
Ask HN: Good books/resources that provide overviews of large industries? - arikr
Inspired by a tweet by Leo Polovets: &quot;I&#x27;m interested in good overviews of large, interesting sectors like logistics, fintech, ecommerce, etc. What are people&#x27;s favorite resources for these (and other!) sectors?&quot;<p>For example:<p>- Shipping Industry, Book: &quot;The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger&quot;
======
laken
On the general "Creativity" industry (with a focus on animation, but it
applies to many similar ones): [https://www.amazon.com/Creativity-Inc-
Overcoming-Unseen-Insp...](https://www.amazon.com/Creativity-Inc-Overcoming-
Unseen-Inspiration/dp/0812993012)

Written by the president of Pixar, and contains many anecdotes about Pixar,
and challenges of animation and general creative work.

------
afryer
One of my favorite mental models for an entire industry (quant finance):

"'P' Versus 'Q': Differences and Commonalities between the Two Areas of
Quantitative Finance"

[https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1717163](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1717163)

Summary: Quantitative Finance comes down to two tasks: "model the future" (P
world) or "extrapolate the present" (Q world).

------
Bucephalus355
I went through this process a while ago. Everything from books on Casino
management (fascinating topic), a skyscraper building company, running a
private university, and the perfume industry. I’ve got hundreds of books
titles I can give you that aren’t reasonable to type here. PM me for more
info.

Best general advice I can give you is to go
[https://thriftbooks.com](https://thriftbooks.com). A better selection than
Amazon at prices 70% less (assuming the books you’re buying are at least a
couple of years old).

Just start typing in random names of topics (or industries) you’re interested
in and go crazy.

I’ve bought about 3,000 hardcover books from them with an average price of
$3.50 (and that’s including tax and shipping).

~~~
amorphous
I'd be very interested in your book titles, any chance to post them online
somewhere?

~~~
aalhour
+1

------
Kagerjay
I've personally read the "Box: How the shipping container..." book. Its a
pretty good read, it talks about the history of caravel ships's cargo load
eventually turning into standarized freight containers. It talks about how
pulley systems eventually turn into cranes used in ports. And the logistics of
extracting freight inside of the hull of a ship (system is like a claw machine
in an arcade). It gaves you the history of how the box came to be, by solving
issues every shipper faced.

As to things related to distribution logistics, my favorite is anything from
the national association of distributors. I've read 1 or 2 books there, the
content there is topnotch [https://www.naw.org/](https://www.naw.org/). Its
got some good very specific applicable MBA-level topics on there, such as
pricing schemas and optimizations.

Ecommerce books I really don't see the point. This is an evolving field. Your
exposed to ecommerce best practices everyday. My favorite go to has always
been things like mcmastercarr.com, amazon, and a few private-based companies.
The recommended read for ecommerce is the amazon book for something that's
more of a narrative. As a side note, analyzing ecommerce sites is also how I
learned a lot of best practices for UX, frontend design, and marketing (just
fire up the debugger, you'd be surprised how different companies do frontend
in different ways).

Private labelling & importing I've read a few. I found this one to be helpful
when I first started private labelling [https://www.amazon.com/Bible-complete-
beginners-successful-i...](https://www.amazon.com/Bible-complete-beginners-
successful-importing-
ebook/dp/B00UHTYAX2/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1528722746&sr=8-1&keywords=import+china)
, it talks about chinese culture and negotiation tactics

Fintech I am not really up to date on so I couldn't really tell you.

Logistics - I think this is something best learned by experience. But, the
recommended standard text is this
[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0989490602/ref=oh_aui_sear...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0989490602/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1).
I've read bits and pieces here and there, its more of a reference manual.

Hardware - A really good book I've read is called "Code: the hidden language"
[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00JDMPOK2/ref=oh_aui_sear...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00JDMPOK2/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1).
It talks about how software integrates with hardware, to understanding how
morse code, the decimal system was created, and leading up to flipflop gates /
and embedded processing. First half of book is readable by anyone, 2nd half
requires a CS degree to understand

Database design schemas - I have a few of these books, I personally prefer
anything from kimball group here. [https://www.amazon.com/Data-Warehouse-
Toolkit-Definitive-Dim...](https://www.amazon.com/Data-Warehouse-Toolkit-
Definitive-Dimensional-ebook/dp/B00DRZX6XS/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-
text&ie=UTF8&qid=1528722972&sr=1-1&keywords=ralph+kimball). Airtable has some
really great database design schema blog posts as well, including case studies
from WeWork.

Finally as a side note, depending on the industry, you might find better
youtube channels over book content, better content on private sites / blogs,
or better content on reddit forums.

One of the best ways of learning an industry is to find what the standard
software is used. You can find it in a google search usually. Just pretend you
own a company in the industry. What would you search up? Find the top 2 or 3
softwares used in that industry. Then, you go to youtube search "Software
tutorial". Binge watch it at 4x speed, and find the recommended intro
playlist. Software tells a rich history of why certain things came to be, and
good UX made software highlights best practices in that industry. Check forums
related to it, and you can find a lot about how an industry operates.

------
amorphous
The best sources are working experts in the field. Getting someone to answer
your questions could potentially save you months/years of reading books (and
give you insights you won't find in books). The problem is, of course, how to
find those people that are willing to talk to you. I wish someone would solve
that! I'd be happy to pay for that kind of service.

~~~
amorphous
To answer the OP question: there are "Plunkett's Almanac" for all sorts of
industries. Rather pricey, but might be worth having a look at (try find them
in a business library)

------
albahk
\- Corporate Real estate / Office leasing, book: “The Essential Guide to
Corporate Real Estate”

[http://www.corenetglobal.org/mycorenetglobal/tcontent.aspx?I...](http://www.corenetglobal.org/mycorenetglobal/tcontent.aspx?ItemNumber=21102)

Startups/Companies looking at the corporate/office occupier market, i.e.
WeWork, VTS, etc

------
kk58
The prize by daniel yergin for oil and gas. Simply awesome. Bettwr yet watch
the 8 part youtube documentary

------
jasoncrawford
Several relevant books here:
[https://rootsofprogress.org/bibliography](https://rootsofprogress.org/bibliography)

More history than overview of current state though.

