Category Archives: Just Plain Interesting

What the Dog Saw

Financial, Just Plain Interesting

This book is not an original creation by Gladwell.  Instead, it is a collection of articles he had written before.  There really isn’t a common theme like his previous books.

I bought the audio CD strictly so I could listen on my way to work.  If you want to read the written word, note that all of the stories can be found online.  Here is the list, in what I thought was the order of interest.

The Talent Myth – Are Smart People Overrated?  Story about Enron and the talent they hired.

Million-Dollar Murray – Why Problems like Homelessness May Be Easier to Solve Than to Manage.  A tale of strange economics.

The Pitchman – Ron Popeil and the Conquest of the American Kitchen.  Do you know how to sell?  Ron Popeil is the amazing

Most Likely to Succeed – How Do We Hire When We Can’t Tell Who’s Right for the Job?  A powerful tale about the challenge of hiring – most of us are terrible interviewers.

Open Secrets – Enron, Intelligence, and the Perils of Too Much Information.  A claim that Skilling and others at Enron are not guilty of deliberately deceiving the world.

Dangerous Minds – Criminal Profiling Made Easy.  A commentary that profiling does not work as well as we may have been lead to believe.

What the Dog Saw – Cesar Millan and the Movements of Mastery

Connecting the Dots – The Paradoxes of Intelligence Reform

The Art of Failure – Why Some People Choke and Others Panic

Blowup – Who Can Be Blamed for a Disaster like the Challenger Explosion?  No One, and We’d Better Get Used to It

Blowing Up – How Nassim Taleb Turned the Inevitability of Disaster into an Investment Strategy

John Rock’s Error – What the Inventor of the Birth Control Pill Didn’t Know About Women’s Health

The Ketchup Conudrum – Mustard Now Comes in Dozens of Varieties.  Why has Ketchup Stayed the Same?

True Colors – Hair Dye and the Hidden History of Postwar America

The Picture Problem – Mammography, Air Power, and the Limits of Looking

Something Borrowed – Should a Charge of Plagiarism Ruin Your Life?

Late Bloomers – Why Do We Equate Genius with Precocity?

The New-Boy Network – What Do Job Interviews Really Tell Us?

The Pentagon’s New Map

Just Plain Interesting, Needs Review Date

This book is an expanded version of an article written by T. Barnett a few years back.  His basic thesis is that all the recent trouble spots our military has been involved in share one thing in common – they are not part of the economically integrated, functioning core.  Put another way, economic integration with the free trading world creates economic co-dependency and an infusion of freedom (human rights) which are at odds with inter-nation war.  Starting with that principal, he dissects US military policy since the end of the cold war.  It is a very interesting analysis.  Some of his ideas are clearly part of current U.S. foreign policy and the real reasons we are in Iraq.  The book isn’t perfect – Barnett is long winded, self aggrandizing, and idealistic (especially his predictions and solutions) – but those issues don’t outweigh the novelty of his analysis and its relevance to the future.

Judge the Jury: Experience the Power of Reading People

Just Plain Interesting, Personal Developement,

This book covers an interesting array of techniques including reading body language, personality typing, birth order, and similar characteristics which influence jury member prejudices.  A claim, which the author’s support, is 80% of the trial outcome is determined by the jury selection.  Accused of a crime?  Managers, secretaries, and teachers are the kinds of people you don’t want on your jury then.  Filed a suit against the government?  You want the unemployed on the jury, and engineers off the jury!  It is by no means a professional’s handbook – the target audience is the layperson.  So to me there wasn’t as much detail as I would have liked.