Scott's Book Reviews

[scottjpearson]

Sing, Wild Bird, Sing: A Novel

Sing, Wild Bird, Sing: A Novel A story beginning with a historic massacre of Irish people in the famine of 1947 and ending in America with the enduring theme of human dignity and freedom. #BookReview #ScottsBookReview

This plot’s preamble begins in 19th-century Oregon, but quickly pivots to a prior time in Ireland during the famine of 1847. It shares the true story of an entire starving village traveling to its British landlord begging for food. Sadly, the landlord refuses succor, and the entire town dies beside a nearby lake. In O’Mahony’s tale, only one person survives, and utterly alone in the world, Honora…

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The Ethics of Pandemics: An Introduction

The Ethics of Pandemics: An Introduction This #newRelease cements ethics lessons learned from the #COVID19 pandemic in preparation for whatever might come next. #BookReview #ScottsBookReview

For most of us, the COVID-19 pandemic was one that we would not choose to relive. Unfortunately, epidemics on a international stage occur with relative frequency, every decade or so. While how to avoid major outbreaks is an important target, so is learning social lessons from COVID so as not to repeat them in the future. In this academic primer, Iwao Hirose seeks to distill such ethical lessons…

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Product Management In Practice: A Real-World Guide to the Key Connective Role of the 21st Century

Product Management In Practice: A Real-World Guide to the Key Connective Role of the 21st Century A practical guide to #ProductManagement in fields related to #tech, with a heavy emphasis on experience and wisdom. #BookReview #ScottsBookReview

Product management is a new role in the world of business. Mainly built around building and deploying technology, product managers began to spring up in early-21st-century corporations. They have been pioneered by organizations around computer technologies, like Intel, Google, or Microsoft. As common with most new roles, figuring out how to meet the challenge on day one can be daunting. To fill…

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Is the Algorithm Plotting Against Us? A Layperson's Guide to the Concepts, Math & Pitfalls of AI

Is the Algorithm Plotting Against Us? A Layperson's Guide to the Concepts, Math & Pitfalls of AI This #newRelease balances describing how #AI works and how it might, and might not, affect human civilization. #BookReview #ScottsBookReview

Post-pandemic, perhaps no STEM topic has gripped the news quite like Artificial Intelligence (AI). For almost a century (since Isaac Asimov), science-fiction writers have dreamed of computers gaining consciousness, but now, some propose those possibilities near fruition. Often, people who write about AI in the news focus solely on social aspects; those developing the technology, in contrast,…

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[scottjpearson]

Desperate Remedies: Psychiatry's Turbulent Quest to Cure Mental Illness

Desperate Remedies: Psychiatry's Turbulent Quest to Cure Mental Illness A history of psychiatric medicine written by an non-clinician & non-scientist that concludes with too little hope for pharmacological remedies. #BookReview #ScottsBookReview

I must begin this review with a confession of my biases. I have had bipolar disorder for 20 years and have learned through hard-fought experience how to control it. I also have progressed through medical school, but do not practice medicine due to side effects of medications for bipolar disorder. For a career, I build software infrastructure that supports the medical research system. I found…

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[scottjpearson]

The Life She Wanted: A Novel

The Life She Wanted: A Novel This #newRelease describes the life story of a poor dreamer among New York's elite in the 1920s-1930s. She achieves what she wants, only in a different way than once expected. #BookReview #ScottsBookReview

Pandora Carmichael is the daughter of a once-famous tennis player who now teaches the sport to the well-to-do in the Hudson Valley in 1920s New York. She grows up around opulence, but she possesses none of it. A teenager at the beginning of the book, she explores dating relationships, but struggles to achieve exactly what she wants out of life. She has a deep passion for fashion design, but in…

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[scottjpearson]

Flatlands

Flatlands by Sue Hubbard This #newRelease tells a coming-of-age tale about how two lives interweave together on the flatlands of England during the beginnings of World War II. #BookReview #ScottsBookReview

Telling her story in a journal, Freda evacuates from London in anticipation of German bombing. She comes from a humble family with weak bonds to each other. Her grandmother Nan is the only person she feels close to, but she soon dies after Freda’s departure. Her mother and father have recently divorced as her father has left for another woman. As a mere twelve-year-old, she is alone in the…

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[scottjpearson]

The Product Manager's Guide: Strategy, Psychology & Leadership at Work

The Product Manager's Guide: Strategy, Psychology & Leadership at Work This #newRelease provides a general overview of product management for those who are mystified by this role in their organizations. #BookReview #ScottsBookReview

In a diverse business, a product manager oversees all of the projects for several products. That is, it sits a step above project managers on the org chart. This corporate designation seems to exist across many companies, especially those which are larger. Potential readers might be mystified by this role among their co-workers; others might aspire to this role and want to know what to do. In…

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[scottjpearson]

Radical Inclusion: Seven Steps to Help You Create a More Just Workplace, Home & World

