The Cuckoo's Egg by Cliff Stoll

This book was originally written in 1989, and since it’s about hackers and networks (pre-internet, as we know it today), it’s definitely dated – but a fun read. Stoll is an astrophysicist working as a system manager, and notices a 75c accounting discrepancy. He spends 2 years obsessively tracking what turns out to be a German hacker involved in industrial espionage.

Born on a Blue Day - By Daniel Tammett

Tammett is a 27-year-old autistic savant with Ausperger’s syndrome (Think “Rain Man” - but he functions better in every-day life.) He can do amazing mathematical calculations in seconds, has an unbelievable memory (pi to the 22,514th digit), and can learn languages (like Icelandic) in a week. He also has synesthesia, which means he experiences numbers as shapes, colors, textures and motions. This is a very engaging book about a remarkable young guy.

How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer

Combining neuroscience and entertaining writing, Lehrer describes how the best decisions are a combination of rational and emotional decision-making processes. Fascinating and very easy to read.

Another Day in the Frontal Lobe by Katrina Firlik

I was curious about an “inside look” at being a neurosurgeon, so I opened it and read the first paragraph:

The brain is soft. Some of my colleagues compare it to toothpaste, but that’s not quite right. It doesn’t spread like toothpaste. It doesn’t adhere to your fingers the way toothpaste does. Tofu - the soft variety, if you know tofu - may be a more accurate comparison.

This is an engaging and entertaining perspective from one of only ~200 female neurosurgeons (out of a total of ~4,500) in the US.

Work Hard Be Nice by Jay Matthews

The KIPP charter schools around the country are doing an outstanding job of engaging and educating low-income kids with phenomenal results. This book is about the founders of KIPP and the creation of the program. This is what education should be. No doubt these schools are changing kids' lives. An easy, inspiring read that provides a glimmer of hope for the US public education system.

My Losing Season by Pat Conroy

I don’t read many sports books, but this one was written by Pat Conroy, so I couldn’t resist. And I wasn’t disappointed. The book starts:

I was born to be a point guard, but not a very good one. There was a time in my life when I walked through the world known to myself and others as an athlete. It was part of my own definition of who I was and certainly the part I most respected. When I was a young man I was well built and agile and ready for the rough-and-tumble of games, and athletics provided the single outlet for a repressed and preternaturally shy boy to express himself in public. Games allowed me to introduce myself to people who had never heard me speak out loud, to earn their praise without uttering a single word. I lost myself in the beauty of sport and made my family proud while passing through the silent eye of the storm that was my childhood.

This book is primarily about Conroy’s senior year playing basketball at The Citadel military school, but also includes flashbacks to earlier in his childhood. He writes about how he felt and what he learned from that season, about the spirit with which he and his teammates played and bonded, and handled their often abusive coach, and about the joy they felt at playing the game. Another great book from Conroy.

Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson

After a failed attempt at K2 in 1993, Greg Mortenson got sick and lost coming down the mountain and was nursed back to health in the town of Korphe, Pakistan. In return, he promised to build them a school – which he did - and has subsequently built over 50 schools for girls in rural Pakistan and Afghanistan. Fascinating book about a guy who’s making a real difference.

Action Inquiry by Bill Torbert

I haven't read much in the last several months, and I struggled through this book; the writing is dry but the content is good - and I'll re-read it when I get a chance. It's about creating an environment in which people and organizations learn and develop.

Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert

Our imaginations are what distinguish people from other animals and enable us to create visions/predictions for our futures, and what we think would make us happy. Gilbert describes how our minds work - and how incredibly bad our accuracy is in these predictions. This is a fascinating, very easy read.

The Star Thrower by Loren Eiseley

I picked up this book because I liked the title, and decided to buy it as soon as I saw the intro was written by W.H. Auden. Excellent decision… I was blown away by this book. Eiseley is a naturalist, anthropologist, scientist, environmentalist, historian, poet (and more), and his writing is fantastic! This is a collection of his favorite essays (and a few poems). He describes the natural world with wonder, beauty and spirituality. I read this book slowly, savoring every sentence.

Beyond the Deep by Bill Stone & Barbara am Ende

This book is about a 1994 expedition to explore the Sistema Huautla, a cave system in Mexico, which – at ~35 miles long and almost 5,000 ft. deep - is the deepest cave in the Americas, and the 5th deepest in the world (as of 2002, when the book was published.) Think of mountaineering expeditions – but underground. There were 44 people on this expedition, who carried massive amounts of equipment into the caves, while doing some pretty hairy rappelling in and around waterfalls. They also spent significant amounts of time route-finding through flooded tunnels using a technology Stone had invented to allow them to recycle their own breath (rather than hauling huge numbers of scuba tanks with them.) The one “camp” sounded like it was hammocks hanging off bolts in the cave walls above an underground river. (Not a good place to be in a flash flood!). Stone and Ende lived underground for 44 days during this expedition. This is not something that’s on my list to do - but the book was interesting and engaging.

In Over Our Heads by Robert Kegan

A fascinating view on developmental psychology. Kegan describes the evolution of mental models/capacities of children, adolescents, and adults, and the dynamic relationship between capacities and cultural demands. The writing is pretty esoteric and academic at times. In the preface, he describes telling his father when his first book was translated into German and Korean. His father responded, “Great! Now when will it be translated into English?” Yeah, there’s still some of that going on, but in general, he used good examples to illustrate his points and the model he describes is definitely thought-provoking. I’ve already gone back and re-read several sections of this book – some parts more than once - and I suspect it’s a book I’ll be returning to for a while.

Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama

Since he’s by far the current front-runner for my vote in next year’s election, I decided to read Obama’s first book – written long before he was running for President. The book is more personal than I expected. As expected, though, it’s very well-written, thoughtful and insightful – and in the “discovering yourself” category, Obama definitely had a lot more complexity to deal with than most people, and wrote about it in a compelling way. But the last quarter of the book - about his pre-law school trip to Kenya - really dragged. Earlier in the book, the detail he included was interesting and provided texture to his insights; in the last section, it was just too much detail and was…. well, boring. Overall, though, I enjoyed it. And his other book is already on the pile of books next to my bed.

The Power of TED* by David Emerald

(*The Empowerment Dynamic) This one almost landed in the reject pile, but – although there were several things I didn’t like about this book – I did like the simple concept. The book provides alternatives to the The Karpman Drama Triangle roles of Victim, Persecutor and Rescuer - negative roles driven by fear. The alternatives offered are Creator, Challenger and Coach - positive roles driven by passion in pursuit of a vision/goal, which create a different approach and energy. The concept is very simple and could’ve been presented in an article. It definitely doesn’t need a whole book. And I don’t like fable-style books, so I didn’t like the way it was written. The concept, though, has broad applicability in our culture where a ridiculous number of people/groups seek out and claim victimhood.

Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey

After about two weeks of gray, dreary weather, including the worst ice-storm in Austin history - 3 days of temps below freezing and the city literally shut down under a coat of ice (yes, 3 days of temps in the 20s and an inch or two of ice is considered an “ice-storm” around here…. Gotta love winter in Texas :-) – I wanted to read about somewhere warm and sunny. What better choice than reading about the desert and canyonlands of SE Utah - one of my favorite spots on earth. I read Desert Solitaire years ago, while on a 4-week backpacking trip in that part of the country, and - while there’s something special about reading a book about wherever you are - I enjoyed it (almost) as much this time around. Abbey says that his intent is “not imitation but evocation” and in this he’s very successful. He captures the slickrock desert and canyons beautifully, including a great chapter about rafting down Glen Canyon (which was drowned when Glen Canyon Dam was built.) He writes that “Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit…” and while he’s somewhat excessive, he’s not entirely wrong in his railing against the “improvements” that the Park Service has made - but which diminish the wilderness. Definitely a great read.

Full Circle by Luis Sepulveda

Another book I started before my trip to Chile… An engaging travelog by a Chilean novelist who spent 3 years in a Chilean prison as a political prisoner and was exiled in the mid-70’s. His travel adventures in South America – and especially those in Patagonia – and the stories about the very colorful characters he met are very entertaining. This is a fun, light read.

The Headmaster by John McPhee

This is the story of Frank Boyden, the headmaster of Deerfield Academy - a prep school that now competes with Andover and Exeter. Boyden was headmaster of Deerfield from 1902, (when the school had 14 students,) to 1968. Interesting profile of an interesting man and the institution he created.

The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan

This book has been on every “Best of 2006” list I’ve seen, and it’s worth all the hype it’s getting. It’s fantastic. The book is about 4 meals and the food chains that supply those meals. The 4 meals are from McDonalds, from Whole Foods, from a local, “sustainable organic” farm, and a meal that the author hunted & gathered himself. Parts of this book are astounding – like the extent to which corn and petrochemicals create the foundation for most of the US’s food supply, (Yup – you read that right) incentivized, of course, by inane government policies lobbied for by big agribusiness, the petrochemical industry, the pharmaceutical industry, the soft drink industry, and others. (You read that right, too.) And in today’s news, the FDA gave preliminary approval for meat and milk from cloned animals – and is ‘unlikely’ to require labelling of these foods (I kid you not. See FDA OK's food from cloned animals.)
The book also offers interesting insights into the complexities of sustainable farming and the interactions between various aspects of the farm (and the natural world in general). There’s a fascinating section about mushrooms – about which we know surprisingly little.
This book is very well-written and engaging. I guarantee you’ll think about food differently after reading it. (And you’ll find me at the local farmer’s market when I do my shopping on saturday morning :-)

A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway

A very light, quick read about Hemingway’s time in Paris in the 20’s – writing in cafes, walking along the Seine, being hungry and broke, skiing in the Alps, etc. He tells stories about his interactions with Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Sylvia Beach (who owned the Shakespeare & Co book store.) He ends the book saying, “This is how Paris was in the early days when we were very poor and very happy.” If you’re at all interested in the literary expat community in Paris in the 20s, you’ll probably like this book (even if you’re not a Hemingway fan.)

All Rivers Run to the Sea: Memoirs by Elie Wiesel

After re-reading Night a few months ago, I became curious about how that experience shaped the adult Elie Weisel. All Rivers Run to the Sea is the first volume of his two-volume autogiography, covering from his childhood to 1969. He describes his happy childhood in Romania, during which he was a devout student. The chapter on the concentration camps is followed by a short chapter on how/what to believe in after experiencing such horrors. Following the war, he lives in a French orphanage, then becomes a journalist and writer so that he can testify to his experience and support Jewish/Israeli causes:

“My people’s quest was mine; its memory my country. Everything that happens to it affects me. I have lived its anguish and been scorched by the fire of its dreams. I belonged to the community of night, the kingdom of the dead, and henceforth I would also belong to the wonderous, exhilirating community of the eternal city of David. It is incumbent upon the Jewish writer to be witness to all that has haunted the people of Israel from its beginnings. That is his role – not to judge but to testify. And in our tradition the responsibilities of the witness are greater than those of the judge; if the testimony is true, the verdict will be just.”

As expected, a very powerful memoir.