one of the few existing books helping understand the world we live in and somewhat explains what we've been going through in the last 2 years. Understand the Empire: Towards Global Governance or the Uprising of Nations? https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09B7QZG4C
Ask HN: What's the best book you read in 2021?
171–180 of 651 posts
Re: Ask HN: What's the best book you read in 2021?
#172Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Taleb. Changed my life and my perspective on doing business, building company and understanding luck. Such a classic.
Also honourable mention: Super Pumped by Mike Isaac. Great read on the legendary Travis' journey.
Re: Ask HN: What's the best book you read in 2021?
#173I'm almost finished with "The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century" by Walter Scheidel. It's a fascinating take on the global history of income inequality from the Stone Age to today; and the impact of major "leveling" events.
On the fiction side, I'm enjoying the "Merlin: The Lost Years" series by T.A. Barron.
Re: Ask HN: What's the best book you read in 2021?
#174I really really enjoyed "The Comanche Empire" https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300151176/comanche-empir... It took a long time to get through (very dense, academic) but was a sprawling look at a powerful indigenous culture that I knew nothing about. Plus, it was enlightening and a bit foreboding to learn how an empire could be at the very height of its power and then, through circumstance, climate, demographics, a…
For a broader look at the same subject (on the continental scale), I recommend 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann.
Re: Ask HN: What's the best book you read in 2021?
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is it worth the effort? I've picked up snow crash a few times in the past 20 years and found it a hard read. I really want to enjoy it but I find it hard to swallow. I suppose it has been hard because it doesn't take itself seriously. My sci-fi reading history has been: - several William Gibson novels between 1995-2008 - Most of the ender's game series and home coming from 80's to 2008. - Between 2008 and 2018 I read…
the first chapter of snowcrash is one of my favorite chapters in any book i’ve ever read. the rest of the book is great and goes into some really bizarre territory on how to manipulate humans, as well as looking at the effects of a truly decentralized economy + metaverse. it’s really forward looking and prescient for a book that was written in 1988-91.
The Deliverator belongs to an elite order, a hallowed subcategory....
Re: Ask HN: What's the best book you read in 2021?
#176The sci-fi novel "Project Hail Mary" by Andy Weir. Captivating, and a lot of fun.
Yeah, I really like how the characters unveiled - and the overall arc of the story.
Bit of feels near the end.
Re: Ask HN: What's the best book you read in 2021?
#177Walter Isaacson's The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race . Reading about how the Crispr and mRNA vaccine development happened was gripping.
I like Walter Isaacson's books and this one was so timely. It was also fascinating to learn about the competition/cooperation in scientific research and how one discovery builds on top of others.
Re: Ask HN: What's the best book you read in 2021?
#178I haven’t finished this yet (only at the start of chapter 6) but The Scientist and Engineer’s Guide to Digital Signal Processing [0] has been excellent so far. DSP is one of the subjects I’ve wanted to learn for years but could never get my head around, mostly (I think) due to bad instructors and very math-heavy explanations. This book is finally demystifying it for me, with explanations that go for intuition over ma…
Read that one too this year. Didn't like how he tried to scare the reader off from complex numbers though! Perhaps a product of the time it was written in?
Hah, maybe! I haven't gotten to that point yet. There are definitely some things that seem dated.
Re: Ask HN: What's the best book you read in 2021?
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
Give the Three Body Problem series a try, I think you’ll enjoy it immensely.
I don't think this is in the same league as Snow Crash, or any other Stephenson novel. Learning about parts of 20th century China political history? Cool! The Sci-fi? Makes distractingly little sense. The wire-slicer weapon was pretty cool though!
I always forget how little actually happens in the first book of the trilogy, and how…earthy(?) it is?
It’s just so small in scope compared to the following books that I forget that its entire appeal is just how unknown the unknowns are and how much potential it sets up for the rest of the story.
Re: Ask HN: What's the best book you read in 2021?
#180Civilized Man's Eight Deadly Sins - Konrad Lorenz
A book from 1973 but still actual and incredibly true.