Outliers, but I picked the book up for a song and needed a short read during this past week while I was preparing to move.
In short, Blink is a mixed bag.
Snoop I have a weakness for popular science books, even though that sometimes steers me dangerously close to quacks or shallow popsci frauds (think pretty much all of Oprah’s guests….). I picked up Snoop on the strength of its review on Amazon.
Some of you may be familiar with Room Raiders, a sickly sort of reality television show airing on MTV since 2003. In it, three young men or women have their rooms “raided”—that is, inspected—by a member of the opposite sex; at the end, the inspector’s room is summarily raided by the contestants. Any pictures of the people are covered up: the goal is to surmise as much about the person as possible based on the state, condition, and content of his or her room. It’s actually an interesting premise—as we shall see—ruined in this case by the fact that its stars are about keg stand away from being mentally retarded.
Atmospheric Disturbances This post may contain spoilers; most of the data it will disclose are easily predictable within the first quarter of the book, and as such I consider them fair game. If you genuinely do not want to know the book’s plot, please do not read this review.
I don’t remember exactly how I came across Atmospheric Disturbances; it was likely an Amazon recommendation, and I can’t say for sure what inspired me to pick it up other than I found it at the library and it’s premise—namely that a man suddenly decides that his wife has been replaced by an identical imposter—piqued that curiosity which is aroused by such things
Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy Were you to take seriously Paco Underhill’s forward to Buyology, or the publisher’s jacket press, you’d likely be under the impression that Martin Lindstrom is the second cousin of Jesus in the marketing world. Actually, I can’t dispute or verify that: relatively well-published, Lindstrom very well may be a branding guru among those in the know.
I picked up Buyology because I’m in that kind of mode from my MBA classes, and the premise of the book (buying decisions are largely unconscious) intrigued me. Except for Lindstrom’s penchant for repetition and the “This is going to blow your mind!” hype, I thought it was actually a good book.
rev. 20 November 2008; get the PDF.
In the inchoate years of the 21st century, the nominal ideas behind Frederick Herzberg’s “Two-Factor Theory” have been largely cast aside in their want of experimental validation, but the late psychologist’s ultimate conclusion—that “job enrichment” is a good and necessary function of management—is certainly alive and well, albeit superseded by more complete theories about the idea (Miner, 2005, pp. 61, 73-74). In a period of a global “flattening” of cultures and economies (to borrow Thomas Friedman’s nomenclature), when fears about job security are on the rise, long-term career goals are sinking into the dusk latitudes, and cynicism about outsource-happy management and inequality is worse in the United States than it has been since the Gilded Age, how can organizations elicit more than a minimum of effort from their employees, short of threatening or scaring them into hyperkinesis?