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Pop Science and Business books


unJon

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As far as I can tell the last thread on this topic was archived. So starting afresh. 

This is a thread to discuss and recommend any popular science books or business books you are reading. So stuff like Dawkins, Dennet, Michael Lewis, Malcolm Gladwell, etc. Don't feel limited by these author names. Really any enjoyable book that touches on science, business or history fits here. I have read and enjoyed many books recommended in past iterations of this thread. 

I recently read The Greatest Story Ever Told So Far by Lawrence Krauss. It's a fairly easily digestible history of physics from Galileo through the Standard Model of quantum mechanics. Well written. If these topics are familiar to you, you may not learn anything. Certainly nothing about really about string or m-brane theory or various competing interpretations of QM. But enjoyable for what it is. 

Lawrence Krauss also wrote A Universe from Nothing. It was his attempt at what I view as the hardest philosophical problem: why does anything at all exist rather than nothing existing. Or how can something spring from nothing. Ultimately I didn't find his argument persuasive but it is worth reading how a real physicist thinks about the issue. 

I am currently reading and enjoying Kasparov's Deep Thinking. It was billed as Kasparov on AI. So far it's mainly about chess programs and his battles with Deep Thought. It's all really interesting. Hoping it everntually gets farther afield. I'm 33% or so through. 

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On 5/14/2017 at 1:52 AM, unJon said:

I am currently reading and enjoying Kasparov's Deep Thinking. It was billed as Kasparov on AI. So far it's mainly about chess programs and his battles with Deep Thought. It's all really interesting. Hoping it everntually gets farther afield. I'm 33% or so through. 

I've been meaning to read this, although more for the chess content than anything else.  Several of Kasparov's books in the past have been let down by some poor editing (or have just been terrible to begin with), but people who are not normally fans of Kasparov have had some nice things to say about this.

Not sure if you'd count Logicomix as popular science, but I liked it quite a bit when I (finally) read it last Christmas.  It's a semi-fictionalised graphic novel (and so maybe not to everybody's taste), about the attempts of Bertrand Russel and others to resolve the foundational crisis of mathematics.

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Greatest Story... sounds like a good rec, thanks.  

I enjoyed Michael Lewis and Malcolm Gladwell for what they are, but rec them for an entertaining and thought-provoking read rather than a reliable or accurate version of the underlying facts or facts respectively.  

I'm enjoying the Hinges Of History series currently.  I like Luc Ferry too for summarizing history and schools of philosophy. 

I've read a ton of books on business, economics and capital markets for MBA classes and work.  I don't know where to even start with recs for those. 

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Just walk away from Gladwell.

Logicomix is great (I know one of the principals, Papadimitriou, quite well.)

I tried to read up on human population genetics recently. I find this endlessly fascinating, the science is progressing at breakneck speed. Mindblowing stuff, clearly still in development.

A brief history of everyone who ever lived: The Stories in Our Genes,  Rutherford. I liked this one best. Recommended. 

Sapiens: A brief history of humankind, Harari. Didn’t like this at all, and did not finish it. Unrecommended.

Troublesome Inheritance, A : Genes, Race and Human History, Wade. This was OK, though I knew most of it already, so I can’t say how useful it is. Not so much prehistory as I had wanted, mostly about how to think about inheritance and genes.  

 

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Some I read in the last few years are
Proof - The Science of Booze by Adam Rogers. Which gives a nice overview of the history and science of our alcoholic drink. The Drunken Botanist by Amy Stuart. Which is full of nice anecdotes on the plants involved in giving us our drinks.

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On 19/05/2017 at 8:56 AM, Happy Ent said:

Sapiens: A brief history of humankind, Harari. Didn’t like this at all, and did not finish it. Unrecommended

 

 

Can you expand on this, what didnt you like about it ?

I recently read his book Homo Deus, after a reccomendation from Bakker, and i thought it was excellent even though he definetely wussed out from making any real, far reaching predictions about his vision of the future. I've also recently read about Elon Musk's endeavours on Wait but Why. Its nice to finally know why he's considered the Tech Messiah, and while  i still think he's a bit of a diva its hard not to be impressed by his ambition. Makes you wonder what the other Lords of Capitalism are spending their billions on and why they haven't achieved as much success.

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20 hours ago, Sheep the Evicted said:

Can you expand on this, what didnt you like about it ?

1. In terms of facts, I learned nothing new. This is not Harari’s problem, but mine—I know a lot of stuff already. So the book is simply not informative for me.

2. Harari’s editorialising/message/flowery prose/perspective just plain annoyed me. I detest Malcolm Gladwell’s books for much the same reasons. I was looking for a popular science book on human history and genetics, not about an opinion piece on the human condition. Again, other readers may love that—it’s simply not a genre I enjoy. I found it dumb and patronising.

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When it comes to pop-science I like books that use the science or technical subject as the framing for a larger story, whilst still giving you good info on the subject. There's two I can think of off the top of my head that stood out to me.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. I think this one's quite famous due to an HBO movie now? The story of the origin of Hela cells which are apparently of inestimable importance to research in medicine and cellular biology, and also the story of the woman they came from and the fortunes of her family.

Carrying the Fire by Michael Collins. The autobiography of the Apollo 11 command module pilot. He's got a very easy to read writing style, with a dry wit and some moments of real poignancy. His description of the solitude of being alone in the command module on the far side of the moon whilst Armstrong and Aldrin were on the surface creates some amazing frisson.

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