Blog:
Technology and Learning
What should we make of these 934 Kindle books in my Wish List? What questions can we ask about this list? What books on this list have you read and would you recommend? How do our book Wish List’s overlap? How many books in your Wish List? Is your Wish List like my Wish List, dominated by e-books? Would you be willing to share your Wish List with our IHE community?
The ability to easily share this sort of list is something new. The abundance of digital space makes the length of the list meaningless. The ability to copy and past this list from Amazon makes its construction simple and fast. The ecosystem of the smart phone and the Amazon app encourages adding books to the list. The fact that books in this list are links makes it more likely that you will add them to your Wish List.
I’m not quite sure if I should be depressed or heartened by the 934 books in this Wish List.
On the depressing side, the reality is that I’ll end up reading very few of these books. The book that I’m most likely to read is the book that you are also reading. Amazon changed the economics of book reading with Kindle e-books, as there is no longer a price advantage in waiting for the paperback. Whatever our concerns about Amazon’s monopoly e-book power, (and we should all have plenty of concerns), we can’t deny the price dividend that book consumers now enjoy. Best case scenario is that I’ll ever read 10 percent of these books. That is depressing.
On the positive side, this Book List is a map of potential learning. I can look at this Wish List and get a better understand of the questions that I ask. Where I’m curious and where I’m in-curious. The scarcity around reading today is time. Nothing is cheaper in per-hour units than buying and reading books. A $15 book takes maybe 5 hours to read with our eyes, perhaps 8 or 9 hours to read with our ears. Even for fast readers books only cost us $3 an hour.
I’ve mostly given up on the idea that the books that I read will help me to be a better person. This is not the fault of the books. I read the wrong books. If I read more fiction than I’d be a better husband, dad, son, brother, and colleague. But mostly I read nonfiction. I read nonfiction because the world confuses me. I want to understand why some people are so rich and so many more are so poor? How your college and mine works, and how we can make it better? Why we make the bad decisions that seem to define so much of our behavior. How the material, social, and economic world that we live in came into being. How people learn? And what the future for my kids might look like?
The answers to all these questions may not be found in the books below, but I wouldn’t know where else to look. Books seem like our best bet to make sense of our lives.
What’s on your Wish List?
What are you reading?
Empty Labor: Idleness and Workplace Resistance by Roland Paulsen
Rethinking University Teaching: A Conversational Framework for the Effective Use of Learning Technologies by Diana Laurillard
Learner-Centered Teaching: Five Key Changes to Practice by Maryellen Weimer
NETWORK NATION by Richard R. John
Managing Technology in Higher Education: Strategies for Transforming Teaching and Learning by A. W. (Tony) Bates, Albert Sangra
Global Suburbs: Urban Sprawl from the Rio Grande to Rio de Janeiro (Cultural Spaces) by Lawrence Herzog
Making the Modern World: Materials and Dematerialization by Vaclav Smil
Generation on a Tightrope: A Portrait of Today's College Student by Arthur Levine, Diane R. Dean
Contemporary Japan: History, Politics, and Social Change since the 1980s (Blackwell History of the Contemporary World) by Jeff Kingston
Inside Greek U.: Fraternities, Sororities, and the Pursuit of Pleasure, Power, and Prestige by Alan D. DeSantis
How Learning Works: Seven Research-Based Principles for Smart Teaching by Susan A. Ambrose, Michael W. Bridges, Michele DiPietro
Retrofitting Suburbia, Updated Edition: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs by Ellen Dunham-Jones, June Williamson
The New Technology Elite: How Great Companies Optimize Both Technology Consumption and Production by Vinnie Mirchandani
The Age of Aging: How Demographics are Changing the Global Economy and Our World by George Magnus
Intelligent Enterprise: A Knowledge and Service Based Paradigm for Industr by James Brian Quinn
The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy (The Princeton Economic History of the Western World) by Kenneth Pomeranz
The Last Taboo: Opening the Door on the Global Sanitation Crisis by Maggie Black, Ben Fawcett
Student Success in College: Creating Conditions That Matter by George D. Kuh, Jillian Kinzie, John H. Schuh
Paying for the Party by Elizabeth A. Armstrong, Laura T. Hamilton
The Industrious Revolution: Consumer Behavior and the Household Economy, 1650 to the Present by Jan de Vries
Contagion: How Commerce Has Spread Disease by Mark Harrison
Too Much to Know: Managing Scholarly Information before the Modern Age by Ann M. Blair
The Power of Knowledge: How Information and Technology Made the Modern World by Jeremy Black
Inflated: How Money and Debt Built the American Dream by R. Christopher Whalen, Nouriel Roubini
How College Works by Daniel F. Chambliss
