60+ Book Recommendations by Paul Graham
Brazen Chariots
Robert Crisp
I recommend Robert Crisp's _Brazen Chariots_. A gripping story about an interesting point in history, told by someone you'd want to know. https://t.co/On5yTNY5fV
Life in the English Country House
Mark Girouard
Based on the author's Slade lectures given at Oxford University in 1975-76.@KucheraRobert @anammostarac This is the best book about English country houses: https://t.co/MMD5TRwGwR
Hitler's Willing Executioners
Daniel Jonah Goldhagen
A revisionist study of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust reveals why ordinary Germans from all walks of life participated willingly in the extermination of the Jews. Reprint. 125,000 first printing. Tour.@matthew_d_green @daveaitel It's hard to say how many people will do terrible things when circumstances encourage them to, but based on history I would guess the proportion is depressingly high. https://t.co/GtqZdCYzh6
Hell Divers
John F. Forsyth
The author, the pilot of a dive bomber during World War II, describes his experiences at Coron Bay, Formosa, Leyte, Luzon, and other naval air battles@tommycollison Hell Divers: Navy Dive Bombers at War, which despite its title (probably the work of the publisher, which usually publishes books about planes rather than people) is actually the autobiography of a particular pilot during WW II.
Secret Knowledge (New and Expanded Edition)
David Hockney
Join one of the most influential artists of our time as he investigates the painting techniques of the Old Masters. Hockney’s extensive research led him to conclude that artists such as Caravaggio, Velázquez, da Vinci, and other hyperrealists actually used optics and lenses to create their masterpieces. In this passionate yet pithy book, Hockney takes readers on a journey of discovery as he builds a case that mirrors and lenses were used by the great masters to create their highly detailed and realistic paintings and drawings. Hundreds of the best-known and best-loved paintings are reproduced alongside his straightforward analysis. Hockney also includes his own photographs and drawings to illustrate techniques used to capture such accurate likenesses. Extracts from historical and modern documents and correspondence with experts from around the world further illuminate this thought-provoking book that will forever change how the world looks at art. Secret Knowledge will open your eyes to how we perceive the world and how we choose to represent it.@CountryOTBlind @Liv_Boeree Yes, interesting book.
Origins Of The Second World War
A J Taylor
One of the most popular and controversial historians of the twentieth century, who made his subject accessible to millions, A.J.P. Taylor caused a storm of outrage with this scandalous bestseller. Debunking what were accepted truths about the Second World War, he argued provocatively that Hitler did not set out to cause the war as part of an evil master plan, but blundered into it partly by accident, aided by the shortcomings of others. Fiercely attacked for vindicating Hitler, A.J.P. Taylor�s stringent re-examination of the events preceding the Nazi invasion of Poland on 1st September 1939 opened up new debate, and is now recognized as a brilliant and classic piece of scholarly research. �Highly original and penetrating � No one who has digested this enthralling work will ever be able to look at the period again in quite the same way� Sunday Telegraph.@antoinenivard @MccartneyLes @asymco If you want a more authoritative source than a Wikipedia article, I recommend this excellent book on the subject: https://t.co/Ps4g08L8Jx
Founders at Work
Jessica Livingston
Now available in paperback—with a new preface and interview with Jessica Livingston about Y Combinator! Founders at Work: Stories of Startups’ Early Days is a collection of interviews with founders of famous technology companies about what happened in the very earliest days. These people are celebrities now. What was it like when they were just a couple friends with an idea? Founders like Steve Wozniak (Apple), Caterina Fake (Flickr), Mitch Kapor (Lotus), Max Levchin (PayPal), and Sabeer Bhatia (Hotmail) tell you in their own words about their surprising and often very funny discoveries as they learned how to build a company. Where did they get the ideas that made them rich? How did they convince investors to back them? What went wrong, and how did they recover? Nearly all technical people have thought of one day starting or working for a startup. For them, this book is the closest you can come to being a fly on the wall at a successful startup, to learn how it's done. But ultimately these interviews are required reading for anyone who wants to understand business, because startups are business reduced to its essence. The reason their founders become rich is that startups do what businesses do—create value—more intensively than almost any other part of the economy. How? What are the secrets that make successful startups so insanely productive? Read this book, and let the founders themselves tell you.@kingharis If you want to understand startup culture, read Founders at Work: https://t.co/CEMictjNnb
The Golden Trade of the Moors
E. W. Bovill
An account of the golden trade of the Moors, and a source book on Saharan trade routes, caravan organization and Sudanese history. The author covers anthropology and economic geography as well as history, as he examines and explores the hot little towns, sharp traders and the brutal rulers. He seeks to encourage and inspire a generation of scholars to discover more about parts of Africa still surprisingly little known to the outside world.A nice photograph of some books. Bovill's Golden Trade of the Moors, top center, is a great book that should be better known. https://t.co/brJYxqft19
