Neil de Grasse Tyson, Richard Gott, Michael Strauss – Welcome to the universe
The great thing about this book is the emphasis on HOW we know what we know about objects that are light years far away that are to our eyes not more than a dot in the sky.
Bart de Loo – The Burgundians (read in Dutch)
Politics and court life in the high middle ages evoked in a juicy style.
Sebastian Mallaby – The Power Law
Nice as a description of the historical evolution of the VC phenomenon, but rather condoning in its evaluation.
Dan Roam – The back of the Napkin
The author has an impressively complete typology of explanatory drawings.
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.
Entertaining plea for rationality and scenario thinking.
The book gives surprisingly little attention to the question how Impact Players can assure they get rewarded for the value they bring
Brian Christian – The Alignment Problem
The analogies between human and machine learning strategies are skillfully narrated, but rather drawn out.
In hindsight, the early internet was shockingly primitive.
Margriet van der Heijden – Denken is verrukkelijk (“Thinking is delicious”; in Dutch)
Thorough biography of Paul Ehrenfest and Tatiana Afanassjewa.
Hakeem Oluseyi – A quantum Life
Impressive and heart-warming life story
One can leave it to an ad-man to create a false dichotomy, starting from a naive and short-sighted definition of ‘logic’.
Deirdre Mask – The address book
Badly written collection of arbitrary anecdotes that include addresses, but do not bring any notable insight to the reader.
Marshall Goldsmith – What got you here won’t get you there
Valuable perspectives on how the minds of successful people work
As engaging as the other parts of the trilogy.
The gripping storytelling makes the shameless bragging accceptable and entertaining.
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.
Garry Kasparov – Winter is coming
March 2022: A foresighted moral plea, that after the Ukraine invasion has become an even more chilling read.
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.
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.
