All in book review

I like coffee, so "Coffee: A Dark History" by Anthony Wild was a pretty sure bet as a gift. This book gave me lots of information to impress the people at my local coffee roaster as well as make sad about the "dark history" of the coffee trade that survives to this day.

In my challenge to read anything this year, my Father's Day gift of Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner was so good I could barely put it down. For someone who enjoys numbers and math, I couldn't help wanting more: data, questions answered, and toys to do the analyses myself.

People have changed the world ever since they figured out how to bash on things with sharpened rocks. This book covers the evolution of our tools over the eons, from the simple tools of our ancient ancestors to the sophistication of our scientific technique today. The bulk of the book is a fascinating tour of surprising revelations and connections between technological, political and sociological changes.

I am in the middle of reading The Axemaker's Gift: A Doubled-Edged History of Human Culture by James Burke and Robert Ornstein. I find it an interesting dovetail into my thinking about knowledge mangaement and the concerns we frequently hear about the over-selling of technical solutions to the general issues of...