andreweverett360 Book Review, Creativity

The Deviant’s Advantage


The Deviant’s Advantage: How to Use Fringe Ideas to Create Mass Markets
by Watts Wacker and Ryan Mathews

“Deviance is the source of all true innovation, growth, and indeed our collective survival. Deviance is defined by time, place, and circumstances.”

“Without deviance there would be no art, no scientific breakthroughs, no technological advances… Physical evolution is perhaps the perfect example of deviance in action. Without mutation—essentially deviance from an established DNA pattern—nature would remain static.”

“Don’t let the words deviant and deviance scare you. They’re being used in their purest definition—something or someone operating in a defined measure away from the norm.”

Continue reading “The Deviant’s Advantage” →
andreweverett360 Book Review, history

The Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge


The Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge
by Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933) with introduction and footnotes by Amity Shlaes and Matthew Denhart

Calvin Coolidge became the 30th president of the United States on August 3, 1923 upon the death of President Warren G. Harding. He ran for reelection in 1924 and served one full term of his own. He did not seek reelection in 1928. To give some context of his time, Coolidge was the first president whose inauguration address was broadcast nationwide on the radio, and he was the first president to make a transatlantic telephone call.

Continue reading “The Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge” →
andreweverett360 Art, Book Review

Seeing It: Photography and Commentary


Seeing It: Photography and Commentary
by Mark Hopkins

As art professor Kit White has written, “Observation lies at the heart of the art process.” Learning to see is a fundamental skill taught in observational drawing classes. It’s also fundamental to fine art photography, as Mark Hopkins explains. The title Seeing It refers to being curious and looking beyond the obvious.

“Cameras do not see; that is the task of their owners. And seeing is what this book is about. In particular, it is about seeing opportunities to create worthy photographic images. It is meant to be inspirational, to show how one camera owner’s concentration on visual awareness has created a collection of photographs whose images others might have walked right past.”

“It is about seeing what you see. If by the end of the book you have a better appreciation of what I mean by that, then I will have fulfilled my goal.”

Continue reading “Seeing It: Photography and Commentary” →
andreweverett360 Book Review, Management

Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout


Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout
by Cal Newport

Slow Productivity is “a philosophy for organizing knowledge work efforts in a sustainable and meaningful manner, based on the following three principles: 1. Do fewer things; 2. Work at a natural pace; 3. Obsess over quality.”

Newport defines knowledge work as “the economic activity in which knowledge is transformed into an artifact with market value through the application of cognitive effort.”

“Concrete productivity metrics of the type that shaped the industrial sector will never properly fit the more amorphous knowledge work setting… In knowledge work… individuals are often wrangling complicated and constantly shifting workloads… In this setting, there’s no clear, single output to track.”

Continue reading “Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout” →
andreweverett360 Book Review, Psychology & Neuroscience

Life’s Journeys According to Mister Rogers


Life’s Journeys According to Mister Rogers: Things to Remember Along the Way
by Fred Rogers (1928-2003)

And now a Thanksgiving palette cleanser.

Fred Rogers was the creator and host of the children’s television show Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood from 1968 to 2001. This short book is a posthumously published collection of his writing for adults.

Continue reading “Life’s Journeys According to Mister Rogers” →
andreweverett360 Book Review, Finance

Essays on Hayek


Essays on Hayek
Edited by Fritz Machlup

Friedrich Hayek (1899-1992) received the Nobel Prize in Economics on December 11, 1974 for his theory of business cycles and the effects of monetary and credit policies. The following year, the Mont Pelerin Society held a conference at Hillsdale College covering various aspects of Hayek’s work. This book is a collection of the papers presented and discussed.

I find it noteworthy that Hayek wrote The Road to Serfdom (1944) on the consequences of socialism in the same era that George Orwell wrote Animal Farm (1945) and 1984 (1949).

Continue reading “Essays on Hayek” →
andreweverett360 Book Review, Writing

Copywriting Is…


Copywriting Is… 30-or-So Thoughts on Thinking Like a Copywriter
by Andrew Boulton  

Andrew Boulton is an advertising copywriter, lecturer, and columnist from the U.K. He is clearly a man of letters, but apparently not a numbers guy: this book has neither chapter numbers nor page numbers. I counted 36 chapters and 220 pages in which Boulton reflects on the creative practice of copywriting. Here are some highlights.

“We are in the business of purposeful attention—getting noticed, of course, but then doing something meaningful with that attention…The very nature of the job is to be, not the loudest voice, but the most compelling—to say something conventional and familiar in a way that feels extraordinary and unavoidable.”

Continue reading “Copywriting Is…” →
andreweverett360 Art, Book Review

The Unexamined Life is Not Worth Drawing: Memoir of an Artist


The Path of Totality: A Memoir/Manifesto
by David Schoffman

With a nod to Socrates, David Schoffman writes, “The unexamined life is not worth drawing.” The author bares his soul as he reflects on the meaning of life as an artist. The book includes approximately 50 illustrations.

Continue reading “The Unexamined Life is Not Worth Drawing: Memoir of an Artist” →
andreweverett360 Book Review, Health

Forest Bathing: The Japanese Art and Science of Shinrin-Yoku


Forest Bathing: The Japanese Art and Science of Shinrin-Yoku
by Qing Li, MD, PhD

“The concept that humans have a biological need to connect with nature has been called biophilia… The American biologist E.O. Wilson… believed that, because we evolved in nature, we have a biological need to connect with it.”

Qing Li is an immunologist and associate professor at Nippon Medical School in Tokyo who studies how spending time in the forest improves our health. In Japanese, shinrin (森林) means forest and yoku (浴) means bathing. “So shinrin-yoku means bathing in the forest atmosphere, or taking in the forest through our senses.” The term forest bathing is analogous to sunbathing, nikkou-yoku (日光浴) in Japanese.

Continue reading “Forest Bathing: The Japanese Art and Science of Shinrin-Yoku” →
andreweverett360 Art, Book Review

Harley Brown’s Eternal Truths for Every Artist


Harley Brown’s Eternal Truths for Every Artist
by Harley Brown

Harley Brown is an artist and art instructor who works in pastel and oil paint. In this book he shares his advice on how to paint a variety of subjects with attention to designing an interesting composition with harmonious colors and the integration of light and shadow.

Continue reading “Harley Brown’s Eternal Truths for Every Artist” →