Books added to the Library throughout January'24
Throughout January’24 I have added 18 books to my library (almost 1 year of readings, looking at my run rate). Hopefully, you can also find 1 or 2 for your own library!
The only rules are:
the book had to be recommended by someone or by something I have read or listened.
the book should be less than €5 (usually via Kindle -promotions- or 2nd hand).
How Big Things Get Done: The Surprising Factors That Determine the Fate of Every Project, from Home Renovations to Space Exploration and Everything In Between
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: Economist, Financial Times, CEO Magazine, Morningstar
Finalist for the Porchlight Business Book Award, the Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year Award, and the Inc. Non-Obvious Book Award
Nothing is more inspiring than a big vision that becomes a triumphant, new reality. Think of how the Empire State Building went from a sketch to the jewel of New York’s skyline in twenty-one months, or how Apple’s iPod went from a project with a single employee to a product launch in eleven months.
These are wonderful stories. But most of the time big visions turn into nightmares. Remember Boston’s “Big Dig”? Almost every sizeable city in the world has such a fiasco in its backyard. In fact, no less than 92% of megaprojects come in over budget or over schedule, or both. The cost of California’s high-speed rail project soared from $33 billion to $100 billon—and won’t even go where promised. More modest endeavors, whether launching a small business, organizing a conference, or just finishing a work project on time, also commonly fail. Why?
Understanding what distinguishes the triumphs from the failures has been the life’s work of Oxford professor Bent Flyvbjerg, dubbed “the world’s leading megaproject expert.” In How Big Things Get Done, he identifies the errors in judgment and decision-making that lead projects, both big and small, to fail, and the research-based principles that will make you succeed with yours. For example:
• Understand your odds. If you don’t know them, you won’t win.
• Plan slow, act fast. Getting to the action quick feels right. But it’s wrong.
• Think right to left. Start with your goal, then identify the steps to get there.
• Find your Lego. Big is best built from small.
• Be a team maker. You won’t succeed without an “us.”
• Master the unknown unknowns. Most think they can’t, so they fail. Flyvbjerg shows how you can.
• Know that your biggest risk is you.
From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life
The roadmap for finding purpose, meaning, and success as we age, from bestselling author, Harvard professor, and the Atlantic's happiness columnist Arthur Brooks.
Many of us assume that the more successful we are, the less susceptible we become to the sense of professional and social irrelevance that often accompanies aging. But the truth is, the greater our achievements and our attachment to them, the more we notice our decline, and the more painful it is when it occurs.
What can we do, starting now, to make our older years a time of happiness, purpose, and yes, success?
At the height of his career at the age of 50, Arthur Brooks embarked on a seven-year journey to discover how to transform his future from one of disappointment over waning abilities into an opportunity for progress. From Strength to Strength is the result, a practical roadmap for the rest of your life.
Drawing on social science, philosophy, biography, theology, and eastern wisdom, as well as dozens of interviews with everyday men and women, Brooks shows us that true life success is well within our reach. By refocusing on certain priorities and habits that anyone can learn, such as deep wisdom, detachment from empty rewards, connection and service to others, and spiritual progress, we can set ourselves up for increased happiness.
Read this book and you, too, can go from strength to strength.
Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World
Between January and July 1919, after the war to end all wars, men and women from all over the world converged on Paris for the Peace Conference. At its heart were the leaders of the three great powers - Woodrow Wilson, Lloyd George and Clemenceau. Kings, prime ministers and foreign ministers with their crowds of advisers rubbed shoulders with journalists and lobbyists for a hundred causes - from Armenian independence to women's rights. Everyone had business in Paris that year - T.E. Lawrence, Queen Marie of Romania, Maynard Keynes, Ho Chi Minh. There had never been anything like it before, and there never has been since.
For six extraordinary months the city was effectively the centre of world government as the peacemakers wound up bankrupt empires and created new countries. They pushed Russia to the sidelines, alienated China and dismissed the Arabs, struggled with the problems of Kosovo, of the Kurds, and of a homeland for the Jews.