The Power Law
Sebastian Mallaby
"A rare and unsettling look inside a subculture of unparalleled influence.” —Jane Mayer "A classic...A book of exceptional reporting, analysis and storytelling.” —Charles Duhigg From the New York Times bestselling author of More Money Than God comes the astonishingly frank and intimate story of Silicon Valley’s dominant venture-capital firms—and how their strategies and fates have shaped the path of innovation and the global economy Innovations rarely come from “experts.” Elon Musk was not an “electric car person” before he started Tesla. When it comes to improbable innovations, a legendary tech VC told Sebastian Mallaby, the future cannot be predicted, it can only be discovered. It is the nature of the venture-capital game that most attempts at discovery fail, but a very few succeed at such a scale that they more than make up for everything else. That extreme ratio of success and failure is the power law that drives the VC business, all of Silicon Valley, the wider tech sector, and, by extension, the world. In The Power Law, Sebastian Mallaby has parlayed unprecedented access to the most celebrated venture capitalists of all time—the key figures at Sequoia, Kleiner Perkins, Accel, Benchmark, and Andreessen Horowitz, as well as Chinese partnerships such as Qiming and Capital Today—into a riveting blend of storytelling and analysis that unfurls the history of tech incubation, in the Valley and ultimately worldwide. We learn the unvarnished truth, often for the first time, about some of the most iconic triumphs and infamous disasters in Valley history, from the comedy of errors at the birth of Apple to the avalanche of venture money that fostered hubris at WeWork and Uber. VCs’ relentless search for grand slams brews an obsession with the ideal of the lone entrepreneur-genius, and companies seen as potential “unicorns” are given intoxicating amounts of power, with sometimes disastrous results. On a more systemic level, the need to make outsized bets on unproven talent reinforces bias, with women and minorities still represented at woefully low levels. This does not just have social justice implications: as Mallaby relates, China’s homegrown VC sector, having learned at the Valley’s feet, is exploding and now has more women VC luminaries than America has ever had. Still, Silicon Valley VC remains the top incubator of business innovation anywhere—it is not where ideas come from so much as where they go to become the products and companies that create the future. By taking us so deeply into the VCs’ game, The Power Law helps us think about our own future through their eyes.If you want to understand how venture capital works and the effect it has had on the US economy, this is the book to read. Lots of people talk about VC. Few of them understand it. But Mallaby does. https://t.co/2B0gfrxqJw
The Illustrated Sailing Alone Around the World
Joshua Slocum
Sailing Alone Around the World is a sailing memoir by Joshua Slocum in 1900 about his single-handed global circumnavigation aboard the sloop Spray.Slocum's _Sailing Alone Around the World_ is great. As well as being the first to sail single-handed around the world, he writes with such humor and directness that this may also be the best book on sailing period. https://t.co/ksTtc7EV4e
To Start a War
Robert Draper
Even after more than fifteen years it is hard to see the invasion of Iraq through the cool, considered gaze of history. Draper paints a vivid and indelible picture of a decision-making process that was fatally compromised, by a combination of post-9/11 fear and paranoia, rank naïveté, craven groupthink, and participants who gamed the process relentlessly. The intelligence failure was comprehensive. The result is a definitive account of a collective process, arriving at evidence that would prove to be not just dubious but entirely false, driven by imagination rather than a quest for truth-- and led to hundreds of thousands of deaths and a flood tide of chaos in the Middle East that shows no signs of ebbing. -- adapted from jacketThat excerpt is from a paywalled NYRB review of Robert Draper's new book on the Iraq War. https://t.co/VUbkA89INg
The Double Helix
James D. Watson
The classic personal account of Watson and Crick’s groundbreaking discovery of the structure of DNA, now with an introduction by Sylvia Nasar, author of A Beautiful Mind. By identifying the structure of DNA, the molecule of life, Francis Crick and James Watson revolutionized biochemistry and won themselves a Nobel Prize. At the time, Watson was only twenty-four, a young scientist hungry to make his mark. His uncompromisingly honest account of the heady days of their thrilling sprint against other world-class researchers to solve one of science’s greatest mysteries gives a dazzlingly clear picture of a world of brilliant scientists with great gifts, very human ambitions, and bitter rivalries. With humility unspoiled by false modesty, Watson relates his and Crick’s desperate efforts to beat Linus Pauling to the Holy Grail of life sciences, the identification of the basic building block of life. Never has a scientist been so truthful in capturing in words the flavor of his work.Rereading Watson's Double Helix. I ignored this book in HS when everyone else was reading it, because I wasn't interested in Biology, but I've now read it 1.5 times as an adult and it's a great story.
