"Maverick" by Ricardo Semler - This book is about the company Semco in Brazil and challenges everything you think you know about business. Semler advocates radical ideas like public self-set salaries and workplace democracy. I don't necessarily agree with everything in the book, but the ideas sure are interesting.
Ask HN: Great books you read in 2009?
71–80 of 140 posts
Re: Ask HN: Great books you read in 2009?
#72Guns, Germs and Steel - still reading it but one of the best I 've read so far..
Re: Ask HN: Great books you read in 2009?
#73Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes. He starts with a takedown of the dietary fat-heart disease hypothesis, moves on to the dietary fat-obesity link. Finally he makes a convincing argument that neither eating less nor exercising more are good ways to lose weight.
"... and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing."
Re: Ask HN: Great books you read in 2009?
#74The Machinery of Freedom (David Friedman) -- Great book on a potential anarcho-capitalist society and how we could push the US government in that direction. The Game (Neil Strauss) -- See nopassrecover's response; he explained it well. Little Brother (Cory Doctorow) -- A fantastic novel about freedom and technology. Makers (Cory Doctorow) -- A great novel about people who create, whether technology or business models…
I'm a huge Stephenson fan, but I felt let down by the Diamond Age's ending. It felt like it was missing 30 pages.
None of Stephenson's books really have much of an ending (or in some cases much of a coherent plot)... the closest I can think of (in the way of endings) is Snow Crash.
But he writes with wonderful detail and humor, and seems really great at writing believable near-term futures, which I imagine are much harder than writing about the distant future (where everything can be fantastical).
Re: Ask HN: Great books you read in 2009?
#75Programming in Haskell by Graham Hutton
A.I. A Modern Approach (ch 13-16) by Russell and Norvig
A Tunnel In The Sky by Robert Heinlein
The Revelation Space series (3 of the 5 books) by Alistair Reynolds
Eon/Eternity (both by Greg Bear)
Re: Ask HN: Great books you read in 2009?
#76Gangleader for a Day - Sudhir Venkatesh's illuminating story about the housing projects, crack gangs and community dynamics of south side chicago in the '90s.
Predictably Irrational - Dan Ariely explains a lot of the idiosyncracies in everyday human behavior
Thoughts Without a Thinker - Mark Epstein's enjoyable tale about buddhism and psychotherapy
Worst:
SuperFreakonomics - Superficial, poorly written, overly patriotic cocktail party factoids
Re: Ask HN: Great books you read in 2009?
#77Guns, Germs and Steel - still reading it but one of the best I 've read so far..
I may have to read that book again everyone seems to highly recommend it and the first pass was for a history class so my mind probably wasn't that into it.
The only thing that really sticks out to me about that book right now was the use of the wheel in childrens' toys where terrain and usability were not suitable.
Re: Ask HN: Great books you read in 2009?
#78I finally finished "Godel, Escher, Bach" in 2009, after starting and giving up on it a few times previously. A great book, but it does require a lot of time and some serious thinking with a pencil and pad to do some working out (or at least it did for me). The best book I read in 2009 (and possibly ever!) was "Fooled By Randomness" - a fantastic book that I can't recommend enough. I also read the sequel, "Black Swans…
I agree that Fooled By Randomness was a good read, but since then Taleb has become too wrapped up in self-aggrandizement, and he now thinks way to highly of himself and his abilities.
He lost me when he started writing articles like Ten Principles for a Black Swan-Proof World (http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/tenprinciples.pdf). Isn't the point about Black Swans that they're impossible to protect against?
Re: Ask HN: Great books you read in 2009?
#79The Machinery of Freedom (David Friedman) -- Great book on a potential anarcho-capitalist society and how we could push the US government in that direction. The Game (Neil Strauss) -- See nopassrecover's response; he explained it well. Little Brother (Cory Doctorow) -- A fantastic novel about freedom and technology. Makers (Cory Doctorow) -- A great novel about people who create, whether technology or business models…
I loved David Friedman's The Machinery of Freedom. His blog is also filled with a lot of interesting thoughts: http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com
Re: Ask HN: Great books you read in 2009?
#80Finally got around to reading 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?' Blew me away. So much better than the film adaptation.
"The other police station" -- that still freaks me out.