Erika Hall

Erika Hall

Bodily autonomy is a human right. Co-founder of Mule Design Studio. Author of Just Enough Research and Conversational Design. She/They/Friend/Sir

'

40+ Book Recommendations by Erika Hall

  • The Book of the Courtier is the new Art of War.

  • I recommend the book "A General Theory of Love" from which I learned how employers take advantage of the limbic system to get more love and loyalty than they offer. "Assuming mutuality where none exists is a mammal's grave and occasionally fatal error." https://t.co/UNSl1L58tr https://t.co/bjyPaUIuGM

  • Producing Politics

    Daniel Laurison

    The first book to uncover the hidden and powerful role campaign professionals play in shaping American democracy by delving into the exclusive world of politicos through off-the-record interviews We may think we know our politicians, but we know very little about the people who create them. Producing Politics will change the way we think about our country’s political candidates, the campaigns that bolster them, and the people who craft them. Political campaigns are designed to influence voter behavior and determine elections. They are supposed to serve as a conduit between candidates and voters: politicos get to know communities, communicate their concerns to candidates, and encourage individuals to vote. However, sociologist Daniel Laurison reveals a much different reality: campaigns are riddled with outdated strategies, unquestioned conventional wisdom, and preconceived notions about voters that are more reflective of campaign professionals’ implicit bias than the real lives and motivations of Americans. Through over 70 off-the-record interviews with key campaign staff and consultants, Laurison uncovers how the industry creates a political environment that is confusing, polarizing, and alienating to voters. Campaigns are often an echo chamber of staffers with replicate backgrounds and ideologies; most political operatives are white men from middle- to upper-class backgrounds who are driven more by their desire to climb the political ladder than the desire to create an open conversation between voter and candidate. Producing Politics highlights the impact of national campaign professionals in the US through a sociological lens. It explores the role political operatives play in shaping the way that voters understand political candidates, participate in elections, and perceive our democratic process—and is an essential guide to understanding the current American political system.

    As we head into the finale of election season, I strongly recommend the @Daniel_Laurison book Producing Politics. https://t.co/7juXn9qvd6

  • Argues for the practice of talking to strangers as a way of widening one's experience of the world, addressing the transformative possibilities as well as the political and practical considerations of engaging with strangers in public.

    If you would like to read a book that is *actually* about the benefits of talking to strangers. Get this one: (Kio also wrote the foreword to JER 2nd ed) https://t.co/4JhIB2ihVb

  • The Elements of Choice

    Eric J. Johnson

    A leader in decision-making research reveals how choices are designed—and why it’s so important to understand their inner workings Every time we make a choice, our minds go through an elaborate process most of us never even notice. We’re influenced by subtle aspects of the way the choice is presented that often make the difference between a good decision and a bad one. How do we overcome the common faults in our decision-making and enable better choices in any situation? The answer lies in more conscious and intentional decision design. Going well beyond the familiar concepts of nudges and defaults, The Elements of Choice offers a comprehensive, systematic guide to creating effective choice architectures, the environments in which we make decisions. The designers of decisions need to consider all the elements involved in presenting a choice: how many options to offer, how to present those options, how to account for our natural cognitive shortcuts, and much more. These levers are unappreciated and we’re often unaware of just how much they influence our reasoning every day. Eric J. Johnson is the lead researcher behind some of the most well-known and cited research on decision-making. He draws on his original studies and extensive work in business and public policy and synthesizes the latest research in the field to reveal how the structure of choices affects outcomes. We are all choice architects, for ourselves and for others. Whether you’re helping students choose the right school, helping patients pick the best health insurance plan, or deciding how to invest for your own retirement, this book provides the tools you need to guide anyone to the decision that’s right for them.

