Entries tagged “books”

May 17, 2011

A book from 1790 has been returned to a library in the town where it was originally borrowed.

The story of the three books began in 1796, when the Federal Society Library of “Cambden,” then part of Lincoln County, was founded. Not much is known about the library, Bilodeau said, other than the fact that it had about 200 volumes. The Goldsmith history was stamped number 53, still clearly visible even after all this time.

No word on the late fees.

Nov 16, 2010

Christie’s has two interesting auctions coming up.  The first is an original Apple-I computer, in original packaging, and is expected to sell for between $160,600 and $240,900.

The second is The Library of Edward Tufte which includes several rare books from the likes of Galileo, Picasso, Ernst, Newton, Descartes, and Euclid.

Update: The Apple computer sold for $210,000.

Apr 18, 2010

In 1934 a ledger was found that listed the “President” as having taken out two books in 1789 and never returned them. The President, of course, was George Washington. He borrowed “Law of Nations” and Vol. 12 of the “Commons Debates”.

This week, Bartlett and his staff became even more convinced the books were filched when librarian Matthew Haugen stumbled upon the long lost 14-volume collection of the “Commons Debates.”

Sure enough, Vol. 12 was missing.

The library doesn’t want the late fees, but they would like to get the books back.

Outliers: The Story of Success

December 14, 2008 at 2:00pm • One comment
Picture of Outliers book cover

Outliers: The Story of Success

An outlier, according to the dictionary, is “a statistical observation that is markedly different in value from the others of the sample”, in other words, a statistical anomaly. In his newest book, Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell attempts to examine why a few people succeed beyond the norm, and what made them outliers.

Along the way, he examines youth hockey players in Canada and how when they were born is more important than any inherit skill they may have; Bill Gates and The Beatles and how practice allows you to be ready for that once-in-a-lifetime opportunity; Jewish lawyers and how cultural prejudices may prepare you for an opportunity later in life; and several others. The book attempts to debunk the myth that a successful person can be “self-made”, and shows that luck, cultural heritage, and the opportunities of your predecessors may have more to do with being present at the right moment in time, with the right set of skills, to take advantage of an opportunity.

I have always enjoyed Gladwell’s writings, in both The New Yorker and his other books. I enjoyed this one as well. However, compared to his first two books, this one doesn’t hit the same chord. It is interesting to look a little deeper at some outliers and how they may have gotten where they did, but it isn’t fascinating; and that’s the difference between The Tipping Point/Blink, and Outliers.

Rating: 7.5/10