
Ask HN: Favorite nonfiction books of 2018? - jestinjoy1
What are your favorite nonfiction  books of 2018 (Read in 2018)
======
crazygringo
Michael Pollan: _How to Change Your Mind_ [1]

Not just about an utterly fascinating topic (psychadelic drugs), in terms of
history (LSD turning from a scientific wonder drug to illegal), his personal
experiences, and the neuroscience behind it, but also just extremely well-
written -- a real page-turner. A crazy potent combination of science,
spirituality (from a skeptic), and narrative. I expect his book will be a
significant part of why psychadelic drugs will be legalized in the near future
specifically for therapeutic purposes.

Also +1 for 2017's _Why We Sleep_ [2]. After reading it, I couldn't believe
how shockingly ignorant I'd been of how I spend a full third of my life, and
how much it affects the other two-thirds -- and the degree to which a lack of
sleep prevents us from perceiving the effects of lack of sleep, in a kind of
vicious cycle.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Change-Your-Mind-Consciousness-
Transc...](https://www.amazon.com/Change-Your-Mind-Consciousness-
Transcendence/dp/1594204225)

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

~~~
mxschumacher
the topic of psychedelic drugs is truly fascinating, but I think Pollan's
books "How to change your mind" is poor. I read most of it and felt angry and
hollow after. I don't recommend a purchase.

Here's the review I left on Amazon (2 star):

"How tot change your mind" delivers and important core message, but it should
have been an article or a podcast episode. Cutting the fluff offers vast room
for lossless compression.

If you listen to the episode of Russ Robert's Econtalk (a podcast) with Pollan
you'll know everything the book has to say.

Some takeaways:

When LSD and psilocybin (the active ingredient in magic mushrooms) were first
studied by western science, there was a lot of hope for their potential use as
medical treatment. Recreational use exploded and governments around the world
banned the drugs, crudely throwing psychedelics in the same bucket as Heroin.
Research stalled for 40 years but has recently picked up again. Partial
legalization and increased medical use can be expected in the near future.

Psychedelics can move humans away from the "default mode" of consciousness and
lead to ego dissolution. This is a trans formative experience for many.

Psychedelics harbor the potential for alleviation: Within the right medical
setting (non-supervised usage is discouraged), the use of these substances can
help addicts, those close to death and the depressed.

LSD and psilocybin are neither toxic or addictive.

According to some, it is possible to reach the enlightened states through a
long term meditative practice, psychedelics can be seen as a shortcut.

\---

What annoyed me about the book is that acronyms are spelled out repeatedly
(for readers who don't pay attention?) while deeper explanations, especially
regarding Timothy Leary are made too late in the book (e.g. only after the
name has been mentioned several times - I am reminded of the frequent
mentioning of John Galt in Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged").

Numerous academic researchers are introduced, I'm fine with an elaboration on
their respective academic affiliations and educational backgrounds - but
spending a third of a page on the description of their physical appearance is
disrespectful of the reader's time.

How others can refer to this book as "the best book they've ever read" is
beyond me. I'm going to try to send the book back, I don't want it in my
library.

~~~
ThomPete
But do you have a better book recommendation?

~~~
arikr
Not op, but acid test is a great read too on the same topic

------
shawnps
Favorites that I read in 2018:

* Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams by Matthew Walker ([https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34466963-why-we-sleep](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34466963-why-we-sleep))

* Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time by Dava Sobel ([https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4806.Longitude](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4806.Longitude))

* Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It by Chris Voss ([https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26156469-never-split-the...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26156469-never-split-the-difference))

* Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond ([https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25852784-evicted](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25852784-evicted))

* Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson ([https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11084145-steve-jobs](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11084145-steve-jobs))

PSA: if you use an e-reader or like audiobooks, check out Libby:
[https://meet.libbyapp.com/](https://meet.libbyapp.com/)

I'm not affiliated with them. Nice app for borrowing ebooks and audiobooks
from your local library.

~~~
lloydde
“Never Split the Difference” was fantastic. Still it was super weird that
unlike the advice in the book, some of the book comes across as bragging.
Also, Chris Voss does not perform the audiobook although in the book he
discusses his mastery of voice, his smooth radio jockey voice and covers
different speaking techniques. Still, one of my favorites of 2018.

~~~
dmos62
I might not end up reading this one due to the comments about bragging, but I
wanted to ask: what's with the title? Why would you never split the
difference?

~~~
odajay
He was an crisis negotiator focused on situation where hostages are taken. You
don’t go around asking for half an hostage.

------
gkamradt
How To Fail At Almost Everything And Still Win Big - Scott Adams (2013)

One of my favorite quotes: “I put myself in a position where luck was more
likely to happen. I tried a lot of different ventures, stayed optimistic, put
in the energy, prepared myself by learning as much as I could, and stayed in
the game long enough for luck to find me.” pg - 158

My top ten list for the year: [https://www.gregkamradt.com/gregkamradt/top-
reads-2018](https://www.gregkamradt.com/gregkamradt/top-reads-2018)

~~~
henrik_w
I really enjoyed it too. My main takeaways:

1\. Use systems, not goals. A system lets you feel good every time you follow
it, whereas a goal only makes you feel good when you reach it

2\. Combination of skills. If you can be good (say top 20%) in more than one
domain, then that combination of skills can be enough to make you very sought
after.

3\. What all adults should know, like public speaking, psychology, business
writing, accounting, design, and conversations.

4\. Learning from failures. This is a theme throughout the book. Each failure
can teach you something. If you attempt something and fail, you at least
gained experience. This experience will be useful for your next project.

~~~
ZoomZoomZoom
Regarding #2: Does the book go into any specifics on how exactly you're going
to be sought after or at least how to look for the people who needs
generalists?

I consider myself a generalist but I never ever see much interest for hiring
someone like me. There's always ask for a person who's a focused pro in some
niche area AND then possesses a cloud of tangential skills, though.

~~~
henrik_w
I think the idea is that you are somewhat a specialist in 2 areas (but not a
worldclass specialist). As I recall, that advice does not apply to being a
generalist.

~~~
ZoomZoomZoom
This looks more close to reality, but parent said "20%", which doesn't look
good enough.

~~~
ThomPete
Top 20% is definitely good enough, the value having removed the issue with
transcendence between two normally unrelated fields will improve your
advantage by many factors.

Of course, not everything goes.

------
unmole
I see loads of great suggestions in this thread, let me just add three of my
LEAST favourite nonfiction books:

Thinking, Fast and Slow: Really should have been subtitled _The Ludic Fallacy
Run Amok_. Filled with grand generalisations based on dubious conclusions from
small under-powered behavioural experiments. Read if you want further evidence
that _Behavioural Economics_ , that bastard child of psychology is an edifice
built on bullshit.

Masters of DOOM: A homage from a fanboy meant for other fanboys. It definitely
has its bits of brilliance but it is still a chore to finish.

The Inner Game of Tennis: At 161 pages it might seem short but is in fact 160
pages too long. I bought it after someone on HN said its advice wasn't really
about tennis but about life. I wonder what that person was smoking at the
time.

~~~
77pt77
> Thinking, Fast and Slow: Really should have been subtitled The Ludic Fallacy
> Run Amok.

Recently I read Blink by Malcom Gladwell (somewhat recommend) and I finally
understood why I hated Thinking, Fast and Slow so much.

Gladwell mentions a concept called thin-sliccing [1]. I finally had a term to
describe my feelings towards that book. If you pay attention to the beginning
you get a pretty accurate idea of just how bad the book really is overall.

Given the book's subject I find the whole thing deliciously ironic.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thin-
slicing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thin-slicing)

~~~
maire
I just finished reading the Undoing Project which is a biography of Kahneman
and Tversky. I realized that Kahneman and Tversky's conclusions seem the
opposite of Gladwell's Blink which I read many years ago. I need to go back
and read Blink again to see what I really think.

~~~
77pt77
Blink is riddled with problems (as Gladwell seems to sometimes admit) but IMHO
is still a far more honnest book than TFS.

------
danso
I know it's already been mentioned, but John Carreyrou's "Bad Blood" is a
must-read. Even as someone who read and enjoyed every story published in the
WSJ about Theranos, the book managed to have even more context and incredible
(and hilarious) reporting. It's a book as entertaining as it is invaluable in
its investigative journalism.

~~~
pauldix
Agree, I thought I knew everything about the story, but the book had even more
in it. Well written and highly entertaining. I couldn't put it down.

------
bretthowell
Dr Panetta, Williams: _Count Girls In_ [1]

 _The_ field guide for anyone who refuses to accept girls and women are less
likely to succeed as engineers, scientists, or in any technology profession.
This accessible yet science-grounded book was effortless to read and is packed
with chapter after chapter of practical age specific advice. I’m a father of
two young girls (and a boy) and I will no doubt keep it at my side for many
years to come.

 _My key take away:_ It seems too often we assume the way things are is they
way they will always be, so we fix the symptoms and stop looking for better
answers. “Education is education and the same for both genders, so the
dispartity between genders in the tech field must be girls aren’t as good at
it or boys keep them out of the club.” Well the authors present a wealth of
scientific evidence to strongly suggest our approach to STEM education
(starting in the home) is geared more towards the way boys brains are
biologically wired to learn, and simple intuitive adjustments to the way the
same concepts are taught to girls net amazing results. After trying a few of
the tips on my 2 and 6 year olds there’s no doubt.. anyone who wants a girl or
a women in their life to succeed should read this book. It’ll change lives.

+1 for _Why We Sleep_ , alarming, insightful and ultimately likely to add
years the lives of those who read it.

[1]
[https://www.amazon.com/dp/1613739397](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1613739397)

~~~
Briq7
Interesting. Here in Norway, girls are outperforming boys in school at every
level, and the gap between them gets bigger every year. A few years a go the
gap was smallest in math, but I recently listen to a discussion on radio that
said even that gap started to get bigger. One of the arguments that are used
here often is that school is geard more towards girls than boys.

I have to read that book to understand why it seems to be so different in USA
(I presume).

Some links about the topic in norwegian: [https://www.nrk.no/norge/jentene-
tar-over-prestisjestudiene-...](https://www.nrk.no/norge/jentene-tar-over-
prestisjestudiene-1.11866832) [https://www.nrk.no/norge/_-guttene-ligger-
langt-bak-jentene-...](https://www.nrk.no/norge/_-guttene-ligger-langt-bak-
jentene-i-skolen-1.13101186)
[https://www.vg.no/nyheter/meninger/i/B7XG7/hvorfor-blir-
gutt...](https://www.vg.no/nyheter/meninger/i/B7XG7/hvorfor-blir-guttene-
skoletapere) [https://www.regjeringen.no/no/aktuelt/Jenter-flinkere-pa-
sko...](https://www.regjeringen.no/no/aktuelt/Jenter-flinkere-pa-skolen-enn-
gutter/id756369/)

~~~
esturk
I just looked up the Norwegian delegate to the International Math Olympiad.
Unfortunately, males are still top heavy. There was only 1 female out of 6
spots.

[https://www.imo-
official.org/year_reg_team.aspx?year=2018&co...](https://www.imo-
official.org/year_reg_team.aspx?year=2018&code=NOR)

~~~
gdy
Misandry.

