The Top 5

Let's just get right to it:

#5 - Blink by Malcom Gladwell
Most people have heard of Gladwell's book The Tipping Point which examines how trends often begin very small in a localized area, and then suddenly exponentially explode all over the place. I also read that book this year, and if I were to expand this list to my top 15 or so, it would appear. But I enjoyed this book more. This is a fascinating look at how much information the average person processes within the first two seconds of observing it. He includes both experimental and anecdotal evidence to show how right now the human mind actually processes information faster than any current computer, even though we're not consciously aware of it. Of particular interest is how this often gets exploited and manipulated by both other people and big business. Advertisers and politicians spend billions of dollars every year just to make sure that the message they send appear "pleasing" to you, even if on a conscious level you detest the actual message content. This is why it is so difficult to overcome a bad first impression of someone. When the conscious mind goes up against the unconscious, consciousness rarely has a chance.

#4 - The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman
This is an excellent book for anyone interested in modern business but is still very accessible to the average reader as well. Friedman analyzes how technology has largely rendered geographical distances moot and brought people and businesses together in a way that is unprecedented. He uses different businesses as case studies and analyzes how specifically they applied new technological advances to revitalize or even reinvent their business. Most of the studies are businesses that everyone is familiar with (UPS and Wal-Mart for example) but chances are there is a lot about the logistics going on behind the scenes that you've never thought about. One of the other interesting parts that he touches on is the dark side of this technology. Mainly that it is not only the "good guys" that have access to it. Terrorist cells are now able to recruit and organize more effectively and carry out attacks on a scale that was unimaginable 10 years ago. This topic is kind of glossed over towards the end of the book, and it would have been nice if he had gone into more depth. Still, it helps in making the reader appreciate the wonders of the information age and still keeping a balanced perspective on the dangers involved as well.

#3 - No God but God by Reza Aslan
I realize that it will look like I intentionally engineered this here so that the previous comments would be a good lead-in but I assure you I did not. This is a book about the history and evolution of the Islamic faith by a Muslim. So much has been thrown around since 9/11 about what Muslims really believe and there are enough different sects that misinformation tends to be the norm rather than the exception. This book is an excellent and well written account on the biography of Muhammad and a historical perspective on how the faith began fracturing and led to the creation of the different sects that exist today. Anyone who watches the news today and doesn't know a Shi'ite from a Sunni will get a lot out of this book. Anyone who only knows of the Islamic faith as a religion that "advocates violence" would find a lot surprising and gain a much better context from reading this. Most importantly, in my opinion this is a book that neither demonizes or idolizes the Islamic religion. It really paints a picture of Islam as a religion in the midst of its reformation, much like the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century. Religious reformations are turbulent and violent times, and the prospect of having one in the age of nukes and chemical weapons as opposed to swords and catapults is truly frightening.

#2 - The Origin of Wealth by Eric Beinhocker
OK, so I have been promising a detailed discussion about this book literally since the day I started blogging. And I still will, because I found it absolutely fascinating and mind-blowing. However, it really does have a pretty specific audience. If you are not interested in economic theory, even though you would be able to understand the material it is very unlikely you would be willing to make the time commitment necessary to get through the 450+ pages. Nevertheless, I will once again defer to my long-promised discussion of this which will be brought to you sometime during this fiscal quarter to ultimately make up your mind if I am overpraising this work or not. So I will only say this brief bit right now. This is a book that attempts to explain economic growth throughout human history as evolution. It's important to note that he is not saying that economic growth is "like" evolution, but that it literally is evolution. Most people only ever think about evolution in terms of Darwinism, but the point he makes and proves (in my opinion) is that really Darwinism is just one of many types of evolution. Within this framework, he defines the general rules that all evolutions must follow and shows how both biology and economics follow them. What I love about this book is that it gives a broad overview of the theory it is presenting (economics as evolution), demonstrates the inherent inadequacies of the current economic system (i.e. a static, closed system that depends on exogenous shocks for progress), discusses how the new thinking helps solve those inadequacies, and then brings it all together to show how this new thinking can and is being applied to the business world today. Much like Hyperspace, if that previous sentence made your eyes cross, this probably isn't the book for you.

