Hacker News Books

Though predating it by many decades, this is a bit of a tldr of the book The Wright Brothers by David McCullough which I thought was great. Presumably if you liked this article, you would feel similarly.

His Excellency, by Joseph J. Ellis, is very good. I strongly recommend it. Founding Brothers, by Ellis, is also very good (and short).

David McCullough has several tremendous US history books, including John Adams, 1776, The Wright Brothers, The Path Between the Seas.

Check out the book The Wright Brothers by David McCullough[1]. You will see that they are anything but tinkerers, but more the founders of aeronautical engineering.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Wright-Brothers-David-McCullough/dp/1...

I'll skip some mentioned already by others. Books I really enjoyed this year:

The Wright Brothers, David McCullough - wonderful book on the Wright Brothers, easy to read, shows that persistence and logic thinking pays out. 5/5

The autobiography of Malcom X, Malcolm X - Nice bio, a bit repetitive sometimes. 3/5

Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand - Although the book has more than 1200 pages it really kept me going. I read this book to get a better understanding of the ideology of some republicans. Fun read. 4.5/5

Freakonomics, Steven D. Levitt - Levitt studies all kind of different everyday questions using economics. 4/5, short, easy to read

Guantanamo Diary, Mohamedou Ould Slahi - Diary of a Guantanamo prisoner who has been imprisoned since 2002. The US has never charged him with a crime. Profound and disturbing. 5/5

No place to hide, Glenn Greenwald - Story on Edward Snowden, probably read by most of HN. Enjoyed it, that's it. 4/5

How to lie with statistics, Darrel Huff - Short book on statistics, easy to read and fun. 4/5

Book review and Comparison of
The Wright Brothers by David McCullough
with
Elon Musk: How the Billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla Is Shaping Our Future by Ashlee Vance

Debt: The First 5000 years by David Graeber. One of the most interesting books I have read in years. It goes really deep into how money appeared, how debt not always have to be payed back etc. A really interesting read!

The Wright Brothers by David McCullough. An extremely interesting store of how two brothers got us in the air. A great story on well thought out incremental innovation and especially risk mitigation of something that from the outside looks reckless and dangerous.

I just finished reading The Wright Brothers by David McCullough. A fascinating aspect of the book is how no one expected two unknowns to solve a problem governments had been pouring money into [1] with no success. Every one of the high profile players of the time were failures.

You may be quick to point out that fusion is different from airplanes - requiring vastly more money and resources. Except that that's also the same argument people thought was true about airplanes in 1900! Anyway, all of this to say if history is our guide than I have my doubts about ITER and the rest of the high profile projects. If fusion is to ever make headway I think it will be from some little known cheap operation in a way no one expects.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Langley#Aviation_work

I used to share that viewpoint until I read The Wright Brothers by David McCullough.

In no particular order.

Empires of Light, by Jonnes. Titan, by Chernow. The Wright Brothers, by McCullough. His Excellency, by Ellis. The Wizard of Menlo Park, by Stross. I Invented the Modern Age, by Snow. Dealers of Lightning, by Hiltzik. Margin of Safety, by Klarman. Masters of Doom, by Kushner. Andrew Carnegie, by Nasaw. Infidel, by Hirsi Ali. Buffett, by Lowenstein. Where Wizards Stay Up Late, by Hafner. Shoe Dog, by Knight. The Making of the Atomic Bomb, by Rhodes.

My 5 favorite ones I read this year

  In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick
  Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance
  To the Last Man: A Novel of the First World War by Jeff Shaara 
  Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson
  The Wright Brothers by David McCullough

All 21 books I read are here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10785428

Here are all the ones I read this year

  A Dance with Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire) by George R. R. Martin
  A Feast for Crows: A Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones) by George R.R. Martin
  The Confident Speaker: Beat Your Nerves and Communicate at Your Best in Any Situation by Harrison Monarth
  House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewsk
  To the Last Man: A Novel of the First World War by Jeff Shaara 
  Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson
  Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader by Brent Schlender
  George Washington's Secret Six: The Spy Ring That Saved the American Revolution by Brian Kilmeade
  Think Like a Freak: The Authors of Freakonomics Offer to Retrain Your Brain by Steven D. Levitt
  Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance
  Finders Keepers: A Novel by Stephen King
  The Guns of August: The Pulitzer Prize-Winning Classic About the Outbreak of World War I by Barbara W. Tuchman
  The Wright Brothers by David McCullough
  Seveneves: A Novel by Neal Stephenson
  The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America by Erik Larson
  Hitler's Last Day: Minute by Minute by Emma Craigie
  The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
  Robopocalypse: A Novel (Vintage Contemporaries) by Daniel H. Wilson
  Robogenesis by Daniel H. Wilson
  In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick

My 5 favorite ones from that list are

  In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick
  Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance
  To the Last Man: A Novel of the First World War by Jeff Shaara 
  Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson
  The Wright Brothers by David McCullough