I read Atul Gawande’s last book The Checklist Manifesto and was impressed at the coverage of the importance of checklists in medicine – which had primarily proven their effectiveness in aerospace applications. I was expecting from Being Mortal was a…

I’m sometimes a hard guy to impress. Sometimes, I strive for excellence and look for ways to get better, and I forget to appreciate that good is good enough. Maybe that is why I appreciated Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance  so much. It certa…

Years ago I was responsible for creating the technology to support a clinical study designed to test the feasibility of improving patient outcomes for patients with diabetes. The resulting article was published in Diabetes Care Volume 24 Number 6 in June…

One of the challenging ethical dilemmas that faces physicians is when parents of a child tell them to do whatever they can to keep their child alive. The problem is that, no matter how painful it is, there are some situations where death is the right…

Complications impact every aspect of our life. We believe that we’ve got life all figured out, but then come the pesky complications to our orderly, perfect world. Atul Gawande speaks about medical complications in Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes on a…

It’s no secret that the American healthcare system is broken. While there have been great advances in healthcare that saves lives and improves the quality of lives for so many people, it is still broken. The problem is that we can’t take a step back and…

Sometimes you pick up a book because someone recommends it, and it changes the way that you view a topic – and it changes the way you view the person who recommended the book.  No Time to Teach: The Essence of Patient and Family Education for Health Ca…

Healthcare isn’t sausage-making. In sausage-making, “what’s in there” doesn’t matter. It’s simply that it tastes good. In fact, most people don’t want to know about the sausage-making process. However, in healthcare, we’re talking about people, and the…

It is not that they set out to be uncaring.  Quite the opposite.  Doctors, most of them anyway, got into medicine because of their concern for others.  That’s what makes the fact that modern medicine, particularly in the United States, isn’t as good a…

Many people don’t know this (or care) but when I was first awarded my Microsoft MVP  award it was for Windows Networking (which was pretty quickly clarified to Windows Server Networking). At the time I was working on Windows Server books and MCSE stud…

The latest book to succumb to my ravenous appetite for software development is Agile and Iterative Development: A Manager’s Guide . More than any of the other books, this book convinced me how astray we’ve all been lead astray by waterfall based deve…

With all of the books with “Agile” in their title today why would anyone want to single out Agile Software Development  in particular?  My reason was the author Alistair Cockburn .  Alistair has been a part of the agile movement being both an original…

If you regularly read this blog then you know that I’ve been doing a lot of reading and reviewing of agile methodology books. (Agile & Iterative Development: A Manager’s Guide , Balancing Agility and Discipline: A Guide for the Perplexed , etc.)  It’s …

Over a year ago (I think) my buddy Vijay Mehta handed me a copy of his book Pro LINQ Object Relational Mapping with C# 2008  After he explained the title to me (no I’m not really kidding), I said thanks and put the book aside until I could think abo…

I was trying to post a comment today to check out a book — a book that I had read and thought I had blogged about but apparently I blogged about it in a dream.  (Yea, I know sick) The book is Professional .NET 2.0 Generics  while I can certainly tear…

It’s very in vogue to describe your software development process as RUP.  Describing the current methodology as agile (XP, Crystal, Scrum, etc.) evokes too many questions, but describing the methodology as Rational Unified Process, more frequently RU…

I struggle to find the right way to express how to make software development right.  I can’t say that I subscribe to every idea that is put forth by Software Engineering.  The Software Engineering Institute does drive software development forward.  Howe…

More than 10 years ago Jim McCarthy wrote the first edition of Dynamics of Software Development .  At that time it was a great book.  It helped identify specific behavior patterns that software development teams fall into.  Perhaps the most familiar beh…

Writing content is easy. Well at least it is for me. I learned how to become a production writer while I was working full-time at a consulting company before I restarted my company. I was responsible for 50 articles a year for a newsletter for TechRepublic.com …

The need for a higher level of attention to security in applications is something that we must unfortunately deal with.  Finding a set of developers with an intrinsic knowledge of security is much like looking for a taxi cab when it’s raining.  You kno…

If you’ve read this blog for a while you know I’ve been on a journey to try to figure out social networking and through extension Web 2.0. I’ve read Wikinomics , Blink , The Wisdom of Crowds , Linked , and The Long Tail . It would be pretty easy to se…

“What evil things lurk inside the hearts and minds of men… “ When I was still in high school – many moons ago – I remember a programming competition. We were supposed to create a program that calculated the length of a line in a triangle (or some such…

When I picked up Building Content Type Solutions in SharePoint 2007  I was hoping that it would be the powerhouse book that helped the SharePoint community realize the power of content types. You see, I’ve decided that they’re one of the most powerful — if …

Whenever a new SharePoint book comes out I’m very hopeful. There is so much to learn about SharePoint. Some of these things are strategic and cultural. Others are the inane details that allow you to make SharePoint do what you want it to do. I quickly p…

Some folks like to cook from recipes. You get a predictable result and you know what to expect. My wife will attest that that’s not exactly the kind of guy I am. I’ve created meals that are good and a fair number of them that weren’t fit for the dog t…

I’ve fallen more than a bit behind on my reading. I’ve got a stack of books here that I keep meaning to read, skim, review, etc. I did get a chance to take a look at one in the last few weeks and I’m glad I did. The book, SharePoint for Project Manage…

I was just graduating high school as the book After the Ball: How America Will Conquer Its Fear and Hatred of Gays in the 90’s was published.  There was, obviously, a lot going on in my world, so I can’t say that the perspectives in America about homo…

It’s January 28th  1986 and I’ve stayed home from school. I’m sitting in the basement of the tri-level home that my parents owned, when my mom called and told me that the Space Shuttle Challenger had exploded. I turned the TV channel I was watching to a m…

Some of my earliest memories are watching The Lone Ranger .  I remember cowboys in white hats and bandits in black hats.  When I picked up America’s Gun Wars: A Cultural History of Gun Control in the United States , I never expected to find a reference to …

One of the most frustrating and hurtful things that can tell someone who is suffering is that it’s their fault. Bad things happen to good people, and it has nothing to do with their faith, their character, or anything other than the randomness of life….

