Recent posts – Page 8

A hero is someone directing their rage towards achieving an unattainable goal and, if successful, ending up a star

Stephen Fry – Heros

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 – Unraveled

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

Mary Beard – Pompeii

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

Duncan Clark – Alibaba

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

David Chang – Eat a peach

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

Stephen Fry – Mythos

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.

Cyber warfare is getting increasingly sophisticated and the USA can no longer contain the threat of Russia and other foreign powers

Andy Greenberg – Sandworm

At some points the investigative journalism is not fully convincing, but it conveys the message effectively.