Review: We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights

We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights by Adam Winkler
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

200 plus years of lawyers and jurists interpreting, perverting, and writing the laws of the corporation, determining just how closely a corporation could be cast as a human, or a citizen. The author tells these legal case stories with relish, mixing the historic record with profiles of major players in this realm, from descriptions of Daniel Webster’s piercing black eyes to Samuel Alito’s brashness. Not dry, quite interesting.

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Review: The Most Good You Can Do: How Effective Altruism Is Changing Ideas About Living Ethically

The Most Good You Can Do: How Effective Altruism Is Changing Ideas About Living Ethically by Peter Singer
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Say you are Mr. Spock, and you take it as a personal goal to optimize the good in the world. You’d first define what good is. After some thought, you might come up with the good that you want to focus on is eliminating medical issues in the world to reduce human pain and suffering. Then you would emotionlessly put forward your efforts and wealth to making that happen. Only after you totally solve the problems of health would you consider turning your attention to something farther up Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. This path follows logic and optimization based on an assumption of what “good” is. What loses with Singer’s system? Tribalism and higher human callings like the arts. What really doesn’t feel right here is the thought that if everyone followed this prescription, the world would be very grey, leaving more of humanity alive but having less to live for. This was a very thought-provoking book to read, and I’m glad I did. Although I don’t agree in total with the author, I can easily understand those that do agree and I commend those donors on putting effort and reflection into their plans. I guess the rest of us will fund the local jazz radio station.

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Review: She Rides Shotgun: A Novel

She Rides Shotgun: A Novel by Jordan Harper
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This feels like the author has taken a good story, in this case a father teaching his child to survive bullies, and amped up a few variables. In this case, the bullies aren’t just going to beat anyone up, they kill entire families. And instead of a typical teen or young adult child, we have a pre-teen that plays with a teddy bear. That’s pretty much it. I found this read like it could be turned into a movie very simply. The plot is simple, the scenery is well described and the scenes could be filmed in California. I’d read more by this author.

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Review: Thousand-Miler: Adventures Hiking the Ice Age Trail

Thousand-Miler: Adventures Hiking the Ice Age Trail by Melanie Radzicki McManus
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I enjoyed this book about the Ice Age Trail through Wisconsin. I had previously enjoyed books about these kinds of travels, although some, like “Wild”, ended up being as much inner psychology as travelogue. There was some cross-mixing of those two focuses here, but this was more a mix of the history of the trail, some character studies of some of the hikers the author met, and the diary of the trek. I hadn’t heard of this trail, which I have likely crossed multiple times as it is near to home. The existence of this book piqued my interest in the trail, and reading the book made me even more interested. I’ve reached a certain age where I have more “freedom” to complete a grand adventure (while beginning to lose the “freedom” of movement of my joints), and this stoked that desire. Nicely done.

I most enjoyed the author’s stories of her crew, a set of family, friends, and acquaintances that helped her to set a speed hiking record for this trail. Despite plenty of planning, I don’t recall any of her helpers being perfect at meetups, drop offs, or prepping, but they all had their own kind of magic on the trail. Ending with her parents as her crew was quite an interesting gamble.


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Review: Eastern Standard Tribe

Eastern Standard Tribe by Cory Doctorow
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Lots of interesting ideas, like tribalism based on home time zone, a kind of wardriving for music, industrial sabotage, and gonzo product development gets mixed together. Kinda like PK Dick in voice. Kinda confused story. I get a neutral feeling about this one. I am not shooed away from reading stories by Doctorow because of this book – it has interesting ideas -- but it doesn’t make me want to run out and add more of his books to my TBR list.

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Review: Secrets of the Millionaire Mind: Mastering the Inner Game of Wealth

Secrets of the Millionaire Mind: Mastering the Inner Game of Wealth by T. Harv Eker
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

This starts off with some promise – suggesting your mental attitude toward money was set at an early age based on your parents/care givers. The author suggests that thinking about your relationship with money through this lens will allow you to see any harm being done and to modify your thoughts. (Shades of “Rich Dad Poor Dad”) And then he goes into affirmation mode – suggesting at the end of every chapter to repeat some money mantra and to “touch your head with your index finger”. All I can picture is a finger gun, so that isn’t going to work for me. The author uses the book to repeatedly sell his seminars, while also talking up multi-level marketing schemes. All the while adding new affirmations. While I like the idea of considering how your upbringing may have set your perspective on money and wealth, I believe there are plenty of other books that include that topic with additional topics of value that don’t have the commercial content that this one has.

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Review: Putting Wealth to Work: Philanthropy for Today or Investing for Tomorrow?

Putting Wealth to Work: Philanthropy for Today or Investing for Tomorrow? by Joel L. Fleishman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I found this an interesting topic, although I have no background in “organized” philanthropy. The author uses this book to describe philanthropic entities of two kinds, perpetual and time-limited. He describes many earlier philanthropies as being perpetual, but in some cases no longer meeting the suspected needs of the originators, or their designees, or perhaps the reason for the existence of the philanthropy has changed (think the Buggy Whip Manufacturers Association). Given these issues, many philanthropic entities more recently have been created with designed end dates. His argument here is that the case against perpetual philanthropies is overblown, and possibly misguided, and that both kinds of charities have value in the world. It was enjoyable reading such a thorough analysis of a seemingly simple topic that has some buried complexities. Also making this interesting is the foundation name-dropping – many of the largest foundations are dissected here, and you learn a lot about the “industry” and its various goals, and you learn quite a bit about the founders of these entities (Rockefeller, Gates, Carnegie, and the like) and how they thought about their fortunes.

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