------
wine
Real Analysis: A Long-Form Mathematics Textbook by Jay Cummings [0] finally
helped me conquer elementary real analysis. It was fast, smooth and
streamlined experience. Your millage may vary, though, as this one wasn't my
first analysis encounter.

This book enters the pantheon of books that were tremendously helpful to me:
Learning to Reason by Nancy Rodgers, Discrete Math by Susanna Epp and Linear
Algebra by Kuldeep Singh.

[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_13?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1545525105&sr=1-13&keywords=real+analysis)

~~~
mindcrime
FWIW, I'm also a big fan of Susanna Epp's book on Discrete Math. I found it
more accessible than Rosen's book.

------
teej
“A Programmer’s Introduction to Mathematics” by Jeremy Kun. It’s funny,
approachable, and manages to get deep into math topics important to
programmers. It goes into the history and culture of math, helping you
understand why math is the way it is. Couldn’t be happier with it!

~~~
gvand
[https://pimbook.org/](https://pimbook.org/) for those who didn't see the
announcement post here.

------
franze
I went back to the basics this year. Re-read my favorites from Jerry Weinberg
( August 7, 2018)

\- The Secrets of Consulting: A Guide to Giving and Getting Advice
Successfully

\- An Introduction to General Systems Thinking

\- Becoming a Technical Leader: An Organic Problem-Solving Approach

\- Are your lights on?

based on his references I went back to Virginia Satir, her Books are kinda
hard to order:

\- The new Peoplemaking

\- The Satir Model: Family Therapy and Beyond

\- Your Many Faces.

And as always once a year:

\- Thinking in Systems: A Primer - Donella H. Meadows

Just writting this list makes me realize that this was a kinda classic year
for me. Still read a lot of coding books i.e.: about JS, CloujourScript but
nothing stood out.

\- Understanding ECMAScript6: The Definitive Guide for JavaScript Developers -
Nicholas C. Zakas

was good. Some points I did not know and a good read.

\- Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It -
Chris Voss

was great as it gave me new insights how to structure my speech and thoughts
behind it.

But well, my favorite book this year was and is mine

\- "Understanding SEO - A Systematic Approach to Search Engine Optimization"
\- Franz Enzenhofer

Taking what i learned from Weinberg and Meadows (with some E. Bono) and apply
it to the system that is search(-behaviour and the marketplace Google).
[https://www.fullstackoptimization.com/b/understanding-
seo](https://www.fullstackoptimization.com/b/understanding-seo)

~~~
Dowwie
What is it about "Thinking in Systems" that compels you to read it annually?

~~~
franze
it defined the way i think about ... everything.

and every year again while reading it i put my experiences (business and
private) again in the form of systems and leverage points as outlined by
donella. and every year again its an awesome learning experience. simply the
most important book i have ever read. (i read a lot)

~~~
Dowwie
You've piqued my interest. It's now in my queue.

------
Insanity
They weren't written in 2018, but some I enjoyed:

* Hackers: Heroes of the computer revolution (Steven Levy)

* Masters of DOOM (David Kushner)

* The simpsons and their mathematical secrets (Simon Singh)

* Countdown to zero day (about stuxnet, by Kim Zetter)

* Sapiens: A brief history of human kind (Yuval Noah Harari)

* Coders at work (Some interviews, not all, but I enjoyed it. By Peter Seibel)

~~~
jmcgough
Masters of DOOM is amaaazing, really made me into a John Carmack fan.

~~~
phaus
Really? I admired his accomplishments before I even read this book (which is
an amazing read), but it kind of makes him seem like a sociopath.

~~~
unmole
The book keeps getting recommend on HN presumably by true fans of DOOM. Apart
from a few brilliant bits scattered throughout, it was a disappointing read
for me.

~~~
rchaud
I liked the book because it was pretty fast paced and gave insights into the
PC game industry of the '80s and '90s, which I didn't know anything about. The
rest of it I feel like I enjoyed because I was a kid in the '90s who loved
Doom and Quake.

~~~
Insanity
As for me, I was quite a 'hardcore' gamer in the late 90s early 2000s. So it
was interesting to read where the games that I've played came from, because
they owe a lot to DOOM.

The first game I remember playing was Wolfenstein 3-D. Or well, my father
played it mainly and I watched, and only occasionally dared to play it myself.
So perhaps for me it was more the nostalgia of Wolfenstein rather than DOOM
that did it :)

I always admired Carmack, even before reading the book. I could agree with the
'sociopath' sentiment though, but that doesn't diminish his genius in my
opinion :)

------
rkho
I enjoyed The More of Less by Joshua Becker. This year I finally had the
realization that I've been accumulating way too many physical possessions that
I didn't really need nor benefit from, and it's been a good introduction to
practicing minimalism.

The book talks about how minimalism isn't about ridding yourself of everything
but your bare necessities, but to discard things that you don't love so that
you can better focus on the remaining things that are important to you. If
you've read The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, this point will resonate
with you quite well.

I've since whittled down my wardrobe significantly, throwing out a large chunk
of shirts/pants/sweaters that I haven't worn in over a year and it's actually
done wonders for my health. I discovered that my bedroom had been left in
neglect for a long time now, which had caused a bit of mold to grow (which in
turn had given me allergy issues for the past couple months) and having to go
through my clothes helped me both physically and mentally.

Another book that touches on these themes is Essentialism: The Disciplined
Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown.

Maybe in 2019 I'll finally get to a point where I don't have to pack dozens
and dozens of boxes when I inevitably move again.

~~~
billylindeman
+1 on both these books

------
jor-el
The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds by Michel Lewis. [0]

It is about the one of the greatest paternship between Nobel laureate Danny
Kahneman and his colleague Amos Tversky.

Kahneman and Tversky’s extraordinary friendship incited a revolution in Big
Data studies, advanced evidence-based medicine, led to a new approach to
government regulation, and made much of Michael Lewis’s own work possible. [1]

The book is very well written and if you have read Kahneman's Thinking fast
and slow, then you should also read this one.

[0][https://www.amazon.com/Undoing-Project-Friendship-Changed-
Mi...](https://www.amazon.com/Undoing-Project-Friendship-Changed-
Minds/dp/0393254593) [1][https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35631386-the-
undoing-pro...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35631386-the-undoing-
project)

------
japhyr
The View from Flyover Country

Sarah Kendzior is my favorite political analyst today. She has called so much
of what's happened over the past few years long before others, and she cuts
right to the heart of what's happening. This book is a collection of essays
she published about the changing economy and political scene over the past ~5
years.

[https://www.amazon.com/View-Flyover-Country-Dispatches-
Forgo...](https://www.amazon.com/View-Flyover-Country-Dispatches-
Forgotten/dp/1250189939)

[https://twitter.com/sarahkendzior](https://twitter.com/sarahkendzior)

~~~
wtmt
If you see this reply soon, you can edit and fix the Amazon link for this
book. Your link shows a Page Not Found error. The correct link is
[https://www.amazon.com/View-Flyover-Country-Dispatches-
Forgo...](https://www.amazon.com/View-Flyover-Country-Dispatches-
Forgotten/dp/1250189993/) (the last two digits are flipped in your link).

------
jacobn
Righteous Mind, Why good people are divided by politics and religion by
Jonathan Haidt (also applies to classic nerd feuds like Mac vs windows vs
Linux)

The Mom Test, how to talk to customers & learn if your business is a good idea
when everyone is lying to you by Rob Fitzpatrick (worst title ever, book is
great)

~~~
ternaryoperator
The Righteous Mind is brilliant. It gives an excellent framework by which to
understand today's events better.

~~~
james_s_tayler
Seems somewhat of an odd tagline "why good people are divided by politics"...

All people are divided by politics.

Perhaps it's one to give a read though.

I swear I'm noticing a systemic failure at a global level of people to
recognize they are always-on 24/7 political machines living inside an always-
on 24/7 political machine and it's mostly Garbage In, Garbage Out.

That's the default mode of operation. Most people are wrong about most things.
Couple that with the fact we are de-facto tribal animals that can't turn our
politics off. All you get is one big, giant disagreement where everyone is
likely wrong and nobody will admit it.

But I keep noticing patterns in everyones language... Patterns that make an
assumption that the crazy political debates we find ourselves in are somehow
an abnormal state and the world has "descended into madness" or "we've gone
mad" or "it seems people have really lost their minds lately".

This pattern crops up over and over again. It's like no man, look at the
hardware and software producing the outputs. This is the output the system is
designed to produce. We haven't "lost our minds" or "gone crazy", we were
always this batshit insane and this is always the protocol we have operated
on.

Curious what the framework the book lays out and what resemblance it bears to
my own framework...

~~~
backpropaganda
The tagline is meant to emphasize that even good people are divided by
politics, and the book is meant to target people who didn't find that obvious.

~~~
james_s_tayler
Right but "good" itself is a moral/value judgement, so you wind up with the
question "who is doing the defining?" And that descends into a disagreement.
That is our M.O.

Actually looking at description of this book and some of the reviews it's
basically what I'm saying. Though my thesis contains a large component
centering around our complete inability to calculate the truth value of most
truth claims a priori and our inability to recognize that leads us to being
utterly convinced our erroneous conclusions are correct and getting angry at
people who disagree with us. This coupled with all the literature on how
dissenters are treated and how groupthink takes hold. We are a walking recipe
for disaster.

This will make for a good read. Probably help me to expand on my own model
even more.

I think a lot of turmoil and confusion could be avoided if we collectively
upgraded our protocols for dealing with each other.

------
slyall
* The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris by David McCullough

* Higher: A Historic Race to the Sky and the Making of a City by Neal Bascomb

* Caesar’s Last Breath: Decoding the Secrets of the Air Around Us by Sam Kean

* Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari

* A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts by Andrew Chaikin

* The Actor’s Life: A survival guide by Jenna Fischer

* The Interstellar Age: The Story of the NASA Men and Women Who Flew the Forty-Year Voyager Mission by Jim Bell

* The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance by David Epstein

* Uncommon People: The Rise and Fall of the Rock Stars 1955-1994 by David Hepworth

* Chasing Space: An Astronaut's Story of Grit, Grace, & Second Chances by Leland Melvin

* The Johnstown Flood by David McCullough

* Jefferson: Architect of American Liberty by John B. Boles

~~~
p1esk
Have you read all of these?

