[15] Amazonia: James Marcus - Review

This almost more of a memoir than a look into Amazon. Marcus applies a dedicated memory to a start-up that goes a hundred different directions before it looks like the Amazon today. Parts are a little funny, you get the idea that many people were expected to work with many things they barely understood. You get confirmation about some of Jeff Bezos's quirks or management style. It's like your spouse unwinding after a long day if that day lasted 5 years.

To be honest, I picked it up without any expectations. Because it is just an account of his time there, it's a pretty easy read and you don't have to devote too much brain power. It was a nice book to read between thicker material. The information in and of itself isn't so much "useful" as it may be slightly interesting if you want a peek into start-ups. This happens to be one of THE start-ups, but you won't get insider knowledge on how to structure your new world-encompassing business or anything.

There isn't much else to say. It's straightforwardly written and isn't anything more than a personal tale.

[14] The Universe Within: Neil Turok - Review

This is a kind of history of science. Often I was reminded of Neil DeGrasse Tyson's Cosmos episodes where you can take on a picture of the whole world of leaps and information. You'll get a lot of the big names from your introductory science classes but a deeper exploration into their significance and relations to each other. The tone if very optimistic and seeks to tie in the implications of physics into everyday understandings of life and ourselves.

It does a good job of tying together discoveries. Even if you don't know anything of electricity and the magnetism of electrons and their spins, you'll get bare bones analogies and descriptions that will at least give you a sense that the world is quite more mysterious than we imagine. Inferences and observation continue to gives us the math to keep trying.

This is advocacy through history. Turok tries to paint the picture that connects us all and motivates the pursuit of knowledge as well as the appreciation that comes with understanding its impact on our lives. You can read it for names, just as a launch point, or to get a sense of the physics world, but you'll leave feeling the importance of the message. I, at least, feel like I want to be in a physics class or two and join the crowd who can claim to be describing the very nature of existence.

[13] The End of Growth: Richard Heinberg - Review

This starts as an overall primer on economics. If you know nothing, you'll get enough of a feel and conversational ability about the basics and history. It depicts clear graphs and analogies and is certainly seeking to be understood. It's a complicated topic where this represents the "easiest" way it can be talked about.The first chapters can act as a primer on the language of the finance world and how it was/is construed to beckon collapse.

The problem is that we're talking about the big bad world of financial markets. The language can become confusing in spite of itself and sorting through the players who had instrumental roles they chose not to play can feel overwhelming. I find a lot of the information redundant but necessary, but in trying to speed or power through you can find yourself losing information you may have thought you were beginning to understand. Or maybe that's just me and being impatient.

I'm tempted to call this "the one book you can reference" to get a picture of how the economy works. You'd just have to have the patience to read and maybe map out the concepts to make them easier to think about. Heinberg seeks to give context and perspective of many schools of thought, and in an already complex environment, picking up disparate points of view is difficult.

At some point it becomes too much information to just sit and read comfortably. It's like hundreds of studies and reports condensed into quasi-predictions about the future. Need a graph related to zinc? No? Huh, because here's one for zinc and 4 other metals. The book starts to feel extremely redundant using every example possible to show you irresponsible resource allocation can't be sustained forever, let alone be used to "grow."

I'm running into book after book that is "overtly academic." The information is usable, powerful, and damming. It makes the case, but just not in a way that you're going to tell everyone you know to read the book.

[12] The Sixth Extinction: Elizabeth Kolbert - Review

The Sixth Extinction is half journalism and half history. The book seeks to provide a context for our modern extinction by describing what scientists have found out about the past and comparing it to the rates of extinction we see in plants and animals today.

The author relates her experience like an explanation of vacations she went on. And much as cycling through someone's slideshow, you might ask yourself when she's gong to get to the point. Chapters are broken up into explorations of a specific animal that has gone or is going extinct. Whether the lengths that are gone to keep it alive or methodical over-hunting is described, you'll find yourself confronted with too many details.

I'm a little disappointed in that I feel the author leaves you with too much room to consider mass extinction par for the course. Surely we know animals, including ourselves, are in severe danger from altering the landscape, the gritty details of rhino insemination not really selling the point or urgency.

How many complicated Latin names of any animal ever do you know? None? Well if you want hundreds, this book provides. In fact entire paragraphs are devoted to lists of animals, because they all existed or have been studied by a lab, along with their scientifically accurate name. Skipping these make it a quicker read.

This feels like a book for the super science nerds Kolbert hung out with on her excursions. You won't take home anything prescriptive, you'll just grasp the lengths researchers go to measure things. To the extent it informs you about the detail and hard work of scientists, it goes a long way. It's a good book on an important topic, but I think the title loomed a little larger than what was focused on.