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Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things

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

#131

Post by noufalibrahim »

matrix2596 wrote: post #84
noufalibrahim wrote: post #75

One of the "hard things" I've come across was turn of the century explorations. The stories of polar explorers like Ernest Shackleton (chronicled in Lansing's Endurance) or tropical ones like "River of Doubt" detailing Roosevelt's exploration of the Amazon tributary are fascinating stories of how people's grit accomplished hard things.

i understand polar expeditions, but werent people already living in amazon

The "Rio da Dúvida" was a tributary which wasn't really mapped at the time. The Brazilian government was laying out Telegraph lines at the time to map the area.

There were tribals in the area but it wasn't mapped.

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

#132

Post by SeriousGamesKit »

I'd suggest 'The Rickover Effect' by Theodore Rockwell. The author gives a firsthand account of what it was like to be part of the teams who created the first nuclear-powered submarine and civilian nuclear power plant (perhaps counterintuitively, in that order). There is a fair amount of discussion about people, culture and leadership, but it is very grounded and very detailed about the mechanics of what went into these projects and how the former made the latter possible.

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

#133

Post by squeedles »

“Across The Airless Wilds” by Eric Swift. Tells the story of how the moon buggy came to be and how it was contracted and built in 18 months. Fascinating deep dive into what it actually took to make that work on the moon.

https://www.harpercollins.com/products/across-the-airless-wi...

He also wrote a book on the interstate highway system called The Big Roads which was interesting but not as much of a page turner.

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

#134

Post by InkCanon »

jll29 wrote: post #115

Reading some of these books recommended here, perhaps the most shocking thing is that so much is due to randomness: an arbitrary person does something small that turns out to be on the critical path, and without it the big thing would not get completed. I like the kind of books recommended here, but please be aware of survivor's bias (there not many books about failures! Any great recommendations? "How we could NOT g…

I have a contrary opinion: most important things are started by apparently small things, but there is a huge amount of training, effort and persistence behind getting to that small thing. Zuckerberg was a serial entrepreneur who already made a few successful websites/apps before Facebook, Nvidia spent decades becoming the world's best GPU manufacturer (when they started there were ~300 graphics processor companies), etc etc.

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

#135

Post by alentred »

I think that "people who did hard things" fall on a spectrum between these two extremities:

- someone who got lucky

- someone who invested an unfathomable amount of time to their craftsmanship or to their beliefs

Of course it is not black and white, and even luck mostly requires hard work in the first place, which I admire (and if you find your luck - hold to it!, nothing wrong with that), but you get the gist. I guess that in other words what I am saying is: beware of the survivorship bias on the left side of this spectrum.

--

Finally, the book: "The story of my experiments with Truth", Ghandi. Definitely belongs to the "work hard" extremity and a very interesting read; but I don't want to create an impression that I find it special in any way because of my above comment, it is just one of the latest I have read, consider the two comments unrelated.

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

#136

Post by noufalibrahim »

0xEF wrote: post #119
noufalibrahim wrote: post #75

One of the "hard things" I've come across was turn of the century explorations. The stories of polar explorers like Ernest Shackleton (chronicled in Lansing's Endurance) or tropical ones like "River of Doubt" detailing Roosevelt's exploration of the Amazon tributary are fascinating stories of how people's grit accomplished hard things.

Shackleton and his crew became something of a hero of mine after I read South and Endurance. Less so frok.a masculine perspective, but more of a fortitude thing. There is a certain triumph felt when we persevere through impossible odds, and ever since I've been attracted to a genre of stories that I loosely label as "Frozen Thrillers," where humans just have to deal with bad things happening in cold unforgiving envir…

If you liked that, you should read "Empire of Ice and Stone" by Budy Levy which was about an Arctic expedition.

It's a good read from a leadership perspective. The "leader" of the expedition (Vilhjalmur Stefansson) abandoned his crew in the middle of the frozen arctic seas and went off the hunt caribou and meet his secret inuit wife. The book portrays him as being completely irresponsible and interested only his own glory and fame (and money)

Meanwhile, the captain of the ship (Robert Bartlett) walked for 700 miles from where they were stranded and then started a rescue mission from Alaska which saved some (though not all of the crew). He's portrayed as a real hero in harsh circumstances.

The whole expedition was named after the flagship. The Karluk (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_voyage_of_the_Karluk). They had two inuit families with them during the trip including their kids. It was funny to see how the inuit kids would play in the snow and have fun while the "explorers" were all but dropping dead. The youngest child was aged 3 at the time. She passed away finally in 2008 at the age of 97.

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

#138

Post by somenameforme »

"The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World from Scratch" [1] is an amazing read. It's a mix of history and how-to describing how (and when.. which is often extremely surprising) developed the technology that we have, and how it might be recreated starting from scratch.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Knowledge:_How_to_Rebuild_...

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

#139

Post by squeedles »

squeedles wrote: post #133

“Across The Airless Wilds” by Eric Swift. Tells the story of how the moon buggy came to be and how it was contracted and built in 18 months. Fascinating deep dive into what it actually took to make that work on the moon. https://www.harpercollins.com/products/across-the-airless-wi... He also wrote a book on the interstate highway system called The Big Roads which was interesting but not as much of a page turner.

Sorry, Earl Swift, not Eric

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

#140

Post by commondream »

The Making of the Atomic Bomb is one I read recently and really enjoyed.

I didn’t love the writing, but thought Skunkworks was full of good stories.

It is a little more character study but Dealers of Lightning is a good one.

I also enjoyed The Idea Factory.

And last, a little off the path of making things but Endurance was a good read.

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