Essays and ephemera
I just finished Miles Davis’ autobiography and it was insane. It’s easily one of the best autobiographies I’ve read and it is certainly the most entertaining biography I’ve read. Other than the excessive profanity, my favorite part is all the great names of people in his life. These are my favorite names from the book.
Continue reading “The Best Names in Miles Davis’ Autobiography”
I make a lot of reports and I’m always looking for ways to make better and more efficient reports. I recently read The Visual Display of Quantitative Information by Edward Tufte and found it illuminating. Although the book is often heavy in theory, its use of clear prose and myriad of examples – both historic and present – made me more introspective about the reports I create. Anyone who uses visuals in their work could benefit from reading Tufte’s book. In this post I’ll talk about my takeaways from the book.
Continue reading “Let’s Get Visual! Visualization Best Practices”
Your writing is full of bullshit. All your emails, blogs, and reports are full of unnecessary jargon, weasel words, and platitudes. And it’s all because you’re afraid of being bold and direct.
At least that’s what Josh Bernoff believes.
And according to him, you can change all of that. Bernoff’s book Writing Without Bullshit calls you out on your bullshit, but provides succinct and actionable ways to change not only how you write, but how you communicate.
Note: I know the author of the book reviewed in this post.
When it comes to politics, I want concise and salient talking points spoken by politicians and myself. Sadly, the former does not possess this and the latter possess more passion than saliency. In these times of polarization, I returned to John K. Wilson’s book How The Left Can Win Arguments and Influence People to see if talking points made almost 20 years ago hold up and to see if I could apply them to today’s political conversation. Sadly, they’re still relevant.
The Chickenshit Club by Jesse Eisinger is easily the best titled book to come out this year. It’s also the best titled book about fighting against corporations.
Enough about the title. The book itself is a slog, where readers endure an Old Testament-esque history of the Justice Department battling corporations over the last four decades.