I use pink to highlight those passages of text that I disagree with. My notes from The Coddling of the American Mind were a sea of pink highlights. Normally, this means that I struggle with what the authors are saying. When I look back at The Marketing…

There aren’t that many television shows I remember from my childhood.  Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood is one of them.  In The Good Neighbor: The Life and Work of Fred Rogers , Maxwell King speaks of the man behind the scenes.  The story is of a man wh…

I’ve heard the stories – or rather I’ve heard the sensationalized stories – about how World War II came to be and how it ended. However, somewhere in the reduction done for history books, I missed the importance of the event. I don’t mean the importanc…

Columbo’s catch phrase, “Just the facts, ma’am,” is strangely appropriate when it comes to understanding the facts around gun rights and gun control.  Gun Control Myths: How Politicians, The Media, and Botched “Studies” Have Twisted the Facts on Gun Contr…

It’s not a Norman Rockwell picture.  There’s no wholesome family sitting in a well-furnished home.  It’s the picture of capitalism that created a market for weapons of destruction.  Gun Country: Gun Capitalism, Culture, and Control in Cold War America …

It’s complicated.  That’s the best way to describe the answers that Guns in America: Examining the Facts seeks to give.  Like all wicked problems , if you define them one way the answers are simple; defined another, still legitimate, way, the answe…

One of the things that I deeply respect is people who are willing to do the reading and research necessary to have a complete and balanced view of a topic. That’s what I found in Daniel Horowitz’ Happier?: The History of a Cultural Movement That Aspired…

I’m by no means a history buff, but there’s something about Iceland that drew me in and made me want to understand the story behind the island nation in the North Atlantic. The History of Iceland  is a tome about the Icelandic people and how this amazi…

I recently finished printing a 3D model of Mister Rogers’ neighborhood trolley.  It brought me a strange sense of joy to think of the little trolley that transported viewers from the real world of Mister Rogers’ house to the make-believe world.  Both …

It’s fitting that Joanne Rogers, Fred Roger’s wife, would open Life’s Journeys According to Mister Rogers .  Written in 2005, two years after Fred’s death and using his quotes, the book pays homage to his wisdom.  However, It’s Joanne’s wisdom and pe…

There are probably neighbors you have today – or you’ve had in the past – whom you don’t want to emulate.  They’re the people you didn’t click with and didn’t form relationships with.  However, most of those who grew up with Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood wou…

It has been identified as the sentinel event.  The book No Easy Answers: The Truth Behind Death at Columbine High School is an exposition and review of the events leading up to the Columbine Massacre as well as the aftermath of the event.  I started r…

It’s a short book.  It is perhaps the shortest book that I’ve reviewed.  However, there’s something profound about The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity , which is both hidden from view and inherently true.  We’ve been told not to back a wild animal int…

I’m blessed by a wide variety of people in my life.  Their experiences and perspectives are so different and rich.  One of those whose path has intersected with mine responded to my question about books about facilitation with The Four-Fold Way: Walking the…

It’s an artful thing to create the right choices so that people are nudged gently into the behaviors that are best for them. That’s what Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness  is all about – helping people make the best choices…

I’ve always had a special place in my heart for libraries. They’re safe places where you can get lost and eventually become found. That’s why when a deal for purchasing The Public Library: A Photographic Essay  crossed my path, I decided to pick it up a…

The actual source of my memory is lost to the sands of time.  We lived in a few houses during the first few years of my life.  I can remember seeing Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood – but I can’t remember which home I was at.  I never knew Mister Rogers a…

While today we might recognize the role of the social work profession, that wasn’t the case in the late 1960s and early 1970s.  That’s why The Common Base of Social Work Practice was so important.  It helped to explain what social work meant and what …

A crisis is a temporary inability to cope by means of our normal problem-solving devices.  People in Crisis: Understanding and Helping is designed to teach the means by which we can help people through their crises and to reach the other side by helping …

I’m concerned.  A lot of people are concerned, really.  It seems like our political system in the United States is spiraling out of control, and it’s not clear what can be done to stop it.  The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels is n…

It wasn’t what I expected, but it was good.  I picked up Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity to understand the issue from a societal perspective and what could be done to address the challenges that so many people face as they’re ster…

I don’t have a particular passion for automobiles.  That’s not why I picked up Unsafe at Any Speed .  Ralph Nader may not have been successful in his presidential bids, but what he did do is disrupt industries that were harming consumers.  He’s lauded f…

It’s Joanne Rogers’ wisdom that starts The World According to Mister Rogers: Important Things to Remember .  Written the year of his death, his grieving wife was able to share her vision of Fred Rogers in a way that no other could – except perhaps Fred h…