More Money Than God
Sebastian Mallaby
Chronicles the evolution of hedge funds from their origins in the 1960s to their status in the recent economic crisis, discussing the contributions of key figures while offering insight into how they have weathered recent financial setbacks and are defining future trends. By the author of The World's Banker. Reprint. A best-selling book.I've now read about half this book, and it's really good. He really got into the details of how hedge funds work and how they evolved. It's hard to imagine anyone will ever write a better book on the subject. https://t.co/cmONiNnfx6
I Want to be a Mathematician
P.R. Halmos
Since it's World Book Day, here are some of the best books I've read recently: I Want to be a Mathematician, by Paul Halmos Barbarian Days, by William Finnegan From Galileo to Newton, by Rupert Hall The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective, by Robert Allen
Barbarian Days
William Finnegan
Surfing only looks like a sport. To initiates, it is something else entirely: a beautiful addiction, a demanding course of study, a morally dangerous pastime, a way of life. Raised in California and Hawaii, Finnegan started surfing as a child. He has chased waves all over the world, wandering for years through the South Pacific, Australia, Asia, Africa. A bookish boy, and then an excessively adventurous young man, he went on to become a writer and war reporter. Barbarian Days takes us deep into unfamiliar worlds, some of them right under our noses -- off the coasts of New York and San Francisco. It immerses the reader in the edgy camaraderie of close male friendships annealed in challenging waves.Since it's World Book Day, here are some of the best books I've read recently: I Want to be a Mathematician, by Paul Halmos Barbarian Days, by William Finnegan From Galileo to Newton, by Rupert Hall The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective, by Robert Allen
My Family and Other Animals
Gerald Durrell
A memoir of an English boy growing up on the Greek island of Corfu recounts the author's humorous adventures as he collects all kinds of animals and insects and brings them back to the house, much to his family's dismay.@dwlz https://t.co/Wmt9df3RAJ
Apollo's Arrow
Nicholas A. Christakis MD PhD
A piercing and scientifically grounded look at the emergence of the coronavirus pandemic and how it will change the way we live -- "this year's must-must-read." (Daniel Gilbert) Apollo's Arrow offers a riveting account of the impact of the coronavirus pandemic as it swept through American society in 2020, and of how the recovery will unfold in the coming years. Drawing on momentous (yet dimly remembered) historical epidemics, contemporary analyses, and cutting-edge research from a range of scientific disciplines, bestselling author, physician, sociologist, and public health expert Nicholas A. Christakis explores what it means to live in a time of plague -- an experience that is paradoxically uncommon to the vast majority of humans who are alive, yet deeply fundamental to our species. Unleashing new divisions in our society as well as opportunities for cooperation, this 21st-century pandemic has upended our lives in ways that will test, but not vanquish, our already frayed collective culture. Featuring new, provocative arguments and vivid examples ranging across medicine, history, sociology, epidemiology, data science, and genetics, Apollo's Arrow envisions what happens when the great force of a deadly germ meets the enduring reality of our evolved social nature.I've just been reading Nicholas Christakis's book about the coronavirus, Apollo's Arrow, and it's a rare combination of broad historical panorama and all-too-topical bestseller. There are interesting insights on every page. https://t.co/DueBe1DIjb
I Want to be a Mathematician
P.R. Halmos
@shombuddho I bought Halmos's book on your recommendation, and it's fabulous, probably the best book I've read this year. Do you have any other recommendations?
