Ball Lightning by Cixin Liu is about a scientist who decides to dedicate his life to studying ball lightning (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_lightning) when nobody takes it seriously
Lift Off by Eric Berger details early days of SpaceX
Because according to the mythology, Cassandra's prophecies actually were predicting the truth.
I think the part where people didn't believe her wasn't relevant, when it came to the DB product naming. She was a "source of truth" regardless of people's belief in it.
A book on the Wright brothers I would very much recommend is "The Bishop's Boys", fascinating story with a lot of detail I was unaware of. From my recollection it wasn't so much no-one believed in them as they just didn't give a dam what others thought, they just were interested in trying. I should clarify that by saying that they were certainly interested in learning what others had done but, as far as I recall, they weren't concerned what others thought about the probability of success.
Neptune's Apprentice is a memoir by Marie DeSantis, who was one the first woman to break into the commercial fishing industry in California in the 1960's.
I'm biased because I work in commercial fishing myself, but this was a very good read.
Longitude - nonfic by dana sobel About a scientist/engineer who developed a sufficiently accurate clock to calculate longitude on an oceangoing ship in the age of sail. Which was of vast importance to sailing. The establishment was strongly in favor of astronomy based methods of calculating longitude.
Barbara McClintock is a real scientist who fits this mold, but I haven't read a biography of her to specifically recommend.
Themistocles[1] was convinced that the Persian empire will attack the Greeks for a second time, so he pushed for crating a naval fleet. Athenians (democracy eh?) were not on board, so he played an entire city by knowingly lying to them (those politician sucked from day one) effectively saving the city and to an extend western civilization as we know it.
37 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 88.3 ms ] threadTo me there’s a distinction between this and disbelief.
Confidence Game: How Hedge Fund Manager Bill Ackman Called Wall Street's Bluff // Christine Richard
Fooling Some of the People All of the Time // David Einhorn
Lift Off by Eric Berger details early days of SpaceX
NN Taleb basically has a book trilogy dedicated to making complicated life bets. Start with Black Swan. You can skip some.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassandra
https://www.google.com/search?q=books+about+cassandra+of+tro...
I think the part where people didn't believe her wasn't relevant, when it came to the DB product naming. She was a "source of truth" regardless of people's belief in it.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23827.The_Bishop_s_Boys
e.g. Peter Mitchell's chemiosmotic theory of how living cells power themselves at a molecular level was not accepted for many years.
A Message to Garcia
This generation needs this mindset. My first manager gave it to me.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Message_to_Garcia
[1] https://www.nerdfitness.com/iron-and-soul/
I'm biased because I work in commercial fishing myself, but this was a very good read.
Barbara McClintock is a real scientist who fits this mold, but I haven't read a biography of her to specifically recommend.
-Papillion by Henri Charrière: https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/bbd4b0ce-baad-4f04-9e98-...
-Escape from Camp 14 by Blaine Harden: https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/112010c8-be72-4ddc-b5e5-...
-The Naked Don't Fear the Water by Matthieu Aikins: https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/2572756e-ab98-4376-94be-...
-Barbie & Ruth by Robin Gerber: https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/69d6197f-f9dd-465f-bc3a-...
-The Fish That Ate the Whale by Rich Cohen (Starts slow but the story is wild.): https://app.thestorygraph.com/browse?button=&search_term=fis...
Fiction:
-The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas: https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/abd1c172-fbba-469d-a99c-...
-Hatchet by Gary Paulson: https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/8a8b0f34-bdec-4e08-bad8-...
-The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah (This one is kind of a rough read.): https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/8a740c2e-a536-47c8-8d67-...
-Pachinko by Min Jin Lee: https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/c906e464-dc41-4f82-9601-...
-The Beekeeper of Aleppo by Christy Lefteri: https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/297187a2-ad88-4b2b-a453-...
-Bear Town by Fredrik Backman (It's not quite what you're looking for, but close, and really good.): https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/1e759f91-b8e7-4a7b-b10a-...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Themistocles