Book Recs
Fiction
Sci-fi/fantasy
Hyperion: really good short stories. Nat Fernelius
allie kuck recommends: the bright sword by lev grossman
A Canticle for Leibowitz: rec from Nat Fernelius
Nonfiction
Business
Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making: Tony Fadell, SVP if iPod. Founder of Nest. Recommended by Nate Hanafy
The Devil’s financial dictionary — Jason Zweig. Explain financial terms simply
Kaput — how Germany sucks now
Dot.con — authoritative book on the .com bubble
How to get filthy rich in Rising Asia — actually a hauntingly beautiful story
A Nation of Neighborhoods – Benjamin Looker
Chokepoints: American Power in the age of Economic Warfare
The Origins of Efficiency – Brian Potter (construction physics guy)
Philosophy
Godel Escher Bach: Douglass Hofstadter. On the nature of consciousness. Recommended by Nat Fernelius
I Am a Strange Loop: same guy also rec’d by Nat Fernelius
Modern Physics and Ancient Faith Mind and Cosmos
The Art of Doing Science and Engineering
Culture
Dignity: Seeking Respect in Back Row America
Tyler Cowan — In Praise of Commercial Culture
History
Plain, Honest Men: The Making of the American Constitution – about the Constitutional Convention
- recommendation from Statecraft
The Vertigo Years : Europe 1900-1914
- Derek Thompson says “most underrated history book”
Historical Governments
- Why Nations Fail - Acemoglu
- Secular Cycles
- Theory of culture change
- war and peace and war
- ages of discord
- origins of the state and civilization
- the collapse of complex societies
- the darker angels of our nature
- ultra society
- The Dawn of Everything
- The Rise and Fall of the great Powers
- State Formations