Marginalia

I wanted to like this book, found the early pages a chore.... then suddenly, I found myself hooked. Mary Pilon's book revolves around Ralph Anspach's legal case against Parker Brothers. Parker Brothers own the "Monopoly"...

I re-read this fascinating book today to help me with a column. It's terrific stuff: packed with memorable facts yet easy to read, counter-intuitive yet persuasive. Books about technology tend to focus on the inventions, the...

I'm excited to announce that on 17 September, my new book will be published in the UK and around the world by Bridge Street Press. How To Make The World Add Up is my effort to help you think clearly about the numbers that swirl...

This thoughtful - and thought-provoking - book takes on a different undertone when read in the light of lockdown. Odell takes her time describing her slow meanderings around the Rose Garden in Oakland, California, sitting and...

Edward O. Thorp is a remarkable chap, and so this is a remarkable autobiography. A Depression-era child whose parents were smart but desperately poor, young Thorp took part-time jobs so that he could buy raw materials. As a boy,...

What is Dark Data? Consider the example of the 1986 Challenger shuttle disaster. Should the shuttle launch, despite fears that low temperatures might weaken the "o-ring" seals? A graph of seven previous occasions when the o-rings...

'"Racist" and "antiracist" are like peelable name tags that are placed and replaced based on what someone is doing or not doing, supporting or expressing in each moment. These are not permanent tattoos. No one becomes a racist or...

I've been a fan of Maria Konnikova's writing for a while. She's a Harvard-educated academic psychologist who switching to writing and turned out to be even better at that than psychology - her book, The Confidence Game, is a...