Books – Page 99 – artdiamondblog.com

Edison Helped Us See the Light

Source of book image: http://www.strategy-business.com/article/07408i?pg=all

Several biographies of Thomas Edison have appeared in recent decades. One of the strengths of Randall Stross’ The Wizard of Menlo Park is that it emphasizes how Edison’s story is relevant to current issues in the economics of invention, entrepreneurship and technology.
In the next several weeks, I will quote some of the more thought-provoking stories and observations in the Stross book.

The Stross book is:
Stross, Randall E. The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World. New York: Crown Publishers, 2007.

“Babies Are Smarter than You Think”

Source of book image: http://www.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_296w/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2013/12/19/Outlook/Images/booksonbooks0031387485124.jpg

Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker discusses a favorite book of 2013:

(p. C11) . . . , babies are smarter than you think, and their cognitive and moral lives, revealed by ingenious experimental techniques, show that fairness, empathy and punitive sentiments have deep roots in human development. Paul Bloom’s “Just Babies” illuminates this research with intellectual rigor and a graceful, easygoing style.

For the full article, see:
“12 Months of Reading; We asked 50 of our friends–from April Bloomfield to Mike Tyson–to name their favorite books of 2013.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., Dec. 14, 2013): C6 & C9-C12.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the article has the date Dec. 13, 2013.)

The book that Pinker praises is:
Bloom, Paul. Just Babies: The Origins of Good and Evil. New York: Crown Publishers, 2013.

Carnegie Wanted Institution to Fund “Exceptional” Scientists “Whenever and Where Found”

So was Carnegie suggesting that we should be open to the exceptional appearing in unexpected locations?

(p. 614) In his deed of trust, Carnegie declared that his research institution in Washington should “discover the exceptional man in every department of study whenever and where found… and enable him to make the work for which he seems specially designed his life work.” That notion would remain the driving philosophy behind the institution over the next century. Some of those “exceptional” scientists, supported by Carnegie money were the astronomer Edwin Hubble, who “revolutionized astronomy with his discovery that the universe is expanding,” and Barbara McClintock, whose work on patterns of genetic inheritance in corn won her a Nobel Prize.

Source:
Nasaw, David. Andrew Carnegie. New York: Penguin Press, 2006.
(Note: ellipsis in original.)
(Note: the pagination of the hardback and paperback editions of Nasaw’s book are the same.)

Hope for “a Morality that Maximizes Human Flourishing”

Source of book image: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-6zEBTa23QDo/UtsQ6rZTkoI/AAAAAAAACdI/lAdUEZDMyaQ/s1600/Moral+Tribes.png

Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker discusses a favorite book of 2013:

(p. C11) “Moral Tribes,” by Joshua Greene, explains the fascinating new field of moral neuroscience: what happens in our brains when we make moral judgments and how ancient impulses can warp our ethical intuitions. With the help of the parts of the brain that can engage in careful reasoning, the world’s peoples can find common ethical ground in a morality that maximizes human flourishing and minimizes suffering.

For the full article, see:
“12 Months of Reading; We asked 50 of our friends–from April Bloomfield to Mike Tyson–to name their favorite books of 2013.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., Dec. 14, 2013): C6 & C9-C12.
(Note: the online version of the article has the date Dec. 13, 2013.)

The book that Pinker praises is:
Greene, Joshua. Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap between Us and Them. New York: The Penguin Press, 2013.

Margaret Thatcher Left Britain “Prosperous, Confident and Free”

Source of book image: http://media.npr.org/assets/bakertaylor/covers/manually-added/thatchercover_custom-e43e3b7aec14140f5606737ab274110160f0c94a-s2-c85.jpg

Daniel Hannan, a European Parliament representative from Britain, discusses a favorite book of 2013:

(p. C9) We’ve waited a long time for the authorized biography of Margaret Thatcher, and it has been worth the wait. Through Charles Moore’s vivid prose, we relive the extraordinary story of Britain’s greatest peacetime leader–how she found her country bankrupt, demoralized and dishonored and left it prosperous, confident and free. Mr. Moore weaves numerous new revelations into the narrative of the single-minded, humorless, workaholic, patriotic force of nature that was Margaret Thatcher.

For the full article, see:
“12 Months of Reading; We asked 50 of our friends–from April Bloomfield to Mike Tyson–to name their favorite books of 2013.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., Dec. 14, 2013): C6 & C9-C12.
(Note: the online version of the article has the date Dec. 13, 2013.)

The book that Hannan praises is:
Moore, Charles. Margaret Thatcher: From Grantham to the Falklands. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2013.

Carnegie Was Depressed by Initial Inactivity of Retirement

(p. 592) IT IS DIFFICULT to picture Andrew Carnegie depressed, but there is no other way to describe his state of being in the months following his retirement. Carnegie confessed as much in an early draft of his Autobiography, but the editor John Van Dyke, chosen by Mrs. Carnegie after her husband’s death, perhaps thinking his melancholic ruminations would displease her, edited them out of the manuscript.
. . .
(p. 593) The vast difference between life in retirement and as chief stockholder of the Carnegie Company was brought home to him as he prepared to leave for Britain in the early spring of 1901. For close to thirty years, he had scurried about for weeks prior to sailing tying up loose ends. There were documents to be signed, instructions to be left with his partners in Pittsburgh and his private secretary in New York. Retirement brought an end to this round of activities and a strange, inescapable melancholy.

Source:
Nasaw, David. Andrew Carnegie. New York: Penguin Press, 2006.
(Note: ellipsis added, italics in original.)
(Note: the pagination of the hardback and paperback editions of Nasaw’s book are the same.)

