Book Review

This week was a reading week - mix of good and bad.

The Conscience of a Liberal - Paul Krugman: A book on inequality in America, with plenty of historical references over the past 100 or more years, plenty of supporting economic data from the outstanding economist, and his views on issues and fixes for range of topics such as CEO pay, healthcare, immigration etc. Good reading, except Paul is a hardline liberal, so you also need to read other books to get a balanced opinion.

The Science of Evolution & The Myth of Creationism - Ardea Skybreak: What shall I say? Must-read for The Pope! For the scientifically oriented, this book is a treat. For the religiously oriented, it depends if you are fundamentalist or moderate. The book does an amazing job of exposing biblical myths with scientific proofs, bashing fundamentalist beliefs, while respecting religious moderate faith. For example, myths such as God created the earth 6000 years ago, with all beings in 6 days, all at once is all proven false, with evidence that rocks on earth are 4.5 billion years old, and fossil and DNA evidence showing that evolution of life happened over billions of years starting from chemical soup that earth was, and lab experiments how species evolve and become extinct at different times. Outstanding and worth the time. You don't have to read the Bible to get a balanced opinion!

Myths, Lies and Downright Stupidity - John Stossel: This was quick and easy to browse through, explaining why conventional wisdom is not necessarily the truth. The one that stood out in my mind: "Women earn less for same work" - if this is true, why would any employer hire men, when they can make more profit by hiring women? The truth is women care more about flexibility and make compromises in salary, while men care more for salary, and dont make those compromises. However, I am not sure I agree with all of the truths.

If Democrats Had any Brains, They'd be Republicans - Ann Coulter: It was quick as well, as I gave up after a few pages. Lot of political, conservative, republican brazen remarks that reassures we still enjoy freedom of speech and expression, but I couldn't get on the same wavelength.