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin
Some of my favorite autobiographical works: Ben Franklin's Autobiography Trollope's Autobiography Hardy's A Mathematician's Apology Durrell's My Family and Other Animals Johnson's Wing Leader Rousseau's Confessions Caesar's Conquest of Gaul Xenophon's Persian Expedition
An Autobiography of Anthony Trollope
Anthony Trollope
Some of my favorite autobiographical works: Ben Franklin's Autobiography Trollope's Autobiography Hardy's A Mathematician's Apology Durrell's My Family and Other Animals Johnson's Wing Leader Rousseau's Confessions Caesar's Conquest of Gaul Xenophon's Persian Expedition
The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau - Classic Illustrated Edition
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
* Beautifully illustrated with atmospheric paintings by renowned artists, The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau is a fascinating treatise on the education of the whole person for citizenship. * Just as accessible and enjoyable for today's readers as it would have been when first published, the novel is one of the great works of French literature and continues to be widely read throughout the world.* This meticulous edition from Heritage Illustrated Publishing is a faithful reproduction of the original text and is enhanced with images of classic works of art carefully selected by our team of professional editors.Some of my favorite autobiographical works: Ben Franklin's Autobiography Trollope's Autobiography Hardy's A Mathematician's Apology Durrell's My Family and Other Animals Johnson's Wing Leader Rousseau's Confessions Caesar's Conquest of Gaul Xenophon's Persian Expedition
A Mathematician's Apology
G. H. Hardy
Some of my favorite autobiographical works: Ben Franklin's Autobiography Trollope's Autobiography Hardy's A Mathematician's Apology Durrell's My Family and Other Animals Johnson's Wing Leader Rousseau's Confessions Caesar's Conquest of Gaul Xenophon's Persian Expedition
Some of my favorite autobiographical works: Ben Franklin's Autobiography Trollope's Autobiography Hardy's A Mathematician's Apology Durrell's My Family and Other Animals Johnson's Wing Leader Rousseau's Confessions Caesar's Conquest of Gaul Xenophon's Persian Expedition
Wing Leader
Johnnie Johnson
The thrilling story of the top-scoring Allied fighter pilot of the 2nd World War 'Johnnie' Johnson, who served with Fighter Command squadrons throughout the war, scoring his 38th and final victory in September 1944. From the moment the author joins his first operational Spitfire squadron in August 1940, the reader is taken on an epic journey through the great aerial fighter actions of the war. The events in which Johnson participated included the Battle of Britain, sweeps across the Channel and over France, the unsuccessful Allied raid on Dieppe, the D-Day landings in Normand and finally operations across the Rhine and into the heart of Germany itself which led to the final victory over the Nazi regime.Some of my favorite autobiographical works: Ben Franklin's Autobiography Trollope's Autobiography Hardy's A Mathematician's Apology Durrell's My Family and Other Animals Johnson's Wing Leader Rousseau's Confessions Caesar's Conquest of Gaul Xenophon's Persian Expedition
The Conquest of Gaul (Penguin Classics)
Jane P. Gardner
Between 58 and 50BC Caesar conquered most of the area now covered by France, Belgium and Switzerland, and twice invaded Britain. This is the record of his campaigns. Caesar's narrative offers insights into his military strategy & paints a fascinating picture of his encounters with the inhabitant of Gaul and Britain, as well as offering lively portraits of a number of key characters such as the rebel leaders and Gallic chieftains. This can also be read as a piece of political propaganda, as Caesar sets down his version of events for the Roman public, knowing that he faces civil war on his return to Rome.Some of my favorite autobiographical works: Ben Franklin's Autobiography Trollope's Autobiography Hardy's A Mathematician's Apology Durrell's My Family and Other Animals Johnson's Wing Leader Rousseau's Confessions Caesar's Conquest of Gaul Xenophon's Persian Expedition
- In The Persian Expedition, Xenophon, a young Athenian noble who sought his destiny abroad, provides an enthralling eyewitness account of the attempt by a Greek mercenary army � the Ten Thousand � to help Prince Cyrus overthrow his brother and take the Persian throne. When the Greeks were then betrayed by their Persian employers, they were forced to march home through hundreds of miles of difficult terrain � adrift in a hostile country and under constant attack from the unforgiving Persians and warlike tribes. In this outstanding description of endurance and individual bravery, Xenophon, one of those chosen to lead the retreating army, provides a vivid narrative of the campaign and its aftermath, and his account remains one of the best pictures we have of Greeks confronting a �barbarian� world.
Some of my favorite autobiographical works: Ben Franklin's Autobiography Trollope's Autobiography Hardy's A Mathematician's Apology Durrell's My Family and Other Animals Johnson's Wing Leader Rousseau's Confessions Caesar's Conquest of Gaul Xenophon's Persian Expedition
The Man Who Knew Infinity
Robert Kanigel
A biography of the Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan. The book gives a detailed account of his upbringing in India, his mathematical achievements, and his mathematical collaboration with English mathematician G. H. Hardy. The book also reviews the life of Hardy and the academic culture of Cambridge University during the early twentieth century.@SamGichuru The book is even more amazing. One of the best I've ever read.