How the Brain May Be Able to Control Robots

Michio Kaku. Source of photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. 2) Michio Kaku is a theoretical physicist and professor at City College of New York. When not trying to complete Einstein’s theory of everything, he writes books that explain physics and how developments in the field will shape the future.
. . .
One of the most intriguing things I’ve read lately was by Miguel Nicolelis, called “Beyond Boundaries: The New Neuroscience of Connecting Brains With Machines,” in which he describes hooking up the brain directly to a computer, which allows you to mentally control a robot or exoskeleton on the other side of the earth.

For the full interview, see:
KATE MURPHY, interviewer. “Download; Michio Kaku.” The New York Times, SundayReview Section (Sun., FEB. 9, 2014): 2.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the first paragraph is an introduction by Kate Murphy; the next paragraph is part of a response by Michio Kaku.)
(Note: the online version of the interview has the date FEB. 8, 2014.)

The book mentioned above is:
Nicolelis, Miguel. Beyond Boundaries: The New Neuroscience of Connecting Brains with Machines—and How It Will Change Our Lives. New York: Times Books, 2011.

Dinosaurs Show that Size Does Not Assure Success, or Even Survival

(p. 504) If the Museum of Natural History was going to be, as Carnegie intended, a world-class institution, it needed more than mummies, ana-(p. 505)tomical models, and Appalachian minerals. It had to have a dinosaur or two. The dinosaur was more than simply a crowd-pleaser. For Carnegie and other devotees of evolutionary science, it was an apt symbol of the unpredictability of a universe in which species and races fell into extinction when they failed to adapt to new environments. For men of slight stature, such as Carnegie, there must have been something quite enthralling about this most vivid demonstration that size and power did not guarantee survival.

Source:
Nasaw, David. Andrew Carnegie. New York: Penguin Press, 2006.
(Note: the pagination of the hardback and paperback editions of Nasaw’s book are the same.)

In Traditional Societies People Try to Kill Strangers

Jared Diamond. Source of photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. 12) Your latest book, “The World Until Yesterday,” is about traditional societies and your research in New Guinea. Why is the acronym Weird central to the book? In Weird — Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic — societies we take these things for granted that just didn’t exist anywhere in the world until a few thousand years ago. We encounter strangers, and it’s normal, and we don’t freak out and try to kill them. We eat food that somebody else grew for us. We have a government with police and lawyers to settle disputes.

. . .
. . . , the book has been criticized for saying traditional societies are very violent. Some people take a view of traditional society as being peaceful and gentle. But the proportional rate of violent death is much higher in traditional societies than in state-level societies, where governments assert a monopoly on force. During World War II, until Aug. 14, 1945, American soldiers who killed Japanese got medals. On Aug. 16, American soldiers who killed Japanese were guilty of murder. A state can end war, but a traditional society cannot.
People have called the book racist, saying it suggests third-world poverty is caused by environmental factors instead of imperialism and conquests. It’s clearly nonsense. It’s not as if people in certain parts of the world were rich until Europeans came along and they suddenly became poor. Before that, there were big differences in technology, military power and the development of centralized government around the world. That’s a fact.

For the full interview, see:
AMY CHOZICK, interviewer. “Talk; ‘New Guinean Kids Are Not Brats’; Jared Diamond on What We Can Learn from Traditional Societies.” The New York Times Magazine (Sun., JAN. 12, 2014): A12.
(Note: bold in original; ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the interview has the date JAN. 10, 2014, and has the title “Jared Diamond: ‘New Guinean Kids Are Not Brats’.”)

The book under discussion above is:
Diamond, Jared. The World until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies? New York: Viking Penguin, 2012.

Carnegie Liked Partnership More than Incorporation

(p. 480) “Don’t want anything to do with a corporation as long as I am in business–Partnership is the only thing–no one man can manage well–every one needs the companionships of equals in business to contradict and differ from him–one advises the other… I who write you thus have grown gray in the service and speak the words of soberness and wisdom.”

Source:
Nasaw, David. Andrew Carnegie. New York: Penguin Press, 2006.
(Note: ellipsis in original.)
(Note: the pagination of the hardback and paperback editions of Nasaw’s book are the same.)

Angus Maddison Saw that Life Improved During the “Capitalist Epoch”

Source of graph: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. A13) Angus Maddison, the late and eminent economist for the OECD, produced a famous chart in 1995, depicted nearby. For the longest time–basically from after the Garden of Eden until the 19th century–economic benefit for the average person in the West or Japan was flat as toast. The Mona Lisa aside, there was a reason someone back then said life was nasty, brutish and short. Then suddenly, new wealth spread broadly.

Maddison describes 1820 till 1950 as the “capitalist epoch.” He means that admiringly. The tools of capitalism unlocked the knowledge created until then. What came to be called “economic growth” gave more people jobs that lifted them and their families from the muck of joblessness and poverty. Maddison also noted that much of the world did not participate in the capitalist epoch. No wonder they revolt now.
This history is worth restating because the importance of strong economic growth, and the unavoidable necessity of a U.S. that leads that growth, may be disappearing down the memory hole of public policy, on the left and even among some on the right. Both share the grim view that the U.S. economy is flatlining, and the grim fight is over how to divide what’s left.

For the full commentary, see:
Henninger, DANIEL. “WONDER LAND; The Growth Revolutions Erupt; Ukrainians want what we’ve got: The benefits of real economic growth.” The Wall Street Journal (Thurs., Feb. 27, 2014): A13.
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Feb. 26, 2014.)

One of Maddison’s last important books was:
Maddison, Angus. Contours of the World Economy, 1-2030 AD: Essays in Macro-Economic History. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.