Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things

This is very much a shameless plug but I wrote a book, Rebooting a Nation, on how the country of Estonia was able to modernize post re-independence in the early '90s and become a leader in e-government (99% of government services accessible online) and a tech hub (Skype, Transferwise, Bolt, etc.). I tried to draw out practical lessons for policymakers in other countries, especially in the U.S. as I wrote it after having worked for the Estonian government and advised some members of Congress in DC on tech policy. It's available for pre-order now and comes out in a few months, link below.

https://www.rebootinganation.com/

_Madhouse at the End of the Earth_ by Julian Sancton went hard. It documents the tragic expedition of Adrian de Gerlache to the south pole in the late 19th century. Due to hubris, they wound up locked in the ice overwinter, and came within a hair's breadth of death.

A gripping read. 10/10 https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/jun/09/madhouse-at-th...

The Making of Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes. Its not about one people but a project, Manhattan Project. One of my most favorite book.

I suspect there are a number of factors that eliminate people from these steps like objectivity, persistence, and other virtues.

The biggest single discriminator that the Y Combinator people talk about, which I agree with, is doing the right things first without regard for scale. Most developers will immediately jump to some framework so that they can prop up some web app in the shortest time and immediately go into promotions and then struggle with scale when they need to scale.

I had this big app that tried to solve for full decentralization of universal file system access from a browser. I wrote my own end-to-end test automation tool and focused all my energy on software execution performance. These things allowed me to prove out new ideas and identify regression in about 8 seconds on a single machine or about 2 minutes on 5 machines talking to each other. Most people won't invest in that. I could perform a massive refactor across dozens for files and hundreds of lines without regression in about 2 hours. At work, at that job at that time, I spending more than 2 weeks for tiny refactors that were littered with regressions and having to clean up other people's messes.

Worse, is that most people recognize when they are not performing well, especially if it is anywhere from 10-100x less well. The normal go to place is either sympathy or an echo chamber. High performers don't do that. They aren't trying to impress people with their awesomeness or seeking sympathy when it falls apart. They just build what they need at great expense because its something they can have that others won't have.

One of the greatest books I've ever read. It is long and took me a couple of months to absorb this one, but in return the amount of detail is staggering and it never ever felt like it got boring or tedious or overstayed it's welcome.