The peacemakers, so it has been said, failed dismally; failed above all to prevent another war. Margaret MacMillan argues that they have unfairly been made scapegoats for the mistakes of those who came later. They tried to be evenhanded, but their goals - to make defeated countries pay without destroying them, to satisfy impossible nationalist dreams, to prevent the spread of Bolshevism and to establish a world order based on democracy and reason - could not be achieved by diplomacy. Paris 1919 (originally published as Peacemakers) offers a prismatic view of the moment when much of the modern world was first sketched out.
Potsdam: The End of World War II and the Remaking of Europe
The definitive account of the 1945 Potsdam Conference: the historic summit where Truman, Stalin, and Churchill met to determine the fate of post-World War II Europe
After Germany's defeat in World War II, Europe lay in tatters. Millions of refugees were dispersed across the continent. Food and fuel were scarce. Britain was bankrupt, while Germany had been reduced to rubble. In July of 1945, Harry Truman, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin gathered in a quiet suburb of Berlin to negotiate a lasting peace: a peace that would finally put an end to the conflagration that had started in 1914, a peace under which Europe could be rebuilt.
The award-winning historian Michael Neiberg brings the turbulent Potsdam conference to life, vividly capturing the delegates' personalities: Truman, trying to escape from the shadow of Franklin Roosevelt, who had died only months before; Churchill, bombastic and seemingly out of touch; Stalin, cunning and meticulous. For the first week, negotiations progressed relatively smoothly. But when the delegates took a recess for the British elections, Churchill was replaced-both as prime minster and as Britain's representative at the conference-in an unforeseen upset by Clement Attlee, a man Churchill disparagingly described as "a sheep in sheep's clothing." When the conference reconvened, the power dynamic had shifted dramatically, and the delegates struggled to find a new balance. Stalin took advantage of his strong position to demand control of Eastern Europe as recompense for the suffering experienced by the Soviet people and armies. The final resolutions of the Potsdam Conference, notably the division of Germany and the Soviet annexation of Poland, reflected the uneasy geopolitical equilibrium between East and West that would come to dominate the twentieth century.
As Neiberg expertly shows, the delegates arrived at Potsdam determined to learn from the mistakes their predecessors made in the Treaty of Versailles. But, riven by tensions and dramatic debates over how to end the most recent war, they only dimly understood that their discussions of peace were giving birth to a new global conflict.
The Great Game: On Secret Service in High Asia
For nearly a century the two most powerful nations on earth, Victorian Britain and Tsarist Russia, fought a secret war in the lonely passes and deserts of Central Asia. Those engaged in this shadowy struggle called it 'The Great Game', a phrase immortalized by Kipling.
When play first began the two rival empires lay nearly 2,000 miles apart. By the end, some Russian outposts were within 20 miles of India. This classic book tells the story of the Great Game through the exploits of the young officers, both British and Russian, who risked their lives playing it. Disguised as holy men or native horse-traders, they mapped secret passes, gathered intelligence and sought the allegiance of powerful khans. Some never returned. The violent repercussions of the Great Game are still convulsing Central Asia today.
Magnificent Delusions: Pakistan, the United States, and an Epic History of Misunderstanding
The relationship between America and Pakistan is based on mutual incomprehension and always has been. Pakistan -- to American eyes -- has gone from being a quirky irrelevance, to a stabilizing friend, to an essential military ally, to a seedbed of terror. America -- to Pakistani eyes -- has been a guarantee of security, a coldly distant scold, an enthusiastic military enabler, and is now a threat to national security and a source of humiliation.
The countries are not merely at odds. Each believes it can play the other -- with sometimes absurd, sometimes tragic, results. The conventional narrative about the war in Afghanistan, for instance, has revolved around the Soviet invasion in 1979. But President Jimmy Carter signed the first authorization to help the Pakistani-backed mujahedeen covertly on July 3 -- almost six months before the Soviets invaded. Americans were told, and like to believe, that what followed was Charlie Wilson's war of Afghani liberation, with which they remain embroiled to this day. It was not. It was General Zia-ul-Haq's vicious regional power play.
Husain Haqqani has a unique insight into Pakistan, his homeland, and America, where he was ambassador and is now a professor at Boston University. His life has mapped the relationship of the two countries and he has found himself often close to the heart of it, sometimes in very confrontational circumstances, and this has allowed him to write the story of a misbegotten diplomatic love affair, here memorably laid bare.