Trillions: Thriving in the Emerging Information Ecology by Peter Lucas, Joe Ballay, Mickey McManus
The History of the Ancient World: From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome by Susan Wise Bauer
The History of the Medieval World: From the Conversion of Constantine to the First Crusade by Susan Wise Bauer
Checklist for Change: Making American Higher Education a Sustainable Enterprise by Robert Zemsky
Energy Myths and Realities: Bringing Science to the Energy Policy Debate by Vaclav Smil
Adventures of an It Leader by Robert D. Austin, Richard L. Nolan, Shannon O'Donnell
The Riddle: Where Ideas Come From and How to Have Better Ones by Andrew Razeghi
The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective (New Approaches to Economic and Social History) by Robert C. Allen
Under New Management: Universities, Administrative Labor, and the Professional Turn by Randy Martin
Panicology: Two Statisticians Explain What's Worth Worrying About (and What's Not) in the 21st Century by Hugh Aldersey-Williams, Simon Briscoe
After the Car by Kingsley Dennis, John Urry
Creating a Learning Society: A New Approach to Growth, Development, and Social Progress (Kenneth Arrow Lecture Series) by Joseph E. Stiglitz, Philippe Aghion, Kenneth J. Arrow
The New Industrial Revolution by Peter Marsh
Getting Smart: How Digital Learning is Changing the World by Tom Vander Ark, Bob Wise
The $10 Trillion Prize: Captivating the Newly Affluent in China and India by Michael J. Silverstein, Abheek Singhi, Carol Liao
Good Products, Bad Products: Essential Elements to Achieving Superior Quality by James Adams
The Organization of Higher Education: Managing Colleges for a New Era by Michael N. Bastedo
Everything Connects: How to Transform and Lead in the Age of Creativity, Innovation, and Sustainability: How to Transform and Lead in the Age of Creativity, Innovation and Sustainability by Faisal Hoque, Drake Baer
Money at Work: On the Job with Priests, Poker Players and Hedge Fund Traders by Kevin J. Delaney
Captive Audience by Susan P. Crawford
Ungifted: Intelligence Redefined by Scott Barry Kaufman
The Future of Management by Gary Hamel, Bill Breen
The Change Function: Why Some Technologies Take Off and Others Crash and Burn by Pip Coburn
Vanished Kingdoms: The Rise and Fall of States and Nations by Norman Davies
The Impact Equation: Are You Making Things Happen or Just Making Noise? by Chris Brogan, Juliet Stanwell Smith
The Assumptions Economists Make by Jonathan Schlefer
The Age of Equality: The Twentieth Century in Economic Perspective by Richard Pomfret
Reinventing Higher Education: The Promise of Innovation by Ben Wildavsky, Andrew P. Kelly, Kevin Carey
Endless Appetites: How the Commodities Casino Creates Hunger and Unrest (Bloomberg) by Alan Bjerga
Uncontrolled: The Surprising Payoff of Trial-and-Error for Business, Politics, and Society by Jim Manzi
Interop: The Promise and Perils of Highly Interconnected Systems by John Palfrey, Urs Gasser
The Infinite Resource: The Power of Ideas on a Finite Planet by Ramez Naam
Managing the Unexpected: Resilient Performance in an Age of Uncertainty by Karl E. Weick, Kathleen M. Sutcliffe
Leadership Conversations: Challenging High Potential Managers to Become Great Leaders by Alan S. Berson, Richard G. Stieglitz
Moving Millions: How Coyote Capitalism Fuels Global Immigration by Jeffrey Kaye
Creating the Twentieth Century: Technical Innovations of 1867-1914 and Their Lasting Impact (Technical Revolutions and Their Lasting Impact) by Vaclav Smil
Darwin's Conjecture: The Search for General Principles of Social and Economic Evolution by Geoffrey M. Hodgson, Thorbjørn Knudsen
To Forgive Design: Understanding Failure by Henry Petroski
A Population History of the United States by Herbert S. Klein
Made in the USA: The Rise and Retreat of American Manufacturing by Vaclav Smil
You Are Here: From the Compass to GPS, the History and Future of How We Find Ourselves by Hiawatha Bray
How We Do It: The Evolution and Future of Human Reproduction by Robert Martin
Remedy and Reaction: The Peculiar American Struggle over Health Care Reform by Paul Starr
The Man Who Sold America: The Amazing (but True!) Story of Albert D. Lasker and the Creation of the Advertising Century by Jeffrey L. Cruikshank, Arthur W Schultz
A Brief History of Central America by Hector Perez Brignoli, Ricardo B. Sawrey, Susana Stettri De Sawrey
Making Reform Work: The Case for Transforming American Higher Education by Robert Zemsky
Simpler: The Future of Government by Cass R. Sunstein
The Leisure Economy: How Changing Demographics, Economics, and Generational Attitudes Will Reshape Our Lives and Our Industries by Linda Nazareth
Create Your Future the Peter Drucker Way: Developing and Applying a Forward-Focused Mindset by Bruce Rosenstein
Stuff by Daniel Miller
What Matters Now: How to Win in a World of Relentless Change, Ferocious Competition, and Unstoppable Innovation by Gary Hamel
Seeing What Others Don't: The Remarkable Ways We Gain Insights by Gary Klein
Why We Lost: A General's Inside Account of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars by Daniel Bolger
Enchanted Objects: Design, Human Desire, and the Internet of Things by David Rose
If Mayors Ruled the World by Barber Benjamin R.