    Went down a choice architecture path this afternoon, as one does, and started reading @ProfEricJohnson's The Elements of Choice. Turns out it's a very practical interaction design book. So, if you're a designer, you should probably read it. https://t.co/l2PH7Si4Ao

  • Disco emerged from the fall-out of the Black Power Movement and an almost exclusively gay scene in a blaze of poppers, strobe lights, tight trousers, hysterical diva vocals and synthesized beats in the late sixties. As a genre, disco radically re-defined the sensibility of the seventies to the extent where reactionary rockers felt the need to launch a paranoid 'Disco Sucks' campaign at the end of the decade. Featuring artists such as Chic, Sylvester, Donna Summer and Frank Grasso, Turn the Beat Around illustrates why and how disco changed the face of popular culture forever.

    I am absolutely going to steal the line: "Punk set out to shock the ’70s rock establishment, but disco did a far better job." Because it's true. If you like reading books, Turn the Beat Around by Peter Shapiro is great.

  • I just finished a very good book called “The Elements of Surprise” by Vera Tobin about the relationship between cognitive biases and plot twists. This got me thinking about the fact that the Old Testament opens with a huge spoiler warning, like the wages of spoilers are death.

  • Challenges popular misconceptions while making startling revelations about free-market practices, explaining the author's views on global capitalism dynamics while making recommendations for reshaping capitalism to humane ends.

    @buzz I recommend the whole book. https://t.co/mbv7ZBEQXz

  • Uses the story in graphic novel format of a teenage girl and her tutor to introduce statistics and provide everyday examples, a text explanation, exercises, and a summary, including using Microsoft Excel to do calculations.

    @ftrain https://t.co/CsVfYF1tFK

  • The Negroni

    Matt Hranek

    An illustrated history of the iconic Negroni, including over 20 simple variations, from Matt Hranek, author of A Man & His Watch and A Man & His Car.

    @wordstern @omnivorebooks ah, it is a beautiful book about what I am made of

  • Crash Course

    Woodrow Phoenix

    A work of graphic nonfiction exploring the powerful, often toxic relationship between people and cars. Using the comic book format, this book vehemently dispels the notion that traffic accidents are inevitable and/or acceptable on any level, insisting that drivers own their responsibility, and consider the consequences of careless and dangerous behavior. It also addresses such timely issues as the use of cars as weapons of mass murder in places like Charlottesville, VA.

    Crash Course by @mrphoenix is an essential book, particularly as a design ethics text, and honestly everyone should read it. Beautifully done and horrifying. I’m sad we ended QBC before I’d heard of it. https://t.co/JB8wg9rEQg

  • Trees in Paradise

    Jared Farmer

    California now has more trees than at any time since the late Pleistocene. This green landscape, however, is not the work of nature. It's the work of history.

    This is a great book. The first chapter is giant sequoias, white supremacy, extractive capitalism, and spectacle. And a small colony of socialists.

  • The End of Policing

    Alex S. Vitale

    Book recommendation The End of Policing by Alex Vitale https://t.co/KURH9QRJqp

  • Nomadic Furniture

    James Hennessey

    Victor Papanek and James Hennessey set out to change the world in the mid 1970s, empowering the people to create their own inexpensive furnishings. Their books, Nomadic Furniture 1 and Nomadic Furniture 2 are reprinted here in their entirety. In their vision of home design, everything is lightweight, folds, inflates, knocks down, stacks, or is disposable. They offer simple instructions for making beds, chairs, sofas, stools, and tables, using inexpensive and recycled materials. Their ideas open up channels for creativity, as well as for saving of money and lightening a household's footprint. This practical, lighthearted approach to living is certainly worth a revisit, in a world where environmental consciousness is quickly evolving.

    Design Actually within Reach https://t.co/jLTlqPzuSo

  • Baking Illustrated

    Cook's Illustrated Magazine Editors

    A comprehensive baking reference offers 350 recipes for baking pies, breads, cookies, cakes, pastry, crisps, cobblers, and tarts.

    @lauraklein I feel like I must have, since I have Baking Illustrated, which is a fantastic book if you don't have it. I'll do that.

