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What I’m Reading

Conspiracy Theories and the People Who Believe Them edited by Joseph E. Uscinski (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). My PhD case study Aum Shinrikyo was deeply influenced by anti-Semitic and power elite conspiracy theories, some from far right and evangelical Christian sources. Uscinski’s collection is a useful guide to the current political and sociological debates about conspiracy theories and their priming effects for extremist worldviews that may lead to political violence.

The Unrules: Man, Machines, and the Quest to Master Markets by Igor Tulchinsky (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2018). In the eighties and nineties, Russian mathematicians and physicists came to Wall Street. Tulchinsky was one of them. His asset management firm WorldQuant adopted many aspects of neoliberal capitalism, from competitive tournaments to traders as independent contractors. This memoir is a quant’s view of how to deal with contemporary information.

The Pac-Man Principle: A User’s Guide to Capitalism by Alex Wade (Zero Books, 2018). Here’s my interpretation of Pac-Man ludology and neoliberal capitalism: (i) the maze represents the situational environment; (ii) the Pac-Man character engages in consumption (or, capital accumulation); (iii) the power pills represent momentary escalation dominance over the four ghosts; and (iv) the maze exits represent the fetish of false escapes. Other video-games may lead to different interpretations of neoliberal capitalism’s political economy.

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What I’m Reading

  1. Russian ‘Hybrid Warfare’: Resurgence and Politicization by Ofer Fridman (Oxford University Press, 2018). Hybrid war using non-military means and the operational codes of Vladimir Putin’s networks are two ways to update Jack Snyder’s original work on strategic culture for what I call fourth generation scholarship. Fridman’s book examines rival conceptual definitions of what hybrid war is – and how political elites in Russia and the United States have incentivised the concept.
  2. Extremism by J.M. Berger (The MIT Press, 2018). I’ve spent part of my in-progress dissertation trying to develop a causal model of belief adoption about violence that leads strategic actors to prefer terrorist tactics as a means to pursue strategic goals. Berger’s scholarship is critical to this aim, and he draws on George Washington University’s Haroro J. Ingram, who is a rising star about violent extremism in policy-making circles.
  3. Negative Capitalism: Cynicism in the Neoliberal Era  by J.D. Taylor (Zero Books, 2013). In studying Aum Shinrikyo for my in-progress dissertation I’ve made political economy connections with Japan’s ‘lost decades’ of macroeconomic deflation and debt leverage. In many ways Japan’s sociopolitical experience foreshadowed the Great Recession or Global Financial Crisis that has affected the West since 2008. Taylor’s book reflects the United Kingdom experience with neoliberal austerity policies and is bracing to read.
  4. Alpha God: The Psychology of Religious Violence And Oppression by Hector A. Garcia (Random House, 2015). Several years ago Max Taylor suggested that counterterrorism analysts study evolutionary psychology to understand distal and diachronic influences on terrorists. Garcia’s book suggests a range of infra- and inter-group dynamics that could be used for qualitative coding of the terrorism studies literature.

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Reading List For Early Career Researchers

Career Development

 

The Professor Is In: The Essential Guide to Turning Your PhD Into A Job by Karen Kelsky (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2015). An influential guide to academic career paths including Post-Docs, ‘post-ac’ (post-academic) and alt-ac (alternative academic) options. Kelsky also runs TheProfessorIsIn.com blog and consulting / seminar services.

 

Successful Careers Beyond the Lab by David J. Bennett and Richard C. Jennings (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017). How research and scientific training can open up diverse ‘post-ac’ (post-academic) career pathways in government and industry.

 

A PhD Is Not Enough! A Guide to Survival in Science by Peter J. Feibelman (New York: Basic Books, 2011). A classic guide to managing Post-Doctoral careers in science: advice on career planning, research programs, grants, and publications.

 

Promotion and Tenure Confidential by David D. Perlmutter (Boston, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010). A ‘behind closed doors’ look at how promotion and tenure processes actually work.

 

“So What Are You Going To Do With That?”: Finding Careers Outside Academia (3rd ed.) by Susan Basalla and Maggie Debelius (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2014). An influential guide to ‘post-ac’ (post-academic) careers, such as working in industry.

