Bookpedia : Library WWWisdom : Author : T

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Summary: The text of lectures given by Tagore in Japan and the United States in 1916-17 in which he criticises the nation-state in both East and West and offers his vision of a society independent of it.

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Summary: I was ambivalent about this book when I picked it up, but was quickly gripped and had to read to the end.
This book is about the Illusion of Control on a massive scale: a refusal to acknowledge blind luck's contribution to our success. Taleb is a trader as well as a scholar, and mixes his logical points with many tales about the "Masters of the Universe": traders who, with a run of successful investment, become rich, promoted and profiled in Fortune magazine. Given the huge numbers of people who become traders, the number of these high-flyers is pretty much what you would expect by chance. The logical conclusion is that there is no evidence that any of these traders have any real skill, or that any of the investment advice given by gurus and journalists has any value. This contrasts with other walks of life where skill and practice are necessary: you couldn't become a concert pianist by blind luck, for example.
Yet the finance industry refuses to acknowledge this. Noise (the natural volatility of the market) is mistaken for signal (understandable and predictable responses to events), and hence pure luck is mistaken for skill. When the hot-shot trader loses all his money, and is escorted from the building by security, it comes as a total surprise to him.
Embarrassingly for his targets, Taleb is not advancing some daring new theory. He just uses probability theory, basic statistics and a knowledge of the psychological research on biases: the toolbox of an informed critical thinker. He shows how professionals in finance, the media and even academia repeatedly fail to use these basic tools: ignoring probabilities, drawing bold conclusions from minuscule evidence, or focusing on probabilities but ignoring values of outcomes
Just as research on bias overlaps research on human happiness, the book also discusses how we can be more happy by exposing ourselves to less information. Far from a whimsical speculation, this is backed up by a clever mathematical/psychological argument.
Taleb's writing style will grate with some people (his favourite topic is clearly himself) but others will find it a very personal and engaging voice. It's an intellectual rather than scholarly book (Taleb mentions a great deal of scientific, philosophical and literary influences, but is not very concerned to back up each claim with citations) but this won't be a problem for most readers.

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Summary: This elegantly written work contrasts liberal democracy (individual in the center) with totalitarian democracy (state in the center). It charts the development of totalitarian democracy in Europe since the 18th century.

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Summary: Describes with pictures the change in fashion, transportation, accessories, and many other items over the century.

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Summary: LARGE PRINT EDITION! More at LargePrintLiberty.com.

Some great books are the product of a lifetime of research, reflection, and labored discipline. But other classics are written in a white heat during the moment of discovery, with prose that shines forth like the sun pouring into the window of a time when a new understanding brings in the world into focus for the first time.

"The Market for Liberty" is that second type of classic, and what a treasure it is. Written by two authors-Morris and Linda Tannehill-just following a period of intense study of the writings of both Ayn Rand and Murray Rothbard, it has the pace, energy, and rigor you would expect from an evening's discussion with either of these two giants.

More than that, these authors put pen to paper at precisely the right time in their intellectual development, that period rhapsodic freshness when a great truth had been revealed, and they had to share it with the world. Clearly, the authors fell in love with liberty and the free market, and wrote an engaging, book-length sonnet to these ideas.

This book is very radical in the true sense of that term: it gets to the root of the problem of government and provides a rethinking of the whole organization of society. They start at the beginning with the idea of the individual and his rights, work their way through exchange and the market, expose government as the great enemy of mankind, and then-and here is the great surprise-they offer a dramatic expansion of market logic into areas of security and defense provision.

Their discussion of this controversial topic is integrated into their libertarian theoretical apparatus. It deals with private arbitration agencies in managing with disputes and criminality, the role of insurers in providing profitable incentives for security, and private agencies in their capacity as protection services. It's for this reason that Hoppe calls this book an "outstanding yet much neglected analysis of the operation of competition."

Summary: This book suggests that we should be working toward the total elimination of government welfare programs subsitituting a renewed and invigorated program of private charity and economic opportunity.

