Category: Social Sciences

Rating: 7.5/10. Zoned in the USA: The Origins and Implications of American Land-Use Regulation by Sonia A. Hirt This book examines the history of zoning, especially focusing on America and how it reached the current state where large areas are mandated for single-family house zoning, something relatively uncommon globally. The strict government regulation in this…

Rating: 7.7/10. Optimizing Play: Why Theorycrafting Breaks Games and How to Fix It by Christopher A. Paul Book that studies the design of video games and sports, and how players’ attempts at theorycrafting or optimizing the game to win more often lead to negative consequences for the enjoyment of the game. There is often a…

Rating: 7.2/10. Immigration in the 21st Century: The Comparative Politics of Immigration Policy by Terri Givens, Rachel Navarre, Pete Mohanty A academic book that discusses the history and politics of immigration, with a primary focus on the US, Australia, and Canada, and countries in Europe, including Britain, France, and Germany. It explores how these countries…

Rating: 7.8/10. Book covering multiple topics in politics, ecology, and sociology — the main argument of the book is a case against “Authoritarian High Modernism,” which essentially refers to the idea of imposing top-down control over society and using scientific and mathematical principles to enhance efficiency. This concept is most notably exemplified in the authoritarian…

Rating: 7.1/10. License to Travel: A Cultural History of the Passport by Patrick Bixby Book about the history of the passport from ancient times to the modern era and reflects on what the passport represents. The passport, although a modern concept, has a long history and carries significant symbolic meaning. It epitomizes the control an…

Rating: 7.7/10. The Culture Map by Erin Meyer: Decoding How People Think, Lead, and Get Things Done Across Cultures Book about how cultures differ across the world, categorizing differences among cultures along eight dimensions. Cultural differences can often lead to misunderstandings without either side realizing it. This is especially important in management where your words…

Rating: 8.0/10. This Is an Uprising: How Nonviolent Revolt Is Shaping the Twenty-First Century by Mark Engler and Paul Engler Book about the mechanics and strategies of protests: a common misconception that protests and uprisings are spontaneous, but in reality they involve careful planning. The book studies the strategy behind successful nonviolent protests and what…

Rating: 7.4/10. The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do by Judith Rich Harris Book about parenting, arguing for the thesis that parents essentially have no effect on how children turn out. Except in cases of extremely severe abuse, parents have no effect on children, after accounting for factors like genetics. Culture…

Rating: 7.4/10. Book about analyzing “systems”: basically, any collection of things that are interconnected and produce emergent properties. In many situations you will be led astray if you only look at individual events or pieces of the system, you have to analyze the system as a whole to understand its behavior. Examples of systems are:…

Rating: 6.7/10. Influential book by Daniel Kahneman, winner of a Nobel Prize in economics for his work on behavioral economics. The main idea of this book is we have two systems for making decisions, call them System 1 and System 2. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and effortless; System 2 is slow, logical, and takes…

Rating: 8.0/10. Book containing several mostly independent essays about aspects of science, mostly from a historical and sociological perspective. The first essay compares Greek and Babylonian science: Greeks were more geometric while Babylonians were good at calculations, but when their cultures came in contact, new ideas emerged combining their sciences to predict astronomical motion. Essays…