  • Four Lost Cities

    Annalee Newitz

    One of Apple's Most Anticipated Books of Winter 2021 A quest to explore some of the most spectacular ancient cities in human history—and figure out why people abandoned them. In Four Lost Cities, acclaimed science journalist Annalee Newitz takes readers on an entertaining and mind-bending adventure into the deep history of urban life. Investigating across the centuries and around the world, Newitz explores the rise and fall of four ancient cities, each the center of a sophisticated civilization: the Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük in Central Turkey, the Roman vacation town of Pompeii on Italy’s southern coast, the medieval megacity of Angkor in Cambodia, and the indigenous metropolis Cahokia, which stood beside the Mississippi River where East St. Louis is today. Newitz travels to all four sites and investigates the cutting-edge research in archaeology, revealing the mix of environmental changes and political turmoil that doomed these ancient settlements. Tracing the early development of urban planning, Newitz also introduces us to the often anonymous workers—slaves, women, immigrants, and manual laborers—who built these cities and created monuments that lasted millennia. Four Lost Cities is a journey into the forgotten past, but, foreseeing a future in which the majority of people on Earth will be living in cities, it may also reveal something of our own fate.

    Buy this book now. https://t.co/CIFwIr74bt

  • Why Save the Bankers?

    Thomas Piketty

    Incisive commentary on the financial meltdown and its aftermath, from one of the world's leading economists

    First book of 2020. A bit of a time capsule. The message of “hey we *really* need progressive taxation” ringing through after the pandemic profiteering of 2020. https://t.co/k4fVHhrNUY

  • Kindred

    Octavia E. Butler

    Dana, a black woman, finds herself repeatedly transported to the antebellum South, where she must make sure that Rufus, the plantation owner's son, survives to father Dana's ancestor.

    Finally read Octavia Butler’s Kindred. You should too, if you haven’t. Got the ebook from sfpl. Now I’ll read the graphic novel which I accidentally checked out first. https://t.co/yQU8JttzYd

  • Challenges popular misconceptions while making startling revelations about free-market practices, explaining the author's views on global capitalism dynamics while making recommendations for reshaping capitalism to humane ends.

    You should all definitely read this book. https://t.co/B7kJSfyj2D

  • Behave

    Robert M. Sapolsky

    There was at least one study (although I think it was a little sketchy) that showed people attributed less danger to hurricanes with feminine names. Robert Sapolsky mentioned it in his book you should all read, Behave. https://t.co/LDdBl7SMcS

  • The Tingleverse

    Chuck Tingle

    Sporting events at the Billings Community Center are ending in angry outbursts, and in the woods nearby, sightings of The Manifested Concept Of Rage are becoming more and more frequent. Could the two be related? An entrepreneur moves to Montana and opens up a petting zoo for creatures of The Void. They claims the cages are secure, but when a big storm rolls into Billings some of the creatures escape. Was this their plan all along? Your reverse twin shows up with a mysterious box, looking for a place to stay. Strange noises are heard from the basement of the Billings Library at night. These adventures and more await you in The Tingleverse: The Official Chuck Tingle Role-Playing Game, which thrusts you directly into the middle of your very own Chuck Tingle story. This rulebook contains everything a group of buckaroos will need, including four playable types (bigfoot, dinosaur, human, and unicorn), five trots (bad boy, charmer, sneak, true buckaroo, and wizard), several unique ways, as well as hundreds of cool moves that are specially crafted for each unique play style. Within these 270+ pages you will also find various magical items and a menagerie of monsters, ranging from pesky Void crabs to this villainous Ted Cobbler himself. The only question left is: what are you waiting for? The adventure begins now!

