Re: getting hard things done I've been admiring the way Elon Musk takes calculated risks in:
Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things
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Re: Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things
#52I haven't personally read it, but The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes seems to fit the bill.
Re: Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things
#53The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes! Lots of detail, but it also shows how many geniuses it took working over years to really make it work.
Re: Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things
#54The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes! Lots of detail, but it also shows how many geniuses it took working over years to really make it work.
And, as added reading, The Radioactive Boy Scout.
Just for a perspective on how abundant and readily available that information had become in academia a few decades later.
Re: Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things
#55How to Make a Spaceship by Julian Guthrie was a greally good read for me.
Re: Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things
#56Failure is not an Option by Gene Kranz, Flight Director of Apollo 11 and Apollo 13 among other missions give a lot of insight into the preparation and focus of safety critical operations.
Re: Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things
#57Exactly: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World http://www.simonwinchester.com/exactly Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longitude_(book) Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38840.Boyd
The thing about Boyd that really resonated with me was. 1) Realizing that he was better at something than everyone else around him. 2) Figuring out what it was that was making him better. 3) Reducing it to practice, so it could be taught to others and refined to become even better. Amazing story.
Boyd gets far too much credit for the F-16. If he had his way it wouldn't work at night or honestly at all in the face of the current threat environment.
Re: Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things
#58"The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York" by Robert Caro
This is an incredibly long biography of a man who figured out how to build an urban empire. While he wasn't an "entrepreneur" per se, he figured out how to generate huge amounts of revenue via tolls/bridges, how to manage and manipulate public policy, and how to attract the best urban planning talent.
... and you can then read about how it all fell apart.
Regardless of your opinion on Robert Moses / NYC, it's an incredibly fascinating read or (~90-hour) audio book.
Re: Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things
#59I really enjoyed American Prometheus. Might be a bit too focused on Oppenheimer for the original request, but it covers the Manhattan Project more broadly too.
Re: Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things
#60moonwalking with Einstein is about a man who decides to get into memory competitions upon learning it's more skill based than he realized. this in turn helped me develop more confidence in my own abilities with day to day routine and not be afraid to try new things i never considered myself naturally good at