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Summary: God forbid that doing business and making money on the Internet should bear any resemblance whatsoever to the past millennium of capitalism before our clunky bricks-and-mortar marketplace started going virtual--that would be too easy. Nope, it's a whole different ballgame now, and the new rule is: adapt or die. At least that's the message behind "Digital Capital".
From the three principles at cyber consultant Alliance for Converging Technologies (one of whom, Tapscott, authored the bestsellers "The Digital Economy" and "Growing up Digital"), the book's pet paradigm for global takeover is what they call the business web, or "b-web" for short--in their words, "strategically aligned, multi-enterprise partner networks of producers, suppliers, service providers, infrastructure companies and customers that conduct business communication and transactions via digital channels." In our words, that's more like an eBay, a Cisco, a Dell, an MP3.com, a Linux ...in short, any enterprise that a) knows how to form lateral partnerships with other goods- or service-providers, and b) eliminates the role of planes, trains and automobiles--not to mention lots of time, money and human energy--by doing almost everything over the 'Net. Not only do the authors provide a wealth of b-web case studies (including Schwab, Priceline, Webvan, AT&T Solutions and OptiMark in addition to those mentioned above), they outline in the latter part of the book a step by-step process for "weaving" a b-web of one's own.
Too often,"Digital Capital"'s smart, sound ideas come marinated in think tank jargon so alienated from plain English as to be near-impenetrable. Consider: "Disaggregation leads to 'disintermediation' and 'reintermediation'", which, believe it or not, isn't a line French film theorists use in pick-up bars, but the simple fact that business webs manage to cut out a lot of the traditional intermediary steps between producers and customers--now why couldn't they just have said that? After you nibble through the self-important MBA-ese, you'll find a smart look at how online shops are rewiring early-21st century capitalism.--"Timothy Murphy, Amazon.com"

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Summary: An Account of Housing in Urban Areas between 1840 and 1914

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Summary: Gerusalemme Liberata
Aminta
Liriche varie
Lettere varie

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Summary: This book is a magisterial critical evaluation of Max Weber's thesis 'The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism'.
Tawney argues rightly that there is an interaction between religion and the social/economical environment because 'it seems a little artificial to talk as though capitalist enterprise could not appear till religious changes had produced a capitalist spirit. It would equally be true, and equally one-sided, to say that the religious changes were purely the result of economic movements.' (p.312)
As an example, the Christian Church itself had changed mightily in the Renaissance. It persecuted the Spiritual Franciscans who followed St Francis' rule of evangelical poverty. It was the richest company in the Western world (see W. Manchester: 'A world lit only by fire').
Tawney remarks rightly that what Calvin did for the bourgeoisie of the sixteenth century, Marx did for the proletariat of the nineteenth. Calvin's success was firmly prepared by Puritan moralists, who stressed thrift, work as an end in itself, efficiency and rational calculation. They paved the way for a shrewd commercial and powerful midldle class, which adopted the Calvinist religion and its ethic as a natural ally.
This very rich book shows the real impact of Calvinism on the whole society. One example: wages. Calvinism considered 'that high wages are not a blessing, but a misfortune, since they merely conduce to weekly debauches.' (p. 267)
This is a brilliantly written, colourful, metaphorical and yet scientific work. It should be an example for many historians, of how 'essential historical evolutions' can be presented to the public in a comprehensive and attractive language.
This is an essential read for the understanding of out modern society.

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Summary: This is a collection of essays, written over a 10-year period up unitl the end of WWII. The period they cover is longer still, starting with the fall of Napoleon, and ending with the final defeat of a far greater tyrant 130 years later.
Each essay covers either a particular figure (Bismark, Metternicht), event(1848, The Munich Conference), or ideal (Communism) and does so in chronological order. Thus creating a continuing narrative throughout this piece.
So what makes this book so enjoyable? Simply the utter disdain and lack of respect with which he treats each particular subject. To dismiss Metternicht as "silly man" or to say those that admire Napoleon "resent reality" shows a nerve and audacity (not to mention a wit) that few possess.
But it is not all critique, credit is given where credit is due. As in Bismark's case, the grand old man is given a sterling write up for his political and diplomatic verve.
At the end of the day, it shows the figures who shaped and controlled our destinies as men, rather than supermen. When you look at the TV or the Paper seeing their heirs gaze at us with their smug and cosy exteriors, it seems to be something we forget all too often.

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Summary: This isn't the ideal book for someone to try and get acquainted with the subject for the first time as the sheer number of key figures and events is quite substantial. Despite that problem I did finish the book with a much greater sense of how the events of this seventy year period played into one another. The complex array of shifting alliances and jockeying for position is conveyed quite ably, although a glossary of the key figures would have been useful for relative neophytes like myself.

