HackerNews Readings
40,000 HackerNews book recommendations identified using NLP and deep learning

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The Orchid Thief: A True Story of Beauty and Obsession (Ballantine Reader's Circle)

Susan Orlean

4.2 on Amazon

3 HN comments

Alone on the Wall

Alex Honnold and David Roberts

4.7 on Amazon

3 HN comments

What the Robin Knows: How Birds Reveal the Secrets of the Natural World

Jon Young

4.5 on Amazon

3 HN comments

Deskbound: Standing Up to a Sitting World

Kelly Starrett

4.7 on Amazon

3 HN comments

Primitive Technology: A Survivalist's Guide to Building Tools, Shelters, and More in the Wild (CLARKSON POTTER)

John Plant

4.7 on Amazon

2 HN comments

Courage to Soar: A Body in Motion, A Life in Balance

Simone Biles, Michelle Burford , et al.

4.8 on Amazon

2 HN comments

Running Rewired: Reinvent Your Run for Stability, Strength, and Speed

Jay Dicharry

4.7 on Amazon

2 HN comments

Move Your DNA: Restore Your Health Through Natural Movement, 2nd Edition

Katy Bowman

4.7 on Amazon

2 HN comments

The Future of Humanity: Terraforming Mars, Interstellar Travel, Immortality, and Our Destiny Beyond Earth

Michio Kaku, Feodor Chin, et al.

4.7 on Amazon

2 HN comments

Summer: A Cookbook: Inspired Recipes for Lazy Days and Magical Nights

Marnie Hanel and Jen Stevenson

5 on Amazon

2 HN comments

A Sense of Where You Are

John McPhee

4.4 on Amazon

2 HN comments

The National Parks: America's Best Idea

Dayton Duncan and Ken Burns

4.7 on Amazon

2 HN comments

The Rock Warrior's Way: Mental Training for Climbers

Arno Ilgner , Jeff Achey, et al.

4.8 on Amazon

2 HN comments

Total Immersion: The Revolutionary Way To Swim Better, Faster, and Easier

Terry Laughlin and John Delves

4.6 on Amazon

2 HN comments

The Emotional Craft of Fiction: How to Write the Story Beneath the Surface

Donald Maass

4.7 on Amazon

2 HN comments

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visittheparksonSep 11, 2016

The parks are definitely something to enjoy and respect.
I highly recommend two books:

  Desert Solitare
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_Solitaire

Death, Daring and Disaster: Search and Rescue in the National Parks
https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/hisnps/NPSBooks/farabee.htm

This is good too:

  The National Parks: America's Best Idea
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_National_Parks:_America%27s_Best_Idea

hyperrailonMar 31, 2021

Many histories of American national parks have stressed the tension between parks as preserves and parks as places for enjoyment. This is so even for park histories that might be expected to follow an orthodox view, such as the Ken Burns PBS miniseries "National Parks: America's Best Idea."

Among those discussions, what's interesting to me is that Stephen Mather [1], the first director of the National Park Service and before that a de facto lobbyist within the Wilson administration for national parks, saw little tension between promoting park tourism and better preserving parks from abuse. In fact, his consistent position was that making parks more fun and accessible for ordinary people would in fact lead to more parks and better-protected parks, because awed park visitors would themselves become lobbyists for parks. He actually broke with his friend and former employee Robert Sterling Yard (the ex-PR man for parks mentioned in this piece) precisely on this point - Yard didn't believe that more park visitors were the unalloyed good that Mather was sure they were.

On balance, I do think that Mather was more right than Yard. But for at least about 50 years there has been a realization that the downsides of park tourism are far bigger than Mather would have envisioned.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Mather

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