Dave O’Reilly’s Blog

	The Wisdom of Crowds Author: James Surowiecki Rating:
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In this fascinating book, New Yorker business columnist James Surowiecki explores a deceptively simple idea: Large groups of people are smarter than an elite few, no matter how brilliant–better at solving problems, fostering innovation, coming to wise decisions, even predicting the future. With boundless erudition and in delightfully clear prose, Surowiecki ranges across fields as diverse as popular culture, psychology, ant biology, behavioral economics, artificial intelligence, military history, and politics to show how this simple idea offers important lessons for how we live our lives, select our leaders, run our companies, and think about our world.

When I started reading this book I didn’t think I was going to enjoy it as much as I eventually did. There’s a bit at the start where he says that in the immediate aftermath of the challenger shuttle disaster, the stock market reacted by reducing the value of the stocks of all of the companies that were involved in the construction of the shuttle, but that the most significant drop was seen in the company that made the solid rocket boosters (which were the cause of the disaster). This was later borne out by the investigation into the cause of the disaster. This is presented as an example of when groups act intelligently. When I read this, I thought to myself…oh dear. There are all sorts of things that are logically wrong with that statement. Off the top of my head:

1. Correlation doesn’t imply causality
2. How did these stocks perform in relation to all of the other stocks on the market in the immediate aftermath of the challenger disaster.
3. It’s easy to find these sorts of ‘coincidences’ in retrospect, but unless they were predicted in advance they have no evidential significance whatsoever.
4. It’s exactly this sort of sloppy reasoning that leads to people believing in the effectiveness of things like reiki healing, aromatherapy and all that rubbish.

Anyway, when I read that I was thinking that this book was going to be a bit silly, but he quickly moves on to some much more substantial arguments, and I actually ended up quite enjoying it. There are some interesting points on when groups make more intelligent decisions than individuals and the circumstances that lead to foolish group decisions. The point does begin to become a bit laboured towards the end of the book, but overall I’d say it’s worth a read.

	The Big Oyster Author: Mark Kurlansky Rating:
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This book is thematically quite similar to Cotton, which I’ve just finished. However, this one covers the oyster trade in New York from the very early days of the settling of New York to the early part of the 20th century.

I suspect I would have enjoyed this book a bit more if I didn’t read it immediately after reading the one about Cotton, because I think it’s better written although it doesn’t cover as large a section of American history.

Well worth a read though!

	Cotton: The Biography of a Revolutionary Fiber Author: Stephen Yafa Rating:
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In the tradition of Mark Kurlansky’s Cod and Salt, this endlessly revealing book reminds us that the fiber we think of as ordinary is the world’s most powerful cash crop, and that it has shaped the destiny of nations. Ranging from its domestication 5,500 years ago to its influence in creating Calvin Klein’s empire and the Gap, Stephen Yafa’s Cotton gives us an intimate look at the plant that fooled Columbus into thinking he’d reached India, that helped start the Industrial Revolution as well as the American Civil War, and that made at least one bug—the boll weevil—world famous. A sweeping chronicle of ingenuity, greed, conflict, and opportunism, Cotton offers “a barrage of fascinating information” (Los Angeles Times).

An enjoyable read, covering quite a large swathe of american history.