Yes absolutely. Howard Zinn—rest in power—is one of the few historians who could 1) detail political arguments and rationales 2) without becoming obtuse in language or overly complex in reasoning and 3) without diminishing in any way the academic integrity of his work. Read this in 9th grade, and it truly did grant a focus to my life that I still carry.
The Master Switch : This really puts a lot of things into context, especially if you're in tech industry. It's basically a history of the entire Information Technology, and it's fascinating how same things happen over and over again, pendulums swing back and forth over and over again, and people keep making same mistakes over and over again. Also you can see the larger picture of why some large tech companies make the decisions they make, and how to successfully compete if you are into that.
You will become a pessimist for a while after reading this, just because it feels like there's no meaning in all this since everything repeats itself and nothing is forever, but when you recover from it you'll find yourself much more insightful about the industry and can make better decisions.
Surprised this isn't higher given the demographics of HN. Another one that felt similar to me, but more focused on mass media specifically and its effect on society, was Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman. Be warned, you will have a very dim view of the future of humanity if you read all the way through.
The Master Switch : This really puts a lot of things into context, especially if you're in tech industry. It's basically a history of the entire Information Technology, and it's fascinating how same things happen over and over again, pendulums swing back and forth over and over again, and people keep making same mistakes over and over again
OK, you sold me. Just ordered a copy. Thanks for the recommendation!
Thanks for sharing the summary. Deep Work was recommended to me recently so this is super helpful. It seems consistent with common thinking that attention is a muscle to be strength trained regularly.
I've been gathering my own book notes in a GitHub repo [1] and added a link back to your post for when I read the book.
Interesting. I had exactly the opposite experience with my first Murakami. I was at Barnes & Noble one Sunday evening, grabbed one of his titles (After Dark) off the shelf, intending to flip through a few pages; and next thing you know the store is about to close and I'm halfway through the book. I bought the copy, drove home and finished reading it that night. I was hooked pretty much from the get-go.
The Gift of Fear (Gavin Debecker) - how to deal with bad people
The War against Women (Marilyn French) - the underlying premise is wrong, but reading it is a good way to learn how to deal with semi-rational, but insane theses. And yes, I can defend this position with quotes / paraphrases from the book, with rational explanations as to why it's insane
How the Police generate false confessions (James Trainum) - former cop explains why harsh interrogation techniques are counter-productive, and how to defend yourself
Get the Truth (Philip Houston et all) - how to tell when people are lying, via simple techniques you can remember
i discovered 'the phantom tollbooth' in grad school (for some reason, it was pretty much unknown in india when i was growing up). i'm pretty sure kid me would have loved it even more than adult me did.
I remember telling my parents this was my favorite book when I was 10. I'm currently reading the Chinese translation since it matches my current Chinese reading level, and it's been quite enjoyable, even though a lot of English-specific word play is lost in translation.
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! - Richard Feynman
What Do You Care What Other People Think? - Richard Feynman
Crime and Guilt: Stories - Ferdinand von Schirach
Fiction:
The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov
Technical:
Bulldog: A Compiler for VLIW Architectures - John Ellis
I have never heard of Ferdinand von Schirach, but since the two other books of Feynman are really good, I would also like to know, why you recommend the third book. Could you tell more why his autobiography is worth reading?
Crime and Guilt is completely unlike either of the Feynman memoirs. It is a compilation of two separate short story collections that were originally published in German. The author is a German criminal defense attorney and the stories are fictionalized accounts of some of his cases. I probably should have listed it under Fiction. It is not an uplifting read and some of the stories are quite brutal. I recommended Crime and Guilt because it portrays the best and worst of human beings. You will read about a bank robber who starts a new life in Ethiopia. Another story is about the author defending a nameless assassin. A third is about a petty burglar who steals from the wrong victim.
+1. An absolutely wonderful read. I've found myself constantly gifting copies. To anyone looking to purchase, the Alma Books[0] translation is the one I would recommend.
Animal farm by George Orwell: a revelation of the beginning and end of revolution and 'change'.
Jewish wisdom for business success.
Call of the wild by Jack London: it shows how possible it is to adapt in order to benefit maximally from change -- using a dog's (Buck) life.
The Art of Learning by Joshua Waitzkin. I was definitely in the right place to take in the topic, but it was, more or less, a book on how you can be "good" without much effort, but to be great or the best, it takes a lot of hard work and time. This book helped me learn that lesson.
On top of that, some of Tim Ferriss' stuff on accelerated learning. Learn how to learn first, then learn everything else.
Amazingly powerful read. It is simultaneously completely saddening to read what some humans are capable of doing to others, but also inspiring to see those who were victims of the holocaust and how they looked out for their fellow man during times when they themselves had absolutely nothing.
A tale of the absolute worst and best of humanity.
"How to Prove It" by D. Velleman. Introduces logical reasoning, set theory, functions, relations, and proofs. It is the base for understanding any mathematical subject.
