*** The Very Nice Box by Eve Gleichman & Laura Blackett

The Very Nice Box stars an introverted industrial designer who lost her girlfriend tragically several years back and has not recovered. She falls in love with her charming boss and disaster ensues. I loved the descriptions of the office and the many witty names of the furniture they create there, and the main character’s obsessive tendencies are perfectly drawn.

There are a couple of plot holes (how did the charming boss ever get that job?) but the plot and humor carries them along.

** The Devil’s Playbook by Lauren Etter

The Devil’s Playbook: Big Tobacco, Juul, and the Addiction of a New Generation essentially tells the story of Juul, with Philip Morris as its suitor, at first unsuccessful to become a suitor in the first place and then, again, unsuccessful after a very expensive acquisition.

Juul was started as a smoking-mitigation solution before invading high schools across the country, with the full knowledge of its executives and only very feeble attempts to change that course. And government regulators were very slow to take any action, at first because they were measuring smoking only and not vaping, and then because legislation moves very slowly.

The author personalizes the story with detailed portraits of the principal actors, making a business story come to life. She also tends to rant against Silicon Valley companies, which, as an aside, is an interesting reminder that the Philistines of Silicon Valley have annexed hip San Francisco –and is also a silly thing to do. Certainly, some other companies, far from Silicon Valley, such as Philip Morris for instance, have tried to kill or harm their customers way before Juul came on the scene.

** Veritas by Ariel Sabar

As its subtitle suggests, Veritas: A Harvard Professor, a Con Man and the Gospel of Jesus’s Wife tries to tell at least two intertwined stories: that of the con man who created a fake papyrus with enough words to suggest a tantalizing reference to Jesus being married, and that of the professor who cut many corners to believe she had proof that Christianity should be a lot less sexist than it is.

It’s all very exciting but the detailed investigations into the complicated misdeeds of the con man got into more details than I was interested in. What is surprising is how a Harvard professor can resist the truth so violently and for so long without any apparent consequences on her employment status.

*** Foregone by Russell Banks

Foregone stars a dying documentary filmmaker who is being interviewed for a biographical movie by some of his past students. But instead of giving pat answers to their questions about his films, he veers way off into very personal memories, which he has kept a secret even from his wife and closest associates. And he is on some powerful drugs that may interfere with them too. (The character of the home nurse is wonderfully drawn.) So the filmmakers capture a very messy and unstable story, which they will undoubtedly edit into a clean narrative, but we, readers, are left with tantalizing contradictions.

*** The Extended Mind by Annie Murphy Paul

The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain is a limpidly organized compendium of psychological studies showing that our brains are–surprise!– connected to our bodies, our surroundings, and other human beings, and function much better when the connections are working properly.

So we should move to learn and think, and trust that our bodies may perceive patterns before our brain creates the idea for it. We should organize our world to trigger our imaginations with visual and tactile objects, and be able to be removed from noise and chaos when we need to, preferably in nature. And when we work with others using our hands to communicate and looking for synchronous activities will bind us together. If only architects and designers could realize the power of our environments to increase our thinking powers!

*** Shape by Jordan Ellenberg

I hesitate to recommend Shape: The Hidden Geometry of Information, Biology, Strategy, Democracy, and Everything Else warmly because it’s very tough reading. I strongly suspect that a good portion of the critics that praise it haven’t really given it a deep read. It’s real math, and real math is hard, if fascinating.

Shape delves into algebraic topology using seemingly innocuous examples like how many holes a straw–or a pair of pants–contain. (Try it, it’s pretty complicated.) It has a couple of chapters on constructing and interpreting pandemic numbers that are quite wonderful, and relatively easier to understand. And lots of discussions about gerrymandering and how to construct “fair” voting districts. But take it in small doses.

* Millionaire Women Next Door by Thomas Stanley

Millionaire Women Next Door, a complement to the classic The Millionaire Next Door, is book is now so old (2004!) that it reads like a time capsule of what working women were like back then–long before 2004 because it does take a little while to become wealthy.

It’s not entirely surprising that millionaire women are very similar to their male counterparts: they are thrifty, unflashy, self-reliant, and even better at managing their money than the men. The big difference is that they are a lot more generous than the men with their money, both to their families and various charities. Heartwarming, no?

What’s not heartwarming is the slapdash quality of this book, which lapses into unrelated stories including pages and pages of stories about male millionaires, somehow? Was there not enough room in the boys book that they need to invade this one, too? And of course the circumstances of women have changed so much in the intervening years that we would really want to know what the differences may be today.

** Noise by Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, & Cass R. Sunstein

Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment discussed the troubling reality that human beings are pretty bad at making judgements. It means that the same individual may make very different decisions depending on the time of day, when they are hungry or tired, when the patient or defendant reminds them of their aunt Olga, and also when their prejudices, large or small, are triggered. And of course there are big differences between individuals, too.

Cue in misdiagnoses, bad hires, and strangely inconsistent prison sentences.  So this is clearly an important problem, and the book contains useful and pretty simple suggestions to minimize it such as defining guidelines, cross-checking between evaluators, and minimizing the influence of first impressions, especially in groups.

That said, and despite its short chapters, the first half of the book is often uncomfortably technical if you don’t love statistical theory, and there’s quite a bit of repetition between chapters (perhaps because there are three authors?), which makes for a bit of a slog. Hang in there for the second part!

** Aftershocks by Nadia Owusu

Aftershocks is a memoir of the daughter of a Ghanaian father and an Armenian-American mother, whose unusual background could suffice to tell a rich story, but there is much more. Her mother up and left when she was two. Her dad’s work kept the family moving from country to country throughout her childhood. Her dad died young  and in circumstances that pose questions. The life story is fascinating. The story of her depression, which constitutes most of the third part of the book, told in a lyrical manner, held less interest for me.

* The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris

The Other Black Girl starts delightfully as a hard-working editorial assistant, who is striving to be elevated to editor but with the vaguest of timeline, and a lowly salary, and is the lone Black employee in the entire office, finally sees another Black editorial assistant hired. Her relief is short-lived as the new assistant quickly manipulates the editors and upper management, and is perhaps leaving threatening notes for the heroine, too.

Sadly the thrilling beginning quickly sinks into petty, drawn-out office intrigue. But the author captures perfectly the horribly awkward white editors and higher-ups who just cannot imagine any life beyond their monochrome world. That part is brilliant.