Entertaining rather than enriching, with strong emphasis on the ways in which Kara lets other people know that she is right
If power is all you want, just follow these 48 simple steps
Robert Greene – The 48 laws of power
A pile of cynical, often conflicting, recommendations presented with Machiavellian panache.
Understanding behavioral economics is quite helpful when you want to understand what works in marketing.
A smart repackaging of Khanemean for marketeers that is indeed worth a second edition nine years after initial publication
The populist far-right has been able to gain ground due to the failure of progressives to address underlying concerns across broad strands of the population
Rhetorically strong, with well chosen observations spun into a seductive narrative that is designed to give hope.
Brain variances manifest differently in women, leading to widely-held misconceptions and many living undiagnozed and untreated
Janara Nerenberg – Divergent mind
Does a great job explaining the negative impact.
A bunch of geeks figured out a better way to run a company and are now taking over the economy
The case that “data trumps opinions, provided your corporate culture doesn’t get in the way” contains little original thinking, but that – to be fair – is not the author’s objective
Most crypto currencies are Ponzi schemes funded and operated by hardened criminals and effective altruists lacking a moral compass
The author’s hard-felt frustration that the crypto market could (and in a sense still can) stay irrational as long as it did makes the story even more juicy.
Writing your tests first saves a shitload of time in debugging
Harry Percival – Test Driven Development with Python
It take quite some wasted hours of coding to appreciate the full power of the TDD approach
If you are quirky enough; people may just trust you because you seem harmless even if you have a history at a Wall Street trading firm
Michael Lewis – Going infinite
Amazing story, told with a consistent yet not so surprising perspective
To optimally solve for the UN Social Development Goals, optimize on simple metrics with good pay-off
Bjorn Lomborg – Best things first
Nice exercise that provides some nice contrarian thinking, as long as one is aware that the methodology of cost-benefit analysis (as applied here) seems to ignore systemic risks (e.g. climate change) and under-plays the difficulty of getting from theory to policy (let alone realization).
It requires a risky mix of naive optimism, grotesque bluff, and boneheaded persistence to get a scoop on a yakuza boss
The story is, appears heavily romanticized, but provides a nice insider perspective on many quirks of Japanese culture.
The ruthless pursuit of profit optimization has killed the soul of the American supermarket
Benjamin Lorr – The secret life of groceries
Narrated with bravado, the book conjures the nostalgic image of a 1950s store and skillfully contrasts it with the current state of the industry.
Don´t settle for industrially produced teabags, but choose high-quality tea leafs and take care to optimize water temperature and infusion time
An impressive book that takes tea sufficiently seriously, serving valuable recommendations on teas to try and pairings to explore.
A solid system of taxation is one of the major indicators for the success of power structures
Chris Wickham – Medieval Europe
Rich and fascinating deep-dive into an under-estimated millennium.
It is easy to fall under the spell of a charismatic and brilliant maniac who is convinced he has mankind’s best interests in mind
Even if multiple views are presented, Elon’s perspective gets most airtime and the final word; which makes the book read like a hagiography.
For every writing-fiction-rule you can come up with, there is a brilliant Chekhov story that disproves it
Reading like a writer – Francine Prose
Lot of examples of great prose, but too few examples of bad writing.
The relationship between biological make-up and human behavior is governed by complex interaction effects
The author set out on a daunting program with impressive results in a fascinating domain.
We tend to underestimate the capabilities of our neolithic ancestors in the domains of engineering and social organization
Mike Pitts – How to build Stonehenge
The book reads as a detective, exploring what we know and what we can reasonably conjecture about the creation of Stonehenge based on the archeological record and examples from indigenous civilizations.
Gothic architecture brought major innovations in the construction of cathedrals, using the frame (rather than the walls) to support the weight
Malcolm Hislop – How to build a cathedral
Fascinating in the thorough treatment of technical details of architecture and construction.
The impact of scaling on the functioning of biological and technical systems is profound
The book continues to drift between wonder about the world and weakly motivated bias towards human scale, which is a pity because it cites some elegant analyses.