When the Money Runs Out by Stephen D. King
My Secret Life on the McJob: Lessons from Behind the Counter Guaranteed to Supersize Any Management Style by Jerry Newman
Circling the Bases: Essays on the Challenges and Prospects of the Sports Industry by Andrew Zimbalist
Russia Against Napoleon: The Battle for Europe, 1807 to 1814 by Dominic Lieven
The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail-but Some Don't by Nate Silver
The Success Equation: Untangling Skill and Luck in Business, Sports, and Investing by Michael J. Mauboussin
Disney U: How Disney University Develops the World's Most Engaged, Loyal, and Customer-Centric Employees by Doug Lipp
Producing Prosperity: Why America Needs a Manufacturing Renaissance by Gary P. Pisano, Willy C. Shih
Worthless, Impossible and Stupid: How Contrarian Entrepreneurs Create and Capture Extraordinary Value by Daniel Isenberg
The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work by Teresa Amabile, Steven Kramer
The American Academic Profession: Transformation in Contemporary Higher Education by Joseph C. Hermanowicz
ALONE TOGETHER by Paul R. Amato
American Project: The Rise and Fall of a Modern Ghetto by Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh, William Julius Wilson
A History of American Higher Education by John R. Thelin
Beans: A History by Ken Albala
Crossing the Finish Line: Completing College at America's Public Universities by William G. Bowen, Matthew M. M. Chingos, Michael S. S. McPherson
Thieves I've Known (Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction) by Tom Kealey
The Locavore's Dilemma: In Praise of the 10,000-mile Diet by Pierre Desrochers, Hiroko Shimizu
The Great Brain Race: How Global Universities Are Reshaping the World by Ben Wildavsky
When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment by Mark A. R. Kleiman
Understanding the Process of Economic Change (Princeton Economic History of the Western World) by Douglass C. North
Unreal City: Las Vegas, Black Mesa, and the Fate of the West by Judith Nies
Pin Action: Small-Time Gangsters, High-Stakes Gambling, and the Teenage Hustler Who Became a Bowling Champion by Gianmarc Manzione
The Myths of Creativity: The Truth About How Innovative Companies and People Generate Great Ideas by David Burkus
Snob Zones: Fear, Prejudice, and Real Estate by Lisa Prevost
My Two Polish Grandfathers: And Other Essays on the Imaginative Life by Witold Rybczynski
The Kills: Sutler, The Massive, The Kill, and The Hit by Richard House
Smartcuts: How Hackers, Innovators, and Icons Accelerate Success by Shane Snow
Haunted Empire: Apple After Steve Jobs by Yukari Iwatani Kane
The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance by Henry Petroski
Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America by Harvey Klehr, John Earl Haynes, Alexander Vassiliev
The Human Age: The World Shaped By Us by Diane Ackerman
The House with Sixteen Handmade Doors: A Tale of Architectural Choice and Craftsmanship by Henry Petroski, Catherine Petroski
The Gateway Arch (Icons of America) by Tracy Campbell
Greenback Planet: How the Dollar Conquered the World and Threatened Civilization as We Know It (Discovering America) by H. W. Brands
Portfolios of the Poor: How the World's Poor Live on $2 a Day by Daryl Collins, Jonathan Morduch, Stuart Rutherford
EconoPower: How a New Generation of Economists is Transforming the World by Mark Skousen, Art Laffer
This Land: The Battle over Sprawl and the Future of America by Anthony Flint
Any Way You Slice It: The Past, Present, and Future of Rationing by Stan Cox
Tapping into The Wire by Peter L. Beilenson, Patrick A. McGuire, David Simon
Spam Nation: The Inside Story of Organized Cybercrime-from Global Epidemic to Your Front Door by Brian Krebs
Generation Unbound: Drifting into Sex and Parenthood without Marriage by Isabel V. Sawhill
The Heist: A Novel (Gabriel Allon Book 14) by Daniel Silva
The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers by Ben Horowitz
Astonish Me: A novel by Maggie Shipstead
Playing House: Notes of a Reluctant Mother by Lauren Slater
The Great American University: Its Rise to Preeminence, Its Indispensable National Role, Why It Must Be Protected by Jonathan R. Cole