 

Tenure Hacks: The 12 Secrets of Making Tenure by Russell James (Seattle, WA: CreateSpace, 2014). A candid guide on how to gain tenure at a research university in the United States system.

 

How To Be An Academic: The Thesis Whisperer Reveals All by Inger Mewburn (Sydney: NewSouth, 2017). Career development strategies to navigate the Early Career Researcher stage and the higher education sector.

 

Grant Writing

 

Get Funded: An Insider’s Guide to Building An Academic Research Program by Robert J. Trew (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017). Grant writing in the context of research program development: includes discussion of the United States-based National Science Foundation Career grants.

 

Having Success With NSF: A Practical Guide by Ping Li and Karen Marrongelle (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012). A guide to getting United States-based National Science Foundation grants.

 

How The NIH Can Help You Get Funded: An Insider’s Guide to Grant Strategy by Michelle L. Kienholz and Jeremy M. Berg (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013). A guide to getting United States-based National Institutes of Health grants.

 

Writing Successful Science Proposals (2nd ed.) by Andrew J. Friedland and Carol L. Folt (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009). A nuts and bolts guide to what a successful grant proposal needs, informed by the authors’ experience with the United States-based National Institutes of Health and other grant-making organisations.

 

Intellectual Property

 

From Innovation to Cash Flows: Value Creation by Structuring High Technology Alliances by Constance Lutolf-Carroll, Antti Pirnes, and Withers LLP (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2009). How intellectual property as an asset class underpins the value creation models of biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies.

 

Intellectual Property: A Very Short Introduction by Siva Vaidhyanathan (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017). How intellectual property works, from a culture / media perspective.

 

Intellectual Property Strategy by John Palfrey (Boston, MA: The MIT Press, 2011). Intellectual property as an asset class, its main types, and how ‘freedom to operate’ works.

 

Capitalism Without Capital: The Rise of the Intangible Economy by Jonathan Haskel and Stian Westlake (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017). Situates intellectual property in the economic context of the growth in intangible assets and the companies that develop and defend their intellectual property portfolios.

 

Project Management

 

Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity (rev. ed.) by David Allen (New York: Penguin, 2015). A primer on Allen’s influential GTD system for time and task management.

 

Making Things Happen: Mastering Project Management by Scott Berkun (Sebastapol, CA: O’Reilly, 2008). Lessons from Microsoft and other companies on effective project management.

 

Scaling Up: How A Few Companies Make It . . . And The Rest Don’t! by Verne Harnish (Ashburn, VA: Gazelles, 2014). New venture lessons on managing people, strategy, execution, and cash.

 

Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice The Work in Half the Time by Jeff Sutherland and J.J. Sutherland (New York: Crown Business, 2014). A guide to the Scrum agile development / project management system by co-creator Jeff Sutherland.

 

Publishing

 

Developmental Editing: A Handbook for Freelancers, Authors and Publishers by Scott Norton (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2011). Explains how the developmental editing process works from a university press viewpoint and the processes involved.

 

Getting It Published: A Guide for Scholars And Anyone Else Serious About Serious Books (3rd ed.) by William Germano (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2016). Demystifies the pre-publication processes involved for dealing with university presses. Germano’s companion book From Dissertation To Book (2nd ed) (Chicago, IL: University of Press, 2013) deals with how to publish your PhD dissertation.

 

The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century by Steven Pinker (New York: Penguin Books, 2015). A linguistic analysis of how grammar and clear writing works: an update to William Strunk Jr and E.B. White’s influential book The Elements of Style (4th ed) (New York: Pearson, 1999).

 

Write No Matter What: Advice For Academics by Joli Jensen (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2017). Strategies for how to maintain a consistent writing schedule: how to deal proactively with life, project, and institutional challenges to stay on track.

 

Writing Your Journal Article In 12 Weeks: A Guide to Academic Publishing Success by Wendy Laura Belcher (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2009). A step-by-step template guide to writing a journal article and managing the writing process.

 

The Business of Being A Writer by Jane Friedman (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2018). A guide to commercial academic publishing and career development strategies for new academic writers.

 

Becoming An Academic Writer: 50 Exercises for Paced, Productive and Powerful Writing by Patricia Goodson (Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications, 2017). Self-paced developmental exercises for academic writing and specific sections of an academic journal article or dissertation.