Blood and Oil: Mohammed bin Salman's Ruthless Quest for Global Power
'If you've ever wondered what would happen if limitless money met limitless power, wonder no longer, it's all here ... Terrifying, disturbing and ghastly' Oliver Bullough, author of Moneyland
'Explosive' The Times
'[A] Crisp page-turner of a book teeming with telling detail ... Splendid' Financial Times
'The fascinating and highly entertaining tale ... Fly-on-the-wall reporting and palace intrigue worthy of Machiavelli' John Carreyrou, author of Bad Blood
Longlisted for the 2020 Financial Times / McKinsey Business Book of the Year
Blood and Oil the explosive untold story of how Mohammed bin Salman and his entourage grabbed power in the Middle East and acquired a network of Western allies - including well-known US bankers, Hollywood figures, and politicians - all eager to help the charming and crafty crown prince.
Through astonishing interviews with powerful insiders, Blood and Oil tells how MBS's cabal played the Saudi economy and capitalised on the omnipotence of feudal power while effectively stamping out dissent, before allegations of his extreme brutality and excess began to slip out. A story of breathtaking dealings that range from Riyadh to London, Paris to America, this is a thrilling and brutal investigation into extreme wealth, one of the world's most decisive and dangerous new leaders, and the bid for Saudi transformation that is reverberating around the world.
The Intelligence Trap: Revolutionise your Thinking and Make Wiser Decisions
How was a brilliant physics professor tricked into carrying 2kg of cocaine across the Argentinian border? Why do doctors misdiagnose 10 to 15% of their patients? Why do Nobel Prize winners spread fake news?
We assume that smarter people are less prone to error. But greater education and expertise can often amplify our mistakes while rendering us blind to our biases. This is the 'intelligence trap'.
Drawing on the latest behavioural science and historical examples from Socrates to Benjamin Franklin, David Robson demonstrates how to apply our intelligence more wisely; identify bias and enhance our 'rationality quotient'; read and regulate our emotions; fine-tune our intuition; navigate ambiguity and uncertainty; and think more flexibly about seemingly intractable problems.
The twenty-first century presents us with complex problems that demand a wiser way of thinking. Whether you are a NASA scientist or a school student, The Intelligence Trap offers a new cognitive toolkit to realise your full potential.
The Undercover Economist
Ever wondered why the gap between rich and poor nations is so great, or why it's so difficult to get a foot on the property ladder, or where the banks went wrong? This book offers the hidden story behind these and other forces that shape our day-to-day lives, often without our knowing it.
Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves
Shortlisted for the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-fiction 2011.
Life is on the up.
We are wealthier, healthier, happier, kinder, cleaner, more peaceful, more equal and longer-lived than any previous generation. Thanks to the unique human habits of exchange and specialisation, our species has found innovative solutions to every obstacle it has faced so far.
In ‘The Rational Optimist’, acclaimed science writer Matt Ridley comprehensively refutes the doom-mongers of our time, and reaches back into the past to give a rational explanation for why we can – and will – overcome the challenges of the future, such as climate change and the population boom.
Bold and controversial, it is a brilliantly confident assertion that the 21st century will be the best for humankind yet.
Sobre la brevedad de la vida
A lo largo de los 20 capítulos que componen el diálogo Sobre la brevedad de la vida, en el que conversa con su amigo Paulino, Séneca realiza un optimista alegato en favor del disfrute de la vida. Para Séneca, la vida es corta y desgraciada solo si no somos capaces de exprimir al máximo sus días. Si los pasamos aguardando, con esperanza o con temor, lo que haya de venir, descubriremos demasiado tarde que la hemos desaprovechado. Si, por el contrario, acomodamos el presente a lo que podemos desear de él, y no nos extraviamos en propósitos superfluos, la vida será duradera, mas no tediosa; será agradable y feliz, aunque tal vez no sea rentable.
