The Scientific Mindset: How Thinking Scientifically Drives Better Business Decisions (Stefan H. Thomke)

In The Scientific Mindset: How Thinking Scientifically Drives Better Business Decisions, author Stefan H. Thomke argues that testing, analyzing, and conducting data-driven research can help guide critical decision-making within a business. Its central message is simple: When decisions matter, do not simply trust the "hot" idea in the room, nor the loudest or most influential voices. Just state what you believe, create a system to test it, and allow evidence to guide the outcome.

Thomke applies this approach to the problems leaders face every day, from understanding customers to choosing strategy and allocating resources. He cites examples from Amazon and Lego to show how experimentation can uncover assumptions that ordinary discussion leaves untouched. Thomke encourages readers to go beyond trusting one's gut and begin to ask sharper questions, form testable hypotheses, design meaningful experiments, and build workplaces where learning matters more than defending a first answer or a gut reaction.

The Scientific Mindset is well-suited for managers, entrepreneurs, and anyone making decisions amid uncertainty. Its useful message is to test more, assume less, and avoid trusting your gut in every circumstance. Because sometimes your gut can be wildly wrong.

MY RATING: 4.5

Lightning Beneath the Sea: The Race to Wire the World and the Dawn of the Information Age (James M. Tabor)

In Lightning Beneath the Sea: The Race to Wire the World and the Dawn of the Information Age, James M. Tabor tells the remarkable story of Cyrus Field. Field was an entrepreneur who attempted to connect Europe and North America with an underwater telegraph cable. Beginning in the 1850s, Field and his team faced enormous technical, financial, and natural obstacles before finally succeeding in 1866. Tabor presents the project as a 19th Century equivalent of a moonshot, an ambitious and seemingly impossible idea but one that ultimately transformed communication.

Rather than focusing only on technical details, Tabor personalizes the project. He details conflicts, failures, and determination by Field and various ship crews that labored on several occasions to make the dream of Trans-Atlantic communication a reality. Storms, broken cables, financial losses, competition, and engineering problems repeatedly threatened the expedition. These setbacks provide the narrative with suspense and provide pace to the book. Tabor also explains the complicated science and technology in a way that is accessible to readers who may not have a technical background.

Tabor closes by highlighting why this communications breakthrough still matters today. The submarine telegraph cable became an early foundation of global communication and helped make rapid global communication possible. Instead of taking hours to telegraph a message, as it did in 1858, messages now are near-instantaneous.

Overall, Lightning Beneath the Sea is an engaging combination of history, adventure, science, and biography. Tabor makes a complicated technological achievement accessible and exciting. The book is especially appealing to readers interested in innovation, exploration, engineering, and the origins of modern communication.

MY RATING: 4.5

The Capitol: The Surprising Biography of an American Building (Brian Jay Jones)

Brian Jay Jones’s The Capitol: The Surprising Biography of an American Building spans three centuries and combines architecture, politics, popular culture, and biography. Jones follows the building from its beginnings through repeated expansion, conflict, destruction, and renewal.

Jones’s narrative highlights the impact George Washington, Ronald Reagan, and a cast of historic figures from the Senate and House of Representatives had on the building. Additionally, Jones highlights the work of many architects and superintendents who contributed to the continued improvement and upgrades of the building. The book moves from the Capitol’s construction and changing dome to assassination attempts, thwarted bombings, Civil War use, and the January 6 attack. These episodes keep the history immediate rather than merely architectural.

Jones’s greatest strength is connecting physical details with national themes. The Capitol emerges as a structure shaped by argument, compromise, ambition, violence, technology, and repair. Jones’s storytelling is effective and the narrative flows with relative ease despite a parade of names and dates. The balance in storytelling helps show the Capitol as not only a place of significance in America’s government, but also a place that is continuously evolving to meet America’s needs. Ultimately, The Capitol is most persuasive when it treats the building neither as a flawless monument nor as a simple backdrop but as a changing record of American democracy today.

MY RATING: 4.5

Shanghai: The Story of China's Most Dynamic City (Michael Dillon)

Michael Dillon's Shanghai: The Story of China's Most Dynamic City is an engaging look at the modern history of one of the world's most influential urban centers. Dillon has an extensive expertise in Chinese history and lived there for some time. He traces Shanghai's remarkable journey from a modest fishing settlement to a global financial and cultural powerhouse, with the brunt of his focus starting in the 1840’s with the end of the Opium Wars and the opening of Shanghai to foreigners. Rather than presenting a simple chronological account, he shows how the city's identity has been shaped by commerce, foreign influence, political revolution, and rapid economic growth. This broad perspective makes the book accessible to both general readers and those with a deeper interest in Chinese history.