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Metis: Microfoundations

Microfoundations

 

The Evolving Self: A Psychology for the Third Millennium by Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi. New York: HarperPerennial, 1994. (TS-3). Recommended to me in 1997 by Spiral Dynamics creators Don Edward Beck and Chris Cowan. Csikzentmihalyi’s sequel to his earlier book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (#17J) makes the case for mindful, directed, psychecentric  evolution. A bridge between Anton LaVey’s Indulgence, Michael A. Aquino’s Xeper, and the self-transformative orientation of Martin Seligman’s positive psychology.

 

Ungifted: Intelligence Redefined by Scott Barry Kaufman. New York: Basic Books, 2013. (TS-3). Kaufman is director of the Imagination Institute and a positive psychology researcher at the University of Pennsylvania. In this book he argues for the Cattell-Horn-Carroll theory of ‘fluid’ intelligence and for the benefits of holistic education. Kaufman explores and evaluates cognitive theories of creativity, learning, skills-building, and talent development. A useful primer on how current debates about human intelligence are redefining education. For some initial considerations of these implications see my Fluid Intelligences Working (30th June and 1st July 2012).

 

Genius 101 by Dean Keith Simonton. New York: Springer, 2009. (TS-3). Dean Keith Simonton is Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Davis. This book provides an overview of Simonton’s influential research program on genius, how it is measured, and under what conditions it can be cultivated and flourish. Builds on Simonton’s earlier book Origins of Genius: Darwinian Perspectives on Creativity (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999) (TS-3) and is a summary of genius research profiled in Simonton’s edited collection The Wiley Handbook of Genius (Chichester, England: Wiley-Blackwell, 2014) (TS-4).

 

The Hour Between Dog and Wolf: How Risk Taking Transforms Us, Body and Mind by John Coates. London: Penguin Books, 2017. (TS-3). Metis involves calculated risk-taking in ambiguous or uncertain conditions. Coates is a neuroscientist formerly affiliated with the University of Cambridge, and as a former risk manager with Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, and Deutsche Bank. His study of the neurobiology of financial risk-taking in booms and busts also has implications for competitive sports and military war-fighting. An introduction to the physiology and the neuroscience of risk-taking.

 

Understanding Beliefs by Nils J. Nilsson. Boston, MA: The MIT Press, 2014. (TS-3) Nilsson is Kumagai Professor of Engineering (Emeritus) in the Department of Computer Science at Stanford University. Nilsson’s artificial intelligence research informs this short introduction into how humans acquire, form, and communicate their beliefs — leading to social, cultural, political, and religious change. Argues for Bayesian probabilistic revision and updates to personal beliefs.

 

Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise by Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016. (TS-1). Anders Ericsson is the Conradi Eminent Scholar and a Professor of Psychology at Florida State University. Ericsson’s research on deliberate practice—how individuals use deliberate and mindful effort to cultivate expertise—has changed how learning is conducted in domains such as the arts, sport, and medicine. Provides a methodology to fulfil the mindful evolution vision of Csikzentmihalyi, Kaufman, and Simonton noted above. Malcolm Gladwell popularised Ericsson’s research as the 10,000 Hour Rule in his book Outliers: The Story of Success (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2011) (TS-3) which has led to a media debate about Ericsson’s research and its conclusions.

 

Mastery by Robert Greene. New York: Viking, 2013. (TS-3). An exploration using historical and contemporary figures of the pursuit and conditions of mastery: the visible outcome of Anders Ericsson’s deliberate practice noted above. Can be read in conjunction with George Leonard’s Mastery (#17M) and Greene’s other popular books on themes like war, power, and seduction. Greene’s companion book Interviews With The Masters (Seattle, WA: Amazon Digital Services, 2013) (TS-3) interviews nine contemporary masters in-depth.

 

Willpower: Rediscovering The Greatest Human Strength by Roy F. Baumeister and John Tierney. New York: Penguin Books, 2012. (TS-3). Roy F. Baumeister is Professor of Social Psychology at The University of Queensland, Australia. In this book he collaborates with New York Times science journalist John Tierney to communicate Baumeister’s influential laboratory research on human will as responsible agency, and how self-control is a necessary foundation for self-agency.

