“I can see patterns. I see the gestalt, the melody within the notes, in everything: mathematics and science, art and music, psychology and sociology.”
The Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe
No contemporary Valley tale quite expectorates on Masters of the Universe like this one. No Bad Blood quite calls out all of our own bullshit and arrogance. Sherman McCoys of today may have hipper names, bigger techs, and greener thumbs, but the cogs that are our socially useless jobs continue to churn the wheels of despair.
The Ecology of Commerce, Paul Hawken
Those nagging voices in our heads: "the cash register is the daily voting booth in democratic capitalism".
One of the greatest flaws of the modern marketplace is how efficiently it has externalized the cost and losses of destroying the environment to taxpayers and away from corporate profits.
This book stirs ambitious questions: Will we ever be able to remove the incentives to continue manufacturing waste as well as the conflict between being "economic" and being "sustainable"? Can we move on to biodegradable consumer products without antagonizing minority and lower-income groups by forcing them to make sacrifices in lifestyle and income? Can we create a "cyclical, restorative economy" in which designers account for the future utility of a product and avoidance of waste from its inception?
Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania, Erik Larson
“I give you now the saga of the Lusitania and the myriad forces, large and achingly small, that converged one lovely day in May 1915 to produce a tragedy of monumental scale, whose true character and import have long been obscured in the mists of history.”
My thriller of the year. Silent film in black and white cinema. History come to life.
Sign Here If You Exist, The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2011, Jill Sisson Quinn
I spent a good half hour on Youtube watching the ichneumon wasp deposit larvae, the emerald cockroach wasp zombify roaches, and various other anthropods in action. The camera lens makes it easy to see beauty in decay and life after death on Earth.
“If my decomposing carcass helps nourish the roots of a juniper tree or the wings of a vulture—that is immortality enough for me. And as much as anyone deserves.”
Why Information Grows: The Evolution of Order, from Atoms to Economies, César A. Hidalgo
Science writings are to me what sermons are to the pious. This short book is an information theory play-by-play from atoms to life to economies, and a beatific epilogue relating physics to the essence of human existence that upon every reread brings tears to my eyes.