Review

** Outdated ** In China, every three years is a generation gap, and Wish Lanterns serves as a time capsule for a period in China 6-9 years ago where affluence and opening to the west was still outpacing patriotic thought and the expectations of family. I remember this time and its optimism, but that was a window of light soon eclipsed by political clouds. Alec Ash tells the story of people he meets and does a good job with it, yet even through the book you can trace the lines of a foreigner in 三里屯 befriending and then chronicling these stories. It would be as if an aspiring Chinese writer came to Cupertino and told the stories of the Americans they met: interesting, but not representative. ...

What a great title! But… This is a muddled regurgitation of Mackinder’s 1904 geopolitical theory about dominating either the seas or the eurasian landmass to create an empire. Loses the big picture to focus on intelligence services and personal experience. Lacks structured thinking on whether this early 20th century theory remains valid or whether it’s just the shared subjective reality of world leaders. Whichever the answer, neither would be convincing. ...

Some of the most jarring pacing you’ll find in a fantasy novel. Not sure the plot survives the transition from a self-contained school to the wider world well, and plot twists were an odd distribution of either heavily proselytized or deus-ex-machina. Not actively bad, but I might recommend that fans of the series stop at #2.

Investors in the voyage got a 47x return. Disrupted the Spanish empire model. First unicorn.

The Shortest Wikipedia Article …is often not the best.

Doesn’t live up to Gottman’s other works. Ends up in the no-mans land between rigorous interpretation of scientific studies, and pragmatic step-by-step guide on what to do when faced with a particular brand of challenge, similar in tone to Peak on Athletic Performance by Marc Bubbs. Gottman adopts the framework of: 1.) Be aware of the child’s emotions 2.)Recognize emotional outbursts as opportunities for intimacy and teaching 3.)Validate the child’s feelings 4.) Help the child verbally label emotions 5.) Set limits while helping the child problem-solve.

2.5 stars. Decent frameworks take. from other sources, but the hard part is how to achieve such frameworks and responsible company fails to deliver. Far too short for such a meaty subject, eleven though i have more respect for patagonia’s approach now.

Not sufficiently scientific to challenge the conclusions of other books around nutrition or mental well-being, not sufficiently succinct to be a useful template of action like other fitness books. The science isn’t awful but also not great, landing squarely in the ‘meh’ category.

Companies are Exploration Most successful people found a lottery ticket and then invent a story to make luck sound like skill. (1) Yet for some, it is clear that regardless the starting point, they would end up on top. Sam Walton is among the latter. Despite the aww-shucks tone and folksy self narrated drawl, Made in America is not a modest book. Sam Walton describes his childhood as obtaining eagle scout at 13 to win a bet, and as the high school football quarterback: * We went undefeated, and won the state championship.* ...

Johnson is the villain, Stevenson is the hero, and it’s not a happy ending.