Founders at Work
Jessica Livingston
Now available in paperback—with a new preface and interview with Jessica Livingston about Y Combinator! Founders at Work: Stories of Startups’ Early Days is a collection of interviews with founders of famous technology companies about what happened in the very earliest days. These people are celebrities now. What was it like when they were just a couple friends with an idea? Founders like Steve Wozniak (Apple), Caterina Fake (Flickr), Mitch Kapor (Lotus), Max Levchin (PayPal), and Sabeer Bhatia (Hotmail) tell you in their own words about their surprising and often very funny discoveries as they learned how to build a company. Where did they get the ideas that made them rich? How did they convince investors to back them? What went wrong, and how did they recover? Nearly all technical people have thought of one day starting or working for a startup. For them, this book is the closest you can come to being a fly on the wall at a successful startup, to learn how it's done. But ultimately these interviews are required reading for anyone who wants to understand business, because startups are business reduced to its essence. The reason their founders become rich is that startups do what businesses do—create value—more intensively than almost any other part of the economy. How? What are the secrets that make successful startups so insanely productive? Read this book, and let the founders themselves tell you.@ertzeus7bt https://t.co/CEMictjNnb
The Quest for El Cid
Richard Fletcher
Rodrigo Díaz, the legendary warrior-knight of eleventh-century Castile known as El Cid, is still honored in Spain as a national hero for liberating the fatherland from the occupying Moors. Yet, as this book reveals, there are many contradictions between eleventh-century reality and the mythology that developed later. By placing El Cid in a fresh, historical context, Fletcher shows us an adventurous soldier of fortune who was of a type, one of a number of "cids," or "bosses," who flourished in eleventh-century Spain. But the El Cid of legend--the national hero--was unique in stature even in his lifetime. Before his death El Cid was already celebrated in a poem; posthumously he was immortalized in the great epic Poema de Mío Cid. When he died in Valencia in 1099, he was ruler of an independent principality he had carved for himself in Eastern Spain. Rather than the zealous Christian leader many believe him to have been, Rodrigo emerges in Fletcher's study as a mercenary equally at home in the feudal kingdoms of northern Spain and the exotic Moorish lands of the south, selling his martial skills to Christian and Muslim alike. Indeed, his very title derives from the Arabic word sayyid, meaning 'lord' or 'master.' And as there was little if any sense of Spanish nationhood in the eleventh century, he can hardly be credited for uniting a medieval Spanish nation. This ground-breaking inquiry into the life and times of El Cid disentangles fact from myth to create a striking portrait of an extraordinary man, clearly showing how and why legend transformed him into something he was not during his lifetime.--From publisher description.The best books are ones that are ostensibly about narrow topics, but which expand in the writing. Whereas general surveys tend to be boring. E.g. Fletcher's Quest for El Cid. https://t.co/KVs7C1RNyF
Hard Drive
James Wallace
Chronicles the career of "Chairman Bill" Gates, the computer whiz kid who commands the powerful Microsoft computer software empire.@ribas_artur @LauraHuangLA I know of no other collections of interviews with founders. The closest you can get is probably books about specific startups. Hard Drive, about Microsoft, is good.
Founders at Work
Jessica Livingston
Now available in paperback—with a new preface and interview with Jessica Livingston about Y Combinator! Founders at Work: Stories of Startups’ Early Days is a collection of interviews with founders of famous technology companies about what happened in the very earliest days. These people are celebrities now. What was it like when they were just a couple friends with an idea? Founders like Steve Wozniak (Apple), Caterina Fake (Flickr), Mitch Kapor (Lotus), Max Levchin (PayPal), and Sabeer Bhatia (Hotmail) tell you in their own words about their surprising and often very funny discoveries as they learned how to build a company. Where did they get the ideas that made them rich? How did they convince investors to back them? What went wrong, and how did they recover? Nearly all technical people have thought of one day starting or working for a startup. For them, this book is the closest you can come to being a fly on the wall at a successful startup, to learn how it's done. But ultimately these interviews are required reading for anyone who wants to understand business, because startups are business reduced to its essence. The reason their founders become rich is that startups do what businesses do—create value—more intensively than almost any other part of the economy. How? What are the secrets that make successful startups so insanely productive? Read this book, and let the founders themselves tell you.@LauraHuangLA I recommend this one, although for people interested in starting startups, my recommendation would be not to go to business school. https://t.co/shzEWlNiHz
Born Red
Gao Yuan
Book recommendation: https://t.co/XuFuv47YI5
Small Wonder
Walter Henry Nelson
Chronicles the history of the popular German automobile the Volkswagen Beetle up to 1970, including its origins, its favor in the Nazi party, and the involvement of Britain and the U.S. in its production and marketing.@Suhail https://t.co/hKhafGvAAF
Vasari's Lives of the Artists
Giorgio Vasari
One of the principal resources for study of Italian Renaissance art and artists, Vasari's Lives offers colorful, detailed portraits of the era's most representative figures. This single-volume edition spotlights 8 prominent artists.@ShriramKMurthi I recommend Vasari's Lives.
The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, 1809-1882
Charles Darwin
The only complete edition.@Austen https://t.co/sPgGsyGIz8
The Country Wife
William Wycherley
The resourceful hero of The Country Wife is Horner, the scourge of stupid husbands and the hope of unhappy wives. Through a single simple ruse Horner helps one woman after another settle accounts with a foolish spouse. Margery, the country wife, upsets his plans when she learns the manners of the city and begins to apply them herself. The Regents Restoration Drama text is based on the first edition of 1675, the last edition to enjoy Wycherley’s attention. By the time the second edition appeared he was in prison for debt, having enjoyed too much of his success at the royal court.Reading Wycherley's "The Country Wife." I don't think you could get away with writing that play now. Strange to think we're more conservative in 2019 than people were in 1675.