    There is even something for all you role playing fans: https://t.co/4xRHxrDQQu

  • In 30 minutes, meet @Jelanimemory author of A Kids Book About Racism. Maybe it would be good for some of the older people in your life too! https://t.co/QxAA1nSJzG

  • A powerful personal journey to find meaning and life lessons in the words of a wildly popular 13th century poet. Rumi's inspiring and deceptively simple poems have been called ecstatic, mystical, and devotional. To writer and activist Melody Moezzi, they became a lifeline. In The Rumi Prescription, we follow her path of discovery as she translates Rumi's works for herself - to gain wisdom and insight in the face of a creative and spiritual roadblock. With the help of her father, who is a lifelong fan of Rumi's poetry, she immerses herself in this rich body of work, and discovers a 13th-century prescription for modern life. Addressing isolation, distraction, depression, fear, and other everyday challenges we face, the book offers a roadmap for living with intention and ease, and embracing love at every turn--despite our deeply divided and chaotic times. Most of all, it presents a vivid reminder that we already have the answers we seek, if we can just slow down to honor them. * You went out in search of gold far and wide, but all along you were gold on the inside. * Become the sky and the clouds that create the rain, not the gutter that carries it to the drain. * You already own all the sustenance you seek. If only you'd wake up and take a peek. * Quit being a drop. Make yourself an ocean.

    Coming up at the top of the hour, join us! Melody Moezzi is an award-winning author, activist, and attorney whose latest book is about addressing isolation, depression, fear, through the healing power of art. https://t.co/fMZysykl1o

  • I love this book and you should definitely stop in. https://t.co/jMOARBCICD

  • Whether you’re designing consumer electronics, medical devices, enterprise Web apps, or new ways to check out at the supermarket, today’s digitally-enabled products and services provide both great opportunities to deliver compelling user experiences and great risks of driving your customers crazy with complicated, confusing technology. Designing successful products and services in the digital age requires a multi-disciplinary team with expertise in interaction design, visual design, industrial design, and other disciplines. It also takes the ability to come up with the big ideas that make a desirable product or service, as well as the skill and perseverance to execute on the thousand small ideas that get your design into the hands of users. It requires expertise in project management, user research, and consensus-building. This comprehensive, full-color volume addresses all of these and more with detailed how-to information, real-life examples, and exercises. Topics include assembling a design team, planning and conducting user research, analyzing your data and turning it into personas, using scenarios to drive requirements definition and design, collaborating in design meetings, evaluating and iterating your design, and documenting finished design in a way that works for engineers and stakeholders alike.

    @erinlynnyoung @halvorson I mean, @kimgoodwin's "Designing for the Digital Age" is THE essential text. @ellenLupton "Design is Storytelling" is fantastic and economical.

  • A playbook for creative thinking, created for contemporary students and practitioners working across the fields of graphic design, product design, service design and user experience. Design is Storytelling is a guide to thinking and making created for contemporary students and practitioners working across the fields of graphic design, product design, service design, and user experience. By grounding narrative concepts in fresh, concrete examples and demonstrations, this compelling book provides designers with tools and insights for shaping behaviour and engaging users. Compact, relevant and richly illustrated, the book is written with a sense of humour and a respect for the reader's time and intelligence. Design is Storytelling unpacks the elements of narrative into a fun and useful toolkit, bringing together principles from literary criticism, narratology, cognitive science, semiotics, phenomenology and critical theory to show how visual communication mobilizes instinctive biological processes as well as social norms and conventions. The book uses 250 illustrations to actively engage readers in the process of looking and understanding. This lively book shows how designers can use the principles of storytelling and visual thinking to create beautiful, surprising and effective outcomes. Although the book is full of practical advice for designers, it will also appeal to people more broadly involved in branding, marketing, business and communication.

    @erinlynnyoung @halvorson I mean, @kimgoodwin's "Designing for the Digital Age" is THE essential text. @ellenLupton "Design is Storytelling" is fantastic and economical.

  • @brownorama wrote a whole book on this: https://t.co/RhxDwAVyER https://t.co/hFXbtUDRzk

  • The overwhelming majority of professional firms price their services by the antiquated hourly billing method, a method with many flaws. This new book demonstrates there is a superior model to price for professional services, a business model change from "We sell time," to "We sell intellectual Capital." Focused on the art of pricing commensurate with external value created, this volume uniquely views value as seen through the eyes of the customer. This is an essential resource for professionals in the accounting, law, IT, advertising, consulting, architectural, actuarial, and engineering fields.

