Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child – Marc Weissbluth

A life-saving baby sleep book. I bought it when my six-month-old baby had gone a month with no nap longer than 30 minutes. The very next day she took a 2 ¼ hour nap and a 1 hour nap, and while she was awake she was a totally different baby – alert, more interested in the world, more capable. Marc Weissbluth argues for paying close attention to your child’s drowsy cues, and putting them down when they are tired. When you do this, you put your child down with no (or almost no) crying, though there may be some crying from over-tiredness as you make the transition to a good sleep schedule. With my baby, it turns out I had not been noticing her drowsy cues and had been keeping her awake past when she was ready to sleep. When this happens, the body produces adrenaline, and the adrenaline interrupts her sleep. So the answer was to put her down much sooner (like 1 ¼ hours after waking up in the morning). This book helps me understand not only my baby’s sleep, but also my own. I’m trying to go to sleep when I’m drowsy, rather than pushing through to my second (adrenaline-fueled) wind.

Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child
Marc Weissbluth
1999
Available from Amazon

Supercapitalism – Robert B. Reich

Our economy is going great (or at least was until the recent housing unpleasantness), but we are often uncomfortable with the social/environmental cost of our economic success. Robert Reich, former labor secretary under Clinton, explains how we have moved from the democratic capitalism of the fifties and sixties to the supercapitalism of today and how that has worked to our benefits as consumers and investors (lower prices, higher stock market values) but to our detriment as citizens (lower wages, worse working conditions, off-shoring of jobs, destruction of communities). He explains why business requires government to intervene to guarantee our interests as citizens, points out how our attention is diverted from appropriate government regulation, and makes arguments for changing how we treat corporations to redress the imbalance between our goals as people and our goals as financial entities. An interesting analysis - a bit slow going the first 50 or so pages, but picks up later. A nice companion to Paul Krugman’s book Conscience of a Liberal.

Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life
Robert B. Reich
2007
Available from Amazon

Unplugged – William H. Colby

A surprisingly easy-to-read book about the right to die in America. It explains the medical and legal history behind our present patchwork state of affairs. Colby explains the landmark cases – Terry Schiavo in great detail, but also Nancy Cruzan (which established the right to remove feeding tubes – Colby was a lawyer for the Cruzan family) and Karen Quinlan (which established the right to remove respirators). He offers solid suggestions about what each of us need to do to make sure our deaths happen as we want. Not exactly an upper, but an important book for understanding and thinking through the issues.


Unplugged: Reclaiming Our Right to Die in America
William H. Colby
2007
Available from Amazon

Cosmic Jackpot – Paul Davies

Why is our universe just right for life? The facile answer is that if it weren’t, we wouldn’t be here to think about it. But beyond that facile answer, why is it just right for life? Does it have to be? Are there other universes that aren’t right for life? And why is there even a universe in the first place? This book covers a lot of ground in astrophysics and cosmology – with some especially fascinating stuff about eternal inflationary universes. The last chapter or two strayed so far into philosophy that I couldn’t follow the arguments, but I came away with a greater appreciation for the difficulty of these ultimate questions.


Cosmic Jackpot: Why Our Universe Is Just Right for Life
Paul Davies
2007
Available from Amazon

The Best American Science Writing 2007 – Gina Kolata, Editor

What is it like to not be able to recognize faces? Should families be allowed to witness emergency resuscitations? How do you cook a really great boiled egg? These questions and more answered in this great collection of science essays edited by Gina Kolata - a New York Times reporter with some serious game.


The Best American Science Writing 2007
Gina Kolata, Editor and Jesse Cohen, Series Editor
2007
Available from Amazon