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Summary: Scientific management, as defined by Frederic W. Taylor (1856-1917), initiated from the premise of the inability of "ordinary" management to grasp the productive capacity of workers.
Management proved inadequate to utilise human resources effectively in order to better production, and thereupon was solely reliant on the initiative and expertise of the workforce to do so.
Taylor's insight was a redefinition of the role of management in the production process. Applying scientific methodology to work management would result, according to him, into improved worker performance and the adaptation of labour to the needs of capitalism (all in favour of management).
In practice, Taylor's extensive experimentation resolved in the articulation of "scientific management", a form of labour organisation that involved the standardisation of labour techniques.
Taylor's ingenuity laid in the design of a universal managerial blueprint of work, which could be employed to address efficiency problems at different levels of complexity.
Production did no longer "wish" of workers to consume themselves mentally, but strictly physically. Man was now unconsciously caught up in a repetitive, mechanical production process founded on the premises of what once was his own mastery.
In time, Taylor's theories caught on with the industrial world and further ground for experimentation was provided. Taylor proceeded strong to formulate the principles of labour management that later on culminated in the publication of the Principles of Scientific Management (1911).
* More produced, at a lower cost. This actually implies "commodification" of labour under the piece-rate system.

Summary: A Guide to Its History and Buildings

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Summary: Amn introduction to role-play, games and simulation in education with six established games described in detail and a directory of published material

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Summary: John Taylor of Caroline is one of the most brilliant political philosophers that America has ever produced. This work in particular demonstrates a compelling critique of government interference in economic matters that also demonstrates Taylor's firm grasp of political economy. Above all, this book is an absolute joy to read.

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Summary: If you're interested in noise reduction, sound insulation or sound measurement this is an excellent introduction. Fairly technical but full of really useful advice and can save you a fortune by telling you what WON'T work as well as what will if you're fancying your own DIY soundproofing. Quite an old book now (mine dates from 1979) but apart from references to the EEC and a few other things that date it the information is still sound. Rupert Taylor is a well known acoustic consultant company still.

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Summary: If you're looking for a thorough, hands-on guide to "Adobe Illustrator 8", give this one a close look. Developers at Adobe created the book's well-rounded exercises and explanations for beginning users who want to master the core features of this newly updated illustration program. The included CD-ROM has project files for working along with the book. Each chapter, or lesson, begins with a "Getting Started" section and ends with review questions and answers, so you can better evaluate what you've learned. A full-colour section shows you the process or results of each lesson. First, you get a tour of the interface and learn how to work with the program's shape tools, colour, patterns, gradients, lines, curves and brushes. Next, you transform objects, manipulate type, blend shapes and colours, work with the Pathfinder palette, use layers, apply watercolour and airbrush effects, and draw 3-D cylinders and boxes with the illusion of depth. Finally, you're ready for output. You learn how to create colour separations, prepare your work for the printer, work with Photoshop images, and optimise graphics for the Web. From beginning to end, the book is full of helpful hints for creating good-looking illustrations. --"Kathleen Caster"

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Summary: Contains also: The Electronic Structure of Atoms

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Summary: Contains also: The Earth's Magnetic Field

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Summary: Contains also: Continental Movement, Sea-Floor Spreading and Plate Tectonics

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Summary: Nascita e sviluppo dell'opposizione al regime negli Stati Uniti degli anni '60

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Summary: In this unique re-creation of one of the most dramatic periods in modern American history, Studs Terkel recaptures the Great Depression of the 1930s in all its complexity. The book is a mosaic of memories from those who were richest to those who were most destitute: politicians like James Farley and Raymond Moley; businessmen like Bill Benton and Clement Stone; a six-day bicycle racer; artists and writers; racketeers; speakeasy operators, strikers, and impoverished farmers; people who were just kids; and those who remember losing a fortune. Hard Times is not only a gold mine of information--much of it little known--but also a fascinating interplay of memory and fact, showing how the Depression affected the lives of those who experienced it firsthand, often transforming the most bitter memories into a surprising nostalgia.

Summary: An explanation of and a complete guide for the use of the Stanford revision and extension of the Binet-Simon Intelligence Scale

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Summary: Le XXe siècle aura eu le triste privilège de connaître la barbarie organisée, administrée, étatisée - dont le génocide reste la variante la plus affreuse. Qu'est-ce qu'un génocide ? Cet essai n'est pas un catalogue de l'horreur. Il est d'abord une tentative d'intelligibilité face à l' " Etat criminel ". On y trouve les faits sur les génocides et autres massacres " génocidaires ", de la Shoah aux violences de Bosnie et du Rwanda. Plus profondément, Yves Ternon, en utilisant les outils des différents spécialistes des sciences humaines, s'efforce de rendre raison du phénomène qui hante notre histoire contemporaine.