~~~
jen729w
FWIW my library account shows me as having loaned 28 books this year. I’d say
I finished 80% of them.

Don’t watch too much television, don’t read too much crap online. There’s
plenty of time in life to read.

~~~
henrik_w
If you use Goodreads to track what you read, you get some stats per year, like
number of books read, number of pages read.

Mine: [https://www.goodreads.com/review/stats/63629672-henrik-
warne](https://www.goodreads.com/review/stats/63629672-henrik-warne)

~~~
r3bl
I find it very useful, and especially by combining the two.

For example, in 2015 I've read more than double of the amount of books I've
read this year, but comparing by the number of pages, the difference is just a
few dozen pages.

While the amount I've read remained steady, I'm clearly able to retain longer
focus necessary to read longer titles, which is something I wouldn't easily
spot in such a short timeframe otherwise.

------
SirensOfTitan
The Mind Illuminated by Culadasa. I find it _the_ textbook on meditation and
it has largely transformed my life.

~~~
lihaciudaniel
+1 to the book. There was a HN comment that said that the book is like a
technical book of your mind. For those who are interested more in the Buddhism
there is a guy who answers 3/4 questions on his podcast "Dhamma on air" :
Bhikku Samahita
[https://www.youtube.com/user/BhikkhuSamahita](https://www.youtube.com/user/BhikkhuSamahita)

------
hliyan
_Drucker 's Lost Art of Management_ [1] contains some amazing foundational
material (as opposed to quick-fix 'techniques' you get in other leadership
books) on how to build an effective organizational culture. It shows that for
Drucker, the modern corporation is an integral part of civilizational fabric
(just like family and other social institutions), and that it too should be
governed by moral values and that those values are the glue that holds it
together as a community.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Druckers-Lost-Art-Management-
Organiza...](https://www.amazon.com/Druckers-Lost-Art-Management-
Organizations/dp/0071765816)

------
jacobkg
How to Measure Anything - Douglas Hubbard

This book is a treatise against the notion that some important things can’t be
measured. Full of information about how to figure what should be measured and
then how to measure it. Very thorough and he managed to answer every objection
I could come up with throughout.

Deep Work - Cal Newport

Starts with the thesis that a generation of workers have forgotten how to
concentrate on mentally challenging tasks. Full of ideas and inspiration for
rebuilding your stamina for intense focused thought.

~~~
mindcrime
_How to Measure Anything - Douglas Hubbard_

I personally consider this one of the most valuable non-fiction books I've
_ever_ read. It would be hard for me to state emphatically enough how strongly
I recommend this book and the author's approach. Using calibrated probability
assessments, an understanding of nth order effects, and Monte Carlo
simulations, is a process that everyone should have in their toolkit.

The stuff on AIE and portfolio management I found less valuable, but all in
all it's a great book.

------
weisser
I read over 40 nonfiction books this year. Here are some favorites.

Life-changing: Why We Sleep

Page-turner: How to Change Your Mind

Most useful: The Consolations of Philosophy

On startups: Troublemakers: Silicon Valley's Coming of Age

Random but amazing: Shadow Divers (true story about deep sea diving - think
Into Thin Air)

~~~
rokhayakebe
How fast and often do you read?

~~~
crazygringo
Not the parent, but that's less than 1 book a week, which I often do.

If your average non-fiction book takes you ~12 hrs to read, that 3 nights of 4
hours of reading. In other words, if reading is a main hobby it's totally
doable. (Also if you have an hour commute to/from work on the subway or train,
that's 10 hrs/wk right there, or... 40 books a year.)

Also, I personally find that non-fiction is _much_ faster to read than fiction
-- in fiction, you want to savor and appreciate each sentence as it paints a
world you don't know. In non-fiction, there tends to be a "lot you already
know" when reading that you can read quickly, especially when you read
multiple books on similar topics. (E.g. reading about the Stanford Prison
Experiment for the _nth_ time, or an explanation of the Prisoner's Dilemma.)

------
cf498
>(Read in 2018)

* Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/215758.Shake_Hands_with_...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/215758.Shake_Hands_with_the_Devil)

Still reading it every few weeks and its hanging over my head to finally
finish it. Not something you want to read, but a book like few i have read
before.

~~~
james_s_tayler
Oooh. Added to my list.

I read Man's Search for Meaning this year and man that's a bleak, hard-hitting
book. Just such a gripping experience reading that.

I've recently bought a copy of The Gulag Archipelago which is a historical
account of the Gulag in Soviet Russia.

Will definitely add Rwanda to the list. I think these books are so important
to read. They're absolutely horrifying, but lest we forget where those ideas
lead people.

~~~
throwaway19743
Keep in mind that Solzhenitsyn's books are primarily fiction and far from
historical.

~~~
james_s_tayler
Primarily fiction meaning most of it didn't happen???

Yet it is based on the testimony of the 200 people he interviewed as well as
his own first hand experience. And was so well documented the KGB couldn't
discredit it. Try as you might.

~~~
throwaway19743
> Primarily fiction meaning most of it didn't happen???

Exactly.

I'm definitely not the most informed person on this topic, but if you're
really into it, you can find a lot of materials disproving his claims.
Probably most of them are in Russian though, I don't know.

> KGB couldn't discredit it. Try as you might.

There's no point in discrediting someone's beliefs. I just want you to look at
his books critically. At least double check the numbers he wrote about.

~~~
james_s_tayler
Upon investigation it seems they are likely of enough accuracy to get you into
the right ballpark of understanding what life in the Gulag was like.

If you want to debate specifics of how many million vs how many 10s of
millions, you're missing the point.

------
klenwell
Three entertaining reads that also turned out to hide interesting little
studies in team management:

\- Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain (the breakout memoir that made his
career)

\- Breaks of the Game by David Halberstam (about the 79-80 Portland
Trailblazers)

\- The Jordan Rules by Sam Smith (about the Bulls first NBA championship with
Michael Jordan and Phil Jackson)

[0]
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33313.Kitchen_Confidenti...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33313.Kitchen_Confidential?from_search=true)

[1]
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/75406.The_Breaks_of_the_...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/75406.The_Breaks_of_the_Game)

[2]
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/246468.The_Jordan_Rules](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/246468.The_Jordan_Rules)

------
kej
I'm really liking How to Invent Everything by Ryan North. It's instructions
for rebuilding civilization if you were stranded in the past, and is just the
right mix of funny and interesting.

~~~
adetrest
That looks like such a cool book, I'm so getting it! Thank you

------
mattselbst
The 1-Page Marketing Plan by Allan Dib Totally changed my view and
understanding of what marketing is and how core it is to product development.
No theory or fluff, cuts straight to the point.

[https://www.amazon.com/1-Page-Marketing-Plan-Customers-
Money...](https://www.amazon.com/1-Page-Marketing-Plan-Customers-Money-
ebook/dp/B01B35M3SM)

~~~
melenaos
Well, this is my next reading! Thanks so much, I wanted to invest in marketing
and I haven't found an entry point until now.

------
dvirsky
A Philosophy Of Software Design by John Ousterhout. Pretty short, but
interesting and does a nice job at dissecting the mistakes we make that lead
to software complexity.

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39996759-a-philosophy-
of...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39996759-a-philosophy-of-software-
design)

~~~
pvarangot
I read it and made my own notes and charts and it's a solid and fun software
engineering book. I hadn't enjoyed a "soft skills" book so much since Coders
at Work.

It's a little bit too technical for the non fiction category though and reads
a little too much like course notes (which it somehow is).

------
jmcgough
Bad Blood is a must if you work in tech. Incredible page-turner, and shocking
at the level of deception they employed.

I also got hooked on Endgame by Frank Brady, about Bobby Fischer (the american
chess prodigy who quit chess and became a reclusive antisemite). It's a
biography and doesn't discuss his matches with any kind of depth, but was
still really interesting to read.

------
sizzzzlerz
* Bad Blood - John Carreyou

This has been listed multiple times. Depicts the darkside of the startup
phenomena

* Chasing New Horizons - Alan Stern, David Grinspoon

Documents the people and machine that explored Pluto

* Sunburst and Luminary - Don Eyles

History of the Apollo guidance computer software from the man who wrote it

~~~
fernandotakai
another recommendation for bad blood. really really good book that shows the
dark side of startups.

the audiobook is super good too, well narrated.

------
gyre007
Scale: The Universal Laws of Life and Death in Organisms, Cities and Companies
by Geoffrey West [1]

[1] [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Scale-Universal-Organisms-Cities-
Co...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Scale-Universal-Organisms-Cities-
Companies/dp/1780225598)

~~~
nyolfen
see also this review by freeman dyson(!):

[https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2018/05/10/the-key-to-
every...](https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2018/05/10/the-key-to-everything/)

unpaywalled:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20180420081837/https://www.nyboo...](https://web.archive.org/web/20180420081837/https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2018/05/10/the-
key-to-everything/)

------
asanwal
Just Mercy by Brian Stevenson - amazing book about US criminal justice system.
Read it.

The Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldratt - a management novel. Oddly engrossing and
educational at the same time

The Everything Store by Brad Stone - about Amazon's history, culture,
businesses

(None of these books was written in 2018. I just read them in 2018)

~~~
WheelsAtLarge
"The Everything Store," was very enlighting to me on Bezo's thoughts on
business. It's just one nugget from the book. All the Amazon news stories that
are propagation these days aren't really surprising once you read the book.
Bezo's primary view on business is that you must work hard to get by in this
world. All who do will get by and even thrive. All that don't will not. A Dog
eat Dog kind of view. It's very good. I highly recommend it.

------
kethinov
Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World by Anand
Giridharadas.

"An insider's groundbreaking investigation of how the global elite's efforts
to 'change the world' preserve the status quo and obscure their role in
causing the problems they later seek to solve."

[https://www.amazon.com/Winners-Take-All-Charade-
Changing/dp/...](https://www.amazon.com/Winners-Take-All-Charade-
Changing/dp/0451493249)

[https://twitter.com/AnandWrites](https://twitter.com/AnandWrites)

------
guiambros
* Why We Sleep, by Matthew Walker

* Masters of Doom, by David Kushner

* What Doesn't Kill Us, by Scott Carney

* Bad Blood, by John Carreyrou

* The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, by Marie Kondō

* How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big, by Scott Adams

