Nominations for next round of books

[michael brewer]

Folks,

Time to nominate our next round of books!  The process is simple. You can propose up to two books that we will be reading starting in September of this year. 

Send an email to the Sunday Philosophers group, proposing your book(s). For each book you can provide a short description calculated to persuade other group members to vote for your book.  At a minimum you can include a link to a review of the book; for example, link to the book on Amazon.

Let’s set a deadline for nominations of midnight July 6.  I will then put all the proposed books in a spreadsheet and send the list out to everyone in our group.  I’ll describe voting procedures at that time.

Mike Brewer

https://sites.google.com/site/sundayphilosophersgroup/books-for-discussion

[Marvin Zelkowitz]

One book I'll recommend is "We'll prescribe you a cat" by Syou Ishida. Translated from Japanese. It describes in a playful way the psychology of cats. It is 5 related but independent stories about people having troubles and a prescription of a cat saves them. It sounds weird, and it is, but it makes sense. (Ignore Angie's poor review on Goodreads. The book is an excellent translation of Japanese culture and was fun to read.)

A second book to follow.

Marv

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[Karl Kasamon]

I propose Nexus, by Yuval Noah Harari. This a great book on information in human societies. 

And The most elegant equation: Euler’s Formula and the beauty of mathematics. I have not read this one, but the Amazon reviews look incredible.

https://www.amazon.com/Most-Elegant-Equation-Euler%C2%92s-Mathematics/dp/0465093779

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[Angie Boyter]

Nexus was on my list of possible nominations, too. You beat me to it, but I have plenty of others.

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[Karl Kasamon]

☺️

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[Steven Clark Cunningham]

Ha!  I was also going to suggest Nexus!

Steve

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[Karl Kasamon]

Friends, 

I will be unable to join you this Sunday, since I need to deliver my sun to away summer camp. I look forward to seeing you at the next book club 

Karl 

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[Mike DiFilippo]

My nomination is Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson.

If a useful purpose of philosophy is to understand societal and political forces and to project the best system for the flourishing of life then these guys make an interesting argument. 

MikeD

Here's the Goodreads blurb:

Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson

4.09

13,417 ratings1,982 reviews

From bestselling authors and journalistic titans Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, Abundance is a once-in-a-generation, paradigm-shifting call to rethink big, entrenched problems that seem mired in systemic from climate change to housing, education to healthcare.

To trace the global history of the twenty-first century so far is to trace a history of growing unaffordability and shortage. After years of refusing to build sufficient housing, the entire country has a national housing crisis. After years of slashing immigration, we don’t have enough workers. After decades of off-shoring manufacturing, we have a shortage of chips for cars and computers. Despite decades of being warned about the consequences of climate change, we haven’t built anything close to the clean energy infrastructure we need. The crisis that’s clicking into focus now has been building for decades—because we haven’t been building enough.

Abundance explains that our problems today are not the results of yesteryear’s villains. Rather, one generation’s solutions have become the next generation’s problems. Rules and regulations designed to solve the environmental problems of the 1970s often prevent urban density and green energy projects that would help solve the environmental problems of the 2020s. Laws meant to ensure that government considers the consequences of its actions in matters of education and healthcare have made it too difficult for government to act consequentially. In the last few decades, our capacity to see problems has sharpened while our ability to solve them has diminished.

Progress requires the ability to see promise rather than just peril in the creation of new ideas and projects, and an instinct to design systems and institutions that make building possible. In a book exploring how can move from a liberalism that not only protects and preserves but also builds, Klein and Thompson trace the political, economic, and cultural barriers to progress and how we can adopt a mindset directed toward abundance, and not scarcity, to overcome them.