Top Hacker News Book Recommendations in Politics & Social Sciences (all time)

All Time Past 6 Months

Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World

Jack Weatherford, Jonathan Davis, et al.

4.6 on Amazon

9 HN comments

The Black Book

Middleton A. Harris, Ernest Smith, et al.

4.8 on Amazon

9 HN comments

Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln

Doris Kearns Goodwin, Suzanne Toren, et al.

4.8 on Amazon

9 HN comments

Permanent Record

Edward Snowden, Holter Graham, et al.

4.8 on Amazon

9 HN comments

The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy - What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America's Next Rendezvous with Destiny

William Strauss and Neil Howe

4.5 on Amazon

9 HN comments

Hell's Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga

Hunter S. Thompson, Scott Sowers, et al.

4.6 on Amazon

9 HN comments

The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America

Erik Larson, Scott Brick, et al.

4.4 on Amazon

8 HN comments

Black Rednecks and White Liberals

Thomas Sowell

4.8 on Amazon

7 HN comments

The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity

Douglas Murray

4.7 on Amazon

7 HN comments

The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War

Ben Macintyre

4.7 on Amazon

7 HN comments

Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race

Margot Lee Shetterly, Robin Miles, et al.

4.6 on Amazon

6 HN comments

AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order

Kai-Fu Lee

4.5 on Amazon

6 HN comments

The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge

Carlos Castaneda

4.7 on Amazon

6 HN comments

The Feminine Mystique

Betty Friedan, Parker Posey, et al.

4.7 on Amazon

6 HN comments

The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love

bell hooks

4.8 on Amazon

6 HN comments

Prev Page 4/10 Next

Sorted by relevance

howard941onJune 17, 2019

You weren't touting KBB and that's good. Kelly Blue Book is a great trademark and marketing tool but the preferred industry reference is The Black Book https://www.blackbook.com/

BizarroonFeb 18, 2018

The Black Book is a classic. Obviously, much of the material is dated, but Abrash is a great writer. IIRC, there's some tidbits in there about Carmack's approach to getting BSP into Quake...or maybe that was Masters of Doom.

orduonAug 11, 2018

> We allow for 3/2=1 because, integer math is faster than floating point math

Is it? I didn't measured it myself, but from reading Abrash's The Black Book I had got an idea that floating point division is faster on x86 with FPU.

PoachedSausageonJune 8, 2020

I see that has a reference to European Scrambling Systems 5 – The Black Book by John McCormac. I actually have a copy of that, it gives a rather entertaining overview of the arms race between the broadcasters and the hackers.

andrewfonJan 4, 2009

The Black Book is available as PDFs from http://www.gamedev.net/reference/articles/article1698.asp

Byte.com hosted a copy for a long time, but that seems to have issues atm.

rigobert_slimonMay 8, 2016

The Black Book seems like a fun read. I'm having a problem finding a copy in english (spanish, french, and chinese so far) but it's definitely now on my finding/reading list!

Tech-NoironFeb 21, 2018

> I guess killing more people than Nazis is OK, as long as they were the wrong kind of people...

Good luck finding sympathy, outside neo-Nazi circles, for actual Nazis and Ukrainian militias who mass murdered Jews.

> if the best criticism of The Black Book is

The best criticism is that it was discredited and disowned even by its own authors.

versteegenonAug 8, 2016

Wow, I never knew the articles were written concurrently with writing the engine. It's truly inspirational to hear that you as a high school student could create a similar engine at the same time by following along; favourited!

I really should read the Black Book, the snippets I've read are great, and anyway I've started writing a software rasteriser for fun...

dahartonAug 1, 2017

Michael Abrash (author of the Black Book) is currently doing VR on GPUs. He's been talking recently about how the GPUs need at least 10x more power, so in some sense he's not impressed by hardware accelerated graphics either. But I'll bet a dollar right now that he won't settle for a Celeron. ;) It doesn't sound like you're doing much that's 3d or graphically demanding? Not surprising you don't need a GPU.

My laptop has a GPU, and also has separate dedicated video decode hardware, so doesn't need either GPU or CPU for most video -- far easier on the battery and doesn't hog the CPU.

Aside from games, you might be interested in a GPU for CNNs or mining virtual currencies. There's no question about the effectiveness over laptop CPUs.

Hacker News Books