~~~
JKCalhoun
> Masters of Doom

No likable "characters" in that one. Fun reading about the era though.

~~~
Reedx
It's been a long time since I've read it, but... not even Carmack?

------
DanBC
The _Making Data Count_ PDF. I also have a hardcopy of a shorter version.
[https://improvement.nhs.uk/resources/making-data-
count/](https://improvement.nhs.uk/resources/making-data-count/)

I like this because it's an easy to read and understand guide to statistical
process control charts, and common cause variation vs special cause variation.

------
jger15
Really enjoyed:

\- 7 Powers: The Foundations of Business Strategy - Hamilton Helmer

\- American Wolf - Nate Blakeslee

\- Atomic Habits - James Clear

\- But What If We're Wrong - Chuck Klosterman

\- Conspiracy - Ryan Holiday

\- The Courage To Be Disliked - Ichiro Kishimi

\- Elements of Fiction: Characters & Viewpoint - Orson Scott Card

\- The Elephant In The Brain - Robin Hanson & Kevin Simler

\- Good Strategy Bad Strategy - Richard Rumelt

\- Gridiron Genius - Michael Lombardi

\- The Longevity Diet - Valter Longo

\- Open - Andre Agassi

\- Warriors & Worriers - Joyce Benenson

\- Why We Sleep - Matthew Walker

\- World After Capital - Albert Wenger

------
randomacct3847
12 rules for life by Jordan Peterson

~~~
x220
I read this too. It was an enjoyable read. You can safely ignore any
commentary or review you read about this book since I have not found a single
one yet that isn't incredibly biased. About half of reviews I've read seem to
be written by people who didn't read the book at all, let alone skimmed it.

~~~
Emma_Goldman
The problem with Peterson is that he makes preposterous truth-claims: based on
his stylised readings of Western mythology, his understanding of humans as
necessarily and essentially hierarchical, and various sub-scientific claims -
e.g., about lobsters - that are dressed up as something their not. All in the
service of something which is knowingly reactionary, to row back on
progressive social moores and the gains of feminism. Obviously he also
occasionally says some things which are true and interesting, but he is not a
reliable intellectual authority.

He's also just a bit of an oddball. He lives in a house full of socialist
realist paintings, his diet is based on absurdist nutritional science - he
only eats beef and salt - and some of the things he says are just plain
_weird_.

~~~
p2detar
> but he is not a reliable intellectual authority.

I don't believe he ever claims the opposite. In fact he urges the reader to
check his sources. All 220 papers and books he read before producing his work
are listed in the endnotes.

> He's also just a bit of an oddball.

The problem with this type of statements are that now I'll say "No, he isn't
an oddball" and this will get us nowhere. Can you understand that?

~~~
zimpenfish
> "No, he isn't an oddball"

His (alleged[1]) diet alone would paint him thoroughly as "oddball", surely.

[1] I don't for one second believe he eats only beef, salt, and water.

~~~
randomacct3847
It isn’t that strange. It’s basically keto, which has become almost
mainstream.

For the record, I’ve tried the “zero carb” diet (basically meat) and it’s not
that hard once you treat food as purely as something functional like a vitamin
rather than a source of pleasure.

~~~
Matticus_Rex
While he's likely in ketosis, pretty much any keto advocate would be shocked
at his (again, alleged) diet.

~~~
p2detar
As far as I know, Peterson's diet is actually his daughter's diet [1]. She
claims it cured her from numerous diseases including rheumatoid arthritis and
depression [2].

I have no idea how credible that is, but I'm just saying it isn't something he
decided on a random basis just to look cool.

1 - [http://mikhailapeterson.com](http://mikhailapeterson.com) 2 -
[http://mikhailapeterson.com/about-me](http://mikhailapeterson.com/about-me)

------
taleodor
Reading now Factfulness by Hans Rosling and it's pretty great so far
([https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34890015-factfulness](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34890015-factfulness))

Other than that I believe Bad Blood by John Carreyrou is possibly the best of
2018 ([https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37976541-bad-
blood](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37976541-bad-blood)) - mentioned in
the other comment already

------
Legogris
Haven't actually read through all of it yet, but I started reading Radical
Markets by E. Glen Weyl and Eric A Posner:
[http://radicalmarkets.com/](http://radicalmarkets.com/)

Interesting take at economic policy and market idelogy.

Here's a talk by one of the authors presenting the idea:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMSAA_nMv_E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMSAA_nMv_E)

------
gikochi
* The Coddling of the American Mind by Jonathan Haidt

Tries to explain the reasons behind all the "triggering" and safe spaces
phenomenon on college campuses

* Escape from Freedom by Erich Fromm

WWII as the outset, one of the topic discussed why people in a democracy would
turn to authoritarian figures.

~~~
yesenadam
Great picks. I started _Coddling_ this week - I've learnt _so_ much already.
Incredibly insightful. Haidt's _Happiness Hypothesis_ was the best book I'd
read in a while, also highly recommended. It's about much more than just
happiness, but how our mind/self/consciousness/emotions work.

 _Escape from Freedom_ (also known as _Fear of Freedom_ ) is great, as are a
lot of Fromm's books. He's my favourite psychologist, and by a long way
favourite Frankfurt School writer. I also love _Man for Himself_ , _The Sane
Society_ , _To Have or To Be_ , _The Art of Loving_. He's wonderfully BS-free,
combining insights into psychology, society, work, politics etc.

------
heurist
The Rise and Fall of American Growth by Robert Gordon. Really fantastic book
about the changes in American society over the last two centuries. Argues that
the impacts of new technology are decreasing over time.

Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker

Genius Foods by Max Lugavere

Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg

The Framers Coup by Michael Klarman

Leadership by George MacGregor Burns

Strategy by Lawrence Freedman

Several books by Joseph Campbell or Peter Drucker. Can't go wrong with either.

------
bigwheeler
The Beastie Boys book. It’s like a time machine. I read like 800 pages in a
day, couldn’t put it down.

~~~
Dowwie
I never knew how central a role Adam played in the group. Further, I was
shocked to learn that he wasn't just the leader but a creative genius.

------
tagawa
Jane Eyre. Not my usual kind of book and I didn’t know what to expect, but
wanted to catch up on the classics and loved it. Not only beautifully written,
it also felt like taking a break outside my usual bubble.

------
kmlx
does it have to be written in 2018? i've read something from 2000 years ago.

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.

"Meditations (Medieval Greek: Τὰ εἰς ἑαυτόν, translit. Ta eis heauton,
literally "things to one's self") is a series of personal writings by Marcus
Aurelius, Roman Emperor from 161 to 180 AD, recording his private notes to
himself and ideas on Stoic philosophy."

------
madrafi
\- Rationality From AI to Zombies (huge collection of essays about
(rationality,intelligence,quantum physics,bayesian probability,philosophy...)
that can be read on lesswrong.com)

-Intuition Pumps and other Thinking Tools

-Sapiens

-Edward.O Wilson Letters to a young scientist

-Cédric Villani Birth of a Theorem

-Emanuel Derman Models Behaving Badly

-Letters From A Stoic by Seneca

-Mathematics it's contents methods 3 Volumes (Aleksandrov et al.)

-Nick Bostrom Superinteligence

-The Moral Animal by Robert Wright

------
formatkaka
Shoe Dog by Phil Knight ( Nike Founder)

The journey of how nike became what it is today. It is a must read because, it
gives an in depth knowledge about how Companies used to be built without the
VC's.

------
aytekin
Creative Selection: Inside Apple's Design Process During the Golden Age of
Steve Jobs by Ken Kocienda

An amazing book full of great stories and lessons to learn from people who
made incredible innovations like the first iPhone. My favorite parts are the
story of the iPhone keyboard and detailed encounters of Steve Jobs demos he
has given.

------
windexh8er
After skimming the great recommendations in the comments one I didn't see
mentioned is: "Dream Teams" [1]. Just recently finished the audio book,
narrated by the author Shane Snow. Was a very engaging book overall.

One I read last year that was one of my favorites is "What Doesn't Kill Us"
[2] by Scott Carney. I went and did a week long Wim Hof class after reading it
and the book was a great preread that gave me perspective and context for the
trip.

[1] [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37703548-dream-
teams](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37703548-dream-teams)

[2] [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30039048-what-doesn-t-
ki...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30039048-what-doesn-t-kill-us)

~~~
drieddust
How was the class? What were your takeaways?

His mind control methods seems similar to Buddhist monks. But monks spend a
life time mastering their brains. How he is able to teach it so quickly?

~~~
windexh8er
The class was very good for the money I thought. I went with a friend, we
spent a couple days in Prague before, and then met with the group at the
airport and took a bus to the hotel close to Mt. Snezka. Day 1 you're thrown
into cold immersion. I remember the first day, it was about 30F, doing a
barefoot walk with just shorts and a hat. Now that might sound crazy to most,
but it was actually very interesting to see how your body could handle it. Our
group was one of four that had between 12-16 people in it. The ages ranged
from early 20s to late 60s. Nobody had a problem. We had people in the groups
that that had zero experience with the methods, so there were really no
prereqs.

I had been doing cold water showers daily for 6+ months before we went and
felt very comfortable with that, but cold water immersion in nature is very
different. If you've watched the documentary the waterfall is part of the
Poland expedition and was fun to go there, and immerse, sometimes multiple
times per day. Often times at night under the cover of dark (which I believe
puts you in a mindset that conditions can vary and you should be open to the
experience).

I would say I didn't do much of any breathing practice prior to the trip and
this was my favorite part. It's hard to describe in words but it was the big
eye opener for me and, I think you're right - a lot of this has been derived
from other ancient practices of other cultures. The nice thing is this is all
packaged up into a week long trip and you're focusing on these things
basically all day. By the time I left I had felt comfortable with the
breathing but wouldn't say I "mastered" it. I think this probably takes
months, minimally.

I still do cold water showers daily and living in a northern part of the US
I'm afforded relatively cold ground water - however I seek colder often. I
thoroughly enjoy it at this point and if I accidentally finish a shower "warm"
it feels incomplete and I'm not, obviously, alert like I am after 3-5 minutes
of the cold.

I've missed 80% of what I got from the class in this short write up - but
overall if you're curious and have an open mind about the methods you'd enjoy
the class. I met a lot of great people on the trip and never felt it wasn't
worth it. The instructors were great. And to clarify you're not always with
Wim - so if that's what you're after I don't think those classes exist
anymore. But the reality is I enjoyed our instructors presentation more than
Wim's. He's very opinionated and constantly talks his mind. While I can
appreciate that I could see how spending an entire week with only him could
wear on certain people and potentially distract.

I should spend some time writing a more detailed review of the experience. I
took notes daily and even though it was just over a year ago I feel so many
aspects of it resonated with me and I'll continue to use the tools I picked up
during the course for years to come. Finally - other acquaintances of mine
attended after me and had similar experiences. I wouldn't say it's for
everyone, but again, if you're curious and have an open mind it was well worth
it.

