Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder

03 Dec 2001, 12:47 p.m.

This Fredrick W. Taylor biography rocks. It confirms the…

Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2001 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.

This Fredrick W. Taylor biography rocks. It confirms the dictum I read in stained glass at the Library of Congress half a year ago: "The history of the world is the biographies of great men." Sometime in the next few years I want to read biographies of other recent historical figures: Freud, Darwin, Marx, Truman, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, the usual suspects.

The next few pleasure books I read will include Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke. My sister and the fellow next to me on the BART recommended it highly. In addition, I must finish Guns, Germs, and Steel. The last time I read any of it, I was riding on a bus from Novgorod to St. Petersburg.