The Iran Wars: Spy Games, Bank Battles, and the Secret Deals That Reshaped the Middle East
From Qasem Soleimani to the nuclear deal, a deeply reported exploration of Iran’s decades-long power struggle with the United States—in the tradition of Steve Coll’s Ghost Wars and Lawrence Wright’s The Looming Tower
“A front-row view of the spy games, assassinations, political intrigue and high-stakes diplomacy that have defined relations with one of America’s most cunning and dangerous foes.”—Joby Warrick, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS
For more than a decade, the United States has been engaged in a war with Iran as momentous as any other in the Middle East—a war all the more significant as it has largely been hidden from public view. Through a combination of economic sanctions, global diplomacy, and intelligence work, successive U.S. administrations have struggled to contain Iran’s aspirations to become a nuclear power and dominate the region—what many view as the most serious threat to peace in the Middle East. Meanwhile, Iran has used regional instability to its advantage to undermine America’s interests. The Iran Wars is an absorbing account of a battle waged on many levels—military, financial, and covert.
Jay Solomon’s book is the product of extensive in-depth reporting and interviews with all the key players in the conflict—from high-ranking Iranian officials to Secretary of State John Kerry and his negotiating team. With a reporter’s masterly investigative eye and the narrative dexterity of a great historian, Solomon shows how Iran’s nuclear development went unnoticed for years by the international community only to become its top security concern. He catalogs the blunders of both the Bush and Obama administrations as they grappled with how to engage Iran, producing a series of both carrots and sticks. And he takes us inside the hotel suites where the 2015 nuclear agreement was negotiated, offering a frank assessment of the uncertain future of the U.S.-Iran relationship.
El enigma cuántico
Tras derrumbarse la imagen clásica del mundo debido a los hallazgos de la mecánica cuántica, los físicos han propuesto una amplia gama de visiones del universo... Pero en la práctica ninguna es consistente, pese a la mayor o menor exactitud de las predicciones basadas en sus teorías y modelos. La situación ha deparado todo un “mercado de realidades”.
Wolfgang Smith, reputado científico, nos brinda en este libro el marco idóneo para descubrir la auténtica cosmovisión a la que apunta la mecánica cuántica, logrando hacerla al mismo tiempo enteramente comprensible. Desgrana cómo todas esas cosmovisiones previas están aquejadas de cierto “cartesianismo residual” y, con ello, la teoría cuántica empieza a cobrar más sentido que nunca. Como demuestra el autor, ahora es posible, por vez primera, integrar los avances de la física cuántica en una visión del mundo que no es forzada sino natural, y que concuerda con las intuiciones permanentes de la Humanidad. Al dominar ambos terrenos merced a su asombrosa erudición, este trabajo provee una comprensión trascendente de la física moderna que es el contrapeso a tantos otros que tratan de interpretar las enseñanzas milenarias de Oriente y Occidente desde postulados que se han revelado erróneos.
Quienes se encuentren abrumados y desamparados por el reduccionismo, el cientifismo y las pretensiones desmedidas de una ciencia puramente cuantitativa, y que al mismo tiempo sean conscientes de los logros y las ambigüedades de la mecánica cuántica, sacarán provecho de este trabajo de excepcional significado.
El bosón de Higgs no te va a hacer la cama: La física como nunca te la han contado
Viajes en el tiempo, agujeros negros, motores de antimateria, aceleración del universo… La física moderna suena a película, pero es ciencia, de la de verdad verdadera, la que nos cuenta una historia fascinante de descubrimientos y sueños cumplidos, de luchas y disputas, de pasión por comprender la naturaleza.
Este divertido libro te ayudará a entender de una vez por todas lo que nos rodea, desde lo más pequeño a lo más grande, y a saber que el bosón de Higgs no te va a hacer la cama, ¡ni aunque le insistas!
El bosón de Higgs no te va a hacer la cama
El hombre en busca de sentido
"El hombre en busca de sentido" es el estremecedor relato en el que Viktor Frankl nos narra su experiencia en los campos de concentración.
