I finished this audiobook last week, and I'm taking a few minutes to write down my thoughts before I forget them. It's a hard thing to remember to do! The book is called Gangsters of Capitalism, by Jonathan M. Katz. Superficially, it's a biography of the American Marine officer Smedley Butler, best known, I think, … Continue reading Gangsters of Capitalism →

I received this book as a gift from my friend Heather Kelley for my birthday, but I just got around to reading it. Her note on the gift said, For my own birthday this year, I am giving friends copies of this book which I loved, and I hope it inspires you. I sent her … Continue reading Everything for Everyone →

I finished Melvin Sheldrake's "Entangled Life" today. The book covers how fungus interact with humans and the rest of life. It's a great read; each chapter discusses different aspects of fungus. The writing is personal, multi-faceted, kind and curious. One chapter is about lichens, the complex symbiotic forms of algae and fungus that adapt so … Continue reading Entangled Life →

Regenesis is a remarkable book by the remarkable author George Monbiot. It's about the looming crisis in feeding humans on planet Earth, and what smart people are doing about it. I'm a few months behind on writing up my book synopses. Which is hard, because one of the points of doing so is to better … Continue reading Regenesis →

My daughter read Gideon the Ninth a year or two ago, and she's been talking about it ever since. A few weeks ago, she recommended that I read it, so I spent a credit on Audible and "read" the book over the last week. I just finished it this morning while mowing the lawn. I'm … Continue reading Gideon the Ninth →

My employer, the OEF, went through making our OKRs for this quarter a few weeks ago. It was the second time I’d been at an organization that uses OKRs; we also had them at Wikimedia. The process was also very different, and it made me realize that I only knew OKRs through folk wisdom and … Continue reading Measure What Matters →

I started reading The Golden Bough by James George Frazer late last year, and it took me many, many months to get through. I have been trying to write about books as I finish them, but this one has been a big block in the pipe for me, so I haven't been writing about the … Continue reading The Golden Bough →

I finished reading A Sand County Almanac last week. Many of the writers I've been reading on the topic of biodiversity refer to this book and its author, Aldo Leopold, as a must-read to understand how conservation can work and why it's so important. It's also a slim volume (which I listened to as an … Continue reading A Sand County Almanac →

I got my Amazon subscription credit renewed a few days ago and decided to listen to another Douglas Tallamy book, Nature's Best Hope. Long story short: it presents very little new material from his previous book, Bringing Nature Home. But that's good. Hope makes the same argument that Home did a few years before: we … Continue reading Nature’s Best Hope →