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Summary: Introduzione alla linguistica storica

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Summary: "Le arti minori" di Mercedes Ferrero Viale

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Summary: Every day we make decisions: about the things that we buy or the meals we eat; about the investments we make or our children's health and education; even the causes that we champion or the planet itself. This book offers a fresh way of looking at the world for individuals and governments alike.

Summary: By train through Asia

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Summary: I heard about this marvellous book as I was reading in the typical popular science literature years ago now but its almost impossible to avoid contact with this tome of the archetypal polymath D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson. A remarkable man with a wonderful open view of science and the, what's now called, interdisciplinarian approach to the world. Refreshingly full of new ideas especially for his day and even now where conservatism as usual is the norm in scientific circles. I hope many scientists read this book and see not just a curiosity but a representation of a whole approach to the world of nature. I will never forget the first time I read the chapter on coordinate transformations in animal shapes, today's schools simply do not inspire in this way and its time this changed. The prescence of this book, well read, on any person's bookshelf is a must.

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Summary: Instruments of the Orchestra and the Great Composers

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Summary: A clear, comprehensive reference grammar.

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Summary: An excursion in history upon green 19th century waterways by America's great naturalist-philosopher, with a biographical sketch by R. W. Emerson

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Summary: I first read Straight and Crooked Thinking in 1971, when I was 16. (I found it in a public library) It had an enormous impact upon me. When listening to political debates, or reading newspapers I often had the feeling that speakers/writers were being dishonest and/or illogical. This book gave me the tools to understand why!
I did make myself rather unpopular with my contemporaries at the time by pointing out fallacies in their arguments, but that is another story.
I later found out that the book had had a similar impact upon my father when he read it in 1942. (It had been distributed free to troops to help the battle of ideas against Nazi propaganda.)
When I started teaching in 1979, I bought two copies, one to keep and one to lend to interested students. Alas, I lent and lost both of them.
I recently borrowed the most recent edition (edited by Christopher Thouless) from my university library and found it as relevant as ever.
This is a wonderful book. It is a powerful antidote to the modern culture of "spin"!...

Summary: I first read Straight and Crooked Thinking in 1971, when I was 16. (I found it in a public library) It had an enormous impact upon me. When listening to political debates, or reading newspapers I often had the feeling that speakers/writers were being dishonest and/or illogical. This book gave me the tools to understand why!
I did make myself rather unpopular with my contemporaries at the time by pointing out fallacies in their arguments, but that is another story.
I later found out that the book had had a similar impact upon my father when he read it in 1942. (It had been distributed free to troops to help the battle of ideas against Nazi propaganda.)
When I started teaching in 1979, I bought two copies, one to keep and one to lend to interested students. Alas, I lent and lost both of them.
I recently borrowed the most recent edition (edited by Christopher Thouless) from my university library and found it as relevant as ever.
This is a wonderful book. It is a powerful antidote to the modern culture of "spin"!...

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Summary: In these days of historical specialization, a comprehensive treatment of any subject is most welcome, whatever its faults. Tilly has indeed set himself a daunting task, namely to explain the development of state formation in Europe over the last millennium; specifically, he seeks to explain why a pattern of divergent state formations ultimately converged in the form of the modern nation-state. To the chagrin of social scientists, he assumes that war has always been the central object of the state; economic/political determinism is complementary but subordinate. Given that the nation-state has enjoyed the greatest military success throughout the centuries, all states have been forced either to move in that direction or cease to exist.
Tilly makes many good points. He reminds us that rulers did not operate with a specific plan of state formation in mind--they created states only in conjunction with certain of their subjects. Given geographic and temporal circumstances, rulers could only pursue increasingly costly military ventures by bargaining with power blocks within their subject population for the necessary resources--soldiers, rations, etc. Where capital was not accumulated and concentrated, the balance of power lay with landowners. Where a city had emerged with a concentration of capital, proto-capitalists held power. Where capital was unavailable, the ruler could resort to methods of coercion of his subjects. Political and economic conditions dictated the bargaining terms with which the ruler sought to win support for his military goals. Tilly argues that different combinations of coercion and capital created diverse types of states. As the demands of war increased, the power blocks which rulers depended on gained more and more advantage over them, thus winning for themselves concessions that increased their standing in the state's government. In effect, the era of bureaucratization was born. The means of capitalization and coercion were incorporated into the structure of the state, and thus was born the nation-state. Essentially, the nation-state has proven to be the best at mobilizing and fighting wars, leading lesser states to either emulate it or risk being conquered by it.
Tilly offers a somewhat simplistic argument, acknowledging the criticisms he duly expects will come. State formation is portrayed as little more than an afterthought of warmongering. The accumulation of royal concessions in time laid the foundation for permanent infrastructure. By seeking revenues and compliance from a subject population, rulers eventually found themselves having to provide for their subjects' welfare--via production, distribution, transportation, etc. In the most modern states, social spending now outweighs military spending; this has served to shorten the length of wars while greatly increasing their intensity. A major contribution of this book is its implication that social history by itself does not explain the emergence of modern states and societies. Some will find Tilly's simplistic model untenable, but I find it quite logical and compelling. His argument (and the wealth of resources on which he draws) certainly warrants serious thought on the part of the reader.

