Rating: 7.9/10. First-Time Home Buyer: The Complete Playbook to Avoiding Rookie Mistakes by Scott Trench and Mindy Jensen Guide to buying real estate, with a focus towards first time home buyers and assumes you’re in the United States (although most of the advice applies to Canada too). The first thing to know is that your…
Category: Nonfiction
The Business of Being an Artist by Daniel Grant
Rating: 7.2/10. Book about the business side of art. Ideally, your art would be displayed in a gallery where people will buy it, but galleries themselves face intense economic pressures and they need to sell most of their art in order to break even. Therefore, most artists need to do a lot of thinking like…
Thinking in Systems by Donella H. Meadows
Rating: 7.4/10. Book about analyzing “systems”: basically, any collection of things that are interconnected and produce emergent properties. In many situations you will be led astray if you only look at individual events or pieces of the system, you have to analyze the system as a whole to understand its behavior. Examples of systems are:…
Stanley Park’s Secret by Jean Barman
Rating: 7.7/10. Stanley Park’s Secret: The Forgotten Families of Whoi Whoi, Kanaka Ranch and Brockton Point by Jean Barman Book about the history of Stanley Park in Vancouver, specifically the people who lived there for several decades after the area was officially designated as a park. Today, Stanley Park is marketed as a pristine wilderness,…
The $12 Million Stuffed Shark by Don Thompson
Rating: 7.2/10. The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art by Don Thompson Book by an economist about the contemporary art market: the book’s title refers to a piece of modern art by Damien Hirst consisting of a decomposing tiger shark floating in a vat of formaldehyde, sold for several million dollars….
Chip War by Chris Miller
Rating: 8.2/10. Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology by Chris Miller Book about the history of computer chips and international geopolitics that has become entangled with the processes of manufacturing them. The COVID pandemic has highlighted the fragility of the computer chip supply chain: chips require a complex network of hundreds…
The Mental Game of Electronic Music Producers by Jason Timothy
Rating: 7.6/10. The Mental Game of Electronic Music Production: Finish Songs Fast, Beat Procrastination and Find Your Creative Flow by Jason Timothy A kind of self-help book about how to be productive as a music producer. It is important to build a habit of doing a bit of music production every day, especially finishing songs…
How I Built This by Guy Raz
Rating: 6.9/10. How I Built This: The Unexpected Paths to Success from the World’s Most Inspiring Entrepreneurs by Guy Raz Book filled with stories about startups, apparently based off a podcast. The book is pretty short and there are a lot of chapters, about 25 chapters of 10 pages each; each chapter revolves around some…
Owners of the Sidewalk by Daniel M. Goldstein
Rating: 8.2/10. Owners of the Sidewalk: Security and Survival in the Informal City by Daniel M. Goldstein Book by an anthropology researcher about the informal economy in Bolivia. The informal economy is characterized by the lack of formal employer employee relationships and is a widespread phenomenon throughout Latin America, but especially in Bolivia, where over…
Moonshot by Albert Bourla
Rating: 7.5/10. Moonshot: Inside Pfizer’s Nine-Month Race to Make the Impossible Possible by Dr. Albert Bourla Book by the CEO of Pfizer on the story of how the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine was made. Most of the events in this book will be familiar to anybody who has been following the news for the past three years,…
The Fate of Rome by Kyle Harper
Rating: 8.3/10. The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire by Kyle Harper Book about the fall and decline of the Roman Empire. The decline of the Roman Empire can be analyzed from many angles: Officially, the Roman Empire was invaded by barbarians and the last emperor was in 476 AD,…
Overbooked by Elizabeth Becker
Rating: 7.8/10. Overbooked: The Exploding Business of Travel and Tourism by Elizabeth Becker Book by a journalist about the global tourism industry and the effects it has had on the world. Tourism started becoming popular in the 1960s and now is a major economic force shaping many countries. Since it is associated with pleasure, tourism…