The Launch Pad
Randall Stross
If you're interested in the history of YC, I think this book is good. (I say "I think" because I haven't read all of it, but the bits I've read seem pretty good.) https://t.co/ruQiKb32uZ
The Launch Pad
Randall Stross
@iamslick @pranavsinghvi @Airbnb @stripe https://t.co/ruQiKb32uZ
The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress
Robert A. Heinlein
A one-armed computer technician, a radical blonde bombshell, an aging academic, and a sentient all-knowing computer lead the lunar population in a revolution against Earth's colonial rule@michael_nielsen @rivatez I've been thinking about this, and it was probably The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, which made me want to work on AI, which led to Lisp.
Hackers & Painters
Paul Graham
Everything around us is turning into computers. Typewriters, phones, cars, letters, encyclopedias, newspapers, and even your local store are being replaced by the Internet. Hackers & Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age, by Paul Graham, explains this world and the motivations of the people who occupy it. In clear, thoughtful prose that draws on illuminating historical examples, Graham takes readers on an unflinching exploration into what he calls "an intellectual Wild West."@BrianMKeenan https://t.co/9w86qTlREI
The Conquest of Gaul
Julius Caesar
The Roman leader's memoirs recount his campaigns against the Gallic tribes conducted between 58 and 50 B.C@nathanbraun I knew people would ask that, and the problem is that it would take an essay to answer. An essay I will definitely write. Meanwhile: My Family and Other Animals, The Conquest of Gaul, Franklin's autobiography.
My Family and Other Animals
Gerald Durrell
A memoir of an English boy growing up on the Greek island of Corfu recounts the author's humorous adventures as he collects all kinds of animals and insects and brings them back to the house, much to his family's dismay.@nathanbraun I knew people would ask that, and the problem is that it would take an essay to answer. An essay I will definitely write. Meanwhile: My Family and Other Animals, The Conquest of Gaul, Franklin's autobiography.
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin was written by Benjamin Franklin from 1771 to 1790; however, Franklin himself appears to have called the work his Memoirs. Although it had a torturous publication history after Franklin's death, this work has become one of the most famous and influential examples of autobiography ever written.@nathanbraun I knew people would ask that, and the problem is that it would take an essay to answer. An essay I will definitely write. Meanwhile: My Family and Other Animals, The Conquest of Gaul, Franklin's autobiography.
Barbarian Days
William Finnegan
Surfing only looks like a sport. To initiates, it is something else entirely: a beautiful addiction, a demanding course of study, a morally dangerous pastime, a way of life. Raised in California and Hawaii, Finnegan started surfing as a child. He has chased waves all over the world, wandering for years through the South Pacific, Australia, Asia, Africa. A bookish boy, and then an excessively adventurous young man, he went on to become a writer and war reporter. Barbarian Days takes us deep into unfamiliar worlds, some of them right under our noses -- off the coasts of New York and San Francisco. It immerses the reader in the edgy camaraderie of close male friendships annealed in challenging waves.If you read books, read William Finnegan's Barbarian Days. It's one of those rare books that divide your life into two parts: before you read it, and after. https://t.co/BTODaei5hr
Barbarian Days
William Finnegan
Surfing only looks like a sport. To initiates, it is something else entirely: a beautiful addiction, a demanding course of study, a morally dangerous pastime, a way of life. Raised in California and Hawaii, Finnegan started surfing as a child. He has chased waves all over the world, wandering for years through the South Pacific, Australia, Asia, Africa. A bookish boy, and then an excessively adventurous young man, he went on to become a writer and war reporter. Barbarian Days takes us deep into unfamiliar worlds, some of them right under our noses -- off the coasts of New York and San Francisco. It immerses the reader in the edgy camaraderie of close male friendships annealed in challenging waves.William Finnegan's _Barbarian Days_ is so good that I find myself looking forward to getting home so I can read more of it. https://t.co/BTODaei5hr
A Sense of Where You Are
John McPhee
When John McPhee met Bill Bradley, both were at the beginning of their careers. A Sense of Where You Are, McPhee's first book, is about Bradley when he was the best basketball player Princeton had ever seen. McPhee delineates for the reader the training and techniques that made Bradley the extraordinary athlete he was, and this part of the book is a blueprint of superlative basketball. But athletic prowess alone would not explain Bradley's magnetism, which is in the quality of the man himself—his self-discipline, his rationality, and his sense of responsibility. Here is a portrait of Bradley as he was in college, before his time with the New York Knicks and his election to the U.S. Senate—a story that suggests the abundant beginnings of his professional careers in sport and politics.@Austen A Sense of Where You Are.
