
Best book/paper you read in 2018? - yesenadam
What&#x27;s the best book or paper you read in the last year, and why? &#x27;Best&#x27; in terms of value it gave you personally - what&#x27;s something you learnt from it, or something you used from it, or was it inspiring, what possibilities did it show you; what question(s) did it answer for you, where did it lead etc. Thank you.<p>I guess it could as well be a lecture, talk, video etc, I don&#x27;t want to rule something out just because of the format.
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julysun
If you have taken some "intro to proofs" or "intro to abstract algebra" or
"intro linear algebra" or any other such course where you've seen rigorous
proofs, then Jay Cummings' "Real Analysis: A Long-Form Mathematics Textbook"
[0] is simply a phenomenal introduction to real analysis. It's a fast paced
tour de force through rigorous analysis.

I actually wrote a longer comment, but I had to invoke the names of other
authors. Better not. Either way, I love the book.

[0] [https://www.amazon.com/Real-Analysis-Long-Form-
Mathematics-T...](https://www.amazon.com/Real-Analysis-Long-Form-Mathematics-
Textbook/dp/1724510126/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1542422962&sr=1-1&keywords=jay+cummings)

~~~
dorchadas
Got any recommendation for those other intro ones with rigorous proofs?
Teaching maths and looking to move from a physics background to more pure
maths one.

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yesenadam
Scott McCloud's _Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art_ (1994), an amazing
book on the history, science and philosophy of comics, is itself a
comic...then checking out most of the cartoonists he mentions that I hadn't
heard of[0], too many to mention. I discovered a load of great stuff from
that, e.g. the graphic novels of Will Eisner and wordless novels of Lynd Ward.

[0] Library Genesis's comics section helped with that
[http://libgen.io/comics/index.php](http://libgen.io/comics/index.php)

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ZainRiz
"A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas"

It's a very insightful read on how you can see the world differently by simply
asking questions (even if you never get an answer)

[https://www.amazon.com/More-Beautiful-Question-Inquiry-
Break...](https://www.amazon.com/More-Beautiful-Question-Inquiry-
Breakthrough/dp/1632861054)

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afpx
“Behave: the biology of humans at our best and worst” by Sapolsky was my
favorite. I knew little about neurobiology, and this went a little deeper.

~~~
yesenadam
Sapolsky's 25 lecture series on Human Behavioral Biology: He's such a
wonderful lecturer.

[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL150326949691B199](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL150326949691B199)

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chasedehan
Subtle art of not giving a f$@k

And Ray Dalio’s Principles.

Both of those gave me personal aha moments. Neither was what I expected but
both delivered.

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guiambros
" _Why We Sleep_ ", by Matthew Walker [1]. I've read a lot about sleep over
the years, but I still found it fascinating and comprehensive.

I've mentioned the book on several other threads [2], so I'll avoid repeating
here.

Along the same lines of expanding the ability of your body/mind, one that I'm
currently reading is " _What doesn 't kill us_" [3]. Pretty fascinating to
think that we have a lot more control over our immune system than originally
thought.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Sleep-Unlocking-
Dreams/dp/1501...](https://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Sleep-Unlocking-
Dreams/dp/1501144324/)

[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17606274](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17606274)

[3] [https://www.amazon.com/What-Doesnt-Kill-Environmental-
Condit...](https://www.amazon.com/What-Doesnt-Kill-Environmental-
Conditioning/dp/1623366909)

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laurentl
_The Innovator’s Dilemma_ by Clayton Christensen (the book itself is 20 years
old but I only read it recently). It’s a fantastic analysis of why successful
companies get displaced by disruptive technologies —or, the other way around,
why it’s so complicated to innovate in successful companies.

The underlying reasons exposed by the book are timeless and universal. As I
read the book (which, again, is 20 years old and focuses on the hard drive
industry) I recognized all the pitfalls my previous company went through as it
was trying to adapt to public Cloud.

This book is a powerful lens to look at disruptive innovation, well-written
and very thoroughly researched. A must read if you’re working in technology
IMO.

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pbamotra
Shoe dog by Phil Knight. It's a memoir by the co-founder of Nike. This is one
of my favorite books till now. The biggest reason being that it's a perfect
combo of personal and business story of company that started with $50 and is
now selling over $30B of goods annually. It's motivational, lucid, and keeps
you on your toes. Phil is a great story-teller and I almost felt as if I was
part of the story. A definite 5/5.

