Some points are more provocative than convincing, but the authors put a lively spin on an age-old argument.
A counterintuitive analysis suggesting that consumers instinctively know more about the value of the signals they are sending than their critics do.
Most books that cover this territory suggest that consumers are mere sheep, blindly led by the insidious forces of capitalism. That assumption, write Quartz (Philosophy and Cognitive Science/Caltech; co-author: Liars, Lovers, and Heroes: What the New Brain Science Reveals About How We Become Who We Are, 2002) and political scientist and communications professional Asp, is wrong. The authors’ credentials provide an indication of how much ground they cover, from a variety of perspectives that transcend conventional categorization. Perhaps the key concept concerns self-image as reflected through the perception of others: “The fact that our self-concept draws on how we think others think about us presents a tremendously intriguing possibility,” write the authors. Consumers proceed with an eye toward “how others might think of them with that product: that is, how the product might enhance their social image.” Where the measuring sticks for social image might once have been wealth and conspicuous consumption, the evolution of “cool”—from anti-materialist rejection of the bourgeoisie to dot.com mainstreaming and from bebop to beatnik to rebel to hippie to ironic hipster—has changed the signals and codes that consumers send. It shows how Harley-Davidson has gone from annual sales of around 70,000 in the early 1990s to more than 325,000 in 2005 by seeing its “consumer culture evolve from a hierarchical to a pluralistic one, a ‘mosaic of microcultures,’ ” while sales of minivans plummeted over the same period in favor of SUVs targeting the same market with a different coded message. Quartz and Asp are particularly incisive on the evolution from rebel cool to “Dotcool,” encompassing the embrace of nerdiness and hipster irony as “today’s knowledge worker is valued for his unconventionality, because originality drives innovation,” thus transcending the rebel-cool disdain for “selling out.”
Some points are more provocative than convincing, but the authors put a lively spin on an age-old argument.Pub Date: April 14, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-374-12918-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Jan. 13, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2015
A quirky wonder of a book.
A Peabody Award–winning NPR science reporter chronicles the life of a turn-of-the-century scientist and how her quest led to significant revelations about the meaning of order, chaos, and her own existence.
Miller began doing research on David Starr Jordan (1851-1931) to understand how he had managed to carry on after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake destroyed his work. A taxonomist who is credited with discovering “a full fifth of fish known to man in his day,” Jordan had amassed an unparalleled collection of ichthyological specimens. Gathering up all the fish he could save, Jordan sewed the nameplates that had been on the destroyed jars directly onto the fish. His perseverance intrigued the author, who also discusses the struggles she underwent after her affair with a woman ended a heterosexual relationship. Born into an upstate New York farm family, Jordan attended Cornell and then became an itinerant scholar and field researcher until he landed at Indiana University, where his first ichthyological collection was destroyed by lightning. In between this catastrophe and others involving family members’ deaths, he reconstructed his collection. Later, he was appointed as the founding president of Stanford, where he evolved into a Machiavellian figure who trampled on colleagues and sang the praises of eugenics. Miller concludes that Jordan displayed the characteristics of someone who relied on “positive illusions” to rebound from disaster and that his stand on eugenics came from a belief in “a divine hierarchy from bacteria to humans that point[ed]…toward better.” Considering recent research that negates biological hierarchies, the author then suggests that Jordan’s beloved taxonomic category—fish—does not exist. Part biography, part science report, and part meditation on how the chaos that caused Miller’s existential misery could also bring self-acceptance and a loving wife, this unique book is an ingenious celebration of diversity and the mysterious order that underlies all existence.
A quirky wonder of a book.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5011-6027-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
An intriguing meditation on the nature of the universe and our attempts to understand it that should appeal to both...
Italian theoretical physicist Rovelli (General Relativity: The Most Beautiful of Theories, 2015, etc.) shares his thoughts on the broader scientific and philosophical implications of the great revolution that has taken place over the past century.
These seven lessons, which first appeared as articles in the Sunday supplement of the Italian newspaper Sole 24 Ore, are addressed to readers with little knowledge of physics. In less than 100 pages, the author, who teaches physics in both France and the United States, cogently covers the great accomplishments of the past and the open questions still baffling physicists today. In the first lesson, he focuses on Einstein's theory of general relativity. He describes Einstein's recognition that gravity "is not diffused through space [but] is that space itself" as "a stroke of pure genius." In the second lesson, Rovelli deals with the puzzling features of quantum physics that challenge our picture of reality. In the remaining sections, the author introduces the constant fluctuations of atoms, the granular nature of space, and more. "It is hardly surprising that there are more things in heaven and earth, dear reader, than have been dreamed of in our philosophy—or in our physics,” he writes. Rovelli also discusses the issues raised in loop quantum gravity, a theory that he co-developed. These issues lead to his extraordinary claim that the passage of time is not fundamental but rather derived from the granular nature of space. The author suggests that there have been two separate pathways throughout human history: mythology and the accumulation of knowledge through observation. He believes that scientists today share the same curiosity about nature exhibited by early man.
An intriguing meditation on the nature of the universe and our attempts to understand it that should appeal to both scientists and general readers.Pub Date: March 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-399-18441-3
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
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