I Read a Book a Week in 2025 (and Yes, It Almost Killed Me)

Sure, reading books is harder nowadays … but so is the world.

Yes, This Thing Is Still On

Museum Human has been reading and studying to help keep the writing relevant. Especially now.

Links of the Week: January 31, 2025: The Year that Was, The Year that Is

Let's start off the year in links with a pile from last year.

Is There a "Joy Division" in Facing the World's Problems? A Review of Hospicing Modernity and What If We Get It Right?

Two recent books approach climate and societal collapse from different sides of the apparent doomer/hoptimism divide—with a side question of joyfulness.

Museum Human's End-of-Year Reading Break Rundown

You get a lot of reading done when you actually read.

In Search of the Counterintuitive: A Review of At Work in the Ruins and Museum Magazine's Issue on Convergence

Do we need more of the unexpected and surprising in our polarized world?

A Review of Bootstrapped and a Webinar on Worker Self-Directed Nonprofits

Organizations too often believe the twin myths of individual self-reliance and worker disempowerment.

Links of the Week: June 21, 2024: Trust Busting or Trust Building?

Museums can't preach trust in society without enacting it internally.

The Mindset to Matter: A Review of Why Museums Matter and Videogames and the Public Museum

Are museum leaders and workers speaking languages too different for institutions to thrive?

Limits and Rifts: A Review of Post Growth and Marx in the Anthropocene

We obsess about growth but do we think enough about limits?

The Story of Technological Progress is Not a Given: A Review of Power and Progress

The cultural sector has to change its ideas about progress and technology.

Tough Love for the DEI Industry: A Review of DEI Deconstructed

A 2022 book has a damning analysis of why DEI hasn't worked so far—and how understanding org culture better is the first step to real change.

The View from Up There: a Review of The Future of the Museum: 28 Dialogues by András Szántó

A 2020 leader-focused book on the future of museums is more than meets the eye.

Museum Luddites, Revisited: A Review of Blood in the Machine by Brian Merchant

A new book connect the Luddite uprising of the 1810s to current tech-directed work.

The Top Museum Human Posts of 2023

Museum Human readers in 2023 enjoyed interviews almost as much as reading about quiet quitting.