Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things

#361

Post by jimbokun » Fri, Jan 10, 2025, 9:01 PM UTC

ashoeafoot wrote: post #327

nickff wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not being sarcastic. The revolution and subsequent wars caused extremely high casualty rates among French men, while the country isolated itself from international trade, and suffered negative economic consequences.

Have you held the nations that stayed aristocratic and the havoc they caused next to france? Getting rid of parasitic waterhead bodies of government is always a pro birthong pains included. PS : Those wars started because the assembled aristocracy of f europe jumped the reforming nation.

> Those wars started because the assembled aristocracy of f europe jumped the reforming nation.

And you think this helps your argument?

Re: Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things

#362

Post by jimbokun » Fri, Jan 10, 2025, 9:04 PM UTC

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #283

buzzardbait wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps not, but I think you can be "very successful" while remaining ethical. Most people want to be successful because success brings happiness. But there is a level of success at which happiness starts to plateau and yields diminishing returns of happiness.

Thank you for saying that. I get low-level irritated at the constant background murmur that success means that you had to screw someone over at some point.

There's a certain strand of progressivism that holds as axiomatic that wealth and power are inherently evil.

Re: Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things

#363

Post by jimbokun » Fri, Jan 10, 2025, 9:05 PM UTC

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #336

portaouflop wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your business’s goal is only “make money” and not solve any real human problems then it should not exist.

What "real human problem" is a coffee shop solving?

Giving people a place to buy and drink coffee.

Re: Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things

#364

Post by juliend2 » Fri, Jan 10, 2025, 9:06 PM UTC

ackbar03 wrote: post #63

If you want more entrepreneurial type stories. When the heavens went on sale, by Ashly Vance, is pretty good. It details the early days of the space start-ups other than spaceX The Founders: The Story of Paypal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley is also pretty good, describes the crazy days of early paypal. Someone already mentioned Liftoff by Erig Berger. Starting a private space company is probably as…

Her biography on Elon Musk is also pretty good as far as depicting someone who did hard things. I was quite impressed by his tenacity.

Re: Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things

#365

Post by surfingdino » Fri, Jan 10, 2025, 9:09 PM UTC

"The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power" by Daniel Yergin

Re: Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things

#366

Post by specproc » Fri, Jan 10, 2025, 9:19 PM UTC

laxd wrote: post #277

Fermat's Last Theorem, about Andrew Wiles long hard journey to prove it.

Maybe you're joking, but my takeaway from this fantastic book was it was about lots and lots and lots of people's cumulative effort.

But yeah, came here to recommend this one. Brilliantly written, a true classic.

Re: Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things

#367

Post by throw0101c » Fri, Jan 10, 2025, 9:20 PM UTC

It's on my reading list, but I have not read it (yet), but perhaps How Big Things Get Done:

* https://dangardner.ca/publication/how-big-things-get-done

* https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61327449-how-big-things-...

Re: Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things

#368

Post by heikkilevanto » Fri, Jan 10, 2025, 9:22 PM UTC

I hope surviving shipwrecks and such counts as getting hard things done. "Safety and Survival at the Sea" has a lot of those. Chapters like Fire, Man in Water, Man on life raft, Man in a boat, and so on. Each chapter has many short episodes, just the hard facts, leaving the details to your imagination. I can quote one from memory: "North Atlantic, November. 12 people on a life raft. The raft kept capsizing, righted by walking on the inside of the canopy. 7 survived."

Re: Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things

#369

Post by kabdib » Fri, Jan 10, 2025, 9:28 PM UTC

Tracy Kidder, _Soul of a New Machine_

Henry SF Cooper, _The Evening Star_ (debugging OS race conditions on a Venus orbiter)

Pascal Zachary, _Showstopper_ (about David Cutler and Windows NT)

Richard Preston, _American Steel_ (building an early continuous casting steel mill in the midwest)

Re: Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things

#370

Post by thruway516 » Fri, Jan 10, 2025, 9:30 PM UTC

thinkharderdev wrote: post #249

codechicago277 wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aaron Greenspan created the early version of what Facebook became, and has loudly criticized the zero-sum tactics used by Zuckerberg, Gates, and other billionaires: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-legend-of-mark-zucker_b_7... Some interesting books in this category: * Masters of Doom. It’s about John Carmack and the team that built Id Software * Einstein. By Walter Isaacson, author of the Jobs biography. Einstein’…

I read the Einstein biography. Highly recommended. But to the parents point, I came way think Einstein was a huge asshole, especially given his pop culture representation as a kindly old grandfather type.

Probably every human being looks like a huge asshole if you put their entire life under a microscope. Even Mother Teresa did some giant asshole things if I remember. You're just not aware what a huge asshole you are because someone hasn't written a very good biography of your life from a perspective different from yours (or you havent lived long enough)