Books I'm reading

I tried reading a couple of books on cooperation and competition, and in my opinion, articles are more usable and approachable. However, here are my thoughts on the books:

Why Humans Cooperate: A cultural and evolutionary explanation
By Natalie and Joseph Henrich, published by Oxford University Press.

Most of this book is a technical explanation of theories, models, and studies. I found this book to be not particularly useful, except for Chapter 10, "Cooperative Dilemmas in the World Today." That chapter detailed applications of cooperation in different spheres: public health policy, environment, workplace, politics. It made me think about cooperation as a necessary thing for some endeavors. (Possible argument: Cooperation goes from nothing to something, creating an ability to tackle some problems, but competition refines that something, and discerns excellence. Cooperation can make action possible, but does not have the ability to make action superior in its kind.)

However, even these applications in different spheres focus on health as the aim of cooperation. For example, the workplace section talks about cooperating with other employees to not come out to work when you're sick. So, I found the book to be mostly irrelevant to my studies of the debate topic, because my focus is not health. Perhaps I would get a little more out of it if I took the time to read the entire thing, but I don't really have time to read it. As I said, it's technical, and pretty boring.

Competition: The Birth of A New Science
By James Case, published by Hill and Wang.

Incidentally, I found this book while looking up information about cover design for my NaNoWriMo novel. "Competition" is quite readable, even with its intended audience being the scientific community. About half of the book is concerned with the economic side to competition, and I haven't read it enough to figure out if I agree (or if FEE agrees) with its economics. There is also a chapter about cooperation arising spontaneously. Overall, this book looks interesting but I'm not sure how useful it will prove to be. We'll have to see about that.