Reviews

Opinions here expressed are mine but you are free to adopt them.

Wealth redistribution?
During a walk in the forest, I listened to a recent episode of the Oxford-style debate series of Intelligence2. Oxford-style means that the position of the audience is registered before and after the debate, and the side that has gained the most percentage points, wins the debate.) The proposition was simple: Is it time for ...
Review: Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker
Seven years after his The Better Angels of our Nature, the book in which he presented abundant statistics and reasons why violence has declined, Steven Pinker has published an even more ambitious tome defending the idea and ideals of Enlightenment. The controversy that arose from the 'cautiously optimist' view he presented in 2011 might have ...
Review: Spent by Geoffrey Miller
Geoffrey Miller's 2008 book Spent: Sex, Evolution, and Consumer Behavior about conspicuous consumption uses the relatively new science of evolutionary psychology to analyse modern humans' consumerist behavior. The bottom line is that we engage in conspicuous consumption to show potential mates, like animals, that we have desirable traits. Through countless examples, some of which are ...
Review: Being Wrong by Kathryn Schulz
Being Wrong is a well-written account of our understanding of error. The author points out how central error is for all aspects of cultural proress. It is not an academic treatise, but still gives the history of thinking about scientific and religious truth a fair treatment, by mentioning for example St. Augustine's fallor ergo sum, ...
Review: Status Anxiety by Alain de Botton
Status anxiety is "the price we pay for acknowledging that there is a public distinction between a successful and an unsuccesful life." In this book, de Botton explores our social lives from the perspective of status, and arrives at a remarkably comprehensive account of human society, that is erudite as it is entertaining. Essentially, the ...
Review: Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall
Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall has been a very exciting read for me, and many readers on Goodreads agree (there are 1400 reviews available). It is the best book on geopolitics that I have read so far and it has helped me consolidate what I already knew and taught me a lot of new things as well. ...
Review: Capitalism by Jürgen Kocka
This is the first of some short book reviews here on creativechoice. I love reading and will share my thoughts about the books that I are think are worth my readers' while. The short book Capitalism: A Short History begins with a concise discussion of the most important figures in the history of the concept ...
Some notes on Paul Mason’s Postcapitalism
In reply to a noteworthy article in the Guardian about the book "Postcapitalism" that is published on July 30. 1 Mason interprets the transition from capitalism to postcapitalism as a parallel to the one from feudalism to capitalism. This serves to explain that such a societal transformation takes many decades and gives rise to 'a ...
Magic in the Moonlight – Woody Allen
I like this film precisely because Woody Allen is repeating himself. I have seen this film many times already. The Purple Rose of Cairo, Scoop, Midnight in Paris. There are a number of lovely reviews on IMDB so I'll skip the remarks about scenery, acting, and storyline (just this much: I think all these aspects ...