Dan Roam – The back of the Napkin
The author has an impressively complete typology of explanatory drawings.
Indigenous societies show that, next to capitalism, there are many alternative blends of violence, knowledge and charisma on which a viable social power structure can be built
David Graeber and David Wengrow – The dawn of everything
The authors attack a overly simplified version of the theories they aim to refute, failing to recognize the necessarily non-linear nature of evolution.
Thinking of decisions under uncertainty as bets leads to better, more rational, choices by challenging our innate biases
Entertaining plea for rationality and scenario thinking.
A selfless focus on creating impact makes employees highly valuable for organizations
The book gives surprisingly little attention to the question how Impact Players can assure they get rewarded for the value they bring
Determining the value function is a difficult problem that is nonetheless key to safely and effectively using reinforcement learning
Brian Christian – The Alignment Problem
The analogies between human and machine learning strategies are skillfully narrated, but rather drawn out.
PayPal has been successful first and foremost because of ruthless competitiveness and a maniacal work ethic
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: A foresighted moral plea, that after the Ukraine invasion has become an even more 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.