Book reviews written by jsalvati

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Displaying 1-10 of 15 reviews

Dive Into Python

by Mark Pilgrim
- Rated 4 stars
“This is a very speedy introduction to python, at least for people with a good deal of programming experience. It is very clear and concise.”

jsalvati wrote this review Friday, October 3 2008. ( reply | permalink )
Principles of Finance with Excel: Includes CD

by Simon Benninga
- Rated 3 stars
“This seemed like a pretty good book. It was a little disappointed that it did not at all discuss probability in finance, even though it did discuss options. Examples in excel are nice to have.”

jsalvati wrote this review Monday, September 29 2008. ( reply | permalink )
Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Political Economy of Institutions and Decisions)

by Elinor Ostrom
- Rated 4 stars
“I think it is valuable to read this book together with Mancur Olson's The Logic of Collective Action (or simply the Public Goods section of your favorite microecon textbook)”

jsalvati wrote this review Sunday, June 1 2008. ( reply | permalink )
Unit Operations of Chemical Engineering

by Warren L. McCabe, Julian C. Smith
- Rated 0 stars
“McCabe did not choose his variable names well. This made it considerably more difficult to follow many explanations than was necessary. The explanations in the book were alright otherwise, not too good, not too bad.”

jsalvati wrote this review Friday, May 9 2008. ( reply | permalink )
Gödel, Escher, Bach:

by Douglas R. Hofstadter
- Rated 3 stars
“The first half was interesting, but it just kept dragging on and on. Learning about Godel's theorem seems important, but I could have done without a lot of the rest.”

jsalvati wrote this review Friday, May 9 2008. ( reply | permalink )
How to Write a Lot: A Practical Guide to Productive Academic Writing

by Paul J. Silvia
- Rated 3 stars
“This was a decent book. The basic message of the book was, if you want to write a lot you need a writing schedule and you need to stick to it. It had a bunch of other useful tips on academic writing.”

jsalvati wrote this review Friday, April 11 2008. ( reply | permalink )
An Economic Theory of Democracy

by Anthony Downs
- Rated 3 stars
“I started the book with high expectations, but I was seriously underwhelmed. First, they included no formal models mathematical about party behavior, and I know they exist. Second, there was a lot of generally poor analysis and omissions. For example, they talk about the low individual returns to voting, but neglect to mention anywhere how intelligent voting is a public good (there are multiple ways of thinking about this, but they don't even discuss it). I wouldn't recommend this book as a public choice book.”

jsalvati wrote this review Tuesday, November 6 2007. ( reply | permalink )
The Reason of Rules: Constitutional Political Economy (Collected Works of James M Buchanan)

by Geoffrey Brennan
- Rated 2 stars
“This book seemed rather empty of content. ”

jsalvati wrote this review Friday, October 26 2007. ( reply | permalink )
Franny and Zooey

by J. D. Salinger
- Rated 2 stars
“I didn't understand this book. I found the characters very difficult to relate to. The same thing happened to me the first time around on Catcher in the Rye, but the second time around I related to Holden perfectly. Maybe I just need to read this book again in a few years. ”

jsalvati wrote this review Wednesday, October 3 2007. ( reply | permalink )
The War of the Worlds

by H. G. Wells
- Rated 5 stars
“survival”

jsalvati wrote this review Friday, August 31 2007. ( reply | permalink )