Edit: Oh, and Mt. Snezka is 110% validation of your short term learnings. We
went on a very windy a day, and while the Mt. is not tall - it's an entire day
adventure. I remember being close to the summit, winds at 30-50mph gusts with
icy snow cresting over the path having only a hat, shorts, boots and a
backpack on thinking to myself how awesome it was to have found that level of
control. Nobody had frostbite, everyone made it and it gave everyone a lot of
that "inner fire".

~~~
drieddust
Thanks for the nice write-up, please keep us posted when you get time to
expand your notes into blog posts.

------
mindcrime
Favorites read in 2018:

 _Dreaming in Code_ by Scott Rosenberg. This book is, so far, the closest I've
come to finding a "spiritual successor" to _The Soul of a New Machine_ by
Kidder. If you liked _The Soul of a New Machine_ , or if you like watching
Halt and Catch Fire, you may well like _Dreaming in Code_.

 _Inspired_ by Marty Cagan. Really solid overview of the essentials of product
management.

 _The Book of Why: The New Science of Cause and Effect_ by Judea Pearl. Judea
Pearl is, of course, a giant in the worlds of statistics and AI, and this book
distills his work on "causal inference" and lays it all out in a pretty
accessible manner. Not a textbook per-se, but not completely non-technical
either. Read this if you're interested in how statistical analysis can be used
to truly establish cause/effect relationships.

 _Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal_ by Ayn Rand. Do you think you hate
Capitalism? Do you not understand why so many people love Capitalism? Have you
based your opinion of Ayn Rand on second-hand commentary instead of actually
reading her works? Then read this book.

~~~
abecedarius
I presume this was heavily downvoted because of the Rand. While I'm not a fan
of her either, that's unfair: 1. _Dreaming in Code_ and _The Book of Why_ are
excellent (I haven't read the other two), and 2. Rand makes some points that
some people need to learn, even if I don't buy her whole worldview.

~~~
mindcrime
_I presume this was heavily downvoted because of the Rand._

Yeah, that's the norm here, sadly. You can post a list of 20 books and if one
of them is by Rand, your post will be down-voted into oblivion. It's almost
like some people have this Pavlovian reaction when they see Rand's name.

I mean, I get that not everyone appreciates her works, and that's fine and
totally understandable. "Different strokes" and all that. But the zeal with
which her haters go on the attack is a bit strange.

 _2\. Rand makes some points that some people need to learn, even if I don 't
buy her whole worldview._

Exactly. This is the same reason that I have copies of _Mein Kampf_ , _The
Communist Manifesto_ and Mao's _Little Red Book_ on my shelf waiting to be
read. I don't have to _agree_ with a work to find benefit in reading it. Quite
the opposite... I believe that if I'm going to argue against something, I
should probably have a reasonable understanding of it. And I prefer to go to
primary sources than rely on secondhand commentary.

~~~
m0zg
I tried to read Mein Kampf and could not. The language is just so incredibly
bureaucratic and dull that I gave up after 50 pages. Maybe it reads better in
German, but I can't read German.

I suspect a lot of dogmatic texts are the same way. Rand is at least not a
total drag to read even though I find a lot of her ideas hilarious (chief of
which is: the very ethical, honest, and hard working rich people).

~~~
Tomte
I haven't read it, but it's also famous in the German version for being pretty
unreadable.

Many people opine that forcing Neonazis to read it may be a way to get them
disillusioned.

Hitler's strength was speaking to the masses, not writing.

------
jeffFrom18F
Some I haven't seen mentioned yet:

The Monk of Mokha - Dave Eggers; This seems to have been mostly under the
radar but it was immensely entertaining and gives a look inside Yemen that is
hard to come by. Probably my favorite book of the year.

Tailspin - Steven Brill; A look at how the split and interaction between
business and government became so dysfunctional over the last 50 years. This
topic has been covered elsewhere but I thought was done well.

Behemoth - Joshua B. Freeman; A history of (very large) factories.

Live Work Work Work Die - Corey Pein; A very cynical but funny look at
life/work in Silicon Valley.

Two Sisters - Asne Seierstad; A story about 2 young Somalian immigrants to
Norway who move to Syria to join ISIS.

Also: Bad Blood

Read in 2018 but published earlier: Black Edge - Sheelah Kolhatkar; The Solace
of Open Spaces - Gretel Ehrlich; American Cornball - Christopher Miller

------
pauldix
I'm biased since I'm married to the author, but I highly recommend "Poached:
Inside the Dark World of Wildlife Trafficking". Rachel (the author) does on
the ground reporting in 12 countries interviewing poachers, traffickers,
customers, conservationists, and government officials. Her description of
meeting Sudan, the last male northern white rhino that died earlier this year,
is haunting. There are also some other great scenes like her sneaking into a
South African prison to meet a convicted trafficker. It's entertaining,
informative and important:

[https://www.amazon.com/Poached-Wildlife-Trafficking-
Merloyd-...](https://www.amazon.com/Poached-Wildlife-Trafficking-Merloyd-
Lawrence-ebook/dp/B078W5JZPJ)

~~~
Dowwie
you're quite the accomplished couple!

------
agotterer
No Easy Day by Mark Owen. It is about the seal team who killed Osama Bin
Laden. I thought the book had a ton I action and was very captivating.

I’m currently about half way through Principles by Ray Dalio and am enjoying
it so far.

Next on my reading list is The coddling of the American mind, by Greg
Lukianoff

~~~
freedomben
Interesting. I read "The Operator" this year by the SEAL that shot Bin Laden,
and it was really good.

------
WheelsAtLarge
Here's one that's out of the norm around here- Caddyshack: The Making of a
Hollywood Cinderella Story by Chris Nashawaty.

Caddyshack is one of my favorites comedies. I've always imagined its creation
was a well thought out journey from the first idea to the finished movie. It
turns out it was not. The movie didn't really take shape until it was being
edited and getting ready to be released.

The book is a description of how it was created. A great read on describing
the process from idea to award-winning movie.

I've worked with very creative teams and wondered how anything gets done. It's
very different from the engineering/techie way of getting from point a to
finished. The process that created Caddyshack is a great example of that.

------
jxsonl
Not written in 2018 but these are some of the books I’ve read this year

The Bullet Journal Method - Ryder Caroll - A how to and the philosophy behind
bullet journalling. Am doing a 1 year test to see if the system works for me.

Spark Joy - Marie Kondo - Book about living minimally, got this suggestion
because the previous book mentioned it and was curious.

The Hacked World Order - Adam Segal - got interested in cybersecurity thanks
to my internship, so picked up a book to read about it and am planning to
study and get certification/qualification to get into the field. Will be
working in IT/Network Engineering for 2-3 years while learning cybersecurity
during free time.

Jony Ive - just like biographies in general.

------
lihaciudaniel
* A mind for numbers - Barbara Oakley \- great framework for learning how to learn * Checklist manifesto \- good for investing better * 12 Rule for life by JP \- Great read, very in depth but only two rules (guidelines) are that needed.

------
jordz
Since setting up a business in 2016, I needed to better understand how to
build a business:

Principles by Ray Dalio - I found this really motivating to ensure our
business sticks to and has a set of principles that evolve based on mistakes
made (sounds obvious).

Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz - I loved listening to this
(audible) because being a CEO can be lonely and hearing other peoples thoughts
and advice based on their experience (that you can relate to) is really
uplifting.

2018 has been a great year for us and I do think these books have helped me
get through the roller coaster that is building a technology startup.

------
JNRowe
Tim Harford’s “Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure”¹, an enthralling
collection of tales from really diverse projects. I’ll freely admit to only
picking it up because I recognised the name from the More or Less² podcast,
but it was well worth the read.

1\. [http://timharford.com/books/adapt/](http://timharford.com/books/adapt/)
2\.
[https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qshd](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qshd)

------
ArtWomb
Terrific list. In addition to the Theranos book, _Bad Blood_. I'd also check
out Paige Williams' _The Dinosaur Artist_. Deep dive into world of fossil
hunting and collecting.

New Yorker article on which it is based, Bones of Contention: A Florida man's
curious trade in Mongolian dinosaurs

[https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/01/28/bones-of-
conte...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/01/28/bones-of-contention-
paige-williams)

------
mars4rp
Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

this is not very well known, but it is an amazing book about why humans behave
this way, it has genetics, history and lots of cool stuff in it.

------
pjc50
I've been enjoying the trilogy of _A Time Of Gifts_ , Patrick Leigh Fermor's
story of walking across Europe in the 1930s.

It's an _extremely_ dense book, like a black forest gateaux. It's also
extremely Romantic, almost to the point of mysticism. I keep having to put it
down to let the imagery fill my head or look up a historical figure. It's
changed the way I think about history and taught me a lot about parts of the
world I'm unfamiliar with.

------
vickychijwani
\- _Gene Machine: The Race to Decipher the Secrets of the Ribosome_
([http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39088590-gene-
machine](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39088590-gene-machine)) - by the
Nobel Prize-winning discoverer of the ribosome, Venki Ramakrishnan, in the
same vein as _The Double Helix_. Highly recommended.

\- _Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies_
([http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1842.Guns_Germs_and_Steel](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1842.Guns_Germs_and_Steel))

\- _Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of
True Inspiration_ ([http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18077903-creativity-
inc](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18077903-creativity-inc)) - about
Pixar's internal culture

\- _An Astronaut 's Guide to Life on Earth_
([http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18170143-an-astronaut-
s-g...](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18170143-an-astronaut-s-guide-to-
life-on-earth))

------
dipa
The Righteous Mind by Johnathan Haidt

Tribe by Sebastian Junger

just put my full lists on medium:

[https://medium.com/@dopeshika/2018-in-books-startup-
science-...](https://medium.com/@dopeshika/2018-in-books-startup-science-
silicon-valley-550f0e37aa31)

[https://medium.com/@dopeshika/2018-in-books-mind-
consciousne...](https://medium.com/@dopeshika/2018-in-books-mind-
consciousness-ae966c38ff3b)

------
Klonoar
Surprised I don't see this listed here.

Habeas Data, by Cyrus Farivar:
[https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/565026/habeas-
data-...](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/565026/habeas-data-by-
cyrus-farivar/9781612196466/)

Book did an incredibly job outlining the history, twists, and turns privacy
and technology have slowly taken over the past few decades. Was very hard to
put down.

------
mysterydip
Fabien Sanglard's Game Engine Black Book: Wolfenstein 3D (2nd Edition).
[http://fabiensanglard.net/gebbwolf3d/](http://fabiensanglard.net/gebbwolf3d/)

It's been a fascinating read of why games had to be made the way they were
back then due to the hardware of the day. All kinds of tricks to squeeze
performance out of a machine designed for word processing and spreadsheets.

------
ertand
It's an old book but I really enjoyed Liar's Poker (1989) by Michael Lewis.

~~~
henrik_w
+1 for Liar's Poker. Funny, revealing and really well written.

------
joeblas
American Kingpin: The epic hunt for the criminal mastermind behind The Silk
Road.