Shanghai has been a city of contradictions. It’s been mostly cosmopolitan for much of the past 200 years, yet also revolutionary during the Cultural Revolution. Dillon examines the wealth and innovation that define the modern city while also acknowledging the inequality, organized crime, and political tensions that were ever present.

Overall, Shanghai is an informative and compelling study that successfully captures the city's rich past and its continuing role in shaping China's future. It is highly recommended for readers interested in Chinese history and urban development. 

MY RATING: 4

Exit Stalin: The Soviet Union as a Civilization, 1953-1991 (Mark B. Smith)

Mark B. Smith's Exit Stalin: The Soviet Union as a Civilization, 1953-1991 opens a window behind the Iron Curtain, giving readers a glimpse into life in the Soviet Union after the death of Joseph Stalin. Smith argues that Soviet society became more complex, with citizens experiencing both greater personal security and continuing political repression until the last few years of Mikhail Gorbachev’s rule when the economy cratered but repression mostly eased. 

Smith explores education, housing, literature, science, and popular culture, showing how ordinary people navigated the contradictions of Soviet society. This approach gives readers a richer understanding of the country, enhancing the stories of each of the Soviet leaders that succeeded Stalin. His discussion of reform under Nikita Khrushchev, stability and stagnation of Leonid Brezhnev's era, and eventual collapse of the Soviet system under Mikhail Gorbachev is balanced and carefully supported by historical evidence. A major focus of the book is on the dissidents in Soviet life (such as Andrei Sakharov and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn) and how the KGB and Soviet leadership varied in their handling of individuals who dissented with the goals of Soviet leadership. 

One of the key questions Smith addresses centers on the primary causes of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, a question that many who study Soviet history have debated over the last 35 years. Overall, Exit Stalin is a solid contribution to the study of Soviet and Russian history

MY RATING: 4

The First All-Star Game: Babe Ruth, FDR, and America at the Crossroads (Randall Sullivan)

The First All-Star Game: Babe Ruth, FDR, and America at the Crossroads by Randall Sullivan recounts not just a pivotal moment in baseball history but much of the context that helped set the stage for July 1933’s “Game of the Century” in Chicago. While the book highlights many of the players and the details of the game, Sullivan spends about half of the narrative detailing baseball and American life in the 1920’s and early 1930’s.

To his credit, Sullivan avoids overwhelming the reader with statistics, instead focusing on character, motivation, and atmosphere. His descriptions of players, fans, and journalists create vivid scenes that invite readers into the era. You learn about some of the lesser-known (to today’s baseball fans) stars of the early 1930’s: guys like Lloyd and Paul Waner, Rick Farrell, and Pepper Martin. 

Some sections include extensive background information. About 200 pages dive into the backstory of baseball and America between 1919 and 1933, from the “Black Sox” scandal and appointment of Judge Kennsaw Landis as baseball’s first commissioner to the World’s Fair and America’s political environment. 

If you’re looking for a story on the All-Star game itself, this book may not be for you due to that extra context. However, as a history book that shows the connection between baseball, American life, and big city politics, The First All-Star Game is a detailed account of how the game came to take place and how a “one-time” event turned into a midsummer spectacle that has lasted nearly a century.

MY RATING: 3.5

1873: The Rothschilds, the First Great Depression, and the Making of the Modern World (Liaquat Ahamed)

In 1873: The Rothschilds, the First Great Depression, and the Making of the Modern World, author Liaquat Ahamed offers an engaging account of the financial panic that reshaped the global economy in the late nineteenth century. Focusing on the crash of 1873 and its long aftermath, he argues that this crisis was the first truly global economic downturn, linking events in Europe, the United States, and North Africa through expanding networks of finance and trade.

The Panics of 1873 (the use of “panics” is intentional since there were several stock market selloffs globally that year) were caused in part by feverish speculation in railroads, shipping, and stock markets in a number of places. The first panic was in Vienna, with subsequent market routes breaking out in Germany, France, and in New York, all brought about by excess market or industry speculation.

The book places the Rothschild family at the center of the narrative, using their banking empire as a lens through which readers can understand the rise of international capital markets and the forces that led to collapse. The author also explores the political and social consequences of the depression, including rising populism, growing antisemitism, two decades of deflation in prices, and the weakening of Reconstruction in the United States. Ahamed argues that while growth in the years following the panic was solid, coming in at around 2.5% annually, the perception in many minds was that the depression was lingering since prices were falling. This price drop was caused in part by increasing production, which increased supply of items, causing prices to drop.

Overall, 1873 is an excellent work of economic history that illuminates how financial crises can transform societies. It is both informative and highly readable, offering valuable insights into the origins of the modern global economy.

MY RATING: 4.5