In hindsight, the early internet was shockingly primitive.
The early 20th century provided a thriving pan-European intellectual and scientific environment, for those men who had the brains and could afford to participate
Margriet van der Heijden – Denken is verrukkelijk (“Thinking is delicious”; in Dutch)
Thorough biography of Paul Ehrenfest and Tatiana Afanassjewa.
The unlikely journey of a talented, black physicist from the hood shows the mechanics of ‘privilege’
Hakeem Oluseyi – A quantum Life
Impressive and heart-warming life story
Old-fashioned advertising creativity is very, very important in marketing effectiveness; unlike ‘thinking logically’
One can leave it to an ad-man to create a false dichotomy, starting from a naive and short-sighted definition of ‘logic’.
Addresses are useful, but the system for assigning them varies between countries
Deirdre Mask – The address book
Badly written collection of arbitrary anecdotes that include addresses, but do not bring any notable insight to the reader.
Beyond a certain point, the limiting factor in your career is most likely a behavioral flaw
Marshall Goldsmith – What got you here won’t get you there
Valuable perspectives on how the minds of successful people work
One can remove the gods from the story of Troy’s fall, but it is so much better if you leave them in
As engaging as the other parts of the trilogy.
The secret to closing a deal is convincing content, delivered convincingly
The gripping storytelling makes the shameless bragging accceptable and entertaining.
Politicians need not believe in conspiricy theories to spread them
Russel Muirhead and Nancy Rosenblum – A lot of people are saying
January 2020: The book spells out the scary power of herd mentality in a post-truth world (indebted to Harry Frankfurt and Fernbach and Sloman).
March 2022: In the perspective of this book, it is curious to see how far Putin can stretch his narrative on the Ukraine invasionfor his domestic audience.
The West has been underestimating the threat of Putin for many years
Garry Kasparov – Winter is coming
March 2022: Strong moral plea, that after the Ukraine invasion has become an even ore chilling read
When belief in progress has vanished, populists promise to rebuild the past – at all costs
Timothy Snyder – the road to unfreedom
October 2019: Elaborate and fascinating analysis of Putin’s Russia, which bears striking parallels to what populists in Western countries try, more recently.
March 2022: Chilling to see these themes back in Putin’s messaging around the Ukraine invasion.
Anything, from a generic concept to a highly personal experience, can be rated on a five-star scale
John Green – The anthropocene reviewed
Although the book is charming at times, reviewing an era through the personal experiences of one arbitrary writer in the early 21st century is a lost cause right from the start.
From Anime to the Karaoke machine and the Gameboy, Japanese design has had an outsized influence on pop culture
Highly entertaining book, providing entertaining facts and refreshing perspectives.
Governments of developing countries should: 1. stimulate household farming 2. push through land reform, and 3. protect their budding manufacturing industry – in that order
Interesting historical perspective on economic development with renewed relevance in a post free-trade world.
The US postal service is a success story of the benefits of public funding
Winifred Gallagher – How the post office created America
In theory a fascinating topic, but in practice a boring read; as I should have expected because the Post leveraged rather than drove innovation.
To solve the problems facing our planet today, we need to think ahead seven generations
Roman Krznaric – The good ancestor
Hard-felt plea for including future generations into political decision making.
Bayesian nets help prevent flawed statistical arguments and enable the leap from correlation to causation
Judea Pearl and Dana MacKenzie – The book of Why
The practical and relevant examples (health effect of smoking, impact of humanity on climate change) of causal inference alone make the book worthwhile.
A pragmatic programmer has to be an inquisitive, realistic critical thinker and fast adapter that is open to new perspectives and technologies
David Thomas and Andrew Hunt – The pragmatic programmer (20th anniversary edition)
Surprisingly philosophical for a book that has ‘pragmatic’ in its title.
Traders trying to make a killing in an ever more sophisticated market economy are driven to ever smarter deals and lower moral standards
Javier Blas and Jack Farchy – The world for sale
Well documented account of how instrumental commodity markets have been in global politics.
Flawed data collection and interpretation hurt the position and prospects of women in many different ways
Caroline Criado Perez – Invisible women
Great exercise in spotting biases, and understanding how these manifest themselves in how the world around us is shaped.