A Mind at Play
Jimmy Soni
Chronicles the life and times of the lesser-known Information Age intellect, revealing how his discoveries and innovations set the stage for the digital era, influencing the work of such collaborators and rivals as Alan Turing, John von Neumann and Vannevar Bush.@Grady_Booch This looks promising https://t.co/O6sPmsmDmy
Hackers & Painters
Paul Graham
Everything around us is turning into computers. Typewriters, phones, cars, letters, encyclopedias, newspapers, and even your local store are being replaced by the Internet. Hackers & Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age, by Paul Graham, explains this world and the motivations of the people who occupy it. In clear, thoughtful prose that draws on illuminating historical examples, Graham takes readers on an unflinching exploration into what he calls "an intellectual Wild West."@synopsi https://t.co/I5WQ5uK8bh
A Concise History of the World
John Morris Roberts
Offering the depth and breadth of the larger edition, a concise, beautifully illustrated, conveniently sized edition combines intellectual, economic, cultural, and political history in a volume that is international in scope and ranges from prehistory to the present.@randallb You could try reading e.g. Roberts's History of the World, but these broad surveys inevitably feel like textbooks. IMO it's better to take a bunch of "core samples" on individual topics. https://t.co/4OHp4rEk0z
A Prefect's Uncle
P. G. Wodehouse
Long before British humor master P.G. Wodehouse created the popular novel series based on the much-beloved character Jeeves, he sent up his native country's private school culture in A Prefect's Uncle. When the mischievous prankster Farnie arrives on campus of tony Beckford College and his shocking true identity is revealed, much hilarity ensues.@hschhaya The MCC match in A Prefect's Uncle.
Life in the English Country House
Mark Girouard
Based on the author's Slade lectures given at Oxford University in 1975-76.@mckaywrigley White's Medieval Technology and Social Change, Fletcher's Moorish Spain, Johnson's Wing Leader, Girouard's Life in the English Country House, Liddell Hart's The German Generals Talk.
German Generals Talk
Basil H. Hart
The German Generals who survived Hitler's Reich talk over World War II with Capt. Liddell Hart, noted British miltary strategist and writer. They speak as professional soldiers to a man they know and respect. For the first time, answers are revealed to many questions raised during the war. Was Hitler the genius of strategy he seemed to be at first? Why did his Generals never overthrow him? Why did Hitler allow the Dunkirk evacuation? Current interest, of course, focuses on the German Generals' opinion of the Red Army as a fighting force. What did the Russians look like from the German side? How did we look? And what are the advantages and disadvantages under which dictator-controlled armies fight? In vivid, non-technical language, Capt. Liddell Hart reports these interviews and evaluates the vital military lessons of World War II.@mckaywrigley White's Medieval Technology and Social Change, Fletcher's Moorish Spain, Johnson's Wing Leader, Girouard's Life in the English Country House, Liddell Hart's The German Generals Talk.
Moorish Spain
Richard Fletcher
Tells the story of a vital period in Spanish history which transformed the culture and society, not only of Spain, but of the rest of Europe as well.@mckaywrigley White's Medieval Technology and Social Change, Fletcher's Moorish Spain, Johnson's Wing Leader, Girouard's Life in the English Country House, Liddell Hart's The German Generals Talk.
Wing Leader
Johnnie Johnson
The thrilling story of the top scoring Allied fighter pilot of World War II 'Johnnie' Johnson, who served with Fighter Command squadrons throughout the war, scoring his 38th and final victory in September 1944. From the moment the author joins his first operational Spitfire squadron in August 1940, the reader is taken on an epic journey through the great aerial fighter actions of the war including the Battle of Britain, sweeps across the Channel and over France, Dieppe and Normandy; and finally, operations across the Rhine and into Germany itself.@mckaywrigley White's Medieval Technology and Social Change, Fletcher's Moorish Spain, Johnson's Wing Leader, Girouard's Life in the English Country House, Liddell Hart's The German Generals Talk.
My Family and Other Animals
Gerald Durrell
Apart from naturalist Gerald Durrell (the youngest) and Larry (Lawrence Durrell, the novelist), the family of Gerald comprised their widowed mother, the gun-mad Leslie, and diet-obsessed sister Margo together with Roger the dog. This title offers an autobiographical account of five years in the childhood of Gerald.@devonzuegel My Family and Other Animals. (I was disappointed. Most of his other books aren't about his family, and I didn't like those as much.)
The Government of the Tongue
Seamus Heaney
In his volume of critical essays The Government of the Tongue, Seamus Heaney scrutinizes the poetry of many masterful poets. Throughout the collection, Heaney's gifts as a wise and genial reader are exercised with characteristic exactness, and we are reminded, above all, of the essentially gratifying nature of poetry itself.Correction: Government of the Tongue. The author's name doesn't appear in the book, but according to the Internet he was Richard Allestree (https://t.co/3J5OkcmABJ).