    I strongly recommend the book Implementing Value Pricing to anyone who has to price or sell anything, especially professional services. It looks like a textbook. It's priced like a textbook. It's a fun and hugely helpful read. https://t.co/R9sjHhAjkl https://t.co/MiANwboRmv

  • Wasteland

    W. Scott Poole

    "The roots of modern horror are found in the First World War. It was the most devastating event to occur in the early 1900s, with 38 million dead and 17 million wounded in the most grotesque of ways, owing to the new machines brought to war. If Downton Abbey showed the ripple effect of this catastrophe above stairs, Wasteland reveals how it made its way into the darker corners of our psyche on the bloody battlefield, the screaming asylum, and desolated cities and villages. Historian W. Scott Poole chronicles the era's major figures and their influences--Freud, T.S. Eliot, H.P. Lovecraft, Wilfred Owen and Peter Lorre, David Cronenberg and Freddy Krueger--as well as cult favorites and the collective unconscious. Wasteland is a surprising--but wholly convincing--perspective on horror that also speaks to the audience for history, film, and popular culture. November 11th, 2018 is the 100th anniversary of the signing of the Armistice that brought the First World War to a close, and a number of smart and well-received recent histories have helped us reevaluate this conflict. Now W. Scott Poole takes us behind the frontlines of battle to the dark places of the imagination where the legacy of the war to end all wars lives on" --

    @mcrate_s Yeah. I'm reading this right now: https://t.co/JYkIsIArBA

  • An argument that operational urban planning can be improved by the application of the tools of urban economics to the design of regulations and infrastructure. Urban planning is a craft learned through practice. Planners make rapid decisions that have an immediate impact on the ground—the width of streets, the minimum size of land parcels, the heights of buildings. The language they use to describe their objectives is qualitative—“sustainable,” “livable,” “resilient”—often with no link to measurable outcomes. Urban economics, on the other hand, is a quantitative science, based on theories, models, and empirical evidence largely developed in academic settings. In this book, the eminent urban planner Alain Bertaud argues that applying the theories of urban economics to the practice of urban planning would greatly improve both the productivity of cities and the welfare of urban citizens. Bertaud explains that markets provide the indispensable mechanism for cities' development. He cites the experience of cities without markets for land or labor in pre-reform China and Russia; this “urban planners' dream” created inefficiencies and waste. Drawing on five decades of urban planning experience in forty cities around the world, Bertaud links cities' productivity to the size of their labor markets; argues that the design of infrastructure and markets can complement each other; examines the spatial distribution of land prices and densities; stresses the importance of mobility and affordability; and critiques the land use regulations in a number of cities that aim at redesigning existing cities instead of just trying to alleviate clear negative externalities. Bertaud concludes by describing the new role that joint teams of urban planners and economists could play to improve the way cities are managed.

    This is super interesting. It should maybe be subtitled “how markets have shaped cities” because internet commerce and remote work are changing markets a bit. The complete dysfunction of living in higher density SF to commute to lower density Silicon Valley is all tax policy. https://t.co/vugyihGhTN

  • Winners Take All

    Anand Giridharadas

    @seldo Have you read this? https://t.co/oEYANOseFN

  • Get Your War On

    David Rees

    Since October 9, 2001, when David Rees posted eight comic strips on his website and called it Get Your War On, tens of millions of people have been entertained and horrified by his clip-arty office workers and their vociferous and profane commentary on the so-called War on Terror. From the first few days of Operation Enduring Freedom to the overhyped pseudo-success of the "surge”--years of fear, bewilderment, violence, and death--Rees has succeeded in depicting a country of grieving, angry, and confused citizens, feeling hatred for--and hatred of--the world beyond our shores. Get Your War On is a kaleidoscopic cavalcade of emotions and moods, including (but not limited to) despair, enraged bewilderment, grief (with a touch of loathing), ecstatic contempt, disgust, and nihilistic exhilaration. This definitive edition of Get Your War On combines strips from the first two publications with sixty-five percent new material created in the last three years.