Personally, because a thorough understanding of the Bible shows that its teaching is quite different to what is often portrayed in media and in the assumptions of people like myself who had not previously read it.
You can take many individual parts of the Bible out of context and make it sound like madness but reading the whole in its entirety has a narrative that many miss.
For those raised on the internet and faster gratification (like me), try The Jesus Storybook Bible which I personally think is a great effort at paraphrasing the original.
That's overly broad. I was hoping for something more specific. Again, not trying to be contrary. I sincerely want to understand why some highly intelligent people can read this book and be convinced of the existence of God, while other highly intelligent people can read it and end up convinced otherwise. I find that outcome interesting.
> I would not want to believe in such a neurotic, angry god.
I'm under impression that people may have created gods in their own image so to speak, which immediately makes me wonder if there will come a time that you will eat these words. Denial much?
Not the OP but... I read Gospels once. Or twice, actually.
The first time as a clueless teenager and it made me worry that maybe this paranormal stuff is real because so many people seem to believe it. This was probably the closest to "being a Christian" I had ever got. If you so desire, feel free to say it's crap and not what this religion was supposed to be about etc. etc., I don't mind at all. That's how I was raised by my parents - they seem to be a hard case of "belief in belief".
The second time in my twenties - it gave me some idea of how people may have come to believe in this paranormal stuff and helped me get over it.
I would recommend Christians read the Bible for exactly that reason.
Christians should be forced to confront the absurdity of their holy book and the psychotic lunacy of the Abrahamic God before deciding not only to base their life and worldview on it, but to raise their children to believe in it and to vote for candidates who enshrine it into law.
At the very least, we might have far fewer Christians who insist upon Biblical literalism.
>Many of those who insist on Biblical literalism have already read this stuff.
I would argue that many likely haven't, or at least not all of it. There are plenty of Christians who construct a coherent narrative of what the Bible "says" in their heads based on cherry-picking and second-hand interpretation, believing it was inspired, word for word, jot and tittle, Old and New Testaments (in whatever form their church currently accepts[0]) by God Himself. They're told that Jesus was prophesied about in Daniel, and that certain monsters in Revelation represent Apache helecopters, and that everything makes perfect sense because the dots are connected for them.
But if one wants to believe that the world was created in seven literal days, one either has to fudge the definition of "days" (which many do) to account for the actual evidence, and come up with some reason for there being two completely different creation accounts in the Bible, or come to terms with the fact that the Bible is a work of fiction written by fallible human beings to understand their world in ways we understand far better now.
When I was in Sunday School aeons ago, I certainly had more questions about the Bible than answers, and it eventually became clear that the people teaching me had no greater or more profound insight into the nature of reality than I had. There are bound to be others who will read the Bible and start to have doubts that what's described there represents absolute truth. When you read it yourself, it's incoherent and irrational.
But you're right, there are some people you just can't reach.
[0] let's just ignore the numerous Biblical canons in existence, or that awkward period when all non-Latin translations were considered heresy, or that other awkward period when there was no singular canon, only numerous oral traditions and Gospels, many of which were decided after the fact to have not been the Word of God after all...
Reading the bible and seeking answers to the difficult questions that presented (rather than tossing it out at the first seeming inconsistencies) is what began my journey from atheism to being a follower of Jesus.
Further reading that helped along that journey:
1) Mere Christianity by CS Lewis
2) The Reason For God by Tim Keller
3) Anything by John Lennox
4) Many discussions by Ravi Zacharias
Regardless, this is not me attempting to invalidate all the points already made to the contrary, but an attempt to point out that belief in the bible isnt the most rediculous thing concievable and there are thoughtful, scientific people who identify as Christian, are not republican, trump-supporting or homophobic. Example: Francis Collins, leader of the Human Genome Project
"Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers" by Geoffrey A. Moore and also his recent "Zone to win". His books explain some of the "deeper structure" to tech business, and is one of the few business-related books I've read that has any depth. By "depth", I mean in the sense that I'm used to from research mathematics (I'm a number theorist by training), where you learn something about a problem that lets you think about problems in a more detailed way.
I'm 30 now. I wish I had read this when I was 20. It would've made dating in my 20s so much easier. I came across it last year and it's probably the single most important book I'll ever read in my entire life, for the sole reason that understanding women will allow me to have a successful marriage one day. I cannot recommend this enough.
279 comments
[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 285 ms ] threadYou will become a pessimist for a while after reading this, just because it feels like there's no meaning in all this since everything repeats itself and nothing is forever, but when you recover from it you'll find yourself much more insightful about the industry and can make better decisions.
OK, you sold me. Just ordered a copy. Thanks for the recommendation!
- [0] https://www.robinwieruch.de/lessons-learned-deep-work-flow/
I've been gathering my own book notes in a GitHub repo [1] and added a link back to your post for when I read the book.
