I Read, Therefore I Blog

The Blurb On The Back:

Most of us crave new experiences and sensations. Whether it’s our attraction to that new burger place or the latest gadget, newness tugs at us. But what about those who can’t seem to get enough? They jump out of planes, climb skyscrapers, and will anything (even poisonous pufferfish) … Prompting others to ask “what’s wrong” with them. These are sensation-seekers and they crave intense experiences, despite physical or social risk. They don’t have a death wish, but seemingly a need for an adrenaline rush, no matter what.

Buzz! describes the world of the high sensation-seeking personality in a way that we can all understand. It explores the lifestyle, psychology, and neuroscience behind adrenaline junkies and daredevils. This tendency, or compulsion, has a role in our culture. But where is the line between healthy and unhealthy thrill-seeking? The minds of these adventurers are explained page by page.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Kenneth Carter is a clinical psychologist and Professor of Psychology at Oxford College, Emory University in the USA. This very easy to read book delves into the psychology of why some people engage in thrill-seeking behaviour (e.g. BASE jumping, eating exotic and potentially deadly foods or sky diving). I found it fascinating and came away with more of an understanding for what drives people to do these things and what they gain from it.

Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.

The Blurb On The Back:

The kiss is the image that, perhaps more than any other, encompasses the beauty and poetry of love. Every love is required to maintain the kiss, to make it last. When they kiss, the noise of the world is silenced, its laws broken, time is stolen from its normal continuity. They fall together in their distinct, embraced tongues. The kiss joins the tongue that declares love with the body of the lover. And the extinction of the kiss and, most importantly, of the desire to kiss one’s beloved announces the demise of love.

In this short book, Massimo Recalcati - one of Italy’s leading intellectuals and bestselling authors - offers seven brief lessons on the mystery and miracle of love, from the serendipity of the first encounter to its end or its continuation over time, as mysterious and miraculous as the fist encounter itself.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Massimo Recalcati is a psychoanalyst and author who teaches at Pavia and Verona universities. This masculine look at love (translated from Italian by Alice Kilgarriff) draws heavily on Roth, Freud and Lacan and is written in an intellectual, pretentious style that alienated me. However, it is an offshoot from an Italian TV series called Lexicon of Love and I wonder if it would be more accessible with sounds and images to support its points.

THE ENDURING KISS: SEVEN SHORT LESSONS ON LOVE was released in the United Kingdom on 22nd January 2021. Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.

The Blurb On The Back:

Are you being digitally manipulated?

Authors Imran Rashid and Soren Kenner have sparked an international debate by revealing the “mind hacks” Facebook, Apple, Google, and Instagram use to get you and your children hooked on their products.

In Offline, they deliver an eye-opening research-based journey into the world of tech giants, smartphones, social engineering, and subconscious manipulation. This provocative work shows you how digital devices change individuals and communities for better and worse.

A must-read if you or your kids use smartphones or tablets and spend time browsing social networks, playing online games or even just browsing sites with news and entertainment.

Learn how to recognise ‘mind hacks’ and avoid the potentially disastrous side-effects of digital pollution. Unplug from the matrix. Learn digital habits that work for you.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Imran Rashid is an IT entrepreneur and family physician who served as Head of Innovation for Aleris-Hamlet Private Hospitals. Soren Kenner is an on-line marketeer and entrepreneur who used to chair McCann MRM EMEA. Although sloppily written at times and somewhat general, this is an informative look at how tech companies work to keep your attention on their product and the adverse affects this might have on your emotional and mental health.

Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.

The Blurb On The Back:

Creativity is an elusive but essential component of innovation and success in competitive, changing markets. The old way of thinking had it that creativity was a kind of mystical property possessed only by certain innately talented people. If an organisation wasn’t innovative enough, its leaders simply needed to find and hire those rare creative people. The past few decades of constant disruption by newcomers has roundly proven this theory false, even if organisational leaders don’t recognise it yet. Years of trying to recruit and retain creative workforce’s just hasn’t helped the established players keep up.

If hiring creativity isn’t helping, it means that organisations have all the creativity they need but aren’t harnessing it properly. What’s going wrong? Some people point to the pressure to keep shareholders happy and to other external pressures, claiming that market forces prevent them from giving creativity the space to develop. But the supersonic rise of companies like Netflix and Amazon show that market forces aren’t stopping the people who really know how to innovate. In Unlocking Creativity Michael A. Roberto draws on years of investigation to reveal the true nature of the problem: enterprise-wide mindsets that stifle creativity on a daily basis.

Every organisation is full of creative minds just waiting for an opportunity to shine. Unfortunately, deeply entrenched organisational cultures and ways of thinking frustrate people when they try to present original ideas. Without knowing it, we may be falling victim to one of the six mindsets that prevent talented people from experimenting, discovering, innovating and helping the organisation flourish.

Unlocking Creativity presents the six mindsets that block creativity, bringing them to life through colourful examples and abundant research evidence, to help leaders recognise the habits that might be preventing creativity from taking flight. With illustrations taken from far and wide - academic research, corporate case studies, hit TV shows, and rock and roll legends all make eye-opening appearances in the pages of this book - Michael Roberto clears the fog around creativity and equips leaders with the insight they need to shift to supportive mindsets and cultures where creativity can thrive.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Michael A. Roberto is Director of the Center for Program Innovation at Bryant University. In this thought-provoking book that will appeal to anyone who has worked at a large organisation, he sets out the 6 organisational mindsets that can block creativity within the workplace and offers ways of countering them, drawing on numerous business, technological and creative case studies and social psychology experiments to help make his case.

Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.

The Blurb On The Back:

Racism, extremism, anti-democratic sentiment – our increasingly polarized world is dominated by a type of thinking that doubts others’ positions but never its own.

In a powerful challenge to fundamentalism in all its forms, Carolin Emcke, one of Germany’s leading intellectuals, argues that we can only preserve individual freedom and protect people’s rights by cherishing and celebrating diversity. If we want to safeguard democracy, we must have the courage to challenge hatred and the will to fight for and defend plurality in our societies. Emcke rises to the challenge that identitarian dogmas and populist narratives pose, exposing the way in which they simplify and distort our perception of the world.

Against Hate is an impassioned call to fight intolerance and defend liberal ideals. It will be of great interest to anyone concerned about the darkening politics of our time and searching for ways forward.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Carolin Emcke is a journalist, academic and self-described “intellectual” and in this book (translated from German by Tony Crawford) she rehashes the familiar intellectual arguments brought out against hate-based actions and populism and in favour of diversity and in doing so, makes the mistake of thinking that rational argument can counter rather than legitimise and help publicise an emotion and politics that works on a base emotional level.

AGAINST HATE was released in the United Kingdom on 18th January 2019. Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.

The Blurb On The Back:

In this devastatingly witty new book, Carl Cederström traces our present-day conception of happiness from its roots in early-twentieth-century European psychiatry, to the Beat generation, to Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump. He argues that happiness is now defined by a desire to be ‘authentic’, to experience physical pleasure, and to cultivate a quirky individuality. But over the last fifty years, these once-revolutionary ideas have been co-opted by corporations and advertisers, pushing us to live lives that are ever more unfulfilling, insecure and narcissistic.

In an age of increasing austerity and social division, Cederström argues that a radical new dream of happiness is gathering pace. There is a vision of the good life which promotes deeper engagement with the world and our place within it, rather than the individualism and hedonism of previous generations. Guided by this more egalitarian worldview, we can reinvent ourselves and our societies.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Carl Cederström is Associate Professor at Stockholm Business School, Stockholm University and in this interesting look at the notion of happiness as being the fulfilment of your potential (with failure deemed to result from a poor attitude and inability to manage your life), he examines how the idea started with Wilhelm Reich and tracks its rise with the Beatniks and co-opting by big business to its impending demise with the rise of Trump.

THE HAPPINESS FANTASY was released in the United Kingdom on 24th September 2018. Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.

The Blurb On The Back:

From the rise of terrorism to the uncertainties associated with economic crisis and recession, our age is characterised by fear. Fear is the expression of a society on unstable foundations. Most of us feel that our social status is under threat and our future prospects in jeopardy. We are overwhelmed by a sense of having been catapulted into a world to which we no longer belong.

Tracing this experience, Heinz Bude uncovers a society marked by disturbing uncertainty, suppressed anger and quiet resentment. This is as true in our close relationships as it is in the world of work, in how we react to politicians as much as in our attitudes towards bankers and others in the financial sector. Bude shows how this fear is not derived so much from a "powerful other" but rather from the seemingly endless range of possibilities that we face. While this may seem to offer us greater autonomy and freedom, in reality the unknown impact and meaning of each option creates a vacuum which is filled by fear.

What conditions lead people to feel anxious and fearful for themselves and others? How can individuals withstand fear and develop ways of making their fears intelligible? Probing these and other questions, Bude provides a fresh analysis of some of the most fundamental features of our societies today.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Heinz Bude is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Kassel and in this very academic book (translated from German by Jessica Spengler), which I found difficult to follow at times, he sets out the nature of the fears inherent within modern society, from fears within relationships to fears of immigrants and foreigners and fears among the middle and working classes.

Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.

The Blurb On The Back:

$uperhubs is a rare, behind-the-scenes look at how the world’s most powerful titans pull the levers of our global financial system. Sandra Navidi reveals how these “SuperHubs” build their powerful networks and how their decisions impact all our lives

Learn what happens at the exclusive, invitation-only platforms – The World Economic Forum in Davos, the meetings of the International Monetary Fund, think-tank gatherings, and galas. This is the most vivid portrait to date of the global elite: the bank CEOs, fund managers, billionaire financiers, and politicians who, through their interlocking relationships and collective influence are transforming our increasingly fragile financial system and societies.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Sandra Navidi runs her own management consultancy with personal connections that have taken her to some of the most exclusive gatherings of the financial world, providing her with an up-close view of how these networks work. In this book, she purports to reveal how these networks developed and grew their power and how the decisions taken by those networks impact on global finance and the lives of everyday 99% like her readers. Unfortunately what she delivers is a slick but superficial summary of social network and regulatory theory, some anecdotes ripped from other sources about the financial crisis of 2007/2008, precious little analysis of how these networks actually operate or implement discussions, a grudging acknowledgement that the networks are a big part of the problem in social and financial inequality and a total failure to offer any solutions to the same.

$uperhubs: How The Financial Elite & Their Networks Rule Our World will be released in the United Kingdom on 26th January 2016. Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the ARC of this book.