Liars and Outliers: Enabling the Trust that Society Needs to Thrive by Bruce Schneier
The Natural History of the Rich: A Field Guide by Richard Conniff
Unnatural Selection: Why the Geeks Will Inherit the Earth by Mark Roeder
Supersurvivors: The Surprising Link Between Suffering and Success by David B. Feldman, Lee Daniel Kravetz
The Routes Not Taken: A Trip Through New York City's Unbuilt Subway System by Joseph B. Raskin
The Cost Disease: Why Computers Get Cheaper and Health Care Doesn't by William J. Baumol, Monte Malach, Ariel Pablos-Mendez
Sugar: A Bitterweet History by Elizabeth Abbot
White Bread: A Social History of the Store-Bought Loaf by Aaron Bobrow-Strain
The Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages 400-1000 by Chris Wickham
Against Thrift: Why Consumer Culture is Good for the Economy, the Environment, and Your Soul by James Livingston
Wrong: Why experts* keep failing us--and how to know when not to trust them *Scientists, finance wizards, doctors, relationship gurus, celebrity CEOs, ... consultants, health officials and more by David H. Freedman
Were You Born on the Wrong Continent?: How the European Model Can Help You Get a Life by Thomas Geoghegan
Numbers Rule Your World: The Hidden Influence of Probabilities and Statistics on Everything You Do by Kaiser Fung
The Last Three Miles: Politics, Murder, and the Construction of America's First Superhighway by Steven Hart
Stayin' Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class by Jefferson R. Cowie
Need, Speed, and Greed: How the New Rules of Innovation Can Transform Businesses, Propel Nations to Greatness, and Tame the World's Most Wicked Problems by Vijay V. Vaitheeswaran
Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence by Daniel Goleman
To Rise Again at a Decent Hour: A Novel by Joshua Ferris
Us: A Novel by David Nicholls
Tokyo Kill: A Thriller (Jim Brodie Book 2) by Barry Lancet
@War: The Rise of the Military-Internet Complex by Shane Harris
#EdJourney: A Roadmap to the Future of Education by Grant Lichtman
Korea: The Impossible Country by Daniel Tudor
Latino America: How America's Most Dynamic Population is Poised to Transform the Politics of the Nation by Matt Barreto, Gary M. Segura
The Brewer's Tale: A History of the World According to Beer by William Bostwick
Degrees of Inequality: How the Politics of Higher Education Sabotaged the American Dream by Suzanne Mettler
The Tell: The Little Clues That Reveal Big Truths about Who We Are by Matthew Hertenstein
Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg Mckeown
Famous Writers I Have Known: A Novel by James Magnuson
Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity, and Branding in the Social Media Age by Alice E. Marwick
Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change the World by Tony Wagner
The Org: The Underlying Logic of the Office by Ray Fisman, Tim Sullivan
The Future Is Exxon by Paul Roberts
Spent: Sex, Evolution, and Consumer Behavior by Geoffrey Miller
Drink: A Cultural History of Alcohol by Iain Gately
Future Babble: Why Expert Predictions Fail - and Why We Believe Them Anyway by Dan Gardner
Global Tilt: Leading Your Business Through the Great Economic Power Shift by Ram Charan
Servants: A Downstairs History of Britain from the Nineteenth Century to Modern Times by Lucy Lethbridge
Merchant Kings: When Companies Ruled the World, 1600--1900 by Stephen R. Bown
The King's Best Highway: The Lost History of the Boston Post Road, the Route That Made America by Eric Jaffe
Act of War: A Thriller (Scot Harvath) by Brad Thor
Busted: A Tale of Corruption and Betrayal in the City of Brotherly Love by Wendy Ruderman, Barbara Laker
The Road to Global Prosperity by Michael Mandelbaum
House of Outrageous Fortune: Fifteen Central Park West, the World's Most Powerful Address by Michael Gross
The $11 Billion Year: From Sundance to the Oscars, an Inside Look at the Changing Hollywood System by Anne Thompson
The Next American Economy by William J. Holstein
Sex, Bombs, and Burgers: How War, Pornography, and Fast Food Have Shaped Modern Technology by Peter Nowak
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