    You can buy a whole book: https://t.co/uGn4faW7QG https://t.co/P2xKEeSyC4

  • Argues for the practice of talking to strangers as a way of widening one's experience of the world, addressing the transformative possibilities as well as the political and practical considerations of engaging with strangers in public.

    Happy Birthday, @kiostark! I'm going to tell everyone to get your awesome book to celebrate your birthday. https://t.co/5IxbuacSi8

  • On the one hand I wish I'd rediscovered cybernetics while I was working on my book Conversational Design, and on the other—well, these are meant to be very short, practical books and my editors already had their work trimming my tangents cut out for them.

  • Thick

    Tressie McMillan Cottom

    In eight highly praised treatises on beauty, media, money, and more, Tressie McMillan Cottom - award-winning professor and acclaimed author of Lower Ed - is unapologetically 'thick': deemed 'thick where I should have been thin, more where I should have been less,' McMillan Cottom refuses to shy away from blending the personal with the political, from bringing her full self and voice to the fore of her analytical work.In eight highly praised treatises on beauty, media, money, and more, Tressie McMillan Cottom - award-winning professor and acclaimed author of Lower Ed - is unapologetically 'thick': deemed 'thick where I should have been thin, more where I should have been less,' McMillan Cottom refuses to shy away from blending the personal with the political, from bringing her full self and voice to the fore of her analytical work. Collected in an indispensable volume that speaks to the everywoman and the erudite alike, these unforgettable essays never fail to be 'painfully honest and

    @bobbie Thick: by Tressie McMillan Cottom I Hate the Internet: Jarett Kobek We: Yevgeny Zamyatin The Fifth Risk: Michael Lewis

  • What if you told the truth and the whole world heard you? Would you expect to be believed? What if you lived in a country swamped with Internet outrage? What if you were a woman living in a society that hated women? In this, his first full-length novel, Jarett Kobek answers the questions of our moment: Why do we live with rank misery seeping from the world's cellphones and computers? Why do we applaud the enrichment of tech CEOs at the expense of the weak and the powerless? Why are we giving away our intellectual property? Why is activism in the 21st Century nothing more than a series of morality lectures typed into devices built by slaves? Set in the San Francisco of 2013, down amongst the victims of a Silicon Valley bubble, I Hate the Internet offers a hilarious and obscene indictment of our online lives.

    @bobbie Thick: by Tressie McMillan Cottom I Hate the Internet: Jarett Kobek We: Yevgeny Zamyatin The Fifth Risk: Michael Lewis

  • The Fifth Risk

    Michael Lewis

    'Will set your hair on end' Telegraph, Top 50 Books of the Year 'Life is what happens between Michael Lewis books. I forgot to breathe while reading The Fifth Risk' Michael Hofmann, TLS, Books of the Year The phenomenal new book from the international bestselling author of The Big Short 'The election happened ... And then there was radio silence.' The morning after Trump was elected president, the people who ran the US Department of Energy - an agency that deals with some of the most powerful risks facing humanity - waited to welcome the incoming administration's transition team. Nobody appeared. Across the US government, the same thing happened: nothing. People don't notice when stuff goes right. That is the stuff government does. It manages everything that underpins our lives from funding free school meals, to policing rogue nuclear activity, to predicting extreme weather events. It steps in where private investment fears to tread, innovates and creates knowledge, assesses extreme long-term risk. And now, government is under attack. By its own leaders. In The Fifth Risk, Michael Lewis reveals the combustible cocktail of wilful ignorance and venality that is fuelling the destruction of a country's fabric. All of this, Lewis shows, exposes America and the world to the biggest risk of all. It is what you never learned that might have saved you.

    @bobbie Thick: by Tressie McMillan Cottom I Hate the Internet: Jarett Kobek We: Yevgeny Zamyatin The Fifth Risk: Michael Lewis

  • @seldo Did no one else read Little Women growing up?

