Rating: 7.8/10. Book about strikes, unions, and labor movements throughout US history. The dynamics and expectations of the working class have changed significantly, but a common theme that occurs throughout history is that the role of government is crucial: if the government decides to side with employers to destroy unions, there is generally nothing that…
All Book Reviews
The Bookseller of Inverness by SG Maclean
Rating: 7.5/10. A historical mystery novel set in the 1750s after the Battle of Culloden in the Scottish town of Inverness. The story takes place a few years after the battle where the Jacobites, the people of Scotland who supported the former Scottish King James, were defeated by the British, leading to depression in the…
The Anglo-Saxons by Marc Morris
Rating: 7.9/10. The Anglo-Saxons: A History of the Beginnings of England: 400 – 1066 by Marc Morris Fairly detailed book about Anglo-Saxon and English history, spanning from the collapse of Roman civilization until the Norman invasion of 1066. It is comprehensive and covers all the major events and kings of this time period. The focus…
The Doctor Who Wasn’t There by Jeremy A. Greene
Rating: 7.0/10. The Doctor Who Wasn’t There: Technology, History, and the Limits of Telehealth by Jeremy A. Greene This book examines the roles of various technologies in healthcare, primarily through historical and social lenses, covering issues such as how different technologies changed how doctors and patients viewed healthcare and the power dynamics between doctors, patients,…
In Search of the Dark Ages by Michael Wood
Rating: 8.2/10. This history book covers the period of early English history from the beginning of the Roman settlement of the British Isles up until the Norman Invasion, which marked the end of the Anglo-Saxon period. This age after the fall of Rome until the Norman Invasion is generally considered the Dark Ages of England;…
Understanding Semiconductors by Corey Richard
Rating: 7.8/10. Understanding Semiconductors: A Technical Guide for Non-Technical People by Corey Richard Fairly short book, about 200 pages, that covers the design and manufacturing of semiconductors, chips, and electronics. It is written at a high level and is not very technical, good to have some understanding of the trade-offs between different technology choices and…
Perfecting Sound Forever by Greg Milner
Rating: 8.2/10. Perfecting Sound Forever: An Aural History of Recorded Music by Greg Milner Book about the history of recorded music from the earliest audio recordings until the present day. It begins with the famous tone tests used by Edison starting around 1915 where they placed a phonograph on stage alongside a live singer and…
Machine Learning System Design Interview by Ali Aminian and Alex Xu
Rating: 6.4/10. Book about preparing for machine learning interviews, covers ~10 different problems and goes through the typical machine learning system design interview process: model architecture, data collection, training, evaluation metrics, and deployment. This book has several major weaknesses: the most obvious is the overwhelming focus on search and recommendation systems, which means most of…
Trust by Hernan Diaz
Rating: 7.9/10. Novel set in 1920s New York focused on a wealthy finance family, and it’s broken up into four parts telling the story from different perspectives. The first part is a novel “Bonds” and we start off with the story of Benjamin Rask, who is a young man from an aristocratic family and turns…
Numerical Linear Algebra: An Introduction by Holger Wendland
Rating: 7.8/10. Textbook about numerical linear algebra cover many algorithms, such as solving linear systems and finding eigenvalues. This book is relatively advanced, as it rarely provides examples and focuses on detailed proofs of convergence properties of algorithms. It also has no examples of computing any algorithms or experimental results, only proofs, so it’s probably…
The Last Logging Show by Aaron Williams
Rating: 8.0/10. The Last Logging Show: A Forestry Family at the End of an Era by Aaron Williams Book written by the son of a forestry family based in Haida Gwaii, BC. The author describes the logging operation that his father manages, and in different chapters of the book, he visits various workers in the…
Discrete and Computational Geometry by Satyan L. Devadoss and Joseph O’Rourke
Rating: 7.9/10. Book about theorems and algorithms in computational and discrete geometry, which deals with many points and polygons in 2D and higher-dimensional spaces. It starts with triangulations and convex hulls and gives a brief tour of many ideas in the field of geometry and their connections to research mathematics. Overall, it takes a quick…