Book Reviews

This book kept being recommended to me and now I can see why.  As a huge extrovert I have become sensitive to introverts in my classes and meetings I run and always try to find ways to ensure they get time to speak. But The Quiet took my understanding to a whole new level.

I love that the author takes a view that both extraverts and introverts are equal, we need both, but then demonstrates very persuasively that our society has become a nation that prefers the views of extroverts. She believes much of the reasoning behind the collapse of the technology boom was the result of most leaders of investors / entrepreneurs were strong E’s and they were not listening to the strong I’s who were looking at data (with little emotion) and not getting caught up in the tidal wave of thinking.

Shop Class As SoulCraft.  By Matthew Crawford

What an interesting book from a PhD’s point of view on how our society has lost its touch with the trades / crafts people.

It’s a bit like Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance partly because the author holds PhD in Philosophy I’m sure.

This has always been one of my soapbox speeches anyway, so I did enjoy this book.  The message in our society is “go to college” and it is told in many ways throughout our lives, in schools, on T.V., in magazines, and on that thing called the Internet.  We are loosing some very talented crafts people who will go on to unhappy lives working at a desk when they would have LOVED working with their hands and figuring out complex problems using machinery.  Some of the brightest young men I ever met were at a high school vocational technical center after I left Colby College a private liberal arts college. One young man in particular was so gifted in the machine tool program that even his instructor who had been a machinist for years was blown away.