The Northwood Holiday Reading List (2017)

With the holidays now long gone, we figured it was finally time to post the latest edition of The Northwood Reading List. We sent this list out to our subscribers in mid-December, but haven't had a chance to post it to the blog until now. The articles listed below don’t necessarily have a holiday theme, but we think you’ll find each one of them worth some of your reading time.  Now on to the reading! The list below covers everything from why rich American women now tend to have more kids than their less well-off counterparts, to a list of the 25 best inventions of 2017. It includes some new articles and some classics. The common themes are that they are interesting, insightful and of significance for us, and hopefully for you too. ‍

The Reason the Richest Women in the US are the Ones Having the Most Kids
‍quartz.com
‍Economists have long believed that as women’s education and income levels go up, the number of children they have will go down. This remains true across most of the world, but in the US recent data points in the opposite direction. This article in Quartz shows that as income inequality has grown over the past three decades, the chance to have a big family and support a large brood of children financially has become an unrealistic goal for many lower and middle income Americans.

‍Gun Violence in America, Explained in 17 Maps and Charts
‍vox.com
‍2017 is now the deadliest year for mass shootings in American history with 112 people left dead, including the 58 killed in a single night in Las Vegas in October. The second worst year? 2016; which saw 71 people killed in mass shootings on US soil. In this piece from VOX, the author provides 17 maps and charts to help illustrate how America’s gun violence problem is unique amongst developed countries.

‍The 25 Best Inventions of 2017
‍time.com
‍From a personal robot with a face and the ability to laugh and dance (Jibo), to glasses that literally let blind people see (eSight 3), 2017 has been another year of amazing and accelerating technological breakthroughs. While the Tesla Model 3 (rightfully) gets all the headlines, the other 24 inventions on this list from Time are also worth acknowledging.

‍Another Global Financial Crisis is Imminent, and Here are Four Reasons Why
‍scmp.com
‍Famous Scottish historian Niall Ferguson was ahead of almost everyone on predicting the Global Financial Crisis and he sees similar areas for concerns in today’s financial landscape. In this article for the South China Morning Post, Ferguson lays out four reasons why another global financial crisis could be on the way.

‍Turning Potential into Success
‍hbr.org
‍An insightful piece from the most recent edition of the Harvard Business Review Magazine on how organizations can do a better job of developing their leaders of tomorrow from within the organization. Identifying future leaders early on and providing them with the tools to create their own success is a lesson worth learning for organizations of any size.

‍With Teen Mental Health Deteriorating over Five Years, There's a Likely Culprit
‍theconversation.com
‍This journal article from Jean Twenge, Professor of Psychology at San Diego State University, argues that the growing use of smartphones is leading to increased mental health issues in today’s teens. Twenge suggests that the recent jumps in teen depression and suicide rates can be linked to symptoms of smartphone use such as lost sleep and decreased face-to-face interaction with friends. In an increasingly connected World, we should all be concerned with her findings.

‍31 Ways to Optimize Your Smartphone
‍popularscience.com
‍Even if excessive smartphone use can harm your mental health, it is likely that most of us can no longer live without one. As a result, we should all be looking for ways to be more efficient in the ways that we use our smartphones. This list from Popular Science looks at some of the best ways to optimize your smartphone use. From taming the tidal wave of push notifications, to extending battery life, there is something here for everyone.

‍The Dying Art of Disagreement
‍nytimes.com
‍Bret Stephens, a conservative columnist at The New York Times, recently gave this lecture in Sydney, Australia on the growing polarization of American society. Stephens argues against the recent trend on American university campuses of disinviting speakers that a portion of the student body disagrees with. He suggests that something must be wrong when students are preventing luminaries from both sides of the political spectrum, such as Condoleeza Rice and Larry Summers, from speaking on their university campuses. Worthwhile reading, regardless of your political viewpoint.

‍Forming a Picture of the New Philanthropist
‍nytimes.com
‍As philanthropy shifts to adapt to the rapidly changing landscape of the 21st century, the families making philanthropic donations shift along with it. In this New York Times article, Paul Sullivan interviews several families of wealth on how they think about giving and what motivates their family’s philanthropy.

‍World War Three, By Mistake
‍newyorker.com
‍On June 3, 1980, the US Military’s missile defence systems issued an urgent warning: the Soviets had just launched a nuclear attack on the United States. US National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski received a phone call from the Pentagon at 2:30 AM letting him that know that 2,200 Soviet missiles would be arriving in the United States within minutes. Brzezinski decided not to wake up his wife, preferring that she die in her sleep, and prepared to call US President Jimmy Carter and recommend an American counterattack. Before he could make that call, he received another call saying the whole thing had been a false alarm caused by a defective computer chip in a US Military communications device. In this haunting New Yorker article, Eric Schlosser highlights how nuclear war by mistake is still a terrifyingly possible outcome.