

Ask HN: Inspirational Biographies - live_to_code

Hey,<p><pre><code>  I'm looking for biographies to read. Some that have really inspired me are:
</code></pre>
Nikola Tesla
Steve Jobs
Steve Woz
Larry Ellison
Lance Armstrong<p>HN have suggestions? In general I'm intereted in stories of how everyday individuals became great.<p>Thanks!
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SwellJoe
I enjoyed all of Asimov's autobiographical books: _In Memory Yet Green_ and
_In Joy Still Felt_ , and the posthumous memoir, _I. Asimov_. I'm a huge fan
of Asimov's non-style literary style (clarity over all), and it works well in
autobiography. If you like scifi, at all, Asimov was an eye witness to nearly
its entire history from golden age onward, and thus worth reading. He's also
perhaps one of the few truly credible witnesses to that history; a number of
other genre favorites and stalwarts had psychological issues (Dick), personal
feuds and vendettas (Ellison), an aversion to the community (Lem), or were
just batshit crazy (Hubbard), and thus their accounts can't generally be taken
without large grains of salt.

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antiform
There are two biographies that I think should be required reading for wannabe
Silicon Valley entrepreneurs: (1) _High St@kes, No Prisoners_ by Charles H.
Ferguson and (2) _The New New Thing_ by Michael Lewis, about Jim Clark

And two that, while light on content (i.e. math), never fail to stimulate the
childlike nature of my inner aspiring mathematician: (1) _The Man Who Knew
Infinity_ by Robert Kanigel, on Ramanujan and (2) _The Man Who Loved Only
Numbers_ by Paul Hoffman, on Paul Erdos.

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live_to_code
Forgot Jim Clark. Really liked his story too.

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sidmitra
"Surely, You're Joking Mr Feynman" was a fun read.

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asp742
I really enjoyed Isaacson's "Einstein: His Life and Universe".

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dmfdmf
Chuck Yeager

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321abc
John von Neumann

Gottfried Leibniz

Helen Keller

Kyle Maynard

Brooke Ellison

