Hacker News Books

Nelson Mandela's Long Walk to Freedom -- truly inspirational

I read Long Walk to Freedom, his autobiography, in college and thought it was really good. The film adaptation was released just last week if you're interested in that (though it sounds mediocre). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Walk_to_Freedom

"In Defense of Food" - Just finished.

"Long Walk to Freedom" - Currently reading.

"Good to Great" - Up next.

I would recommend anyone interested in his life to read his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom.
http://www.amazon.ca/Long-Walk-Freedom-Autobiography-Mandela...

Well, for non-technical books; I have enjoyed the following in no particular order:
- Founders At Work
- Eric Sink on the Business of Software
- The Great War for Civilization
- Pity the Nation
- On Intelligence
- The State of Africa
- Long Walk to Freedom
....etc

Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela!

* The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee. The prose was a bit purple for me but fascinating book about the progress of cancer treatment including recent advances. Second half of the book is more interesting in my opinion so don't give up if you find the history of cancer a little do dry.

* Tuf Voyaging by George RR Martin. I thought this was a stupid premise (guy travels the universe in a huge ship with cat companions?) but a friend strongly recommended it and I found it stupidly readable and very entertaining.

* Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery by Henry Marsh. Deeply interesting and humane book about the work of an eminent brain surgeon.

* The Better Angels of Our Nature: The Decline of Violence In History And Its Causes by Steven Pinker. Strong persuasive central thesis even if though I didn't agree with all his arguments. Very wide-ranging book with many ideas from philosophy and history.

* Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic by David Quammen. Informative and scary book about zoonotic diseases. Like a non-fiction cross between the detective, horror and sci-fi genres.

* The Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela. Read this because I felt I should rather than out of pure interest, but it was a good decision: fascinating biography and startling how intelligent and occasionally ruthless Mandela was.

While traveling through Africa I read A Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela. Reading about the history while being there makes it all very real. I also just read A Primate's Memoir by Robert Sapolsky, which has some of the wildest travel stories about Africa you could ever imagine. A must read if only to prepare you for what you are about to experience. Those two could keep you busy for a few weeks.

The problem is that in the age of TL;DR, nobody here is going to take the time to read "A Long Walk to Freedom". So they will listen to snippets of info, mostly taken out of context. Yes Mandela did create the "spear of the nation" but most people do not understand the background of this or the reason, instead they resort to reading a few snippets and posting here.

You get two types of people here, one group is liberal and support alomost anything against racism, women abuse, welfare reform, you name it, if it promotes freedom they are for it.These are called the Democrats. On the other side of it the people who love racism but deny it exists, they donated to george zimmerman, they hold onto their guns at all cost, believe all minorites are on welfare etc. These are the Republicans. A lot of people who are posting negative things come from this group and they are no different than Apartheid type whites, they even be worst, but this style of thinking has been passed down from their parents and they will pass it down to their kids, thats life. Don't let their lack of evolution sway your understanding of what Mandela stood for as most of them have not taken the time to educate themselves, but just read snippets and focus on something slighlty negative.

If Mandela had ceated a civil war, this country would not have been blessed with "Elon Musk", "Emmanue Dherman" and people Like "Roelof Botha" would not be living the cozy VC life even though his family were high ranking members in the apartheid government.

Oh, lots! I wish you'd narrow down to some categories you're interested in.

A few example i enjoyed:
The State of Africa, Martin Meredith
The Code Book, Simon Singh
Pity the Nation, Robert Fisk
The Great War for Civilization, Robert Fisk
Alan Turing: The Enigma, Andrew Hodges
Long Walk to Freedom, Nelson Mandela
The Last Lecture, Randy Pausch
Fermat's Engima, Simon Singh

Lots more....