Bloomberg’s civics lesson on how morality is translated into law by political process. Courageous and inspiring, this cool-headed independent billionaire mayor serves as an unlikely beacon for Americans, but also for others, for instance the Netherlands, where religious intolerance is in danger of getting some serious political power in the form of Geert Wilders.
SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance by Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner. As with the first book, Freakonomics, I was fascinated by the economic mechanisms and quirky independent research that challenges our assumptions and that should be considered when making public policy. Remember the connection between the [...]
Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa by Dambisa Moyo The past few years have seen a number of popular books on the necessity and/or follies of development aid, and to Africa in particular. Think Jeffrey Sachs and Paul Collier. In the ongoing discussion about the [...]
Book Review: Socialnomics: How social media transforms the way we live and do business by Erik Qualman This book I highly recommend for anyone trying to figure out what to do with Twitter, Facebook and whatever social media is out there (after you realize that blogging is actually yesterday’s news). It is an eye-opening and [...]
Book Review: The Audacity to Win: The Inside Story and Lessons of Barack Obama’s Historic Victory by David Plouffe I always follow US presidential elections closely, but the most recent one was special, as it was for many people. The grassroots movement of the Obama campaign, for which the Howard Dean campaign of 2004 was [...]
A must read for those interested in politics around the world, but especially for those fascinated by the Kennedy’s. At the same time, however, this book reveals not very much about how Ted Kennedy became the Lion of the Senate. As he himself claims in the book, no children of Joseph P. Kennedy were taught [...]