I don’t deride teamwork to the extent that Rand does, but neither do I hold it up as a veritable moral imperative demanded by a collectivist deity…and given the current context, I consider that we are in far greater danger of too greatly lauding the team than we are of not valuing teamwork sufficiently.
Blog
Making It So Review
Making It So is well written and has a few, mildly interesting segments, but it overall doesn’t offer much that is unique or freshly insightful in any broader sense.
New Old Stories
It is reductionist and unimaginative to contend that there are no new stories to tell, akin to the assertions that history is just a cycle that repeats itself. As long as there are new people, as long as the world is changing and entropy hasn’t prevailed throughout the universe, there will be new stories.
Shahnameh Review
The ”Persian Book of Kings” is sometimes described as the Persian Iliad which, after reading it, I think is a terrible description. Shahnameh is far less narrative, and it is as much a history book as it is an epic.
Wondrous Tales
All of this reflection, eventually, produced a name for the sense I had for what was missing in my writing and what unifies the pieces I enjoy the most: wonder.
Culture Smart: Japan Review
I have few critiques that I can make, which probably speaks to the importance of managing expectations more than it does the book itself. With sections on history, language, customs, religion, geography, and good, it addresses all of the basics.
Beyond Word Count
I find word count provides helpful insights into my writing habits and the structure of my stories. On shorter time scales, though, it doesn’t always reflect the amount of writing work I might be doing.
How to Behave Badly in Elizabethan England Review
Slice-of-life history books have a particular appeal, since they include the sorts of details that escape larger “history” texts, but that are exactly what can enrich a story and make its world immersive for the reader.
Until Death Do Us Part Release and Author’s Note
I sat down and wrote, for the "Monsters and Madness" prompt, a...romance?
Nuts and Bolts Review
Simple machines offer a way of thinking about engineering at a more fundamental level, rather than a systems engineering approach, and Agrawal’s book is an insightful, modern iteration of that idea.
IGC Publishing 