A hobby rather than a field of study, but Open Crumb Mastery by Trevor Wilson made me fall in love with sourdough baking, it's amazing. I'm baking regularly for 2 years now since reading it and has gotten pretty good, even with difficult pastry like croissants and panettone.
Ask HN: Which book can attract anyone towards your field of study?
91–100 of 283 posts
Re: Ask HN: Which book can attract anyone towards your field of study?
#92Accounting... The rule of accouting is that if anything excites you about accounting you shouldn't do accounting. The most fun I had studying accounting was learning about tax evasion, money laundering, defrauding stakeholders etc. Any academic book about forensic accounting could be deemed interesting if you just read only the case studies.
> The most fun I had studying accounting was learning about tax evasion, money laundering, defrauding stakeholders etc. Sounds like hacking.
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Re: Ask HN: Which book can attract anyone towards your field of study?
#93I think there ought to be a book that explains how the modern world works at large, that'd include many many fields of study and explain how they all work together. I'm not aware of anything of the sort. If anyone else knows, let me know :)
Maybe not exactly what you're looking for, but I found this entertaining:
How to Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveler: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39026990-how-to-invent-e...
It's written in a comedic style, and takes you through what you would need to build to "reimplement modern civilization" if you found yourself stuck back in time.
Re: Ask HN: Which book can attract anyone towards your field of study?
#94Accounting... The rule of accouting is that if anything excites you about accounting you shouldn't do accounting. The most fun I had studying accounting was learning about tax evasion, money laundering, defrauding stakeholders etc. Any academic book about forensic accounting could be deemed interesting if you just read only the case studies.
What book on forensic accounting would you recommend for entertainment value? I have some knowledge of french accounting, been exposed to US style, and thoroughly enjoyed long forms involving forensic accounting, money laundering and the like...
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Re: Ask HN: Which book can attract anyone towards your field of study?
#95A very tough question. I feel that it might be quite hard to lure a curious person into Computer Science, who doesn't know anything about the field yet. One of the books I liked (since I actually studied Linguistics in my Bachelor's) and what drew me towards CS was "Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software" by Charles Petzold.
What about a book for Linguistics? I also studied Linguistics and now while I still find the knowledge useful (getting to describe to my son a voiced vs unvoiced plosive) I am not as interested in it anymore.
"don't sleep there are snakes" - half an adventure book, half linguistic analysis and explanation of a fairly unique language.
Re: Ask HN: Which book can attract anyone towards your field of study?
#96"Seeing Like a State" by James C. Scott I started my career in international development, and the book above provides a dozen case studies on states using scientific management, stats, etc. to try and control their growth/populations/economies and failing miserably. It is a beautiful book in that it illustrates how difficult it is to actually manage a country and economy well, especially if you are trying to complete…
One thing I've observed is population growth control - be it reducing the growth or encouraging growth - always fails miserably. For example many people have heard of the one child policy in China, but the facts are that both the introduction and the removal of the policy had no perceptible effect on fertility rates.
This is definitely not true. There was a decade of population growth control mechanisms in the decade before the official, universal one child policy. Over that decade (the 70s) China experienced an incredibly sharp reduction in fertility.
It’s likely that increasing socioeconomic wealth would have naturally followed that trajectory, but it’s unarguable that Chinas fertility policies accelerated the drop.
Re: Ask HN: Which book can attract anyone towards your field of study?
#97"Seeing Like a State" by James C. Scott I started my career in international development, and the book above provides a dozen case studies on states using scientific management, stats, etc. to try and control their growth/populations/economies and failing miserably. It is a beautiful book in that it illustrates how difficult it is to actually manage a country and economy well, especially if you are trying to complete…
One thing I've observed is population growth control - be it reducing the growth or encouraging growth - always fails miserably. For example many people have heard of the one child policy in China, but the facts are that both the introduction and the removal of the policy had no perceptible effect on fertility rates.
Interesting. Do you have a good source for this? Googling it is just the same (Chinese source) line repeated over and over:
> National Health and Family Planning Commission spokesman Mao Qunan said the agency’s work had reduced the number of births in China over the years by “400 million”.
Nothing much about the effect of the removal of the policy either.
Re: Ask HN: Which book can attract anyone towards your field of study?
#98"Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion" by Robert B. Cialdini (1984)
"How to Make Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie (1936)
Two great books that could lure a curious mind into sales. However, I recommend both to everyone.
Re: Ask HN: Which book can attract anyone towards your field of study?
#99A hobby rather than a field of study, but Open Crumb Mastery by Trevor Wilson made me fall in love with sourdough baking, it's amazing. I'm baking regularly for 2 years now since reading it and has gotten pretty good, even with difficult pastry like croissants and panettone.
The book is described explicitly as "not for beginners". Do you have a recommendation for beginners?
Re: Ask HN: Which book can attract anyone towards your field of study?
#100It is off-topic, insofar as it's not my field, but let me answer a dual question: The Vital Question by Nick Lane made me think that were I to start over, be young and finish school, I'd study biology and biochemistry.
If you haven't read it yet, pick up "Sex, Power Suicide" as well. Very dense reading but I learned something new or understood something I knew better from basically every page I read.