  • "Do you remember when we had the vote?" In a world that's just a step away from our own, time travel is possible. But war is brewing - a secret group is trying to destroy women's rights, and their access to the timeline. If they succeed, only a small elite will have the power to shape the past, present, and future. Our only hope lies with an unlikely group of allies, from riot grrls to suffragettes, their lives separated by centuries, battling for a world where anyone can change the future. A final confrontation is coming. The Future of Another Timeline is a breathtakingly original novel from Annalee Newitz, founding editor of io9, about the lengths we'll go to make history. 'A revolution is happening in speculative fiction, and Annalee Newitz is leading the vanguard' Wil Wheaton, actor Star Trek and Big Bang Theory 'Clever, compelling and utterly original' Laurie Penny "Smart and profound on every level, this is a deeply satisfying novel' Publishers Weekly, STARRED review 'A glorious tale of hope in the face of outrage, an anthem of timeless resistance against the powers that would lead us to our worst futures' Ken Liu 'A page-turner and an ambitious feminist lens on the time-traveler story' Kelly Sue DeConnick, screenwriter for Captain Marvel 'Exciting and urgent in the here and now' Saladin Ahmed 'Secret history becomes a thrilling secret war' Nicola Griffith

    Blurry @Annaleen reading Future of Another Timeline https://t.co/bXLD38Gey1

  • "Finding your bearings as a manager can feel overwhelming - but you don't have to fake it to make it, and you don't have to go it alone. Lara Hogan shares her recipe for supporting and leading a tech team - from developing your mentoring and coaching skills, to getting comfortable with having difficult conversations, to boosting trust among teammates - while staying grounded along the way." -- Provided by publisher.

    @abookapart @redsesame Are you a manager? Want to become one someday? Get Resilient Management. Do not buy this as a gift for your manager, because that will send the wrong message, BUT if you read it, you will be better able to empathize with them, which is a itself a gift. https://t.co/gWESM9rrY3

  • Infinite Jest

    David Foster Wallace

    A gargantuan, mind-altering comedy about the Pursuit of Happiness in America Set in an addicts' halfway house and a tennis academy, and featuring the most endearingly screwed-up family to come along in recent fiction, Infinite Jest explores essential questions about what entertainment is and why it has come to so dominate our lives; about how our desire for entertainment affects our need to connect with other people; and about what the pleasures we choose say about who we are. Equal parts philosophical quest and screwball comedy, Infinite Jest bends every rule of fiction without sacrificing for a moment its own entertainment value. It is an exuberant, uniquely American exploration of the passions that make us human - and one of those rare books that renew the idea of what a novel can do.

    @ftrain Did you read Infinite Jest y/n?

  • Winners Take All

    Anand Giridharadas

    'Entertaining and gripping . . . For those at the helm, the philanthropic plutocrats and aspiring "change agents" who believe they are helping but are actually making things worse, it's time for a reckoning with their role in this spiraling dilemma' Joseph Stiglitz, New York Times Book Review 'In Anand's thought-provoking book his fresh perspective on solving complex societal problems is admirable. I appreciate his commitment and dedication to spreading social justice' Bill Gates An insider's trenchant investigation of how the global elite's efforts to "change the world" preserve the status quo and obscure their culpability Former New York Times columnist Anand Giridharadas takes us into the inner sanctums of a new gilded age, where the rich and powerful fight for equality and justice any way they can - except ways that threaten the social order and their position atop it. We see how they rebrand themselves as saviours of the poor; how they lavishly reward "thought leaders" who redefine "change" in winner-friendly ways; and how they constantly seek to do more good, but never less harm. But why should our gravest problems be solved by the unelected upper crust instead of the public institutions it erodes by lobbying and dodging taxes? Rather than rely on scraps from the winners, Giridharadas argues that we must take on the gruelling democratic work of building more robust, egalitarian institutions. Trenchant and revelatory, Winners Take All is a call to action for elites and citizens alike.