------
plahteenlahti
Favourites of 2018:

Lost and Founder: The Mostly Awful, Sometimes Awesome Truth about Building a
Tech Startup by Rand Fishkin
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35957156](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35957156)

Transforming NOKIA: The Power of Paranoid Optimism to Lead Through Colossal
Change by Risto Siilasmaa
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39850907](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39850907)

Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams by Matthew Walker
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34466963](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34466963)

Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture by
David Kushner
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/222146](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/222146)

The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups by Daniel Coyle
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25870385](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25870385)

How to Turn Down a Billion Dollars: The Snapchat Story by Billy Gallagher
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34964879](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34964879)

Good Strategy/Bad Strategy: The difference and why it matters by Richard P.
Rumelt
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36658033](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36658033)

------
gs7
The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman. Fantastic book that makes you
realize how poorly designed many things in our lives are.

~~~
nnd
Disclaimer: the book might provoke a latent obsessive-compulsive relationship
to doors.

------
koolhead17
Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

Principle by Ray Dalio.

When Coffee and Kale Compete by Alan Klement.

Spark by Dr John J. Ratey, Eric Hagerman, John Ratey.

The One Thing by Gary Keller, Jay Papasan.

The Mythical Man Month by Frederick P. Brooks.

A Dozen Lessons for Entrepreneurs by Tren Griffin.

Software Project Survival Guide by Steve Mcconnell.

The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis.

I Wonder What I'm Thinking About? by Moose Allain.

Truth, Lies & Statistics by Lee Baker.

On shortness of life by Seneca.

------
alexilliamson
How To Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan

~~~
yboris
My favorite for the year too!

------
gmishuris
Three of my favorites were:

1\. The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle An excellent analysis of what makes some
cultures great and others toxic.

2\. Measure What Matters by John Doerr John Doerr describes a simple yet
effective management system that has helped Google succeed and scale. The
Objective and Key Results approach can be effective for anyone from a single
contributor to a large organization trying to encourage a culture of effective
collaboration and achievement.

3\. Small Giants by Bo Burlingham The stories about a handful of companies
that chose to be great rather than big.

Some of the other books that I have enjoyed are listed here:
[https://behavioralvalueinvestor.com/other-interesting-
books/](https://behavioralvalueinvestor.com/other-interesting-books/)

------
a_c
The Billionaire Who Wasn't - How Chuck Feeney Made and Gave Away a Fortune

An entertaining read about a low profile billionaire who secretly gave away
most of his fortune. When forbes put him on the richest list in 1988, he had
already moved most of his fortune into a foundation for charity deeds

------
EamonnMR
Exploding the Phone (Phil Lapsley): A history of the Phone Phreak phenomenon.
If you've browsed around ancient hacker lore or read textfiles.com, you'll
enjoy it.

Giving Good Weight (John McPhee): Some John McPhee articles. They're very
good, as usual, the title article being about farmers markets and told in an
experimental style.

Rust: The Longest War (Jonathan Waldman): Explores several different stories
tied together by the theme of metal corrosion and the people who contend with
it.

Hallucinations (Oliver Sacks): Mostly about what malfunctions of the brains of
a few can tell us about how all of our brains are structured.

Designers & Dragons: A History of the Roleplaying Game Industry (Parts 1 and 2
so far) (Shannon Appelcline) The history of a bunch of start-ups.

------
bookofjoe
"Educated" — Tara Westover

------
plg
Fryderyk Chopin: A Life and Times by Alan Walker [1]

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Fryderyk-Chopin-Dr-Alan-Walker-
ebook/...](https://www.amazon.com/Fryderyk-Chopin-Dr-Alan-Walker-
ebook/dp/B0796XDT9R/)

------
mr_isomies
In the Wake: On Blackness and Being by Christina Sharpe

"In this original and trenchant work, Christina Sharpe interrogates literary,
visual, cinematic, and quotidian representations of Black life that comprise
what she calls the "orthography of the wake." Activating multiple registers of
"wake"—the path behind a ship, keeping watch with the dead, coming to
consciousness—Sharpe illustrates how Black lives are swept up and animated by
the afterlives of slavery, and she delineates what survives despite such
insistent violence and negation."

[https://www.dukeupress.edu/in-the-wake](https://www.dukeupress.edu/in-the-
wake)

------
dyukqu
_Psychology and Space_ by Yuri Gagarin and Vladimir Lebedev (a Soviet
psychologist)[0]

It's an old book (I just read it in 2018, if that counts), but I guess its
content about astronomers' training is very relevant to this day. Still, I'd
like to read more up-to-date -e.g reflecting on the astronomers' experiences
who had lived on the International Space Station- counterpart of this book.

[0] [https://www.amazon.com/Psychology-Space-Yuri-
Gagarin/dp/1410...](https://www.amazon.com/Psychology-Space-Yuri-
Gagarin/dp/1410206742)

------
jen729w
Breaking news : the remaking of journalism and why it matters now –
Rusbridger, Alan

From the editor of The Guardian for the last 20 years, a fascinating look at
the move from traditional print to online news.

\---

The perfect weapon : war, sabotage, and fear in the cyber age – Sanger, David
E.

The subtitle says it all. From that I’m now reading ‘Click Here to Kill
Everybody’ by Schneier. Enjoying it so far.

\---

The world as it is : a memoir of the Obama White House — Rhodes, Benjamin J.

Another obvious one based on the title.

\---

As a side note, _join your local library, people_. None of this cost me a
penny. I hope you still have a library wherever you live. Ours (Melbourne City
Library Service) is just magnificent.

~~~
unixhero
Yes I Did ny MBA studies there. Incredible place.

~~~
unixhero
And apparently skipped typing class:)

------
andersthue
“The Anatomy of Peace” because it has helped me to get unstuck and start
living life and feel free.

For two years I have been stuck in growing my business, now I am free to grow
it as much as I want.

------
DyslexicAtheist
my reading has taken a dark turn this year. I blame it on Thomas Ligotti
(first book on my list) ;)

\- The Conspiracy Against the Human Race (Thomas Ligotti) ... fun fact: S01 of
'True Detectives' has ripped part of the dialogue straight from this book
without giving credit

\- The Trouble with being born (Emil Cioran)

\- The Industrial Society and its Future (Ted Kaczynski)

\- The Technological Society (Jaques Ellul)

\- Propaganda (Jaques Ellul)

\- McMafia - A Journey Through the Global Criminal Underworld (Misha Glenny)

\- The Doors Of Perception (Aldous Huxley)

\- The Manipulation of Human Behavior (Albert D. Biderman)

~~~
qpooqpoo
You should certainly also read the books "Technological Slavery" (2010) and
"Anti-Tech Revolution" (2016) by Kaczynski

------
theothermkn
The Dictator's Handbook by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith

Everyone should read it. You think you know politics, but you haven't even
begun until you've read this book.

~~~
seer
If you don’t have the time for a whole book - CGP Gray does a pretty good
summary in his “Rules for rulers” youtube video. Very highly recommended!

~~~
sk1pper
That was great, thanks! Looks like I’m gonna have to pick up The Dictator’s
Handbook now.

------
tmaly
Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss, it taugh me very important
negotiation skills that I use everyday.

Extreme Ownership by Willink and Babin has taught me about good leadership.

------
rev0lutions
K-punk: The Collected and Unpublished Writings of Mark Fisher

------
diehunde
Brief Answers to the Big Questions by Stephen Hawking[1]. Not only about
cosmology but also about topics such as the existence of god, finding life in
other planets, the future of the humanity and other very intriguing questions.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Brief-Answers-Questions-Stephen-
Hawki...](https://www.amazon.com/Brief-Answers-Questions-Stephen-
Hawking/dp/1984819194)

~~~
el_cid
I think the book is targeted towards a younger audience which might explain
the lack of more thorough insights into the topics he selected. More
disappointing for me was the choice of some of these topics - some of them are
covered very superficially and sometimes even with a surprising one-sidedness.
As I recently finished Factfulness by Hans Rosling - where he explains how the
population increase is slowing down and experts having good reason to believe
that it will again plateau in the future - I was stunned to hear Hawking
exaggerate this danger over and over again. And unfortunately this was not the
only topic on which he is not an expert and yet gives his opinion and presents
it as fact. He covers religion, AI, social politics with a very broad brush
and a very self assured tone: "Time didn't exist before the Big Bang so there
is no time for God to make the universe in." Hawking's concept of God as being
part of creation is different to the definition most people/religions have, so
his argument feels incomplete. The editing is poor and makes the book feel
rushed - which it might have been the case. Maybe they tried to capitalize on
a great man's passing by having a new book quickly available. I'm being
cynical, but I can't find a better reason why there are so many paragraphs
being repeated in different chapters.

------
joshuahedlund
Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker (stunning global progress in the last two
centuries)

The Newcomers by Helen Thorpe (refugee students learning English and American
culture)

------
mesaframe
1\. Operating systems : three easy pieces

2\. Computer network a top down approach

3\. Electric Machinery Fundamentals

Each book teaches what the book is intended to and in a really comprehensive
manner.

------
rhlala
It is an old book, but i would recommend "the inner game of tennis" to anyone
making a living of competitive competition in any field.

------
kiliantics
Bullshit Jobs - David Graeber

------
rationalbeaver
Why Information Grows: The Evolution of Order, from Atoms to Economies - César
Hidalgo (2015)

Fantastic read that gave me a new way to understand the world.

~~~
james_s_tayler
What were some key insights from this?

It looks quite interesting. I'm guessing it's centered around entropy?

~~~
rationalbeaver
You're on the right track with that, although I'd say it's centered around
order, rather than entropy.

It's hard to do it justice here, but the book builds off of existing
information theory to offer an explanation of why there are pockets of order
in the universe (like our solar system) instead of uniform chaos.

From there it explains how natural systems can increase in complexity over
time, and then moves eventually into human systems like cities and economies.

He basically uses physics and thermodynamics to explain economics, which I
found fascinating.

