Book 27: What Color Is Your Parachute? 2017: A Practical Manual For Job-Hunters and Career-Changers
What Color Is Your Parachute? is a “job-search” book I am reading for a course my university requires as part of my internship. Because I am completing assignments based on it, I won’t be posting any notes.
So far, I cannot recommend it because it is not well-written, and I am unsure it will add value to my future job searches.
Book 28: On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
Timothy Snyder, Yale historian of Eastern and Central Europe, wrote On Tyranny to teach Americans how to resist slides toward illiberal democracy and authoritarianism based on Europe’s experience in the 20th Century.
He wrote it out of concern about the election of Donald Trump who, this morning on Twitter, accused The New York Times of pursuing a “sick agenda over national security.” His tweet is a startling, dangerous accusation against our free press and is exactly the kind of behavior you would expect to see from an authoritarian. I’m hoping to learn a lot from this book.
For the record, he most likely tweeted this because of a segment on Fox News regarding a 2015 report in The Times that did not worry other U.S. officials.
Book 29: The Genius of Birds
Apparently, birds are “astonishingly intelligent” (who knew?). In The Genius of Birds, acclaimed science author Jennifer Ackerman explores the new research behind birds’ brilliance. I don’t know much about birds or their brains, besides what The Master and His Emissary included, and I’m excited to learn something new.
Book 30: Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
“One hundred thousand years ago, at least six different species of humans inhabited Earth. Yet today there is only one—homo sapiens. What happened to the others? And what may happen to us?”
In Sapiens, Dr. Yuval Noah Harari combines history and science to tell the fascinating story of us, beginning around 70,000 years ago with the appearance of cognition.
Bill Gates and other ravenous readers strongly recommend Sapiens. The Director of Research at IBM recommended it to me, and my wonderful grandparents gifted it to me for my birthday.
That’s it for July. I hope you’ll be reading with me!