Rating: 8.7/10. Restaurant Success by the Numbers: A Money-Guy’s Guide to Opening the Next New Hot Spot by Roger Fields Book about the restaurant industry written by an accountant who ran several restaurants in New York. There’s a common myth that 80-90% of restaurants fail within the first year. In reality, restaurants have one of…
Author: Bai Li
Bobby Fischer Comes Home by Heigi Olafsson
Rating: 7.6/10. Bobby Fischer Comes Home: The Final Years in Iceland, a Saga of Friendship and Lost Illusions by Heigi Olafsson A memoir of Bobby Fischer, a chess prodigy, and his later years which he spent in living in Iceland. The author is an Icelandic grandmaster who served as a sort of ambassador for Fischer…
The End is Always Near by Dan Carlin
Rating: 7.9/10. The End Is Always Near: Apocalyptic Moments, from the Bronze Age Collapse to Nuclear Near Misses by Dan Carlin History book by Dan Carlin, famous for the Hardcore History podcast. This book is a collection of eight loosely-related chapters, mostly related to societies in decline or apocalyptic moments in history, such as the…
Why Startups Fail by Tom Eisenmann
Rating: 8.4/10. Why Startups Fail: A New Roadmap for Entrepreneurial Success by Tom Eisenmann It is well known that most startups fail. This book examines common failure patterns for startups through case studies: beginning with the problems faced by early-stage startups, then another different set of problems faced by startups as they grow. The case…
An Introduction to Law and Legal Reasoning by Steven J. Burton
Rating: 8.1/10. Book that describes at a high level how the law works, suitable for laymen or beginning law students. The purpose of legal system is to settle disputes that arise in a complex society in a fair and peaceful way. There are competing views on how deterministic are the judgments made by the legal…
Rockonomics by Alan B. Krueger
Rating: 8.8/10. Rockonomics: A Backstage Tour of What the Music Industry Can Teach Us about Economics and Life by Alan B. Krueger Book by an economist describing the financial realities of the music industry. Relative to how much value it provides to our lives, music is extremely cheap. The majority of Americans listen to music…
The Party by Richard McGregor
Rating: 7.5/10. The Party: The Secret World of China’s Communist Rulers by Richard McGregor Book by an Australian journalist describing the inner workings of the Chinese Communist Party. The politburo (“The Party”) is a secretive organization, out of sight of the common people. It comprises of only a handful of elite individuals, who are seldom…
That Will Never Work by Marc Randolph
Rating: 7.6/10. That Will Never Work: The Birth of Netflix and the Amazing Life of an Idea by Marc Randolph Story of the early days of Netflix, from its founding in 1997 until its IPO in 2002. The author is a serial entrepreneur: after his previous company got acquired, he starts brainstorming new business ideas…
A History of Modern Tourism by Eric G. E. Zuelow
Rating: 7.7/10. A book describing the history of tourism, i.e., travel for leisure reasons. Although humans have migrated for thousands of years, travel for fun was not common until quite recently. In ancient times, people traveled for trade, in search of new resources, or for religious reasons, but these types of travel have a very…
The Art Question by Nigel Warburton
Rating: 8.0/10. Philosophical investigation into the question of: “What is art?” This question is often asked when faced with certain postmodern art pieces, such as readymade objects like a urinal displayed in an art gallery. Bell proposes that art must have “significant form” — choices made by a human artist in order to produce an…
Forgotten Continent: A History of the New Latin America by Michael Reid
Rating: 7.9/10. Book about the recent history of Latin America — despite encompassing approximately 20 countries and spanning across two continents, the countries in this region has had remarkably similar histories and has faced similar societal issues: inequality, lack of development, political instability, crime, etc. Compared to the Western World, Latin America started to fall…
Fortress Besieged (围城) by Qian Zhongshu
Rating: 8.0/10. A classic Chinese novel of the 20th century, set in 1937, a period of chaos and disorder in Chinese history when it was being invaded by the Japanese. The main character, Fang Hongjian, is a student who studied in Europe for a few years but drifted around without earning a degree and ended…