Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg, How Google Works **

Eric and Jonathan promote an "obligation to dissent," so I feel free to opine that How Google Works is weak, disorganized, and doesn't fulfill the promise of its title.

The authors' intent is to describe new managerial principles that apply in "the Internet Century" using examples from Google's remarkable success. However, the book fails to provide actionable details for running a company, or much insight into how Google is different. Instead, it compiles well-rehearsed bromides (respond quickly to email; have an owner for every meeting), identifies traditional business practices you don't need (business plans; market research), and suggests that all you need to do it hire "smart creatives" and let them loose. It doesn't say anything about the magic of managing all of these smart people with their great ideas.

For many people, the main attraction will be the inside stories from Google. The stories are there, but they often don't support their points. For example, the key takeaway from the chapter on decision-making is to "decide with data," but the introduction is the story of Google's withdrawal from China in 2009, which was decided on moral grounds rather than data.

Overall, I think the Founder's IPO Letter presents the case more clearly and succinctly.

Ben Marcus, Leaving the Sea *** 1/2

Leaving the Sea is a collection of stories from my favorite experimental writer. It's structured like an avant-garde sandwich, with surprisingly traditional stories at the beginning and end and the well-nigh incomprehensible ones in the middle. Although the stories come from many different publications over the course of a decade, they work together quite well.

My favorite stories were the ones that most resembled Marcus' novels Notable America Women and The Flame Alphabet. Many of the stories treat bodies as disposable costumes and heads as empty bones filled with air and bad thoughts. Characters often speak into bags or fabrics.

"First Love" has just the right balance between creative language, off-kilter ideas, and emotional warmth; "Origins of the Family" strikes a similar tone. "Rollingwood" is my favorite of the loneliness quartet that comprises Part 1.

The Stanley Fish Reader ****

Stanley Fish writes on a wide range of topics -- John Milton, contract law, deconstruction, campus politics, free speech, affirmative action -- but his argument is always the same: our understanding and values derive from a set of historically constructed background assumptions, and that's nothing to be alarmed about.

Reading Fish is a lot like reading the philosopher Richard Rorty. They are both fervent anti-foundationalists with clear and entertaining prose styles (for those with a tolerance for academic writing), and both come across as too proud of being provocative. I agree with most of what Fish says, even when it is frustrating. (It's frustrating to be stuck without a neutral bias-free perspective.)

My introduction to Fish was his collection There’s No Such Thing as Free Speech (and it’s a good thing too), and I would recommend that book over this one. The Stanley Fish Reader may provide a wider and more accurate portrait of Fish's career, but it's not as thought-provoking. The introductory notes for each essay are uniformly weak; I would much prefer a book titled Fish and His Critics (on the model of Rorty and His Critics), where Fish responds to original critical essays.

Max Barry, Machine Man ** 1/2

Barry's most recent book, Lexicon, led me to believe that he was an above-average thriller writer who can make wild scientific plots sound plausible. So I was anxious to read Machine Man, which is about an engineer who starts replacing his body parts with improved mechanical ones.

The first chapter is an excellent start. It introduces our narrator, Dr Charles Neumann, as he wakes in the morning and can't find his phone.

I didn't know how warm it would be today. It might rain, it might be humid, I had no idea. I had a desktop but it took forever to boot, more than a minute. I would have to choose clothes without information on the environmental conditions. It was insane. 

The chapter is funny and clearly outlines Neumann's off-kilter perspective as an engineer above all. (He sees another character wearing earrings and thinks she must favor appearance over efficiency, poor girl.)

Alas, it's downhill after that. The other characters are cartoonish, with names like Cassandra Cautery and Lola Shanks (which retrospectively made me notice the narrator's last name). The action sequences are nowhere near as compelling as the ones in Lexicon were. Most damning, Neumann's personality shifts around according to the dictates of the plot: sometimes he's the odd duck making logical but surprising decisions; other times he's the hapless victim of the ruthless company he works for.