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Academic books and texts that you're reading

SFG75

SFG75

Well-Known Member
What scholarly or academic textbook are you reading? I suppose this could fall into the general category of non-fiction, though if you were to post there, the chances of other students/life long learners finding what you posted would not be too great. As for me, I'm reading The Rise of American Democracy, Vol.1 by Princeton historian Sean Wilentz. The foppish Federalists and their disdain for the working man has always been an interest of mine. Gotta love Jefferson's philosophy of state's rights and the whole nobility of the yeoman farmer thing.

So, what scholarly book or text are you reading?
 
I was reading texts on psychological testing and counselling, but since I've left my course I don't need to anymore! I'm planning on reading a few of Albert Ellis' books, and I would love to read up on evolutionary psychology, if anyone has any recommendations.

PS.
SF, your new avatar means that I'm going to confuse you with someone from Palimpsest. Apologies in advance :).....Unless, that is you......

EDIT: a quick check of both profiles suggests, no.
 
I'm between semesters at the moment, so I'm not reading my Intro to Financial Accounting text anymore. But I have just begun Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. I am considering going into environmental engineering, and have heard from several sources that this book basically began the environmentalist movement.
 
Robots: Bringing Intelligent Machines to Life? by Ruth Aylett and I Robot by Isaac Asimov.

I'm so going to ace this course and build an army of killbots.
 
I'm on my way to the used book store to purchase a few chemistry textbooks from the 1890's... should be good fun! I can't wait to read them :D
 
I've requested (but not yet received) a copy of a paper that was presented at last years International Conference on Pattern Recognition by Professor Alex Pentland of the Human Dynamics Lab at MIT. It's innocuous sounding title is A Computational Model of Social Signalling. Apparently, what Pentland and his team have done is to develop computer software that can predict the outcome of a debate or negotiation purely from social signals alone, without any reference to the rational content of the argument. Pentland describes this as "astonishing". So do I!

I'm intrigued to see how this squares with some of the research into stereotypes that Steven Pinker cites in The Blank Slate. According to Pinker the research shows that most peoples stereotypes are a fair and accurate judgement of the stereotyped group provided that they have personal and not second hand experience of the group being stereotyped. It also shows that people will readily change their impressions of an individual in the light of evidence that contradicts the stereotype, but that this process is degraded if they are distracted or time-pressurised. It's interesting to wonder what implications Pentland's work has for the "objective" standards against which people's stereotypes were assessed, although Pinker does mention that some of these standards were set by the groups being stereotyped, and not just "independent" researchers.
 
Maimonides

Right now I'm working on Maimonides - reading Wikipedia (!) and a more scholarly introduction and then I'm going to tackle The Guide for the Perplexed. I'm planning, with another instructor, a series of presentations next spring on belief and the effects of belief.

What causes us to believe something or to "believe in" something?
Can we will belief?
How do our beliefs affect our moral or social actions - or do our actions create our beliefs?

We do not expect to answer these questions but we hope to get some good discussions going.

I hope to talk about Maimonides and Williams James; he (more political) wants to do Descartes and Karl Marx.
 
Just finished The Open Society And Its Enemies by the late Karl R. Popper. It's a great examination of Athenian democracy and how people like Plato began to mourn the demise of the "closed" society whereby early tribal leaders and the like held sway without input from the masses. I had a great time reading this book and found it be very interesting. Popper speculated as to why Plato's society in Republic took the form that it did-that Plato actually recognized class antagonisms and sought to minimize them by even trying to remedy inter-class rivalaries and the like. A definite 4/5 in my book.
 
Holy old thread! I'm going to kick it up a bit.
I'm going to be reading "iSpeak"
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I'll be starting my class on June 10th. Speech 101 (Oh Joy!):D
 
None at the moment, since I just finished up a semester, but I had been reading Precalculus: Graphs and Models, and America : A Narrative HIstory vol. 1 .
 
Ive been reading THE EARTH REPORT: the essential guide to global ecological issues. Pretty interesting book, has alot of global essays in it. And alot of cool diagrams. Only problem is, its kind of old..so im guessing alot of the info is off But the book costed 25 cents at salvation army sooo.....
 
I'm excited, I haven't taken a class in a LONG time. I will be reading Educational Governance and Administration; Fifth Edition.
 
These texts were for my summer school schedule. The case book had some tough situations, that portion of the class was very demanding. I did pass with flying colors. If anything, I learned that you have to deliberate and get all sides of the problem sounded out. Not doing so could be the very end of you.:whistling:

If I only knew...success strategies for navigating the principalship; Harvey B. Alvy & Pam Robbins

A casebook for school leaders; Linking the ISLLC standards to effective practice; Karen L. Hanson.
 
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