Radical Inclusion: Seven Steps to Help You Create a More Just Workplace, Home & World This #newRelease tells lessons learned from a personal story of political leadership to create a more just world in Sierra Leone. #BookReview #ScottsBookReview

David Moinina Sengeh was seemingly at the peak of a great career triumph. Educated in America at Harvard and MIT, he was now a governmental cabinet member of education in his home country Sierra Leone. However, at the very beginning of his president’s term, the president – his boss – said that he would maintain the previous regime’s policy of banning pregnant girls from school. To most, this move…

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The Recruit's Playbook: A 4-Year Guide to College Football Recruitment for High School Athletes

The Recruit's Playbook: A 4-Year Guide to College Football Recruitment for High School Athletes An accessible guide for players about the complicated process of college football recruiting. Includes a year-by-year plan. #BookReview #ScottsBookReview

Recruiting for college football is a complicated but important process. Many aspire to its benefits, but only a few will move onto the next level. Like anything in sports and life, those who prepare the best will succeed the most. So how do you prepare, aside from dominating on the field? Larry Hart’s guide is a great way to start. An ex-NFL player and current college coach, he shows aspiring…

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[scottjpearson]

The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons

The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons An engaging series of stories about foundational patient experiences that taught us the core #neuroscience of how the human brain works. #BookReview #ScottsBookReview

Research into the human brain comprises an exciting frontier of knowledge today, yet most scientific accounts can dryly bore the average reader. And frankly, a lot of scientists and doctors can benefit from reading narratives of human stories behind scientific discoveries. To fill this gap, Sam Kean chronicles in this book the many functions of the human brain – and of parts of the human brain.…

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[scottjpearson]

Parenting Teens with Love & Logic: Preparing Adolescents for Responsible Adulthood

Parenting Teens with Love & Logic: Preparing Adolescents for Responsible Adulthood A conservative but helpful guide to child psychology with teenaged children, focused on increasing habits of responsibility. #BookReview #ScottsBookReview

When my daughter was younger, I enjoyed reading Love and Logic for parents of young children. I found it helpful for establishing a good relationship with my daughter. And she has become a healthy preteen now. She is socially conscious, in an academic magnet school, and mostly interested in mature things. Importantly, she has become friends with my wife and me. Some of the credit for that goes to…

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[scottjpearson]

The Home Front: Life in America During World War II

The Home Front: Life in America During World War II A collection of podcasts with footage of interviews describing America's domestic challenges during World War II - an enlightening angle on the war. #BookReview #ScottsBookReview

The story of World War II has been well-mined by historians over the past 80 years. It’s hard to provide a new angle on the action, yet this series of podcasts does just that. While many histories focus on stories of foreign battles, this history tells America’s domestic challenges around the war. It does so using audio footage of interviews from people at the time. While I’ve heard some of these…

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The Light on Farallon Island: A Novel

The Light on Farallon Island: A Novel This #newRelease of historical fiction delights in spanning #romance, #suspense, and #mystery. Voyage to a near-barren island and discover yourself alongside Lucy Riley. #BookReview #ScottsBookReview

Lucy Riley is someone with secrets that haunt her from England to the American East to the Mid-West to the West Coast. They even chase her out of San Francisco to the Farallon Islands in the Pacific. She becomes a teacher to the rough island’s children. The handful of adults on the island are employed to man the lighthouse and harvest exquisite eggs. It’s a place that next to no one wants to go…

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A Lowcountry Heart: Reflections of a Writing Life

A Lowcountry Heart: Reflections of a Writing Life A series of writings reflecting on the last years of celebrated Southern author Pat Conroy's life. #BookReview #ScottsBookReview

Pat Conroy is one of the giant writers of the modern American South. He grew up in Beaufort, South Carolina, in the so-called “Lowcountry,” south of Charleston. The son of a decorated but semi-abusive Marine pilot, he went to the Citadel, a military college in Charleston, then all-male, and played basketball. He wrote about all of this in several memoirs alongside other great works of fiction.…

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[scottjpearson]

Leaving: How I Set Myself Free from an Abusive Marriage

Leaving: How I Set Myself Free from an Abusive Marriage This #newRelease remembers a journey from India to the United States, from an abusive marriage to personal and familial health. #BookReview #ScottsBookReview

An abusive marriage filled with domestic violence is one of the worst possible outcomes of a marriage. While betrothed, it can be hard to foresee this result, but it can take a lifetime to recover from the trauma. If children are involved, they, too, can be scarred with worse mental health outcomes. Sometimes, social constraints – such as living in a patriarchal culture or under a country’s…

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Tennessee & the Ongoing Struggle for Civil Rights

My adopted home state of Tennessee has made itself a new front in the ongoing struggle for civil, human rights. Historically, like the weather that passes through, it’s been a home to many crosswinds. Slavery was legal in Tennessee. In the era of the Civil War, east Tennessee was significantly anti-slavery and pro-Union, and Tennessee was one of the first states to be reincorporated into the…

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