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Ask HN: Books about people who persevered when no one else believed in them?

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Re: Ask HN: Books about people who persevered when no one else believed in them?

#31

Post by glaucon »

anon2020dot00 wrote: post #16

Isaac Newton, Wright Brothers, almost any pioneer is doubted since it hasn't been done until they did it

A book on the Wright brothers I would very much recommend is "The Bishop's Boys", fascinating story with a lot of detail I was unaware of. From my recollection it wasn't so much no-one believed in them as they just didn't give a dam what others thought, they just were interested in trying. I should clarify that by saying that they were certainly interested in learning what others had done but, as far as I recall, they weren't concerned what others thought about the probability of success.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23827.The_Bishop_s_Boys

Re: Ask HN: Books about people who persevered when no one else believed in them?

#32

Post by yesenadam »

alexrson wrote: post #24

Longitude - nonfic by dana sobel About a scientist/engineer who developed a sufficiently accurate clock to calculate longitude on an oceangoing ship in the age of sail. Which was of vast importance to sailing. The establishment was strongly in favor of astronomy based methods of calculating longitude. Barbara McClintock is a real scientist who fits this mold, but I haven't read a biography of her to specifically reco…

There's an excellent British TV movie version of Longitude (200 minutes, 2000, Jeremy Irons, Michael Gambon) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0192263/

Re: Ask HN: Books about people who persevered when no one else believed in them?

#33

Post by 8bitsrule »

A Melville bio might be sobering.

Melville's Moby Dick was so widely ignored (at best) that he quit writing prose for decades before starting Billy Budd a few years before his death. By that time, Moby was out-of-print ... it wasn't a 'work of genius' or a 'great American classic' for decades longer.

Re: Ask HN: Books about people who persevered when no one else believed in them?

#34

Post by filoleg »

atmosx wrote: post #30
mwattsun wrote: post #15

Cassandra was a Trojan priestess of Apollo in Greek mythology cursed to utter true prophecies, but never to be believed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassandra https://www.google.com/search?q=books+about+cassandra+of+tro...

which makes you wonder why would anyone name a distributed database acting as a “source of truth” Cassandra…

Because according to the mythology, Cassandra's prophecies actually were predicting the truth.

I think the part where people didn't believe her wasn't relevant, when it came to the DB product naming. She was a "source of truth" regardless of people's belief in it.

Re: Ask HN: Books about people who persevered when no one else believed in them?

#37

Post by rakejake »

DougMellon wrote: post #23
jmpman wrote: post #19

Not quite what you’re looking for, but highly recommend: A Message to Garcia This generation needs this mindset. My first manager gave it to me.

A Message to Garcia [0] was often passed around while I was in the Navy. That in addition to Iron and the Soul by Henry Rollins [1]. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Message_to_Garcia [1] https://www.nerdfitness.com/iron-and-soul/

+1 for Iron and the Soul. Really spoke to me.

Re: Ask HN: Books about people who persevered when no one else believed in them?

#38

Post by muzani »

Perseverance/patience/persistence (sabr) is the common theme in the Quran. It's said to be one of the two core traits of faith, the other being gratefulness. The idea is that anyone can profess faith, but the real test of faith is whether they believe things will be fine when pitted against all odds. Not so much light triumphing against dark, but faith that God is ultimately in control.

The Quranic take on David vs Goliath was that it required perseverance to follow David, who did not look much like a King. And after marching, they were exhausted and thirsty, reached the river, but were only allowed to take a single sip. Anyone who took more than a sip would not be part of the battle with Goliath. So there were only a few in the battle, which made the odds seem impossible, and so they prayed to God for perseverance (2:250) and Goliath was defeated in the most unexpected way.

Most tales about a Prophet is a story of perseverance.

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