#1 - The Weather Makers by Tim Flannery
Let's get this out of the way right from the start. This book is about global warming. Anyone that has engaged me in any form of serious conversation over the last year should not at all be surprised that this book tops the list. This is a topic that I am very interested in because I believe it is the most important topic in the world today. Please reread that sentence and understand that I am not using those words as hyperbole or exaggerating for affect. The war in Iraq, terrorism, disease, world hunger, etc are all problems worthy of a great deal of attention but they all pale in comparison to this one, because if we don't solve this one all of the rest won't matter. Before I get into the specifics of this book, permit me a brief aside.

I don't really understand how this issue became partisan. Probably because it concerns the environment and that has always implied the left wing in the past. But to me this is just asymptom of a larger problem that especially exists in this country; the unwillingness to believe science. It is really upsetting to me that we continue to revisit the topic of evolution when it was adequately solved by the Scopes trial over 80 years ago. People like to use "selective" studies from science with no regard to how the scientific method works. The scientific community builds theories based on evidence and then continually modifies them based on new evidence received from tests that are objective and repeatable. It is important to realize that you cannot simply disprove one minor aspect of the theory and then label the entire theory "wrong". You try to accommodate the new data into the theory and find out where the fundamental disconnect originated from. In a nutshell, this is what I believe has happened with the global warming debate. People seemed to have made up their mind about it 10 years ago when there was a lot of conflicting data to interpret and the model failed to explain a lot. But since that time (and especially in the last 3 years), most of those conflicts have been resolved and the outliers have been explained. I think I am so adamant about this topic because up until about 2 years ago, I was one of those that dismissed global warming. But there are just too many facts out there for any rational person to dispute it anymore. And while there are still some scientists who deny that it is happening, remember that there are also scientists who don't believe in evolution or dinosaurs. The term "mad scientist" exists for a reason. And I know that history is replete with examples of doomsday prognosticators crying wolf. All I can say to that is that sometimes the wolf is real.

In any case, if I haven't infuriated you and you're still reading this, I'll go into the specifics of the book now. I think my main reason for reading this book is because I hate Al Gore. I am not a George W supporter in the least, but I still have a problem saying that we'd be better off had we elected Gore. However, I am also a big Roger Ebert fan and I try to make it a point of seeing the films he gives 4 stars to. Therefore I found myself with a dilemma when he gave Gore's documentary An Inconvenient Truth 4 stars. In the end, I decided to see it and the film is actually very well made and his arguments are coherent and compelling. But given my natural dislike and distrust of Gore, I wanted another source to either confirm or refute him. I chose this book by searching on Amazon and looking for something that seemed to garner some form of consensus among the left-leaning and right-leaning reviewers. I think the best thing I can say about the book is that it is very straightforward and easy to read. You don't need to know a lot of science to understand what is happening and see that the consequences he lays out are realistic and intuitive. But the thing that really elevates this book above others in the category is that he doesn't spend a lot of time blaming people for our current woes, and he lays out steps we can all take to help overcome the problem. The result is that by the end you are left feeling like this is a huge problem that will require a global effort to solve but that it is actually possible to do so.

As a final note, I want to issue an open invitation for anyone to point me in the direction of any credible sources that still deny the existence of climate change. I don't say that with animosity. I'd truly like to know if I have been the victim of doomsday propaganda and if I am consequently guilty of fear mongering myself. If you are able to find such info, please let me know. If on the other hand, you look and you aren't able to, this might be a topic that deserves more attention in your life.

- descends from soapbox -

As an FYI, here is a list of the other books I read over the last 15 months. As I said before, there isn't a bad one in the bunch and I'd recommend them all. If anyone wants to know any more about any of them (or the ones above) please let me know. I also own about half of them and would be happy to lend them to you.

The Survivor: Bill Clinton in the White House by John Harris
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
Olympos by Dan Simmon
Knowledge and the Wealth of Nations by David Warsh
Prince of the Marshes by Rory Stewart
Gaia by James Lovelock
Gaia's Revenge by James Lovelock (like The Weather Makers but minus the hope)
The Bridge Betrayed by Michael Sells
The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson
Reefer Madness by Eric Schlosser
Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser
American Theocracy by Kevin Phillips
The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
My Year In Iraq by Paul Bremer
Spook by Mary Roach