This book made me realize just how valuable dense cities are for economic
progress and innovation (and why that is - one reason being that it's
relatively difficult to transfer knowledge and know-how from one human to
another). It also provides an interesting sort of grand purpose for humanity -
to be caretakers of this little region of ordered information we find
ourselves in.

~~~
seansamuelson
This was definitely the best book I read in the last year and really changed
my larger worldview and led me down the path into information and chaos
theory. I particularly like how you put it here: "It also provides an
interesting sort of grand purpose for humanity - to be caretakers of this
little region of ordered information we find ourselves in." that is an elegant
summary of that concept which really resonated with me, but I hadn't been able
to quite put into words. Thanks!

------
walrus01
Not written in 2018, but I recommend reading everything James Bamford has ever
written on the topic of the NSA.

------
lamby
Countdown to Zero Day by Kim Setter [0]

This book tells the story behind the virus that sabotaged Iran's nuclear
efforts but reads like a genuine thriller or cyberpunk novel.

[0] [https://chris-lamb.co.uk/azn/B00KEPLC08](https://chris-
lamb.co.uk/azn/B00KEPLC08)

------
vertigolimbo
Bryan Cranston: A Life in Parts. It shows Bryan's life, struggles and
pleasures - everything that prepared him to play Walter White in Breaking Bad.
That's the only Autobiography I ever read, but once I picked up the pace I
couldn't put it down. Highly recommended!

------
ucacian
Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It by
Chris Voss

This book could be the most important investment you make. By using the
techniques introduced in the book, I was able to raise my contract rate from
$35 to $60. It totally changed my life.

------
sage2018
Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer. Chapter about memory palace is
especially amazing!

~~~
melling
I’m glad I read that book but I was slightly disappointed.

Signal and Noise by Nate Silver was more educational and enjoyable.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Signal_and_the_Noise](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Signal_and_the_Noise)

Fooled by Randomness was also good. Better than Black Swan IMO.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fooled_by_Randomness](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fooled_by_Randomness)

Just started Einstein’s Shadow by Seth Fletcher. Am enjoying it.

[https://www.amazon.com/Einsteins-Shadow-Black-Astronomers-
Un...](https://www.amazon.com/Einsteins-Shadow-Black-Astronomers-
Unseeable/dp/0062312022)

——

Adding other books that I’ve read in the past that I see mentioned and also
loved:

Masters of Doom

Longitude

I liked Logitude so much I called myself h4labs when I released apps in the
App Store, after Harrison’s H4 watch.

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/h4labs-word-
search/id1311744...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/h4labs-word-
search/id1311744075?mt=8)

------
Emma_Goldman
My idiosyncratic picks, all of them history:

 _Civil War_ , David Armitage

 _Meaning in History_ , Karl Lowith

 _Manifest Destiny_ , Anders Stephanson

 _The Deluge_ , Adam Tooze

 _The Moral Economists_ , Tim Rogan

 _The Guardians_ , Susan Pederson

I also enjoyed properly getting to grips with Keynes, Du Bois, Schmitt and
Freud for the first time.

------
SanjeevSharma
My Reading list - 2018 [https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/my-reading-
list-2018-sanjeev-...](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/my-reading-
list-2018-sanjeev-sharma/)

------
jakozaur
Europe's Growth Champion: Insights from the Economic Rise of Poland

[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07B52ZGSK](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07B52ZGSK)

------
richardreeze
* The Beginning of Infinity - David Deutsch (taught me the true importance of knowledge)

* Tribe - Sebastian Junger (taught me how important it is to be part of a close community, decided to Airbnb all of next year after reading this book)

------
sunstone
Didn't read it this year but if you're in the mood for a challenging small
book, using small words in short sentences then Consilience by E.O. Wilson is
hard to beat. Philosophy at its best.

~~~
yesenadam
Small? My copy has 384 large pages.

~~~
sunstone
By small I meant about a half an inch thick :)

------
banjo_milkman
Books I liked in 2018:

Crashed by Adam Tooze ; history of the financial crisis, goes into more detail
than most of the others

The Future of Capitalism by Paul Collier; lots of ideas on how to improve our
situation, most of them are good, UK focused

Bad Blood by John Carreyrou; if you've ever been in a startup you'll recognize
bits of this story, but it quickly gets out of control in novel ways.
Astonishing story.

What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets by Michel Sandel

The Attention Merchants by Tim Wu

Who we are and how we got here by David Reich: ancient DNA and human history

The Book of Why by Judea Pearl; liked it but I need to reread this one a few
more times to comprehend completely or go to his textbooks

Empire of Cotton: Sven Birckets; a history of the first global technology
including how it made the UK & USA rich

The Away Game: The Epic Search for Soccer's Next Superstar by Sebastian Abbot

~~~
gdy
Liked the Sandel's book.

------
ncfausti
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari

~~~
freedomben
I read this too. I _loved_ the first 30%. Couldn't put it down. After that he
gets into modern history and inserts his own opinion and politics into the
facts, which I found distasteful and distracting. He's also very hostile to
religion. I'm agnostic so I agreed with most of what he said, but it seemed so
unnecessary and again distasteful and distracting.

------
javen
In no particular order:

\- Factfulness by Hans Rosling, Ola Rosling, Anna Rosling Rönnlund

\- How Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky, Daniel Ziblatt

\- The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis

\- Conspiracy by Ryan Holiday

\- X by Chuck Klosterman

------
rohindaswani
Interesting book that highlights frameworks to undergo different types of
change.

Switch, How to change things when change is hard - Chip Heath & Dan Heath

------
artaak
_The case for Mars by Robert Zubrin, Arthur Clarke_ \- highly recommended for
technically minded folks. One of my favorites of 2018.

------
agigao
1\. David Hume - An Enquiry Regarding Human Understanding. Although I’ve been
listening to Prof. Peter Millican’s online lectures “General Philosophy for
some time and also met him in Oxford, somehow I’ve avoided reading Hume. He is
a Hume “evangelist”, the latest edition of “An Enquiry” was published by
Oxford Uni Press with his introduction, which is itself an eloquent narrative
of science, religion, and philosophy. Nonetheless the book is quite small and
somehow might make animpression of insignificant, 2 hour read, it indeed
isn’t. Sometimes I read 2-3 pages and then think for 15-20 minutes. It turns
my unserstanding of self upside down or perhaps “downside up”. Totally
recommended.

2\. Psychology by Dimitri Uznadze (Georgian scholar), which is a major work in
psychology written originally in Georgian. He lived and worked in really dark
times: WW I, annexation of the country by the Red Communist Army,(Bolsheviks),
The Great Terror(30s) when hundreds of thousands were executed or were exiled
to Siberia my grand-grandpa among others, WW II. He went through all these
major gifts of the first half of 20th century Georgia. And I did really wonder
how he managed to pull this off and lived life of a revolutionary scientist in
those times. Well, the book is a bit overwhelmed with quotations by Marx and
Engels but perhaps that was the way togo through censorship and even save your
own career and life. It’s a 700 page definitive guide to Psychology, which
goes against Freud, Jung, Lacan and it’s speculative contemporaries.

3\. The Book of Why - Judea Pearl. The colleague mentioned the book upon
working on a new recommender system at job, then I ordered 2 copies for both
of us. Haven’t dived deep yet, but Judea Pearl is one of the fathers of modern
AI, he asks tough questions and tryies to guide the revolution to the next
level, where AI system will be able to reason about the result and answer to
the question - why. “The Correlation is not Causation”.

Well, these are the major ones that stood up this year. Also In terms of
fiction 2018 was quite classy: The Iliad by Homer, Faust by Goethe, The
Sleepwalkers - Herman Broch, re-reading The Man Without Qualities by Robert
Musil (one of my favourite work of literature of all time).

I’ve found out after creating soc. media accounts last year,(After being off
for 3 years) my reading habits have degenerated and yesterday I got rid of
them again, feels like I’ve pulled out a huge empty inflated balloon off of my
brain.

Happy Holidays!

P.S. Apologies for awkward English, haven’t had much practice of
writing/speaking English this year.

~~~
gikochi
Your English is perfectly fine. Thanks for the quick overview on the books. I
haven't heard of any of them before. They sure sounds interesting and worth
checking out! Happy Holidays!

------
austincheney
* A Deepness in the Sky - Vernor Vinge

I read it again this year. I read it for the first time about 9 years ago and
its who I wanted to be when I grew up.

~~~
blandflakes
I would love for this to be nonfiction, but alas...

------
checker659
Finish: Give Yourself the Gift of Done

[http://a.co/d/jknRNxt](http://a.co/d/jknRNxt)

------
henrik_w
I really enjoyed "Dreaming the Beatles: The Love Story of One Band and the
Whole World" by Rob Sheffield

------
chiru59
A Field Guide to Lies: Critical Thinking in the Information Age - Daniel J.
Levitin

Amazing book. Title says it all.

------
m1keil
in addition to Bad Blood and Shoe Dog that were mentioned numerous times
already I would add "Rocket Men" by Robert Kurston. The story of Apollo 8. I'm
not a space geek but the story is very interesting and well written. Audible
book is very good.

------
gadders
Rise and Kill First - about the Mossad/Shin Bets operations against Muslim
terror groups.

------
tjr
_The Forgotten Founding Father_ by Joshua Kendall

 _Hannukah In America_ by Dianne Ashton

------
mikesickler
* Math with Bad Drawings

* The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World

* Bad Blood

------
wp381640
released this year and great reads:

* Bad Blood - mentioned tons of times

* Billion Dollar Whale - story of the 1MDB scandal

* Black Edge - chronicles insider trading on wall street

* The Billionaire Raj - about India's income inequality and ruling oligarchy

------
rtchau
Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver

~~~
fujimotos
The funny thing here is that Taleb dismisses Nate Silver as a wanker, calling
him "does not know how math works"...

~~~
adetrest
I found Taleb's writing style to be extremely pompous and very hard to read.
His ideas may be interesting, but I couldn't finish any of his books because
every sentence reads like "I'm smarter than anyone else, and I need to remind
you as much as I can"

~~~
fujimotos
> I couldn't finish any of his books because every sentence reads like "I'm
> smarter than anyone else, and I need to remind you as much as I can"

You'll probably like the digest summary of "Skin in the Game" by Guardian.

[https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/feb/25/skin-in-the-
ga...](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/feb/25/skin-in-the-game-by-
nassim-nicholas-taleb-digested-read)

~~~
rtchau
I laughed so hard at that.

Yeah, I'm reading Black Swan now, and then have Antifragile and Skin in the
Game... I get the impression it'll be a journey through the man's ever-
inflating ego. Signal/Noise was great though (not that I didn't thoroughly
enjoy NNT's Fooled by Randomness), I'd love to read more of Nate Silver's
stuff. Also open to recommendations of similar material?

------
booleanbetrayal
\- Bad Blood \- Black Edge

------
rayalez
\- "Rationality: From AI to Zombies" \- probably the most influential book
I've read in my life, profoundly changed the way I think. It's a collection of
LessWrong essays on science and rationality.

\- "On Intelligence" and "I am a Strange Loop" \- how mind works.

\- "Rework", "Zero to One", "Start Small, Stay Small" \- insightful startup
advice.

\- "Atomic Habits" \- by far the best book on developing habits. Thought it
was just another one of those self-help books, but turned out to be very
insightful and well written.

\- "The Obstacle Is the Way" \- amazing introduction into stoic philosophy, by
Ryan Holiday (author of Trust me I'm lying). He summarized everything I wanted
to learn about the subject, and explained it extremely well. Absolute best
book to read in hectic/stressful situations, audio version is great too.

