| |
|
Gaming the Vote: Why Elections Aren't Fair (and What We Can Do About It)
William Poundstone
Hill and Wang, 2008
A joy to read
I've read a number of books on voting systems, most of which are very dry and technical. This book manages to explain a lot of things in a well-written, readable form, and I recommend it highly.
The book has two main sections: in one, several elections in the past ...
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
Fixing Climate: What Past Climate Changes Reveal About the Current Threat--and How to Counter It
Wallace S. Broecker, Robert Kunzig
Hill and Wang, 2008
Poking the Beast
Combine one coauthor who is the world's leading expert on climate change with a skilled science journalist and you get a riveting biography of Wallace S. Broecker that reads like a National Book Award novel. The science is a bonus, but, more than that - it is, I think, ...
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don't Add Up
John Allen Paulos
Hill and Wang, 2007
Devastating the deity's dozen
Although titled "Irreligion", this book might be better typified by "Irrational". Paulos lines out the litany of weary old arguments in support of the deity now dominating Western society. Reading them simple, straightforward format, they seem more like excuses than ...
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
Night (Oprah's Book Club)
Elie Wiesel
Hill and Wang, 2006
Simple, thought provoking
I've never read such a short book with such a huge impact. When I read this as part of a college class, we learned that it was originally some 600 pages long. Then the author decided to cut it down to the absolute bare bones - and it worked brilliantly.
Too much ...
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography
Roland Barthes
Hill and Wang, 1982
For the people...
After reading these last few negative reviews i had to write in about this, one of the most amazing books i have ever read. It is true that this book could be thought of as for the well read and serious academics only, but really, it is a book for anyone wishing to ...
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
Fortune's Formula: The Untold Story of the Scientific Betting System That Beat the Casinos and Wall Street
William Poundstone
Hill and Wang, 2006
It takes exceptionally smart people to make truly massive blunders
This book is a concise look at the evolution of formal investment theory, with continual contextual references to its ties to gambling and to organized crime. It also is a hilarious and insightful history of gambling from the Bernoulli's in the 1700s through the hedge ...
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences
John Allen Paulos
Hill and Wang, 2001
A must
This book explains why we are so easily manipulated. Follow the numbers and a larger truth emerges.
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
All But My Life
Gerda Weissmann Klein
Hill and Wang, 1995
Survial of the Human Spirit~A deeply moving story.
This is one of the first Holocaust survival stories that I read. It is by far one that has stayed with me in the most detail.
I'm not going to give the story away I'm just going to say you will cry and rejoyce in this story. It will touch you to core of your very ...
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
Mythologies
Roland Barthes
Hill and Wang, 1972
A must for old-school Marxists and modern rhetoricians
In Mythologies, Barthes offers a series of snapshots with titles such as "Plastic," "Striptease," "Toys," "The World of Wrestling," and "Operation Margarine." His aim is to reveal the ideological abuse hidden in these myths, which are manufactured to read as reality. ...
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
Beyond Oil: The View from Hubbert's Peak
Kenneth S. Deffeyes
Hill and Wang, 2006
Excellent discussion of Hubbert and his technical exposition
Deffeyes has written an excellent book on M K Hubbert's 1969 published predictions for future world oil production.The most interesting chapter is chapter 3.It covers the basic logistics model that Hubbert showed fit the data like a glove fitting your hand.Deffeyes ...
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
Amusing the Million: Coney Island at the Turn of the Century (American Century)
John F. Kasson
Hill and Wang, 1978
Did you ever wonder why people wanted "to go to the Fair ?
This book was not really what I expected it to be.Rather than giving interesting insight into what went on at Coney Island;it is more a book about why it came into being,why at the time,and why at that location. The book seemed to run out of steam and ended abruptly ...
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
The Night Trilogy: Night, Dawn, Day
Elie Wiesel
Hill and Wang, 2008
A Must Read
This is a must read - for everyone! A real, raw and riviting account of Ellie Wiesel's personal experience during the Holocaust. Starting when no one believed the pending danger of war... to the formation of ghettos and finally life in a concentration camp. His ...
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
Image-Music-Text
Roland Barthes
Hill and Wang, 1978
STRONGLY recommended for anyone with insomnia
Roland Barthes strikes me as an unreliable logician and a philosopher that one should be wary of. His premises are largely unsupported (or supported only weakly) and his statements often paradoxical or vastly generalized. His vocabulary is of such an unnecessarily ...
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
Group Theory in the Bedroom, and Other Mathematical Diversions
Brian Hayes
Hill and Wang, 2008
Extremely Interesting Even for Math-a-phobics
If you liked the book "Freakonomics: a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything" (which I loved), there is a good chance you will like this one too. The author may have screwed-up giving it the title he did and by adding "and Other Mathematical ...
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation
Sid Jacobson, Ernie Colon
Hill and Wang, 2006
A straightforward, full-color graphic novel adaptation
The 9/11 Report is a straightforward, full-color graphic novel adaptation of the final report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. Featuring a foreword Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton, the Chair and Vice Chair of the 9/11 ...
|
|
|
|
|
|