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Nuclear Politics

During my on-going PhD research at Monash University, I’ve increasingly focused on ‘dissertation to book’ studies from university presses (Cambridge, Cornell, Princeton, Stanford) that develop and test formal theories. This has been a surprise to me – given that my earlier published research used critical theory and journalism experience.

 

The latest study I’m looking at is Alexandre Debs and Nuno P. Monteiro’s Nuclear Politics: The Strategic Causes of Nuclear Proliferation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016). They include a puzzle and case study based approach that emphasises the pivotal role of security concerns. Their book includes coding rules and a formal theory: a useful ‘writing model’ for the relevant sections of my draft thesis.

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What I’m Reading

  1. Marx, Capital, and the Madness of Economic Reason by David Harvey (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017).  One of Karl Marx’s leading contemporary scholars interprets the three volume Capital in the context of post-2008 secular stagnation. Some interesting comments on how debt and extractive institutions work.
  2. How To Be An Academic: The Thesis Whisperer Reveals All by Inger Mewburn (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2017). The Thesis Whisperer explains why contemporary higher education is like The Hunger Games and offers informed advice on how to survive ‘precariat’ labour and build an institutional profile.
  3. Fundamentals of Critical Argumentation by Douglas Walton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). The University of Windsor professor’s introductory textbook on argumentation and critical reasoning.

 

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The Credibility Vortex

In 2006, I studied strategic studies and wrote a Masters mini-thesis on North Korea’s nuclear weapons development program with Dr Andy Butfoy. He’s an Australian expert on arms control, strategic studies, and US-Australian politico-military relations.

 

In late 2016, Andy released his first novel The Credibility Vortex:

 

It’s a political thriller set in Washington. It features intrigue in the National Security Council, rogue officials, dirty tricks, assassination attempts, and the possible end of the world . . .

 

I recommend you check Andy’s first novel out: it’s a gripping read.

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Early 2017 Reading Pile

The following books will be on my reading pile for early 2017:

 

  1. Sheelah Kolhatkar’s Black Edge: Inside Information, Dirty Money, and the Quest to Bring Down the Most Wanted Man on Wall Street (New York: Random House, 2017). Kolhatkar is a staff writer at The New Yorker. I followed the insider trading case against Steve A. Cohen and his hedge fund SAC Capital for several years. I thought about writing a PhD chapter on it — but getting access to the court records was going to be expensive and it was out-of-scope to my main focus. Kolhatkar has saved me the trouble — and illustrates why investigative journalism is important.
  2. Ed Thorp’s A Man For All Markets: From Las Vegas to Wall Street, How I Beat the Dealer and the Market (New York: Random House, 2017). Thorp is a giant in quantitative investing and card counting in poker. There’s a lengthy interview with Thorp in Jack D. Schwager’s book Hedge Fund Market Wizards, and this book promises more revelations. Features a foreward by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
  3. Andrew W. Lo’s Adaptive Markets: Financial Evolution at the Speed of Thought (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017). Lo is the Charles E. and Susan T. Harris Professor, a Professor in Finance, and the Director of the Laboratory for Financial Engineering at the MIT Sloan School of Management. This book outlines Lo’s Adaptive Markets Hypothesis – a challenger to the Efficient Markets Hypothesis – and offers a conceptual basis for why some hedge fund trading works.
  4. Siva Vaidyanathan’s Intellectual Property: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017). Vaidyanathan is Professor of Media Studies at the University of Virginia. Intellectual Property (IP) is an intangible asset class that includes copyrights (works of creative expression), trademarks (logos and symbols that differentiate a company in the marketplace), patents (know how and processes), and trade secrets (confidential and secret information). Vaidyanathan explains how IP works and examines its legal / cultural debates. A good primer for content creators.
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Grand Intentions

Grand Intentions by Trevor Barr
Grand Intentions by Trevor Barr

Have you ever wondered how powerful chief executive officers negotiate their lucrative compensation packages? Grand Intentions by veteran internet and telecommunicatons scholar Trevor Barr shares their secrets.