\- Fun autobiographies: Ghost in the Wires (Kevin Mitnick), iWoz (Steve
Wozniak), Catch me if you can (Frank Abagnale), Just for Fun (Linus Torvalds),
Elon Musk, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!

\- How companies work: Creativity Inc (Pixar), In the Plex (Google)

\- On writing: Art of fiction/nonfiction by Ayn Rand, Story (and Dialogue) by
Robert McKee, Save the Cat, Step by Step to Standup Comedy.

\- Grokking Deep Learning - by far the simplest and clearest introduction into
deep learning, starts from scratch and takes you through the whole thing,
without any of the scary/overwhelming math.

\- Refactoring UI (design tips), Programmer’s Introduction to Mathematics,
Master Algorithm - still reading these books, but they look REALLY good.

\- Other: The Selfish Gene, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience,
Serious Creativity, Hackers & Painters, Hacking Growth, Angel (on angel
investing, by Jason Calacanis).

Also collections of essays by Paul Graham [1] and Scott Alexander [2]:

[1]
[https://www.dropbox.com/s/2no0sqybnxurpcd/Paul%20Graham%20-%...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/2no0sqybnxurpcd/Paul%20Graham%20-%20Complete%20Essays.epub?dl=0)

[2]
[https://www.dropbox.com/s/i43lqpdyd4qa255/The%20Library%20of...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/i43lqpdyd4qa255/The%20Library%20of%20Scott%20Alexandria%20-%20Scott%20Alexander.epub?dl=0)

~~~
gdy
"Catch me if you can (Frank Abagnale)"

It's fiction vaguely based on a real story.

------
filterkaapi
Influence by Robert Cialdini Grit by Angela Duckworth

------
Ice_cream_suit
Politics. Sachs translation of aristotle.

------
sien
Factfulness (2018) by Hans Rosling is fantastic about the real state of the
world.

How the Internet Happened (2018) by Brian McCullough is a fantastic read about
the history of the internet from first internet bubble to the iPhone.

Educated (2018) by Tara Westover is an amazing autobiography.

Enlightenment Now (2018) by Steven Pinker is pretty good, even if he doesn't
know that much about the actual enlightenment.

Autonomy (2018) by Lawrence Burns about self-driving cars is well worth a
read.

Fire and Fury by Michael Wolff is good about the very strange world inside the
Trump administration.

------
ivanmaeder
Taken and adapted from my comment on this thread also about books read in
2018:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18661546](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18661546)

1\. "How to Measure Anything" (Douglas Hubbard)

Presents a few simple techniques (confidence intervals, Monte Carlo
simulations, regression analysis, Bayes, etc) to help with decision-making.
E.g., should we build this feature or spend the same money on marketing?

Many other books explain how our thinking can be flawed (Daniel Kahneman's
"Thinking, Fast and Slow", Ralf Dobelli's "The Art of Thinking Clearly"), but
this book gives you some _actual_ real-world mathematical tools to avoid
flawed thinking.

2\. "Why We Sleep" (Matthew Walker)

As I read this book I kept thinking about all the people I knew who would
benefit from it: family and friends, managers, colleagues…

With references to studies, the book explains the different factors that
influence sleep, what your body does during sleep and the different phases of
sleep, how your body—mostly the brain—benefits, etc.

For days after reading it I kept telling friends about things I'd learnt from
it. One of my favourite was how certain types of bird are able to sleep: they
line themselves up in a row, with the birds on each end putting only half
their brain to sleep. This way they can keep one of their eyes open—the one
furthest to the end—so they can keep watch. Then after a while the birds on
the end will turn around and sleep the other side of their brain.

Fascinating!

3\. "Superforecasting" (Philip Tetlock)

Tetlock explains his work on the "Good Judgment Project" which is a kind of
experiment he's been running for a few years, getting people to sign up and
provide regular predictions for different questions (e.g., "Will the South
African Government grant the Dalai Lama a visa within six months?")

He explains what the best predictors (superforecasters) do, and how
collaborations between predictors can do better than individuals (and even
better than wisdom of the crowds).

Favourite quote: "[The data] revealed an inverse correlation between fame and
accuracy: the more famous an expert was, the less accurate he was."

4\. "Shoe Dog" (Phil Knight)

The story of Nike, told by the founder. I honestly don't care about Nike but
that's not the takeaway—it's not about shoes or T-shirts or Michael Jordan.
It's about a guy trying to keep a business alive: almost from day one there no
let-up, the company is continually under threat.

Also the early employees are a really fun bunch.

------
pcvarmint
Hoaxed (Mike Cernovich)

------
deloschang
* Billion Dollar Whale

------
acangiano
12 Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson.

~~~
lanestp
Don’t dismiss this because you think you disagree with the politics. 12 rules
is life changing.

~~~
libdjml
Agreed. If anyone thinks it’s a legitimately bad book, feel free to discuss
why.

~~~
tomlock
It is a self-help book rooted in Jungian theory, widely discredited in modern
psychology. His understanding of modern and postmodern philosophy is only deep
enough to convince readers with no knowledge of those topics that he knows
something about them.

~~~
tomlock
Also here's a great video that might help Peterson fans understand some of the
problems with his positions:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LqZdkkBDas](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LqZdkkBDas)

~~~
raarts
I urge everyone to look at this video. If this is the best the left can do,
they are in big trouble. JP is much more convincing than this video is.

Also - I see this a lot - he is attacked on ideological grounds, while his
entire argument is that the discourse should be grounded in science, not
ideology.

Here's an example: many people seem to think that if you give men and women
equal rights and opportunities, that this will automatically lead to 50-50 in
STEM, health, politics etc. The problem here is that extensive research shows
that in the societies where the most equal opportunities exist (Scandinavia)
the differences between men an women in those areas actually _increase_. This
research has not been refuted by anyone.

Apparently when men and women are free to choose the life they want to lead,
they make different choices.

Which leads to the question: should we really push for equity in the sense of
equal representation or is that just another form of oppression?

Again: if this video is the best the left can do, they are in big trouble.

~~~
tomlock
If the right is arguing against the belief that ratios will be 50-50
automatically given equal opportunities, they aren't arguing against the left.

In fact the video states that the assertion there are biological differences
between men and women is uncontraversial.

------
monkmartinez
Goodbye, Things

------
Dowwie
New Dark Age

------
drivativ
Why Information Grows - Cesar Hidalgo
([https://books.google.com/books?id=J88_CQAAQBAJ](https://books.google.com/books?id=J88_CQAAQBAJ))
_Best book I 've read in recent memory. Changed my understanding of the world
and (maybe) our place in it._

The Information - James Gleick
([https://books.google.com/books?id=7ztdygAACAAJ](https://books.google.com/books?id=7ztdygAACAAJ))
_All developers having anything to do with data should read this or at least
be familiar with the concepts it covers._

Chaos - James Gleick
([https://books.google.com/books?id=OoLNzl4XpPUC](https://books.google.com/books?id=OoLNzl4XpPUC))
_A good follow-up to "The Information"_

Scale - Geoffrey West
([https://books.google.com/books?id=bJPZDAAAQBAJ](https://books.google.com/books?id=bJPZDAAAQBAJ))
_Covers the kind of fundamentals of science everyone should understand._

Life 3.0 - Max Tegmark
([https://books.google.com/books?id=2hIcDgAAQBAJ](https://books.google.com/books?id=2hIcDgAAQBAJ))
The Master Algorithm - Pedro Domingos
([https://books.google.com/books?id=CPgqCgAAQBAJ](https://books.google.com/books?id=CPgqCgAAQBAJ))
_These two go nicely together_

The Death of Expertise - Thomas M. Nichols
([https://books.google.com/books?id=x3TYDQAAQBAJ](https://books.google.com/books?id=x3TYDQAAQBAJ))
_Maybe the thing that brings about the downfall of society as we know it_

Fantasyland - Kurt Andersen
([https://books.google.com/books?id=aaX4DAAAQBAJ](https://books.google.com/books?id=aaX4DAAAQBAJ))
_A fun, engaging American history - whether the theory behind it is accurate
or not, it is still enlightening._

Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
([https://books.google.com/books?id=niDNtZoYsAUC](https://books.google.com/books?id=niDNtZoYsAUC))
_A painful re-reading but hard not to conclude that Huxley had it way more
directionally right than Orwell or any other future fiction authors._

Amusing Ourselves to Death - Neil Postman
([https://books.google.com/books?id=oup6iagfox8C](https://books.google.com/books?id=oup6iagfox8C))
_Though largely about media in the 80 's, it is even more relevant today._

World Without Mind - Franklin Foer
([https://books.google.com/books?id=Q8gPDgAAQBAJ](https://books.google.com/books?id=Q8gPDgAAQBAJ))
_Too easy to pick on big tech this year but that doesn 't mean most of this
book isn't on the nose._

------
kenneth
Liar's Poker

Zero to One

Straight to Hell

------
billylindeman
Extreme Ownership - Jocko Willink and Leif Babin

12 rules for life - Jordan Peterson

Rethinking Money - Bernard Lietaer and Jaequi Dunne

------
sandeepvk
Zero to One Capitalism in America Enough

------
wraithdroplets
I am interpreting the question as being: "What was my greatest pleasure
reading experience in 2018?" Thus my answer is: Nimoy, Leonard: I Am Not Spock
(1975). Since it contains the greatest pleasurable experience of the most
influential TV scientist of our times, even when he didn't have green blood --
his time as Tevya in Fiddler of the Roof when the cast presented him with
awards for his service and they ate a cast dinner together. Thus he received
the greatest emotional outlet of his quite in-held life.

~~~
wallflower
In case you or anyone reading this missed it, this heartbreaking story

[https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/01/01/a-tech-
pioneer...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/01/01/a-tech-pioneers-
final-unexpected-act/amp)

------
RodericDay
"The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in
Capitalist Ruins" by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25510906-the-mushroom-
at...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25510906-the-mushroom-at-the-end-
of-the-world)

It's all about how in Japan there's this tradition of gifting (and never
purchasing for oneself) matsutake, as a way of showing appreciation. However,
this tradition grew alongside deforestation.

Japan has done a pretty good job conserving forests, but this strange mushroom
they like so much only grows in deforested forests out of skinny pines, so now
it has to be imported from Oregon, Finland, and China.

The author embeds herself a bit with Laotian refugees that do mushroom hunting
in Oregon, and describes the various interesting ways these communities
operate. Auctions, forest hunting, how kids get started, etc.

And then she explains how these two intensely social and human concepts (the
gift giving and the harvesting) are connected via an impersonal cynical
international supply chain that commodifies everything.

Beautiful book tbh.