Durante todos esos años de sufrimiento, sintió en su propio ser lo que significaba una existencia desnuda, absolutamente desprovista de todo, salvo de la existencia misma. Él, que todo lo había perdido, que padeció hambre, frío y brutalidades, que tantas veces estuvo a punto de ser ejecutado, pudo reconocer que, pese a todo, la vida es digna de ser vivida y que la libertad interior y la dignidad humana son indestructibles. En su condición de psiquiatra y prisionero, Frankl reflexiona con palabras de sorprendente esperanza sobre la capacidad humana de trascender las dificultades y descubrir una verdad profunda que nos orienta y da sentido a nuestras vidas.
La logoterapia, método psicoterapéutico creado por el propio Frankl, se centra precisamente en el sentido de la existencia y en la búsqueda de ese sentido por parte del hombre, que asume la responsabilidad ante sí mismo, ante los demás y ante la vida. ¿Qué espera la vida de nosotros?
El hombre en busca de sentido es mucho más que el testimonio de un psiquiatra sobre los hechos y los acontecimientos vividos en un campo de concentración, es una lección existencial. Traducido a medio centenar de idiomas, se han vendido millones de ejemplares en todo el mundo. Según la Library of Congress de Washington, es uno de los diez libros de mayor influencia en Estados Unidos.
The Book of Why: The New Science of Cause and Effect
A Turing Award-winning computer scientist and statistician shows how understanding causality has revolutionized science and will revolutionize artificial intelligence
"Correlation is not causation." This mantra, chanted by scientists for more than a century, has led to a virtual prohibition on causal talk. Today, that taboo is dead. The causal revolution, instigated by Judea Pearl and his colleagues, has cut through a century of confusion and established causality -- the study of cause and effect -- on a firm scientific basis. His work explains how we can know easy things, like whether it was rain or a sprinkler that made a sidewalk wet; and how to answer hard questions, like whether a drug cured an illness. Pearl's work enables us to know not just whether one thing causes another: it lets us explore the world that is and the worlds that could have been. It shows us the essence of human thought and key to artificial intelligence. Anyone who wants to understand either needs The Book of Why.
Radical Candor: How to Get What You Want by Saying What You Mean
A practical guide to those bewildered or exhausted by management, written for bosses and those who manage bosses. Drawing on years of first-hand experience, Radical Candor shows you how to be successful while retaining your integrity and humanity. From Kim Scott, former manager at Google and Apple, and CEO coach to Silicon Valley.
'Reading Radical Candor will help you build, lead, and inspire teams to do the best work of their lives.' – Sheryl Sandberg, author of Lean In
If you don't have anything nice to say then don't say anything at all . . . right?
While this advice may work for home life, as Kim Scott has seen first hand, it is a disaster when adopted by managers in the work place.
Scott earned her stripes as a highly successful manager at Google before moving to Apple where she developed a class on optimal management. Radical Candor draws directly on her experiences at these cutting edge companies to reveal a new approach to effective management that delivers huge success by inspiring teams to work better together by embracing fierce conversations.
Radical Candor is the sweet spot between managers who are obnoxiously aggressive on the one side and ruinously empathetic on the other. It is about providing guidance, which involves a mix of praise as well as criticism – delivered to produce better results and help your employees develop their skills and increase success.
Great bosses have a strong relationship with their employees, and Scott has identified three simple principles for building better relationships with your employees: make it personal, get stuff done, and understand why it matters.
Radical Candor is the perfect handbook for those who are looking to find meaning in their job and create an environment where people love both their work and their colleagues, and are motivated to strive to ever greater success.
Featuring a new preface, afterword and Radically Candid Performance Review Bonus Chapter, the fully revised & updated edition of Radical Candor is packed with even more guidance to help you improve your relationships at work.
Obvious Adams: The Story of a Successful Business Man
Published in 1916, this story is over a hundred years old, yet its message is just as relevant today as it was in 1916. Perhaps even more so.Why? Because never in the history of our society have we had greater access to information yet at the same time we’ve never been more deficient in common sense.Advertising legend David Ogilvy believed this book changed his life and was so passionate about its message that he had his employees read it every year.I’ve read the book a dozen times, and each time I pick up a new insight or piece of wisdom from it. It’s less a book about advertising, or even about Adams himself, as much as it’s a book about the power of mindset.I encourage you to read and re-read this book a dozen times, too. I can realistically promise you that you’ll glean some new wisdom from Obvious Adams each time you re-read it.