Rating: 7.5/10. Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States by James C. Scott Book about the neolithic revolution and how early states arose out of hunter-gatherers. The traditional narrative is that the invention of agriculture enabled the formation of larger, more complex states, and this is the first step on the road…
All Book Reviews
The Seven Pillars of Statistical Wisdom by Stephen M. Stigler
Rating: 7.7/10. Book about the history of statistics, grouped into seven “pillars” – key ideas that unify modern statistics as a discipline. Each of the seven chapters has catchy titles: Aggregation, Information, Likelihood, Intercomparison, Regression, Design, and Residual. Many key ideas seems obvious in retrospect, but it took a surprisingly long time before anyone thought…
Restaurant Success by the Numbers by Roger Fields
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…
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…