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Hi everyone!

For the June event, let's head back to behavioral psychology. In "Stumbling on Happiness", author Daniel Gilbert offers not a self-help book, but instead explains why, by any objective measure, humans are just terrible at knowing how we will feel a day or a month or year from now, and even worse at knowing what will and will not bring us that cherished happiness.

So come and let's discuss a book that "Malcolm Gladwell" (author of The Tipping Point) describes as "a psychological detective story about one of the great mysteries of our lives".

For June, our book will be:

Stumbling on Happiness
by Daniel Gilbert

Stumbling on Happiness

We'll be meeting at the Caribou Cafe in West Lakeview (across the street from Whole Foods). The cafe is down the street from the Paulina brown line stop and accessible from the Belmont and Ashland buses. The cafe will validate parking in the structure across the street but do NOT park in the Whole Foods lot on street level.

Caribou Cafe (Ashland)

Feel free to email me with any questions or concerns. Hope to see lots of you there!

-MikeE

"Under the right circumstances, groups are remarkably intelligent, and are often smarter than the smartest people in them." - James Surowiecki

I think most of us would agree that this seems rather counterintuitive but that's what the author of our next book claims. Surowiecki explains the four basic conditions that need to be met so a crowd's "collective intelligence" will produce better outcomes than a small group of experts and then covers how this applies to a range of problems including

- driving in traffic
- competing on TV game shows
- maximizing stock market performance
- voting for political candidates-
- navigating busy sidewalks
- tracking SARS
- designing Internet search engines like Google

I think that's more than enough to discuss!

For April, our book will be:

The Wisdom of Crowds
by James Surowiecki

http://www.amazon.com/Wisdom-Crowds-James-Surowiecki/dp/0385721706/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-3716716-5419369?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1173417436&sr=8-1

We'll be meeting at the Caribou Cafe in West Lakeview (across the street from Whole Foods). The cafe is down the street from the Paulina brown line stop and accessible from the Belmont and Ashland buses. The cafe will validate parking in the structure across the street but do NOT park in the Whole Foods lot on street level.

Caribou Cafe (Ashland)

Feel free to email me with any questions or concerns. Hope to see lots of you there!

-MikeE

With many of us spending time with our families around the holidays, hopefully our January book (The Pecking Order) can help us understand how they shaped who we are. I have three younger brothers myself so I'm quite interested.

For January, our book will be:

The Pecking Order: A Bold New Look at How Family and Society Determine Who We Become
by Dalton Conley

The Pecking Order (Amazon)

We'll be meeting at the Caribou Cafe in West Lakeview (across the street from Whole Foods). The cafe is down the street from the Paulina brown line stop and accessible from the Belmont and Ashland buses. The cafe will validate parking in the structure across the street but do NOT park in the Whole Foods lot on street level.

Caribou Cafe (Ashland)

Feel free to email me with any questions or concerns. Hope to see lots of you there!

-MikeE

We'll be reading "The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban" by Sarah Chayes. Hope to see everyone there!

From Publishers Weekly
Afghanistan only uncovers itself with intimacy, and intimacy takes time," writes Chayes, a skilled but increasingly frustrated journalist, whose determination "to grasp the underlying pattern" during and after the toppling of the Taliban in late 2001 chafes against her editors' post-9/11 comfort zone. With keen sympathy for Afghanistan's indomitable people, Chayes eventually swaps NPR and its four-and-a-half-minute slots for an NGO, becoming "field director" of Afghans for Civil Society, spearheaded by Qayum Karzai, the president's brother. ACS's humanitarian work, which includes rebuilding a bombed-out village, brings Chayes into direct conflict with the warlords with whom U.S. policy remains disastrously entangled. This is the point of her engrossing narrative, which begins in Pakistan, inside the U.S.-backed Afghan resistance pushing northward to Kandahar, and is framed by the 2005 murder of police chief Zabit Akrem, a key ally in the fight against Kandahar's corrupt warlord-governor. Throughout, Chayes relies on exceptional access and a felicitous prose style, though she sacrifices some momentum to cover several centuries of Afghanistan's turbulent past in an account that adds little to those by Ahmed Rashid and others. However, her hands-on experience as a deeply immersed reporter and activist gives her lucid analysis and prescriptions a practical scope and persuasive authority. (Aug. 21)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

We'll be meeting at Uncommon Group in Lakeview.Book Information (Amazon)

Our book selection is "The Geography of Thought : How Asians and Westerners Think Differently ..and Why" by Richard Nisbett

" contends that "human cognition is not everywhere the same"-that those brought up in Western and East Asian cultures think differently from one another in scientifically measurable ways. Such a contention pits his work squarely against evolutionary psychology (as articulated by Steven Pinker and others) and cognitive science, which assume all appreciable human characteristics are "hard wired." Initial chapters lay out the traditional differences between Aristotle and Confucius, and the social practices that produced (and have grown out of) these differing "homeostatic approaches" to the world: Westerners tend to inculcate individualism and choice (40 breakfast cereals at the supermarket), while East Asians are oriented toward group relations and obligations ("the tall poppy is cut down" remains a popular Chinese aphorism). Next, Nisbett presents his actual experiments and data ... " - Publishers Weekly

Bring a beverage and something to sit on - I'll bring the cups.

In case of rain in the forecast, an update 24hrs. in advance will be sent to notify of alternate. Rain location will be an Asian-themed place in or near Wicker Park. Suggestions are welcomed.

Don't forget to vote for the September book.