Ask HN: What are you reading?
What book, article, paper, etc. are you reading right now?
I just finished Ben Rhodes' book The World As It Is, about his eight years in the Obama administration as the U.S. Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications. I have always found the scale of a U.S. president's duties pretty awe-inspiring so I found the book fascinating. If you share that interest, I would also recommend Days of Fire about the Bush administration.
I've also recently finished up Into the Black, the true story of Space Shuttle Columbia's first mission, and the coming together of the shuttle program as a whole. It was filled with interesting details, though I did feel like it jumped around a bit.
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[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 60.6 ms ] threadMore pragmatically, at any given time there are usually 2-3 books that I'm actively making meaningful progress on and expect to finish in the next 1-30 days or so. Right now that set includes:
A Canticle for Liebowitz - Walter M. Miller Jr.
Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid - Douglas Hofstadter
Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies - Nick Bostrom
Beyond that, I'll just link to the aforementioned Goodreads profile. Feel free to friend me on there, I always enjoy following what other HN'ers are reading.
https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/33942804-phillip-rhodes
Valley of Genius[1] is a history of silicon valley, but told via excerpts and quotes from influential members of the SV community. It's quite a fascinating book, and I highly recommend it. I'm in my early thirties, so this book really helps to provide context for when people say we're just rebuilding things that have been done before. Learning about what was going on at Xerox with Alan Kay is just incredible.
The other book I'm reading is the Selfish Gene[1], by Richard Dawkins. I've read this book 3-4 times already, so at this point I read it for almost philosophical reasons. It's a wonderful explanation of evolution and micro-biology. I'm sure there are more up-to-date texts, but Dawkins is a superb writer.
[1] Valley of Genius: The Uncensored History of Silicon Valley (As Told by the Hackers, Founders, and Freaks Who Made It Boom)
[2] The Selfish Gene, by Richard Dawkins
Dark Matt and Trojan Horses by Dan Hill
Interaction of Color by Josef Albers
Simplicity by Edward de Bono
The Score Takes Care of Itself
Building Evolutionary Architectures
Design It!
Managing Humans
Big Nerd Ranch Kotlin
Currently reading The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South and Safe Area Goražde, a comic book about the Bosnian War.
Also reading Bertrand Russell's The History of Western Philosophy in between books, but that's a book I'll never really finish.
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