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.
Almost any country can hack its way to power, posing a threat to political systems and essential infrastructure world-wide
Nicole Perlroth – This is ho they tell me the world ends
Although the writer clearly picks sides, she does not shy away from the role of the US in the cyber arms race.
Today’s dominant ideology is the acceptance of ‘how the world really is’ and that any attempt to change that will lead to ruin
Slavoj Zizek – Like a thief in broad daylight
Mix of interesting Marxist perspectives on contemporary politics and confusing rants about old movies.
A hero is someone directing their rage towards achieving an unattainable goal and, if successful, ending up a star
Fresh and highly entertaining retelling of classic tales.
Statistical thinking leads to better decisions, but unfortunately most people are bad at that
Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, and Cass Sunstein – Noise
Overly simplified presentation of basic statistics that cuts some corners, as superbly pointed out by Andrew Gelman.
To make the fashion industry sustainable (from both environmental and social perspective) consumers need to care and get engaged
Maxine Bedat does for fashion what the Michael Pollen did for food, but with a much more solid program behind it.
From the start, WeWork’s business model was eerily similar to that of Regus while Adam Neumann’s main skill was conning investors
Eloit Brown and Maureen Farrell – The cult of We
The book is too overtly written with the benefit of hindsight, which makes the cautionary tale less compelling.
A start-up in retail should resolve significant friction in the value chain and/or the consumers’ lives
Christiane Lemieux and Duff McDonald – Frictionless
Story on repeat: X had a frustration, X is so privileged that she can raise at least a couple of $100k from friends and family, and X starts an amazing company to solve the problem – at least in theory – for herself and the rest of the world.
A good archeologist makes Sherlock Holmes’ deductions look rather elementary
The best feature of the book is that the author explains how archeologists infer facts about life 2000 years ago.
China’s debt-fueled economic growth cannot continue in the same way
Dinny McMahon – China’s great wall of debt
October 2021: Apparently, the financial troubles of Evergrande are the first cracks in the wall.
July 2019: Interesting perspective on China’s impressive rise over the past years, providing more context to the recent trade war with the US and contrasting the view of Kai-Fu Lee.
Apparently, the success factors that made Jack Ma are his command of the English language, his showmanship
After a reasonably insightful chapter describing Alibaba’s strategy, the book slides into an enumeration of facts that illustrate the way in which China’s government steers private enterprise.
Do not start a restaurant, unless there is nothing else you can do
Entertaining and endearing, despite the writers (sometimes painful) personality flaws
Psychologically, the Greek gods can be characterized as tantrum-prone children with a sex drive
Carefully crafted and highly entertaining.
AI increasingly constrains the domain of human creativity, similar to how science has constrained Faith
Marcus de Sautoy – The creativity code
Surprisingly up-beat considering its message and packed with nice examples.
Like in other instances of decolonization, forming the USA has been a murky affair largely dependent on chance
Colin Woodard – American nations
The book is more about political realities than about cultures, with little attention given to the role of black people (apart from them being enslaved).
A bunch of anarchists and misfits was able to defy the most powerful nations of the world for a surprisingly long time
Colin Woodart – The republic of pirates
Captivating narrative which juicy details on naval warfare practices and life on board.