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Ask HN: What are the best unknown books you have read?

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Re: Ask HN: What are the best unknown books you have read?

#71

Post by prepend »

mellosouls wrote: post #12
mellosouls wrote: post #8

Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban is not unknown but not hugely popular. Post apocalyptic novel written in a made up language (think Clockwork Orange). Poetic and deeply moving account of a boy's journey through a world where scientific knowledge has devolved to primitive ritual and incantation; and his dawning realisation that we lost everything . I've never read anything else like it. https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/R…

Here's how it starts off, be warned: On my naming day when I come 12 I gone front spear and kilt a wyld boar he parbly ben the las wyld pig on the Bundel Downs any how there hadnt ben none for a long time befor him nor I aint looking to see none agen. He dint make the groun shake nor nothing like that when he come on to my spear he wernt all that big plus he lookit poorly. He done the reqwyrt he ternt and stood and c…

This sounds like the Sloosha’s Crossing last section of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas. Pretty cool.

Re: Ask HN: What are the best unknown books you have read?

#72

Post by chubot »

idlewords wrote: post #30

"Light and Color in the Outdoors" by Marcel Minnaert. The book goes into the physics of a lot of outdoor phenomena; you will be amazed at the things you never noticed or thought about before reading it. "The History and Social Influence of the Potato" is a pretty good time. "Politics of Qat: The Role of a Drug in Ruling Yemen" may sound way too niche, but it's fascinating as a study of transportation in a drug econom…

I just saw the Potato book mentioned last night in Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan :) I had no idea that "potato vs. wheat" was a "class" issue in Europe, with potatoes coming from the Americas, but it makes a lot of sense.

In general Pollan references a lot of great work in all of his books. If anyone wants to find some stuff to read his books are a good first stop.

Re: Ask HN: What are the best unknown books you have read?

#73

Post by 45ure »

Aquarium by Viktor Suvorov.

The "Aquarium" of the title is the nickname given to GRU headquarters in Moscow by those who work there. "What sort of fish are there swimming there?" asks Suvorov of his boss when he learns about it. "There's only one kind there—piranhas." ─ Wikipedia.

Book: https://archive.org/details/ViktorSuvorovAquariumTheCareerAn...

Re: Ask HN: What are the best unknown books you have read?

#74

Post by chubot »

brownbat wrote: post #69

Andy Kessler's How We Got Here. Only a few hundred people have rated it on GoodReads, but if you wanted to trace a march of technological progress from swords to the Internet, it does a good job. There are definitely other stories you could tell about this accelerating sweep of technological change, but this one was a solid rapid overview and really stuck some ideas with me about how changes compound (or completely s…

FWIW I read most of How We Got Here book last year after having it in my reading list for something like 15 years :-/ Somehow it popped up after all that time.

I thought it was a great concept for a book, and the author has a unique viewpoint and knows his stuff, but it wasn't very well written. There seemed to be a lot of detail without defining terms, but it was also "breezy" and fast. Just my opinion.

Re: Ask HN: What are the best unknown books you have read?

#75

Post by b215826 »

timkam wrote: post #10

Ariel Rubinstein - Economic Fables. For everyone who is interested in an intuitive and (self-)critical perspective on economic theory. The PDF version is available for free on Rubinstein's personal web page, but requires you to provide your email address: http://arielrubinstein.tau.ac.il/books.html

Ariel Rubinstein is one of the most honest game theorists I've come across. He's extremely critical of the claims that game theory can be used to accurately predict outcomes of the real world [1]. Economic Fables is a semi-biography as well, and has details of his life growing up in Israel. I wish more scientists (across all disciplines) had the audacity to critically assess their own fields of research like Rubinstein. He also gives almost all of his books -- including his widely-used text "A Course in Game Theory" coauthored with Osborne -- for free on his website [2].

[1]: http://arielrubinstein.tau.ac.il/articles/FRANKFURTER_ALLGEM...

[2]: http://arielrubinstein.tau.ac.il/books.html

Re: Ask HN: What are the best unknown books you have read?

#76

Post by xwowsersx »

brownbat wrote: post #69

Andy Kessler's How We Got Here. Only a few hundred people have rated it on GoodReads, but if you wanted to trace a march of technological progress from swords to the Internet, it does a good job. There are definitely other stories you could tell about this accelerating sweep of technological change, but this one was a solid rapid overview and really stuck some ideas with me about how changes compound (or completely s…

Hmm..reviews on Goodreads seem kind of mixed. Some make it sound like it's a bit of an idiosyncratic editing mess with disconnected chapters, etc.

Re: Ask HN: What are the best unknown books you have read?

#77

Post by abstrakraft »

pixelpoet wrote: post #34
idlewords wrote: post #30

"Light and Color in the Outdoors" by Marcel Minnaert. The book goes into the physics of a lot of outdoor phenomena; you will be amazed at the things you never noticed or thought about before reading it. "The History and Social Influence of the Potato" is a pretty good time. "Politics of Qat: The Role of a Drug in Ruling Yemen" may sound way too niche, but it's fascinating as a study of transportation in a drug econom…

Funny coincidence, I bought the Minnaert book recently! Especially as a rendering engineer, it's absolutely fantastic.

Any comments on the cheaper, earlier edition printed by Dover as "The Nature of Light and Colour in the Open Air"? Is the later edition worth the higher price?

Re: Ask HN: What are the best unknown books you have read?

#80

Post by tzs »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #26

The Uneasy Case for Progressive Taxation If you think it’s “obvious” that progressive taxes are better/worse than flat taxes this is an excellent look at the evidence which may make you less confident.

If instead of doing one tax to cover your whole budget, you do it is separate taxes for each item applied serially [1], and each of those taxes is a flat rate tax [2] that applies to income above a base amount [3], so that you are paying thousands of separate taxes, each with a very low flat rate, then when you look at the net result it is equivalent to a progressive bracket system with a lot of narrow brackets.

That probably says something interesting about the relationship of flat rate tax systems (as usually proposed) and progressive rate tax systems, although I'm not sure what.

[1] What I mean by "applied serially" is you take you income, and apply the first tax. Your income minus the tax amount becomes the income for the second tax, and so on.

[2] I say "flat rate" rather than simply "flat" because almost no one ever actually proposes a flat tax, which would be the same tax amount regardless of income.

[3] ...which makes it not really a flat rate, but rather a progressive tax with two brackets. I think that every serious "flat" tax proposal I've seen has been this way, so that's what I'm using.

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