Rating: 7.7/10. Book covering the history of autonomous driving, starting from the earliest days with the DARPA Challenge in 2003, and continuing up to 2020. The story begins when DARPA, motivated by the 9/11 attacks, decides to invest heavily in autonomous robots for potential military use in conflict zones like Afghanistan. As a result, DARPA…
Category: Nonfiction
License to Travel by Patrick Bixby
Rating: 7.1/10. License to Travel: A Cultural History of the Passport by Patrick Bixby Book about the history of the passport from ancient times to the modern era and reflects on what the passport represents. The passport, although a modern concept, has a long history and carries significant symbolic meaning. It epitomizes the control an…
The Cold Start Problem by Andrew Chen
Rating: 8.3/10. The Cold Start Problem: How to Start and Scale Network Effects by Andrew Chen Book about the dynamics of network effects and offers guidance for founders who are building products that depend on these effects for success. The author previously worked at Uber during a phase of explosive growth where he witnessed firsthand…
The Effective Hiring Manager by Mark Horstman
Rating: 7.2/10. Book on hiring, from screening resumes, interviews, and offer. It mostly focuses mostly on on behavioral interviews, which are the only type that is applicable to any job, so I’m a bit disappointed because it doesn’t offer any specific details on other types of interviews or data to back up its claims, especially…
The Death of the Artist by William Deresiewicz
Rating: 7.8/10. The Death of the Artist: How Creators Are Struggling to Survive in the Age of Billionaires and Big Tech by William Deresiewicz Book about the economic challenges faced by artists of various types, including musicians, visual artists, writers, etc. Despite often being highly educated, artists are consistently among the lowest earners in the…
The Culture Map by Erin Meyer
Rating: 7.7/10. The Culture Map by Erin Meyer: Decoding How People Think, Lead, and Get Things Done Across Cultures Book about how cultures differ across the world, categorizing differences among cultures along eight dimensions. Cultural differences can often lead to misunderstandings without either side realizing it. This is especially important in management where your words…
The Nomadic Developer by Aaron Erickson
Rating: 7.3/10. The Nomadic Developer: Surviving and Thriving in the World of Technology Consulting by Aaron Erickson Erickson Book about technology consulting firms, how their business works, and how to succeed in one. Essentially, consulting companies sell the hours of their consultants to clients. The sales team tries to add work to the “backlog” to…
Better Healthcare Through Math by Sanjeev Agrawal and Mohan Giridharadas
Rating: 8.2/10. Better Healthcare Through Math: Bending The Access And Cost Curves by Sanjeev Agrawal and Mohan Giridharadas Book about healthcare scheduling and operations written by a pair of consultants specializing in healthcare schedule optimization. Efficiency in healthcare is an important problem to tackle because the demand for healthcare will only increase in the next…
Beyond the Trees by Adam Shoalts
Rating: 7.4/10. Beyond the Trees: A Journey Alone Across Canada’s Arctic by Adam Shoalts Book by Canadian Explorer Adam Shoalts who takes a journey by canoe into the Canadian Arctic over a span of 5 months, starting from the west side of the MacKenzie River in Yukon, all the way to Baker’s Lake in Nunavut….
This Is an Uprising by Mark Engler and Paul Engler
Rating: 8.0/10. This Is an Uprising: How Nonviolent Revolt Is Shaping the Twenty-First Century by Mark Engler and Paul Engler Book about the mechanics and strategies of protests: a common misconception that protests and uprisings are spontaneous, but in reality they involve careful planning. The book studies the strategy behind successful nonviolent protests and what…
In Pursuit of the Traveling Salesman by William J. Cook
Rating: 8.5/10. In Pursuit of the Traveling Salesman: Mathematics at the Limits of Computation by William J. Cook Book about the Traveling Salesman Problem, written by a University of Waterloo professor and a leading researcher on this topic. The TSP is NP-hard, meaning there’s no efficient algorithm to solve it for all cases (unless P…
Retail Therapy by Mark Pilkington
Rating: 7.7/10. Retail Therapy: Why the Retail Industry is Broken – and What Can Be Done to Fix It by Mark Pilkington Book written by a retail executive from the UK, about the business of retail. The first section discusses the decline of numerous retail chains during the 2010s, such as the downfall of Toys…