Books Read in 2011
I picked up the pace a bit in 2011, with a little help from acquiring a Kindle in July...
Books read in 2011:
- David Allen, Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity
- Dan Ariely, The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic
- Kevin Behr, Gene Kim, and George Spafford, The Visible Ops Handbook: Implementing ITIL in 4 Practical and Auditable Steps
- John W. Creswell, Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches, Third Edition
- Gordon R. Dickson, The Alien Way
- Daniel Domscheit-Berg, Inside Wikileaks: My Time with Julian Assange at the World's Most Dangerous Website
- John Duignan with Nicola Tallant, The Complex: An Insider Exposes the Covert World of the Church of Scientology
- Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piatelli-Palmarini, What Darwin Got Wrong, Updated Edition
- Floyd J. Fowler, Jr., Survey Research Methods, 4th Edition
- Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
- Jefferson Hawkins, Counterfeit Dreams: One Man's Journey into and out of the World of Scientology
- Alan Haworth, Anti-Libertarianism: Markets, Philosophy and Myth
- Marc Headley, Blown for Good: Behind Scientology's Iron Curtain
- Gene Kim, Paul Love, and George Spafford, Visible Ops Security: Achieving Common Security and IT Operations in 4 Practical Steps
- Jon Krakauer, Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith
- Peter D. Kramer, Should You Leave?
- Lawrence M. Krauss, Quantum Man: Richard Feynman's Life in Science
- Patrick Lencioni, The Three Signs of a Miserable Job: A Fable for Managers (and their employees)
- Stephen L. Macknik and Susana Martinez-Conde, Sleights of Mind: What the Neuroscience of Magic Reveals About Our Everyday Deceptions
- Nancy Many, My Billion Year Contract: Memoir of a Former Scientologist
- Robert McLuhan, Randi's Prize: What Sceptics Say About the Paranormal, Why They Are Wrong and Why It Matters
- Ben Mezrich, The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook: A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal
- Delbert C. Miller and Neil J. Salkind, Handbook of Research Design & Social Measurement, 6th Edition
- Kevin Mitnick with William L. Simon, Ghost in the Wires: My Adventures as the World's Most Wanted Hacker
- Harry Markopolos, No One Would Listen: A True Financial Thriller
- Milton L. Mueller, Networks and States: The Global Politics of Internet Governance
- Ronald L. Numbers, Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths About Science and Religion
- Judith Pintar and Steven Jay Lynn, Hypnosis: A Brief History
- Kevin Poulsen, Kingpin: How One Hacker Took Over the Billion-Dollar Cybercrime Underground
- Janet Reitman, Inside Scientology: The Story of America's Most Secretive Religion
- Mary Roach, Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void
- Jon Ronson, The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry
- Benjamin Rosenbaum and Cory Doctorow, True Names
- Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
- David Schmidtz and Robert E. Goodin, Social Welfare and Individual Responsibility: For and Against
- Amy Scobee, Scientology: Abuse at the Top
- Robert Sellers, Hellraisers: The Life and Inebriated Times of Richard Burton, Richard Harris, Peter O'Toole, and Oliver Reed
- Tom Standage, The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century's On-Line Pioneers
- John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley in Search of America
- Jim Steinmeyer, The Last Greatest Magician in the World: Howard Thurston versus Houdini & the Battles of the American Wizards
- Donald Sturrock, Storyteller: The Authorized Biography of Roald Dahl
- Nassim Nicolas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (Second Edition)
- Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
- Hugh B. Urban, The Church of Scientology: A History of a New Religion
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8 comments:
Of those I've only read Huck Finn, Under the Banner of Heaven, and Demon Haunted World.
Top 5 for the year?
Of the books I read, the top five would probably be Inside Scientology, The Big Short, The Psychopath Test, Kingpin, and Under the Banner of Heaven. Also contenders would be The Victorian Internet, The Upside of Irrationality, Packing for Mars, and Ghost in the Wires.
Been a few years since I read it, but I also thought that Under the Banner of Heaven was excellent, with the story of those two brothers being an extremely effective framing device.
Thank you for the recommendations. I'm reading Under the Banner of Heaven now. I will add The psychopath test, The Victorian Internet, The upside of irrationality, and Packing for Mars to my future reading list.
You know what would be awesome? All of these posts put together in a recommended book list. I'd pay good money / give good cred to whomever can point me to a book on epistemology that is both in-depth but also not boring to the point of hurling it across the room. Any takers? :)
Alexander: I rather enjoyed Keith Lehrer's Theory of Knowledge, John Pollock's Contemporary Theories of Knowledge (now in a revised edition co-authored by Joe Cruz), and Alvin Goldman's Epistemology & Cognition and his more recent Knowledge in a Social World. The first three all concentrate on individual epistemology, which I think is in many ways a mistake... so you might want to check out the last one on the list.
Oh, I should add that those three authors were all on my prelim committee. Lehrer argues for a form of coherentism, Pollock for internalist foundationalism, and Goldman for externalist reliabilism. The Lehrer and Pollock books are both introductory texts which review common theories and their problems, including attacking each other's theories. Goldman's books aren't really surveys, and his approach is an example of naturalized epistemology, which I also advocate--taking seriously cognitive science as having something to say about epistemology. Lehrer and Pollock are both more purely philosophical. Another book on epistemology that is short and interesting is Gilbert Harman's Change in View. Again, not a survey, and it's focused on rationality of belief revision, as opposed to justifying an individual's current set of beliefs. My tolerance for epistemology may be higher than yours, since it was my area of specialization in grad school... if you really can't stand it, I recommend Steve Shapin's A Social History of Truth, which I think contains great lessons for how belief justification actually occurs in practice, specifically focused on the development of scientific institutions and methods for establishing what counts as objective in 17th century England.
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