I’ve just published my annual round-up of my non fiction reading for last year here. Do go and read the whole post, but here I’ll just mention my absolute favourites for the year (or at least the ones I keep telling people to go and read):
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I reviewed this book here. This book is almost at the centre of a Venn diagram of the kind of book I enjoy. It is a book about data, and how the way in which our society collects and categorises it tends to ignore women. And in a world of big data, where decisions are increasingly made based on analysis of data, this matters.
Criado Perez’s book involves a brisk review of all the many different ways in which inadequate data can give quite the wrong impression of the world, subdivided into Daily life, the Workplace, Design, The Doctor, Public life, and Emergencies. Every chapter is full of infuriating examples.
Too often planners, statisticians, and other professionals decide that women’s lives, bodies and activities are too complicated to measure.
In the information age, there is a lot of hubris that big data will create the answers to everything. But if big data is only measuring half the population, it will make things worse, not better. Read this book, and if you have any influence over data; its collection or its use; think honestly about whether you are considering women as much as men in the way you collect your data. And remember that the more often decision makers reflect the general population (whether by gender or other measures of diversity) the more likely it is that decisions will be good for that diverse population.
Highly Recommended
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I reviewed this here. This is a topic close to my heart. Many people I work with have heard me say that my KPI for myself is that my team gets enough sleep. That is short hand for quite a few things – not too much stress, not working too hard, and planning well enough in advance of deadlines that the work can be done in good time.
This book is a fascinating review of everything we know about sleep and why it is important. The book starts by introducing you to a few pretty confronting facts:
“Insufficient sleep is a key lifestyle factor determining whether or not you will develop Alzheimer’s disease. Short sleeping increases the likelihood of your coronary arteries becoming blocked and brittle… Sleep disruption further contributes to all major psychiatric conditions, including depression, anxiety and suicidality.”
A list of facts, though, is far less interesting than reading about the experiments that have demonstrated them, and the weight of evidence that shows just how important sleep is for all humans. And fundamentally all those people (eg Margaret Thatcher) who claim not to need that much sleep are likely to be kidding themselves. People who haven’t had enough sleep don’t realise who cognitively and emotionally impaired they are. As well as reducing their current functioning, they are putting their physical and mental health at risk.
Sleep! Make sure you get enough.
Highly recommended
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I’ve been hesitating about reading this for a while, as it is a bit grim. It is an authoritative book about domestic abuse in Australia. What it is, why it happens, how to predict it, what the different state and federal governments are doing about it and much more. As Hill points out, many people who don’t think they know anyone affected by domestic abuse end up realising, when it is described without adjectives, that it is very common even in their own circle. There are lots of horrifying stories in this book, but I felt it had to be read, to really understand what happens in our community. Hill is very clear eyed, and determined to research all aspects. So some of her conclusions to vexed questions like whether domestic abuse is more common in aboriginal communities, whether women make up allegations for the family court, whether men are abused at the same rate as women, or abused at all would not satisfy anyone who would prefer a simplistic answer on any side of a complex issue.
An example of a surprising statistic in a good way was that the number of male perpetrators of domestic abuse in the US killed by female victims went down by 69% between 1976 and 2002. In a bizarre twist, the introduction of women’s refuges in America – an innovation to save the lives of women – has actually done more to save the lives of the men who terrorise them.
For me the most horrifying chapter (which you can read as an initial article here) was the one about the Family Court. The quote at the beginning of the chapter tells you why:
Women will be told by child protection, it’s absolutely critical that your child have no contact with the [abusive] father, otherwise we’ll remove the child from you. Then the next week, they’re told in the Family Court it’s absolutely critical that this child has contact with the father. – Fiona McCormack, CEO of Domestic Violence Victoria.
Highly recommended
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This is a graphic novel by economist Bryan Caplan, and cartoonist (Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal) Zach Weinersmith. It is deliberately a polemic – to persuade the reader that completely open border are the best way to manage immigration, both for the good of humanity and for the good of the country that is being opened up. While I didn’t find it completely convincing (even though I am much more in favour of immigration than the average person – as an immigrant myself, I almost feel a moral obligation to be), it does a fantastic job of outlining all the benefits, and all the objections, and how you can modify open borders to reduce some of the negative impacts that worry people.
My own concern is mostly about the welfare state – as befits a US economist, Caplan seems quite comfortable with the idea that immigrants could be removed from access to the type of welfare that costs a lot. I’m not sure if I’m morally comfortable with that. But Caplan would point out that even those immigrants who would need the welfare state are likely to be better off than where they would have come from.
An easy, and very enlightening read.
Highly Recommended
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A book that was 10 years in the making, as Solomon selects a number of distinct groups where children are dramatically different from their parents in some way, and what that does for their relationships, the children’s view of where they come from, and the parents’ view of their children. Solomon has a concept of horizontal identity and vertical identity – the vertical one is one you get from your parents, and the horizontal one is the cultural one that comes from the identity you have that may be very different from your parents.
Before reading it, I thought it was a book about disability but it is so much more. The thread of themes reading through discussions with thoughtful parents and children had two main strands:
- Many disabilities are much more severe, or even disabilities at all, because our society is not set up for people in that category. Deafness is the strongest example of this, but the milder part of the autism spectrum is similar.
- A parent-child relationship across boundaries of identity is harder to maintain (as society as a whole is so set up for in groups and out groups), but when it works it is ultimately incredibly strong.
All parents have some differences in identity from their children, that is the job of children, to be their own person. So this book is thought provoking for any parent.
Highly recommended