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Summary: Knowledge, wealth, and violence at the edge of the 21st century

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Summary: Social analysts Alvin and Heidi Toffler turn their attention to the revolution in wealth now sweeping the planet. This book is about how tomorrow's wealth will be created, and who will get it and how. But 21st-century wealth, they argue, is not just about money, and cannot be understood in terms of industrial-age economics. They write about everything from education and child rearing to Hollywood and China, from everyday truth and misconceptions to what they call our "third job"--the unnoticed work we do without pay for some of the biggest corporations. In earlier work, they coined the word "prosumer" for people who consume what they themselves produce. Here they expand the concept to reveal how many of our activities--parenting, volunteering, blogging, painting our house, improving our diet, organizing a neighborhood council--pump "free lunch" from the "hidden" non-money economy into the money economy that economists track.--From publisher description.

Summary: I decided to reread this book after 20 years to see how accurately it represented the experiences of the past 20 years. How nice a surprise I received when I found that the broad themes were beautifully portrayed against the background of the prior agricultural and industrial economies. This long term perspective made the articulation of the future vision clearer.
Particularly impressive in retrospect is the description of a forecast for mass customized products. The customer "will become so integrated into the production process that we find it . . . difficult to tell . . . who is the producer." One might be reading about someone ordering a computer on the Dell Web site.
Almost equally impressive is the appreciation of how electronic connections will establish horizontal connections.
Key insights related to:
(1) Companies needing to take on full responsibility for the consequences of their actions on society and the environment;
(2) Companies becoming much more important social institutions of change;
(3) Information moving to the center of major decisions;
(4) Government spreading its influence so that business and politics become inextricably entwined; and
(5) Institutional ethics coming to more closely reflect social ethics.
In fact, this is the first book I have located that sees the business organization as the critical institution in making ecological, moral, political, racial, sexual and social change, as well as the usual transactional ones.
The fundamental vision of humanity as seeking a more appropriate civilization that is built around individual choice in coordinating social interests is a remarkably accurate description of the evolution of the free market democracies over the last 20 years.
Realizing how hard it is to forecast anything, one comes away with a remarkable appreciation for Alvin Toffler's fundamental estimation of human potential. He took that understanding, tied technology to it, and found the answer quite well.
After enjoying this remarkable book (for the first time or) again, I encourage you to consider how these same human characteristics will take us forward in the future. How can you facilitate this felicitous development?
Make your actions and those you cooperate in serve everyone's best interests!

Summary: The role of the future in education

Summary: Building on the paradigm introduced in their earlier books (Future Shock, The Third Wave, and Powershift), the authors argue that as the new "Third Wave" transforms society, so will it transform warfare. Throughout, the authors attempt to show how war has been transformed, and how it will continue to transform in the decades ahead.
I picked up this book in reaction to the recent attack on the World Trade Center in New York City. I was hoping that it would give me a better insight into modern military, and what modern warfare would be like. I think that the authors did a great job of showing just how different any present and future wars are likely to be.
My one complaint is that the authors focused almost exclusively on the militaries of the advanced societies. If you want to see how the "new" terrorists are also "Third Wave" organizations, I highly recommend Countering the New Terrorism, by Ian O. Lesser, et al.
That said, this is a fascinating book, with a thought-provoking message. I highly recommend you read it.

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