It’s disappointing that in 2013 women are still reading and writing about leadership and work-life balance. Yet here we are. Nothing here stood out to me as groundbreaking, except, perhaps, that the ideas came from Sandberg herself. If new generations of women are still grappling with how to become leaders, then learning from Sandberg is a useful place to start. Plus, given the discourse  Lean In provoked, the conversation about women in the workplace is far from exhausted.

A fascinating account of the development of cooking technology and its impact on tastes and trends. I was surprised to learn that so much of what I think of as fundamental to cooking and eating are actually rather recent developments which have consequences for society far beyond the kitchen and the dinner table. For example, cans existed for 50 years before someone invented a can opener. For us, the two are an obvious pairing, but that’s not how it happened. For decades, people were missing an essential tool from their lives, and didn’t know it. Makes me wonder about the yet-to-be-designed tools that we’re lacking now, and don’t even know about.