Hacker News Books

According to JE Gordon in “ Structures: Or Why Things Don't Fall Down,” the answer is surprisingly simple: everything was massively, tremendously overbuilt.

Also, often builders would start with scale models, and then exaggerate proportions - that doesn’t require sophisticated math. Just do the modeling “analog”!

I should probably enforce a limit on the number of times I'm allowed to plug this book on HN every year: J.E. Gordon's Structures, Or Why Things Don't Fall Down

http://www.amazon.com/Structures-Things-Dont-Fall-Down/dp/03...

It's not exactly a young book, but it's newer than the Bay Bridge...

There are several books I read, still want to increase my reading amount:

1. "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!", nice bio about Feynman

2. "Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future", inspiring biography and business book.

3. "Apollo" by Catherine Bly Cox. Awesome book about Apollo Programm. Goes even in some technical details.

4. "Mastering Bitcoin: Unlocking Digital Cryptocurrencies". Very good and thorough book about bitcoins, the author implements most import concept in the book.

5. "F'D Companies: Spectacular Dot-com Flameouts". I seldom don't recommend a book, but this one is hard to tell. It is interesting read about a lot of failed dot-com era companies. But the layout and writing style looks like an automatic rip-off of some blog articles (I read on kindle). It's not totally bad, but be warned before buying. Try some free chapters.

6. "Structures: Or Why Things Don't Fall Down", good layman general introduction into static. Nice overview why all the buildings/bridges etc around you don't fall apart.

7. "Never Eat Alone", Classics of networking. Actually basic stuff that people probably already know about networking. But still good to read, and author always shows examples on successful persons or himself.

8. "The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory", reading this at the moment. Very nice and simple introduction to relativity theory and quantum mechanics. I finished around 100 pages and like it.

I read 8 books this year. My aim is around 2 books/month.

Reading can make difference.

To put the history in context, it’s nice to have some basic understanding of the physics/engineering involved in holding things together.

As no kind of expert myself, I really enjoyed JE Gordon’s book The New Science of Strong Materials. It’s a nice easy-to-read introduction, I’d guess about 250 pages long, and talks about not only iron and steel, but also wood, glass, etc. I also liked his later book Structures, which is somewhat overlapping in subject but a bit longer, focused more on the engineering and less on materials per se or historical development.

The two books are from 1968 and 1978, respectively, but age pretty well. Used copies can likely be found for a few dollars.

http://amzn.com/0691125481
http://amzn.com/0306812835

Someone who knows these fields better can probably recommend more recent sources.

tl;dr:

When asked how he learned about rockets, Musk reportedly said, "I read books."

Here are eight books that shaped the revolutionary entrepreneur:

1. "Structures: Or Why Things Don't Fall Down" by J.E. Gordon
"It is really, really good if you want a primer on structural design," Musk says

2. "Benjamin Franklin: An American Life" by Walter Isaacson
"You can see how [Franklin] was an entrepreneur," Musk says.

3. "Einstein: His Life and Universe" by Walter Isaacson
Musk tells Rose he was influenced by the biography of theoretical physicist Albert Einstein

4. "Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies" by Nick Bostrom
"worth reading" Musk tweeted in 2014.

5. "Merchants of Doubt" by Erik M. Conway and Naomi Oreskes

6. "Lord of the Flies" by William Golding
"The heroes of the books I read always felt a duty to save the world," he says

7. "Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future" by Peter Thiel
Musk says that his Paypal co-founder's book offers an interesting exploration of the process of building super successful companies.

8. The "Foundation" trilogy by Isaac Asimov
Musk says Asimov's books taught him that "civilizations move in cycles," a lesson that encouraged the entrepreneur to pursue his radical ambitions. "Given that this is the first time in 4.5 billion years where it's been possible for humanity to extend life beyond Earth," he says, "it seems like we'd be wise to act while the window was open and not count on the fact it will be open a long time."

The Design of Everyday Things. Probably the quintessential book on design, the basic premise is that if you can't figure out how a thing works, it's not your fault.

Structures: Or Why Things Don't Fall Down. About the engineering of various things, mostly buildings. Highly recommend.

The Elements of Computer Systems (better known as NAND to Tetris). Describes a computer from the bottom up.

A History of the Arab Peoples

The Quran

The Bible

Space and Time in General Relativity by David Mermin

Feynman QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter

Interesting books with >4 star Amazon ratings:

The Meaning of Relativity (Einstein) http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-94-011-6022-3

Centauri Dreams: Imagining and Planning Interstellar Exploration http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-1-4757-3894-0

The Physics of Musical Instruments http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-0-387-21603-4

Introduction to Nanoscale Science and Technology http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/b119185

Scanning Electron Microscopy and X-ray Microanalysis http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-1-4615-0215-9

Structures or Why Things Don't Fall Down http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-1-4615-9074-3

Fundamentals of Power Electronics http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/b100747

Advanced Organic Chemistry A/B http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/b114222 http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/b114293

Principles of Terrestrial Ecosystem Ecology http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/b97397