I summarise non-fiction books with more detail and critical analysis than you'll find elsewhere. Join my newsletter to get new summaries delivered straight to your inbox!
September monthly round-up
Hope you all had a nice September. It's hard to believe we're three-quarters through the year, but I'm certainly ready for the holiday season to start soon. This month was a pretty good one, with two book summaries and four blog posts (three related to the books I summarised):
Book summaries
- Death by Meeting: A Leadership Fable by Patrick Lencioni
- The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less by Barry Schwartz
Blog posts
- Why you have so many unnecessary or ineffective meetings. Death by Meeting got me thinking about some of the many reasons why meetings are so often ineffective (only a few of which were covered in the book).
- Why I write criticisms of books. I kind of fell into writing criticism posts about many of the books I read because I think I'm naturally rather critical. Here I offer up an explanation of my thought process, so that hopefully my posts aren't taken the wrong way.
- Why should you want to be a satisficer?. In The Paradox of Choice, Barry Schwartz explains that satisficing, as opposed to maximising, is correlated with stuff like happiness, optimism, self-esteem and life satisfaction. The implication is that satisficing causes all that good stuff. I question that assumption.
- Can maximisers become satisficers? If so, how? Even if you want to be a satisficer, it's easier said than done. This post considers whether it's even possible to change our maximising/satisficing tendencies and explores how you might go about it.
October will likely be a quieter one, as I'll be travelling. But I have a summary for Lessons of History by Will and Ariel Durant almost done, which you can expect to see next week.
Until next time,
To Summarise
ToSummarise.com
I summarise non-fiction books with more detail and critical analysis than you'll find elsewhere. Join my newsletter to get new summaries delivered straight to your inbox!
I'm back after a short break with a new summary for The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters by Priya Parker. Great gatherings have so much potential to deepen our social connections and enrich our lives, yet so many gatherings frankly kind of suck. It's worth a read even if you've never thought of yourself as much of a “gatherer”. As usual, the key takeaways are below, and you can find the full summary by clicking the link above. KEY TAKEAWAYS Gatherings don’t have to suck. But...
March was a quieter month with only 2 book summaries: Why We’re Polarized by Ezra Klein (25 mins) — published in 2020, Ezra Klein looks at how US politics got to be so polarized. A Hacker’s Mind by Bruce Schneier (25 mins) — Schneier applies his background in computer security to looking at how market, legal, political, and cognitive systems can also be "hacked". I'm also planning to take some time off next month, so I'll see you in May! Thanks for subscribing and until next time, To Summarise
My latest summary is for A Hacker’s Mind: How the Powerful Bend Society’s Rules, and How to Bend them Back by security expert Bruce Schneier. It's an interesting look at the systems around us through the lens of hacking. As usual, the key takeaways are below, and you can find the full summary by clicking the link above. KEY TAKEAWAYS A hack is an activity allowed by the system that subverts the goal or intent of the system. Hacks exploit a vulnerability in the system to advance the hacker’s...