Each week we post a round-up of some of our most exciting national and international PUP book coverage. Reviews, interviews, events, articles–this is the spot for coverage of all things “PUP books” that took place in the last week. Enjoy!
A SOCIAL STRATEGY
Planning to hop on Uber to find a ride during your upcoming weekend trip? Was it a tweet from a coworker or a status update from an old college friend that put this ride request app on your radar? PUP author Misiek Piskorski appears on Bloomberg TV to examine the story behind how Uber came to flood your Facebook newsfeed. He also takes a closer look at the company’s $17 billion valuation. How do companies like Uber and Twitter make money? Piskorski lends his insight.
The segment mentions Piskorski’s new book, A Social Strategy, which was reviewed in the Financial Times. Maija Palmer says:
For companies that are struggling to measure social media, Piskorski offers a different way of looking at the problem, and his three tests – the social utility test, the social solution test and the business value test – provide a way to check if a project is working.
In the book, Piskorski examines what makes social media so different from traditional media, and he argues that answering that question is the key to making social media work for any business. In A Social Strategy, he provides the most convincing answer yet, one backed by original research, data, and case studies from companies such as Nike and American Express.
A Social Strategy was also reviewed on PopMatters and featured on Crowdly.
Take a break from drafting witty tweets about the upcoming weekend, and take a look at this interview with Piskorski on Yahoo! Finance. You can also view Chapter One of A Social Strategy.
THE EXTREME LIFE OF THE SEA
To celebrate World Oceans Day, the Guardian‘s GrrlScientist reviewed Stephen and Anthony Palumbi’s The Extreme Life of the Sea. The review says that “regardless of your level of knowledge, this quietly joyful and informative book has something of value for everyone.”
The Extreme Life of the Sea takes readers to the absolute limits of the ocean world–the fastest and deepest, the hottest and oldest creatures of the oceans. It dives into the icy Arctic and boiling hydrothermal vents–and exposes the eternal darkness of the deepest undersea trenches–to show how marine life thrives against the odds. This thrilling book brings to life the sea’s most extreme species, and tells their stories as characters in the drama of the oceans. Coauthored by Stephen Palumbi, one of today’s leading marine scientists, The Extreme Life of the Sea tells the unforgettable tales of some of the most marvelous life forms on Earth, and the challenges they overcome to survive. Modern science and a fluid narrative style give every reader a deep look at the lives of these species.
You can preview the book, which GrrlScientist calls “sweetly enthusiastic, enlightening and witty and, at times, inspired,” by viewing the prologue. Check out this fun video from author Stephen Palumbi — it will get you in gear to celebrate the ocean’s fastest creatures.
CHILD MIGRATION AND HUMAN RIGHTS IN A GLOBAL AGE
On Thursday, former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo spoke about the Nigerian schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram more than 60 days ago, and he said he believed that some of the girls “will never return.” Reuters reports on Obasanjo’s interview with the BBC, where he said he would consider it a “near-miracle” if all of the girls were returned to their families.
As PUP author Jacqueline Bhabha says in her recent Project Syndicate op-ed, it is nothing new that young Nigerian women are taken from their homes; each year, thousands of Nigerian girls are forced into prostitution:
Six of every ten people trafficked to the West are Nigerian, and at least 60% of trafficked sex workers in Italy and Belgium are Nigerian girls. Across Europe, North America, Russia, and the Middle East, these young women are visible to all who bother to look – and have been for decades.
Why is no one outraged? The inconsistency is rooted in the girls’ circumstances: the schoolgirls are innocent victims crying out for protection, while the child sex workers are illegal immigrants, slated for deportation as soon as they are caught.
View the entire op-ed, which is entitled “The Nigerian Schoolgirls Near You.”
Bhabha is no stranger to the research behind issues like this. A professor of the practice of health and human rights at the Harvard School of Public Health, director of research at Harvard’s François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights, and the Jeremiah Smith, Jr. Lecturer at Harvard Law School, Bhabha argues that our societies have a deep-seated ambivalence to migrant children–one we need to address head-on. Her new book Child Migration and Human Rights in a Global Age offers a road map for doing just that, and makes a compelling and courageous case for an international ethics of children’s human rights. View the introduction here.
WHY GOVERNMENT FAILS SO OFTEN
Finally, we bring you a review from this week’s Wall Street Journal. Yuval Levin calls Peter Schuck’s Why Government Fails So Often “an essential manual for 21st-century policy makers.” In the book, lawyer and political scientist Peter Schuck provides a wide range of examples and an enormous body of evidence to explain why so many domestic policies go awry–and how to right the foundering ship of state.
Schuck argues that Washington’s failures are due not to episodic problems or partisan bickering, but rather to deep structural flaws that undermine every administration, Democratic and Republican. These recurrent weaknesses include unrealistic goals, perverse incentives, poor and distorted information, systemic irrationality, rigidity and lack of credibility, a mediocre bureaucracy, powerful and inescapable markets, and the inherent limits of law. To counteract each of these problems, Schuck proposes numerous achievable reforms, from avoiding moral hazard in student loan, mortgage, and other subsidy programs, to empowering consumers of public services, simplifying programs and testing them for cost-effectiveness, and increasing the use of “big data.”
Michael Barone includes Schuck’s book in a recent column discussing the VA, and the book is included in a feature in the Miami Herald on the same subject.
Check out Chapter One of Why Government Fails So Often.