 

Barr’s gripping novel opens with the telecommunicatons giant Telco One in crisis: rural Telco One client Thomas Bowie dies of an asthma attack due to a technical line fault. In the aftermath, Telco One’s board fires its chief executive officer and hires Clint Mason – a mid-market CEO with experience at the United States telecommunications firms MCI and Sprint, a fundraiser for the Republican Party, and who has a keen interest in American Native Indian culture and history. Mason is tasked with spearheading Telco One’s privatisation and the operational transformation that is required to remain competitive.

 

The first three chapters of Grand Intentions read like a negotiation masterclass: how Gordon Hunt (customer liaison and government division head), Nathan Thompson (a Telco One board member), and Jennifer Ralston (a Telco One board member and advocacy lawyer) deal with and disagree over the due diligence, compensation package negotiation, and rapid on-boarding of Mason and his operations manager Brad Botein. Australia’s prime minister, unions, and pension fund managers are carefully watching Telco One’s board. Each has a crucial role in vetting Mason’s appointment.

 

Mason has a strategic vision for Telco One: to shake-up Hunt’s customer liaison activities and identify new revenue sources, to improve Telco One’s share price by dramatically cutting head count, and to build and roll out a Next Generation Network – in only nine months. He has a close eye on the successes of Apple, Google, and today’s visionaries like SpaceX’s Elon Musk.

 

It’s a strategic vision of disruption that will also be familiar to shareholders of QANTAS, Commonwealth Bank, Rio Tinto and other companies who face a combination of industry, regulatory and technological head winds. Barr offers an informed insider’s view into the C-suite and senior management discussions that take place. In doing so Grand Intentions goes beyond media rhetoric about Silicon Valley disruption to convey the dilemmas and decision-making that business leaders face.

 

Barr traces the impetus and fallout from Mason’s corporate revitalisation through a range of Telco One employees. Gordon Hunt champions a consumer advisory council that will get close to Telco One’s customers. Hunt’s exchanges with Mason and Botein in a performance review meeting are eye-opening in how he gains buy-in for the council initiative. Barr shows Mason and Botein’s commercial acumen and what they really privately think about Hunt’s council. Other Telco One senior managers like marketer Jasmine Spencer and networks and systems engineer Lars Sorenson have their own competing ideas and initiatives.

 

Hunt hires counselors Paul Brooks and Max Groves to chair the consumer advisory council. Brooks and Groves are new to Telco One’s commercial world and they each grapple with Hunt’s neoliberal agenda. The council has to be solutions-based and identify new products and services. Brooks and Groves differ in their reactions to these pressures. Barr contrasts their experiences with their partners Karen and Nicole’s worlds of community radio and teaching.

 

Barr also has a few important ‘reality-check’ comments about Mason’s decision to shutdown Telco One’s research labs and instead create a senior management advisory. In the newly privatised Telco One, researchers now need to generate new revenues and have fundable research programs. Researchers can no longer be a cost centre or be solely reliant on government grants.

 

As Mason’s change agenda proceeds each of these characters faces career turbulence and ethical challenges. Some are able to thrive on the disorder and to emerge stronger: to be antifragile as philosopher Nassim Nicholas Taleb describes. Other characters make suboptimal decisions and must face the consequences. Mason’s change agenda thus acts as a sorting mechanism: a fictional depiction of the Tournament Theory process of economists Edwin Lazear and Sherwin Rosen, and the noncooperative Game Theory interactions of the late mathematician John Nash Jr (A Beautiful Mind). But Barr’s characters are not one-dimensional either, as Mason’s encounter with Aboriginal elder Amanyi Kunoth shows: he is deeply critical of Australia’s on-going mistreatment of its first peoples.

 

Grand Intentions is filled with Barr’s commentary and reflections on why telecommunications is the underlying infrastructure for today’s internet economy. It’s an opportunity to be privy to conversations inside corporations about growth initiatives that capture and sustain the media’s attention. It’s a cautionary guide for MBA graduates on how to accumulate power, navigate organisational politics, and climb the career ladder. Finally, Grand Intentions is poignantly candid about the human costs and casualties of disruption, and what winner-takes-all really looks like.

 

Grand Intentions is available in Australia from Readings and other good bookstores. Internationally, it is available from Book Depository (with free shipping), from AbeBooks resellers, and as an Amazon Kindle ebook.