Top Hacker News Book Recommendations in History (past 6 months)

All Time Past 6 Months

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies

Jared Diamond Ph.D.

4.5 on Amazon

10 HN comments

Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time

Dava Sobel

4.5 on Amazon

5 HN comments

The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War

Malcolm Gladwell and Pushkin Industries

4.4 on Amazon

3 HN comments

Energy and Civilization: A History (The MIT Press)

Vaclav Smil

4.6 on Amazon

3 HN comments

Bowling Alone: Revised and Updated: The Collapse and Revival of American Community

Robert D. Putnam

4.3 on Amazon

3 HN comments

Common Sense: The Origin and Design of Government

Thomas Paine and Coventry House Publishing

4.8 on Amazon

2 HN comments

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed: Revised Edition

Jared Diamond

4.5 on Amazon

2 HN comments

The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program That Shaped Our World

Vincent Bevins, Tim Paige, et al.

4.8 on Amazon

2 HN comments

Billion Dollar Loser: The Epic Rise and Spectacular Fall of Adam Neumann and WeWork

Reeves Wiedeman

4.4 on Amazon

2 HN comments

Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World (Politics of Place)

Tim Marshall

4.6 on Amazon

2 HN comments

How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States

Daniel Immerwahr

4.7 on Amazon

2 HN comments

Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right

Jane Mayer

4.7 on Amazon

2 HN comments

Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America

Ibram X. Kendi, Christopher Dontrell Piper, et al.

4.8 on Amazon

1 HN comments

In Cold Blood

Truman Capote

4.6 on Amazon

1 HN comments

A History of the World in 6 Glasses

Tom Standage

4.6 on Amazon

1 HN comments

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toiletaccountonAug 9, 2021

If anyone is interested in this I highly recommend Longitude by Dava Sobel. It's about the creation of modern timekeepers by a carpenter with no training at all in watchmaking. Brilliant guy who created something which truly changed the world.

berlinquinonJune 2, 2021

The grasshopper escapement was invented by John Harrison, who built the first clocks that could keep time at sea. These were used to calculate Longitude. There's a nice short biography called Longitude that covers his story.

berlinquinonJune 2, 2021

The author of Longitude gave some good examples of the human cost of the Longitude problem: a ship running aground and sinking, or sailors dying from scurvy because they traveled too far in the wrong direction. So an economic and military problem, and also one felt directly by anybody at sea.

berlinquinonJune 2, 2021

Beat me to it...

I just finished Longitude and it was a great read! Harrison is an interesting character since he really spent his whole life working on the same problem of keeping time at sea. A whole lot of perseverance.

hangonhnonJune 2, 2021

In case anyone is interested in the history of watchmaking, etc. there's a great book titled Longitude: https://www.amazon.com/Longitude-Genius-Greatest-Scientific-...

An accurate marine chronometer was necessary for reliable navigation in order to calculate one's longitude. It turned out to be an incredibly difficult problem that was ultimately solved by John Harrison, who invented the Grasshopper escapement, which the Grasshopper Clock uses.

I think some of us will find Harrison to be very relatable -- more hacker than scientist and never satisfied with his work. He kept coming out with new and improved versions even after he won the Royal Society's prize, IIRC.

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