[1]: https://github.com/tedmiston/notes
The War against Women (Marilyn French) - the underlying premise is wrong, but reading it is a good way to learn how to deal with semi-rational, but insane theses. And yes, I can defend this position with quotes / paraphrases from the book, with rational explanations as to why it's insane
How the Police generate false confessions (James Trainum) - former cop explains why harsh interrogation techniques are counter-productive, and how to defend yourself
Get the Truth (Philip Houston et all) - how to tell when people are lying, via simple techniques you can remember
Here are some links to more articulate reviews.
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/review...
https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2013/01/crime-and-guilt-by-fer...
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/23/books/review/Steinhauer-t....
[0] - https://www.amazon.com/Master-Margarita-Mikhail-Bulgakov/dp/...
On top of that, some of Tim Ferriss' stuff on accelerated learning. Learn how to learn first, then learn everything else.
https://www.amazon.com/Starting-Strength-Basic-Barbell-Train...
Amazingly powerful read. It is simultaneously completely saddening to read what some humans are capable of doing to others, but also inspiring to see those who were victims of the holocaust and how they looked out for their fellow man during times when they themselves had absolutely nothing.
A tale of the absolute worst and best of humanity.
You can take many individual parts of the Bible out of context and make it sound like madness but reading the whole in its entirety has a narrative that many miss.
For those raised on the internet and faster gratification (like me), try The Jesus Storybook Bible which I personally think is a great effort at paraphrasing the original.
EDIT: clarity
I'm under impression that people may have created gods in their own image so to speak, which immediately makes me wonder if there will come a time that you will eat these words. Denial much?
The first time as a clueless teenager and it made me worry that maybe this paranormal stuff is real because so many people seem to believe it. This was probably the closest to "being a Christian" I had ever got. If you so desire, feel free to say it's crap and not what this religion was supposed to be about etc. etc., I don't mind at all. That's how I was raised by my parents - they seem to be a hard case of "belief in belief".
The second time in my twenties - it gave me some idea of how people may have come to believe in this paranormal stuff and helped me get over it.
Christians should be forced to confront the absurdity of their holy book and the psychotic lunacy of the Abrahamic God before deciding not only to base their life and worldview on it, but to raise their children to believe in it and to vote for candidates who enshrine it into law.
At the very least, we might have far fewer Christians who insist upon Biblical literalism.
Many of those who insist on Biblical literalism have already read this stuff.
You lose one life. Try again.
I would argue that many likely haven't, or at least not all of it. There are plenty of Christians who construct a coherent narrative of what the Bible "says" in their heads based on cherry-picking and second-hand interpretation, believing it was inspired, word for word, jot and tittle, Old and New Testaments (in whatever form their church currently accepts[0]) by God Himself. They're told that Jesus was prophesied about in Daniel, and that certain monsters in Revelation represent Apache helecopters, and that everything makes perfect sense because the dots are connected for them.
But if one wants to believe that the world was created in seven literal days, one either has to fudge the definition of "days" (which many do) to account for the actual evidence, and come up with some reason for there being two completely different creation accounts in the Bible, or come to terms with the fact that the Bible is a work of fiction written by fallible human beings to understand their world in ways we understand far better now.
When I was in Sunday School aeons ago, I certainly had more questions about the Bible than answers, and it eventually became clear that the people teaching me had no greater or more profound insight into the nature of reality than I had. There are bound to be others who will read the Bible and start to have doubts that what's described there represents absolute truth. When you read it yourself, it's incoherent and irrational.
But you're right, there are some people you just can't reach.
[0] let's just ignore the numerous Biblical canons in existence, or that awkward period when all non-Latin translations were considered heresy, or that other awkward period when there was no singular canon, only numerous oral traditions and Gospels, many of which were decided after the fact to have not been the Word of God after all...
Further reading that helped along that journey: 1) Mere Christianity by CS Lewis 2) The Reason For God by Tim Keller 3) Anything by John Lennox 4) Many discussions by Ravi Zacharias
Regardless, this is not me attempting to invalidate all the points already made to the contrary, but an attempt to point out that belief in the bible isnt the most rediculous thing concievable and there are thoughtful, scientific people who identify as Christian, are not republican, trump-supporting or homophobic. Example: Francis Collins, leader of the Human Genome Project
Antifragile https://www.amazon.com/Antifragile-Things-That-Disorder-Ince...
High Output Management https://www.amazon.com/High-Output-Management-Andrew-Grove/d...
The Master Switch https://www.amazon.com/Master-Switch-Rise-Information-Empire...
Thinking Fast and Slow https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-Kahneman/dp...
I'm 30 now. I wish I had read this when I was 20. It would've made dating in my 20s so much easier. I came across it last year and it's probably the single most important book I'll ever read in my entire life, for the sole reason that understanding women will allow me to have a successful marriage one day. I cannot recommend this enough.
[0] Free online: https://www.scribd.com/doc/33421576/How-To-Be-A-3-Man