Eccentric Orbits: The Iridium Story
Book about Dan Colussy, who somehow managed to rescue Iridium satellite network when it was weeks away from bankruptcy and being deliberately crashed into the ocean.
Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things
101–110 of 454 posts
Re: Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things
#102[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
Almost no one thinks about the modern miracle that are grocery stores. It wasn't that long ago that getting out-of-season produce was literally impossible. Today, you just put up with inferior tomatoes in the winter and be annoyed about it. The logistical complications of worldwide produce supply chains and your local supermarkets are really, really nuts.
I think most people don’t have access to supermarkets tho.
Most people on this forum do
Re: Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things
#104not sure it's a story of "people doing hard things" but it may go your way for "mechanics of how things that we take for granted actually got built", the book is "Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk" > a comprehensive history of man's efforts to understand risk and probability, from ancient gamblers in Greece to modern chaos theory. In some parts it's not an easy read, but the underlying stories are very i…
Agreed not sure it exactly fits the prompt but this is a really fascinating book. One of those things where I didn’t fully bring into conscious awareness until reading it: statistics are tools that didn’t always exist, and had to be developed alongside multiple philosophical revolutions.
Re: Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
i understand polar expeditions, but werent people already living in amazon
Do you have a recommendation of a book written by them?
The letters from Francisco de Orellana: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisco_de_Orellana
https://en.scribd.com/document/647918681/The-Voyage-of-Franc...
Re: Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things
#106I find reading books about how people did hard things to be very motivating and therapeutic, especially when facing a difficult task myself! I’ve enjoyed all of these; they were all recommendations from HN.
Showstopper - Windows NT
Losing the Signal - BlackBerry
Made in Japan - Sony
Piloting Palm - Palm
Sweating Bullets - PowerPoint
Folklore.org - Early Apple.
The “Mac Folklore Radio Podcast” [0]. Has a few interesting stories of people innovating and solving challenges.
Re: Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things
#107"The Soul of a New Machine", by Tracy Kidder.
Re: Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things
#108Even if it probably isn’t exactly what you were looking for, I’d wholeheartedly recommend The Spy and the Traitor by Ben McIntyre, documenting the story of Oleg Gordievsky, the soviet spy that crossed over to the MI5 during the Cold War. It gave me a glimpse into the secret war at the time, the stuff that inspired James Bond, and the hardships and permanent threat faced by a spy trying to live several lives at once.…
All of the author's books are great imo. If you like cold war spy stories, you'd also enjoy Billion Dollar Spy.
Re: Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things
#109Even if it probably isn’t exactly what you were looking for, I’d wholeheartedly recommend The Spy and the Traitor by Ben McIntyre, documenting the story of Oleg Gordievsky, the soviet spy that crossed over to the MI5 during the Cold War. It gave me a glimpse into the secret war at the time, the stuff that inspired James Bond, and the hardships and permanent threat faced by a spy trying to live several lives at once.…
Agreed, this is probably the most gripping non-fiction I've ever read
Re: Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things
#110Robert Kurson's diving books (Shadow Divers and Pirate Hunters) are some of the best books on startups I've ever read. They're stories about some of the most ambitious wreck divers out there.
It might not seem analogous, but there's a lot of parallels, i.e. you have limited air (aka runway), you need to choose the people on your expedition wisely and can't bring too many, you need to be extremely ambitious (seeking more than just touristy diving), etc.
The writing is incredible, too.