Top Hacker News Book Recommendations in Engineering & Transportation (all time)

All Time Past 6 Months

Carbon: One Atom's Odyssey

John Barnett and Roald Hoffman

5 on Amazon

5 HN comments

Nothing Like It In the World: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad 1863-1869

Stephen E. Ambrose

4.6 on Amazon

5 HN comments

Chernobyl: The History of a Nuclear Catastrophe

Serhii Plokhy, Ralph Lister, et al.

4.7 on Amazon

5 HN comments

507 Mechanical Movements

Henry T. Brown

4.5 on Amazon

4 HN comments

Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge

Jeremy Narby

4.7 on Amazon

4 HN comments

The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google

Scott Galloway, Jonathan Todd Ross, et al.

4.5 on Amazon

4 HN comments

Stone

William Hall

4.8 on Amazon

4 HN comments

Pure, White, and Deadly: How Sugar Is Killing Us and What We Can Do to Stop It

John Yudkin and Robert H. Lustig

4.7 on Amazon

4 HN comments

Jungle: A Photicular Book

Dan Kainen and Kathy Wollard

4.9 on Amazon

4 HN comments

Signals and Systems

Alan Oppenheim, Alan Willsky, et al.

4.1 on Amazon

4 HN comments

Radiant: Farm Animals Up Close and Personal (Farm Animal Photography Book)

Traer Scott

4.8 on Amazon

4 HN comments

Island of the Lost: An Extraordinary Story of Survival at the Edge of the World

Joan Druett

4.5 on Amazon

3 HN comments

Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100

Michio Kaku

4.6 on Amazon

3 HN comments

CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics

John Rumble

4.6 on Amazon

3 HN comments

Kiss the Ground: How the Food You Eat Can Reverse Climate Change, Heal Your Body & Ultimately Save Our World

Josh Tickell and Terry Tamminen

4.8 on Amazon

3 HN comments

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lostloginonMay 16, 2019

Thanks for this.
For those interested in radioactive wastelands, the current TV series ‘Chernobyl’ seems very good, and so is the book ‘Chernobyl: The History of a Nuclear Catastrophe’ by Serhii Plokhy

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_(miniseries)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36204894

arethuzaonMay 6, 2021

Mikhail Gorbachev for one

https://slate.com/technology/2013/01/chernobyl-and-the-fall-...

Edit: Chernobyl: The History of a Nuclear Catastrophe by Serhii Plokhy also makes a claim that the accident let to political instability in the Ukraine which certainly didn't help with the integrity of the SU.

goatloveronDec 27, 2019

The Expanse S4 was going off the fourth book, I believe. I didn’t like it as much as the last two seasons, but it’s supposed to be a setup season for what comes in the next couple books.

Also, Chernobyl was fantastic and Watchmen was delightful, for the most part. And Evil is an interesting supernatural/cutting edge
Tech mix. Then there’s the final season of Mr. Robot.

sateeshonApr 26, 2020

  The other thing I will add is that the miniseries drew
  heavily from Svetlana Alexievich’s master work ‘Voices of 
  Chernobyl’, which I cannot recommend enough.

I think the book's title is "Chernobyl Prayer" and may be "Voices of Chernobyl" is the subtile. The edition (from Penguin) I am reading currently just has the title "Chernobyl Prayer". I haven't watched the series, but can't recommend the book enough, especially in these testing times where it is hard to get a good grasp of the situation unfolding. Sadly (as the book narrates) most of the people on the ground who were first deputed (forced) to carry out cleanup activities in the aftermath of Chernobyl were ill equipped, and many got exposed to high levels of radiation resulting in devastating consequences. This is not very different from the risks that many frontline workers fighting the current pandemic have to bear with.

imhoguyonMay 13, 2021

I would also add Chernobyl (2019 mini-series) https://m.imdb.com/title/tt7366338/

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