History
My mother-in-law sent me a copy of this book for my birthday and I finally got around to reading it this last fall. Economics is a fascinating field and von Hayek's work "The Road to Serfdom" is incredibly relevant today even though it was originally published in 1944. The book was not intended to be an economic treatise but rather an application of economic theory to political reality. Hayek saw what happened in Europe between the wars and felt compelled to write a book to his fellow Britons
Son of Hamas is the gripping story of a young man who is the son of one of the founders of Hamas. He tells his own story, going all the way back to his grandfather and his father as imam's in the Muslim faith all the way through his seeking asylum in the United States because of his work for Shin Bet, the Israeli internal security force tasked with finding terrorists within the homeland. The amazing transformation of his life from son of a Hamas leader to working for the Israeli intelligence c
I wanted to enjoy Jared Diamond's book, Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, and it started off well. He details a conversation he had with a New Guinean who asked a simple question, "Why was it the whites that invaded New Guinea and not the other way around?" This book is Diamond's answer to the question. No, it's not that white people are smarter, faster, stronger and better than everyone else. In a nutshell, it's because of geography, climatology and agronomy.
I came across this book in a reference to former President Clinton. Apparently towards the end of his time in office this book came to his attention and upon reading it he began urging those around him to read the book. Robert Wright asserts that all of human history can be understood in terms of game theory. He builds on two very high level concepts from game theory: zero sum and non-zero sum games. His primary assertion is that throughout history, human interaction has by nature become mor
A Geography of Time: The temporal misadventures of a social psychology is a delightful and fascinating read by Robert Levine. Levine, a professor of social psychology, takes the reader around the world examining how various cultures and people's tell, interpret and use their time. In one of the chapters he takes a short diversion from the trip to examine a brief history of time and the telling of time. When I picked up this book I wasn't sure what to think of it but I am very glad I took the
This book might seem out of character for my reading list, however history is a hobby of mine. This particular period of history fascinates me as I grew up with church and Christianity as a large part of my life. Understanding the day to day life during this time period in history makes the life of Christ more realistic. In The City in Roman Palestine, Daniel Sperber does an excellent job of using both archeology and the historical record of Jewish historians of the time to paint a very deta