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sgillen
not a paper that came out this year but Emergence of Locomotion Behaviors in
Rich Environments by Google deepmind:
([https://arxiv.org/abs/1707.02286](https://arxiv.org/abs/1707.02286))

made me realize that although RL is brittle and slow it can still be super
effective the problem domains I care about (robot locomotion).

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21dayhero
Atomic Habits by James Clear.

I work on a habit building platform so read almost all books and papers on
habit building and behavioral science. This recent book by James Clear has
summarized the key points of what's known about building and replacing habits.
It's easy to read and most importantly - practical.

~~~
aalhour
I am interested in these topics as well, can you share your top 5 resources
besides Atomic Habits?

~~~
21dayhero
sure:

James Clear, the above author has the blog where he writes about habits
extensively: www.jamesclear.com

Tiny Habits is a habit program created by Stanford Prof BJ Fogg -
www.tinyhabits.com

21 Day Hero (shameless plug) - is a place where you start building habits
through 21 day challenges. We're transitioning however to full-on habit
building journey, through an app and other tools/programs - www.21dayhero.com

Selfication - [http://www.selfication.com/](http://www.selfication.com/) \- is
also a great blog in the behavioral science direction

Best apps out there is Fabulous, Spar!, Habitica, Pacifica and many others.

If you want this all in one - our team actually have this secret habit
landscape map done, which includes all books, apps, researchers, blogs in the
habit space. Haven't shared publicly yet. But can email it to you if you wish

~~~
aalhour
This is excellent, thanks a bunch! I'd love to have that list, can you email
it to me please? [https://aalhour.com/contact](https://aalhour.com/contact)

~~~
21dayhero
sure, just did.

~~~
aalhour
Thank you!

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olcor
Thorstein Veblen's "The Theory of the Leisure Class" (1899). The book was
difficult to read for me since the language is very archaic, but it pretty
much explained a lot about how class and community is structured.

As an introvert and a social recluse, this book is a goldmine; it eased a lot
of confusions in my head about how society and class structures work, and
taught me to better avoid the pitfalls of consumerism and peer pressure.

~~~
yesenadam
I loved that too! Apparently there was Veblen craze in the US when that came
out, Veblen societies everywhere. Here's a bit I liked:

...the cheap, and therefore indecorous, articles of daily consumption in
modern industrial communities are commonly machine products; and the generic
feature of the physiognomy of machine-made goods as compared with the hand-
wrought article is their greater perfection in workmanship and greater
accuracy in the detail execution of the design. Hence it comes about that the
visible imperfections of the hand-wrought goods, being honorific, are
accounted marks of superiority in point of beauty, or serviceability, or both.
Hence has arisen that exaltation of the defective, of which John Ruskin and
William Morris were such eager spokesmen in their time; and on this ground
their propaganda of crudity and wasted effort has been taken up and carried
forward since their time. And hence also the propaganda for a return to
handicraft and household industry. So much of the work and speculations of
this group of men as fairly comes under the characterisation here given would
have been impossible at a time when the visibly more perfect goods were not
the cheaper. - p162

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thisisrajat
Shoe Dog by Phil Knight (founder of Nike).

Hands down the best autobiography I have read. I personally learned a lot
about how a brand is created rather than a business. How businesses were built
even before VC capital was a thing. And how life is all about making
tradeoffs.

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duykhoa12t
__How Google works
__[https://www.howgoogleworks.net/](https://www.howgoogleworks.net/)

Those ideas and principles of building a successful Google, from making great
product, build the great culture and hiring the smart creative people.

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___cs____
\- Hit Refresh: The Quest to Rediscover Microsoft's Soul and Imagine a Better

\- Whiplash: How to Survive Our Faster Future

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anvsh
Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Alboom, really great book about life and
everything brilliant about it.

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vlindos
Microsoft Windows by filter.net Software origins always fascinated me. It was
a new world discovery in very recent history.

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thenaturalist
Inadequate Equilibria - Where and How civilizations get stuck

By Eliezer Yudkowsky

First book in a long time which really made me see the world differently and
taught better thinking.

[0] [https://equilibriabook.com](https://equilibriabook.com)

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ishanjain28
Creativity Inc. It's about Pixar.

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piocho
Gunter Pauli - The Blue Economy

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kfrog10101010
Bad Blood

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kfrog10101010
Bad Blood.

