Ask HN: Best book you read in 2010 and briefly why

The Baroque Cycle trilogy by Neal Stephenson was good. It took me about a year (off and on) to finish though. It's historical fiction through the eyes of a computer geek and sci-fi writer.

It's a tie between Naked Economics by Charles Wheelan and Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely.

Naked Economics was a brilliant overview of economics in that it explains all the concepts behind economics without being utterly boring (like all the other texts I've attempted to read) and has real life examples for each and every thing. Lots of revelations of how incentives work together and / or clash at times to create important results.

Predictably Irrational was a mind-changing book in that it questioned the notion that rational self interest is embedded in everyone. All the statements are backed up with either previous research or at least ad lib experiments, and I love that. None of that handwaving bullshit that I usually see in popular science (and especially psych) books.

I liked both of these books --- "The Big Short" maybe a little more than "Too Big To Fail", because Lewis is just crazy!good about pacing and character development --- but had serious concerns about how accurate/unbiased they were. Particularly Sorkin's book, which I've heard negative things about.

I'm about 2/3 of the way through _All The Devils Are Here_ by Joe Nocera and feel like it's doing a brilliant job of addressing the shortcomings for Sorkin's book, which I felt maybe sacrificed some accuracy for the sake of building an enjoyable narrative. _Devils_ also has an interesting structure, different than the others; it's a catalog of sketches of the different people/forces/companies that went into the mess, so you get a chapter on the guy who started Ameriquest, and a chapter on Fannie's struggles against the Bush administration, and a chapter on how Goldman's IPO and Merrill's cultural mismatch to trading culture caused them to screw up the market. It's great reading.

Would you recommend any of his followup books? I'm worried that stories with different characters, time periods etc won't have the same feel.

"The Four Steps to the Epiphany" by Steve Blank For me it made the prospect of running a startup much more real. It gave a good grounding in the various phases you'll go through and the challenges and priorites in each. It gives clear actionable advice at every step. For someone from a technical background or for those up at bat for the first time (both attributes describe me), I reckon it's indispensible. I carry my copy in my bag wherever I go.