CNAC Book Club List - April 2008
Explore the CNAC Book Club List for April 2008 featuring top book recommendations and must-read titles. Discover the best books discussed by the club that month!
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John Adams
by David McCullough
Profiles John Adams, an influential patriot during the American Revolution who became the nation's first vice president and second president.
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The Logic of Life
by Tim Harford
Analyzes the underlying economic logic behind seemingly irrational behavior, explaining how people are responding to future costs and benefits and how socially tragic outcomes have their roots in individually rational decisions.
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The Wisdom of Crowds
by James Surowiecki
In this fascinating book, New Yorker business columnist James Surowiecki explores a deceptively simple idea: Large groups of people are smarter than an elite few, no matter how brilliant—better at solving problems, fostering innovation, coming to wise decisions, even predicting the future. With boundless erudition and in delightfully clear prose, Surowiecki ranges across fields as diverse as popular culture, psychology, ant biology, behavioral economics, artificial intelligence, military history, and politics to show how this simple idea offers important lessons for how we live our lives, select our leaders, run our companies, and think about our world.
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ID: 0374249393
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Dead Certain
by Robert Draper
In the definitive book on the Bush presidency, a gifted reporter and longtime Bush observer with unprecedented access to the White House offers a revealing and balanced look at this most secretive of administrations.
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ID: 0425202399
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Book
Freakonomics Rev Ed
by Steven D. Levitt
Which is more dangerous, a gun or a swimming pool? What do schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers have in common? Why do drug dealers still live with their moms? How much do parents really matter? How did the legalization of abortion affect the rate of violent crime? These may not sound like typical questions for an econo-mist to ask. But Steven D. Levitt is not a typical economist. He is a much-heralded scholar who studies the riddles of everyday life—from cheating and crime to sports and child-rearing—and whose conclusions turn conventional wisdom on its head. Freakonomics is a groundbreaking collaboration between Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, an award-winning author and journalist. They usually begin with a mountain of data and a simple question. Some of these questions concern life-and-death issues; others have an admittedly freakish quality. Thus the new field of study contained in this book: freakonomics. Through forceful storytelling and wry insight, Levitt and Dubner show that economics is, at root, the study of incentives—how people get what they want, or need, especially when other people want or need the same thing. In Freakonomics, they explore the hidden side of . . . well, everything. The inner workings of a crack gang. The truth about real-estate agents. The myths of campaign finance. The telltale marks of a cheating schoolteacher. The secrets of the Klu Klux Klan. What unites all these stories is a belief that the modern world, despite a great deal of complexity and downright deceit, is not impenetrable, is not unknowable, and—if the right questions are asked—is even more intriguing than we think. All it takes is a new way of looking. Freakonomics establishes this unconventional premise: If morality represents how we would like the world to work, then economics represents how it actually does work. It is true that readers of this book will be armed with enough riddles and stories to last a thousand cocktail parties. But Freakonomics can provide more than that. It will literally redefine the way we view the modern world.
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Book
The Smartest Guys in the Room
by Bethany McLean
An account of the rise and fall of Enron, written by award-winning Fortune investigative reporters, draws on a wide range of sources while revealing the contributions of lesser-known participants in the scandal. Reprint.