    I’m maybe a little late to this, but everyone in and around Silicon Valley needs to read “Winners Take All” https://t.co/QLHnFz7DQb

  • Ruined by Design

    Mike Monteiro

    The world is working exactly as designed. The combustion engine which is destroying our planet's atmosphere and rapidly making it inhospitable is working exactly as we designed it. Guns, which lead to so much death, work exactly as they're designed to work. And every time we "improve" their design, they get better at killing. Facebook's privacy settings, which have outed gay teens to their conservative parents, are working exactly as designed. Their "real names" initiative, which makes it easier for stalkers to re-find their victims, is working exactly as designed. Twitter's toxicity and lack of civil discourse is working exactly as it's designed to work.The world is working exactly as designed. And it's not working very well. Which means we need to do a better job of designing it. Design is a craft with an amazing amount of power. The power to choose. The power to influence. As designers, we need to see ourselves as gatekeepers of what we are bringing into the world, and what we choose not to bring into the world. Design is a craft with responsibility. The responsibility to help create a better world for all. Design is also a craft with a lot of blood on its hands. Every cigarette ad is on us. Every gun is on us. Every ballot that a voter cannot understand is on us. Every time social network's interface allows a stalker to find their victim, that's on us. The monsters we unleash into the world will carry your name. This book will make you see that design is a political act. What we choose to design is a political act. Who we choose to work for is a political act. Who we choose to work with is a political act. And, most importantly, the people we've excluded from these decisions is the biggest (and stupidest) political act we've made as a society.If you're a designer, this book might make you angry. It should make you angry. But it will also give you the tools you need to make better decisions. You will learn how to evaluate the potential benefits and harm of what you're working on. You'll learn how to present your concerns. You'll learn the importance of building and working with diverse teams who can approach problems from multiple points-of-view. You'll learn how to make a case using data and good storytelling. You'll learn to say NO in a way that'll make people listen. But mostly, this book will fill you with the confidence to do the job the way you always wanted to be able to do it. This book will help you understand your responsibilities.

    Speaking of books, check out this awesome new cover for Ruined by Design (which probably Amazon will pull at some point). When you order the book, at least one employee will see the message: https://t.co/eNASj11I1l

  • “A revolution is happening in speculative fiction, and Annalee Newitz is leading the vanguard."--Wil Wheaton From Annalee Newitz, founding editor of io9, comes a story of time travel, murder, and the lengths we'll go to protect the ones we love. 1992: After a confrontation at a riot grrl concert, seventeen-year-old Beth finds herself in a car with her friend's abusive boyfriend dead in the backseat, agreeing to help her friends hide the body. This murder sets Beth and her friends on a path of escalating violence and vengeance as they realize many other young women in the world need protecting too. 2022: Determined to use time travel to create a safer future, Tess has dedicated her life to visiting key moments in history and fighting for change. But rewriting the timeline isn’t as simple as editing one person or event. And just when Tess believes she's found a way to make an edit that actually sticks, she encounters a group of dangerous travelers bent on stopping her at any cost. Tess and Beth’s lives intertwine as war breaks out across the timeline--a war that threatens to destroy time travel and leave only a small group of elites with the power to shape the past, present, and future. Against the vast and intricate forces of history and humanity, is it possible for a single person’s actions to echo throughout the timeline? Praise for The Future of Another Timeline: "An intelligent, gut-wrenching glimpse of how tiny actions, both courageous and venal, can have large consequences. Smart and profound on every level.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review) "You close the book reeling with questions about your own life and your part in changing the future."—Amy Acker, actress (Angel and Person of Interest)

    So after reading @Annaleen's "The Future of Another Timeline" (which all of you should) I started musing on weird edits to the timeline which might be correlated with more significant changes in society. Specifically, I started thinking about pants…

  • Argues for the practice of talking to strangers as a way of widening one's experience of the world, addressing the transformative possibilities as well as the political and practical considerations of engaging with strangers in public.

    If you want to read a good book that is actually about talking to strangers and is by a good, smart, conscientious person: https://t.co/yEsIY9SrFu