Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Favorite nonfiction books of 2018?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 344 posts

Re: Ask HN: Favorite nonfiction books of 2018?

#191

Post by coopes »

henrik_w wrote: post #186
gkamradt wrote: post #19

How To Fail At Almost Everything And Still Win Big - Scott Adams (2013) One of my favorite quotes: “I put myself in a position where luck was more likely to happen. I tried a lot of different ventures, stayed optimistic, put in the energy, prepared myself by learning as much as I could, and stayed in the game long enough for luck to find me.” pg - 158 My top ten list for the year: https://www.gregkamradt.com/gregkamr…

I really enjoyed it too. My main takeaways: 1. Use systems, not goals. A system lets you feel good every time you follow it, whereas a goal only makes you feel good when you reach it 2. Combination of skills. If you can be good (say top 20%) in more than one domain, then that combination of skills can be enough to make you very sought after. 3. What all adults should know, like public speaking, psychology, business w…

Pretty convincing reply. I'm placing an order for the book right now

Re: Ask HN: Favorite nonfiction books of 2018?

#193

Post by gvand »

henrik_w wrote: post #186
gkamradt wrote: post #19

How To Fail At Almost Everything And Still Win Big - Scott Adams (2013) One of my favorite quotes: “I put myself in a position where luck was more likely to happen. I tried a lot of different ventures, stayed optimistic, put in the energy, prepared myself by learning as much as I could, and stayed in the game long enough for luck to find me.” pg - 158 My top ten list for the year: https://www.gregkamradt.com/gregkamr…

I really enjoyed it too. My main takeaways: 1. Use systems, not goals. A system lets you feel good every time you follow it, whereas a goal only makes you feel good when you reach it 2. Combination of skills. If you can be good (say top 20%) in more than one domain, then that combination of skills can be enough to make you very sought after. 3. What all adults should know, like public speaking, psychology, business w…

> Use systems, not goals.

This, it could seem something that could have limited effect in real life but it's not. Small daily improvements compound.

Re: Ask HN: Favorite nonfiction books of 2018?

#194

Post by Emma_Goldman »

My idiosyncratic picks, all of them history:

Civil War, David Armitage

Meaning in History, Karl Lowith

Manifest Destiny, Anders Stephanson

The Deluge, Adam Tooze

The Moral Economists, Tim Rogan

The Guardians, Susan Pederson

I also enjoyed properly getting to grips with Keynes, Du Bois, Schmitt and Freud for the first time.

Re: Ask HN: Favorite nonfiction books of 2018?

#196

Post by jor-el »

The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds by Michel Lewis. [0]

It is about the one of the greatest paternship between Nobel laureate Danny Kahneman and his colleague Amos Tversky.

Kahneman and Tversky’s extraordinary friendship incited a revolution in Big Data studies, advanced evidence-based medicine, led to a new approach to government regulation, and made much of Michael Lewis’s own work possible. [1]

The book is very well written and if you have read Kahneman's Thinking fast and slow, then you should also read this one.

[0]https://www.amazon.com/Undoing-Project-Friendship-Changed-Mi... [1]https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35631386-the-undoing-pro...

Re: Ask HN: Favorite nonfiction books of 2018?

#198

Post by Emma_Goldman »

x220 wrote: post #145
randomacct3847 wrote: post #72

12 rules for life by Jordan Peterson

I read this too. It was an enjoyable read. You can safely ignore any commentary or review you read about this book since I have not found a single one yet that isn't incredibly biased. About half of reviews I've read seem to be written by people who didn't read the book at all, let alone skimmed it.

The problem with Peterson is that he makes preposterous truth-claims: based on his stylised readings of Western mythology, his understanding of humans as necessarily and essentially hierarchical, and various sub-scientific claims - e.g., about lobsters - that are dressed up as something their not. All in the service of something which is knowingly reactionary, to row back on progressive social moores and the gains of feminism. Obviously he also occasionally says some things which are true and interesting, but he is not a reliable intellectual authority.

He's also just a bit of an oddball. He lives in a house full of socialist realist paintings, his diet is based on absurdist nutritional science - he only eats beef and salt - and some of the things he says are just plain weird.

Post reply on HN