The Hobbit
J.R.R. Tolkien
This lavish gift edition of J.R.R. Tolkien's classic features cover art, illustrations, and watercolor paintings by the artist Alan Lee. Bilbo Baggins is a hobbit who enjoys a comfortable, unambitious life, rarely traveling any farther than his pantry or cellar. But his contentment is disturbed when the wizard Gandalf and a company of dwarves arrive on his doorstep one day to whisk him away on an adventure. They have launched a plot to raid the treasure hoard guarded by Smaug the Magnificent, a large and very dangerous dragon. Bilbo reluctantly joins their quest, unaware that on his journey to the Lonely Mountain he will encounter both a magic ring and a frightening creature known as Gollum. Written for J.R.R. Tolkien's own children, The Hobbit has sold many millions of copies worldwide and established itself as a modern classic.@bsdphk We've already read The Hobbit twice.
Guns, Sails and Empires
Carlo M. Cipolla
Guns, Sails and Empires is that rarity among works of history: a short book with a simple, powerful thesis that the entire book is devoted to proving. Carlo Cipolla begins with the question, "Why, after the end of the fifteenth century were the Europeans able not only to force their way through to the distant Spice Islands but also to gain control of all the major sea-routes and to establish overseas empires?" (19) He quickly dismisses motive as a causal factor: motive to circumvent the "Moslem blockade" had existed in earlier centuries as well, but motive without means is empty. Cipolla identifies two developments that provided the means for Europeans to finally succeed beyond their wildest dreams: ships seaworthy enough to reach distant seas; and powerful cannon that could be carried by these ships.@mattknox @starsandrobots I suspect if you'd read Guns, Sails, and Empires and Plagues and Peoples, little in Guns, Germs, and Steel would surprise you.
Plagues and Peoples
William McNeill
Upon its original publication, Plagues and Peoples was an immediate critical and popular success, offering a radically new interpretation of world history as seen through the extraordinary impact--political, demographic, ecological, and psychological--of disease on cultures. From the conquest of Mexico by smallpox as much as by the Spanish, to the bubonic plague in China, to the typhoid epidemic in Europe, the history of disease is the history of humankind. With the identification of AIDS in the early 1980s, another chapter has been added to this chronicle of events, which William McNeill explores in his new introduction to this updated editon. Thought-provoking, well-researched, and compulsively readable, Plagues and Peoples is that rare book that is as fascinating as it is scholarly, as intriguing as it is enlightening. "A brilliantly conceptualized and challenging achievement" (Kirkus Reviews), it is essential reading, offering a new perspective on human history.@mattknox @starsandrobots I suspect if you'd read Guns, Sails, and Empires and Plagues and Peoples, little in Guns, Germs, and Steel would surprise you.
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
Jared Diamond
"Fascinating.... Lays a foundation for understanding human history."—Bill Gates In this "artful, informative, and delightful" (William H. McNeill, New York Review of Books) book, Jared Diamond convincingly argues that geographical and environmental factors shaped the modern world. Societies that had had a head start in food production advanced beyond the hunter-gatherer stage, and then developed religion --as well as nasty germs and potent weapons of war --and adventured on sea and land to conquer and decimate preliterate cultures. A major advance in our understanding of human societies, Guns, Germs, and Steel chronicles the way that the modern world came to be and stunningly dismantles racially based theories of human history. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science, the Rhone-Poulenc Prize, and the Commonwealth club of California's Gold Medal.@mattknox @starsandrobots I suspect if you'd read Guns, Sails, and Empires and Plagues and Peoples, little in Guns, Germs, and Steel would surprise you.
The Spectator
Joseph Addison
@dillchen Yesterday I read (bits of) The Spectator, The Hobbit, an anonymous chronicle of the Third Crusade, and a Wodehouse story.
The Hobbit
J.R.R. Tolkien
This lavish gift edition of J.R.R. Tolkien's classic features cover art, illustrations, and watercolor paintings by the artist Alan Lee. Bilbo Baggins is a hobbit who enjoys a comfortable, unambitious life, rarely traveling any farther than his pantry or cellar. But his contentment is disturbed when the wizard Gandalf and a company of dwarves arrive on his doorstep one day to whisk him away on an adventure. They have launched a plot to raid the treasure hoard guarded by Smaug the Magnificent, a large and very dangerous dragon. Bilbo reluctantly joins their quest, unaware that on his journey to the Lonely Mountain he will encounter both a magic ring and a frightening creature known as Gollum. Written for J.R.R. Tolkien's own children, The Hobbit has sold many millions of copies worldwide and established itself as a modern classic.@dillchen Yesterday I read (bits of) The Spectator, The Hobbit, an anonymous chronicle of the Third Crusade, and a Wodehouse story.