Throughout February’24 I have added 15 books to my library. Hopefully, you can also find 1 or 2 for your own library!
The only rules are:
the book had to be recommended by someone directly or by an article I have read or podcast I have listened.
the book should be less than €5 (usually via Kindle -promotions- or 2nd hand).
Silent Spring by Rachel Carson
Although they will probably always be less celebrated than wars, marches, riots, or stormy political campaigns, books have at times been the most powerful influencer of social change in American life. Thomas Paine's Common Sense galvanized radical sentiment in the early days of the Revolution; Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe roused the North's antipathy to slavery in the decade leading up to the Civil War; and Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, which in 1962 exposed the hazards of the pesticide DDT, eloquently questioned humanity's faith in technological progress and helped set the stage for the environmental movement. Carson, a renowned nature author and a former marine biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, or FWS, was uniquely equipped to create so startling and inflammatory a book. A native of rural Pennsylvania, she had grown up with an enthusiasm for nature matched only by her love of writing and poetry. The educational brochures she wrote for FWS, as well as her published books and magazine articles, were characterized by meticulous research and a poetic evocation of her subject.
An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth: What Going to Space Taught Me About Ingenuity, Determination, and Being Prepared for Anything by Chris Hadfield
Colonel Chris Hadfield has spent decades training as an astronaut and has logged nearly 4000 hours in space. During this time he has broken into a Space Station with a Swiss army knife, disposed of a live snake while piloting a plane, and been temporarily blinded while clinging to the exterior of an orbiting spacecraft. The secret to Col. Hadfield's success-and survival-is an unconventional philosophy he learned at NASA: prepare for the worst- and enjoy every moment of it.
In An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth, Col. Hadfield takes readers deep into his years of training and space exploration to show how to make the impossible possible. Through eye-opening, entertaining stories filled with the adrenaline of launch, the mesmerizing wonder of spacewalks, and the measured, calm responses mandated by crises, he explains how conventional wisdom can get in the way of achievement — and happiness. His own extraordinary education in space has taught him some counterintuitive lessons: don't visualize success, do care what others think, and always sweat the small stuff.
You might never be able to build a robot, pilot a spacecraft, make a music video or perform basic surgery in zero gravity like Col. Hadfield. But his vivid and refreshing insights will teach you how to think like an astronaut, and will change, completely, the way you view life on Earth — especially your own.
The Double Helix by James Watson
The story of the most significant biological breakthrough of the century - the discovery of the structure of DNA.
'It is a strange model and embodies several unusual features. However, since DNA is an unusual substance, we are not hesitant in being bold'
By elucidating the structure of DNA, the molecule underlying all life, Francis Crick and James Watson revolutionised biochemistry. At the time, Watson was only 24. His uncompromisingly honest account of those heady days lifts the lid on the real world of great scientists, with their very human faults and foibles, their petty rivalries and driving ambition. Above all, he captures the extraordinary excitement of their desperate efforts to beat their rivals at King's College to the solution to one of the great enigmas of the life sciences.
Economics for Real People: An Introduction to the Austrian School by Gene Callahan
This is the second edition of the fun and fascinating guide to the main ideas of the Austrian School of economics: Economics for Real People, written in sparkling prose especially for the non-economist. Gene Callahan shows that good economics isn't about government planning or statistical models. It's about human beings and the choices they make in the real world.
This may be the most important book of its kind since Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson. Though written for the beginner, it has been justly praised by scholars too, including Israel Kirzner, Walter Block, and Peter Boettke.
Israel M. Kirzner (New York University): "Even a cursory examination of this book is sufficient to impress the reader that we have here a remarkably well-written exposition for the layman of the highlights of Austrian Economics."
Peter J. Boettke (George Mason University): "Written in a jargon-less and engaging style, Callahan's work provides the most comprehensive introduction to modern Austrian economics currently available to the intelligent layman."
Walter Block (Loyola University, New Orleans): "I don't toss around compliments like this lightly, but the passion, eloquence and sheer witty writing style of this author is also reminiscent of Rothbard. I plan to use it in all of my future intro courses."
Barron's calls Economics for Real People "a terrific new book on economic theory." "If I were teaching an introductory course in economics," writes Gene Epstein (December 2, 2002), "I'd assign Gene Callahan's Economics for Real People: An Introduction to the Austrian School. I also commend it to folks in search of a good read on the joys of economic insight."
Economics for Real People: An Introduction to the Austrian School
Nature Girl by Carl Hiaasen
Passionate and willful Honey Santana is taking rude, gullible telemarketer Boyd Shreave and his less than enthusiastic mistress, Eugenie Fonda, into the mangroves of Florida’s Ten Thousand Islands for a gentle lesson in humility. What Honey doesn’t know is that she’s being followed by her obsessed former employer, Piejack, and her still-smitten ex-husband, Perry, with their protective and wise-beyond-his-years twelve-year-old son, Fry. And when they all arrive on Dismal Key, they don’t know the island is occupied by Sammy Tigertail, a failed alligator wrestler trying like hell to be left alone despite the Florida State coed clinging to his side. South Florida has never been quite so hilarious as it is in this outrageous tale of one woman’s single-handed quest to eradicate greed and enforce civility in her corner of the Sunshine State.
Carry On, Jeeves, The Inimitable Jeeves and Right Ho, Jeeves - THREE P.G. Wodehouse Classics! by P.G. Wodehouse
P.G. Wodehouse, the master of British humor, produced dozens of books and hundreds of short stories in his long and prolific career. But none of his creations has quite captured the world's imagination as much as his bumbling, empty-headed, man-about-town Bertie Wooster and Bertie's faithful, knight-in-shining tuxedo Jeeves.
Collected here are three of Wodehouse's most beloved "Jeeves and Wooster" tales - including ten short stories from the anthology "Carry On, Jeeves," as well as the complete novels "The Inimitable Jeeves" and "Right Ho, Jeeves" - each a master class in comedic writing. ("Carry On, Jeeves" also features the only Wooster and Jeeves story narrated by Jeeves himself!)
Along with Jeeves and Bertie, we are introduced to an entire cast of beloved Wodehouse characters: Madeline Bassett, Bingo Little, James "Corky" Corcoran, Honoria Glossop, Rockmetteller Todd and the terrifying and bombastic Aunt Agatha.
Carry On, Jeeves, The Inimitable Jeeves and Right Ho, Jeeves - THREE P.G. Wodehouse Classics!
The (Mis)Behaviour of Markets: A Fractal View of Risk, Ruin and Reward by Benoit B. Mandelbrot
From the world-famous inventor of fractal geometry, a revolutionary new theory that turns on its head our understanding of how markets work. Fractal geometry is the mathematics of roughness: how to reduce the outline of a jagged leaf, a rocky coastline or static in a computer connection to a few simple mathematical properties - to make the complex simple. With his fractal tools, Benoit Mandelbrot has got to the bottom of how financial markets really work. He finds they have a shifting sense of time, a unique dimension and a wild kind of behaviour that makes them volatile, dangerous - and also beautiful. In Mandelbrot's fractal models, the complex gyrations of IBM's stock price, the FTSE 100, cotton trading and exchange rates can be reduced to straightforward formulae that yield a much more accurate description of the risks involved.
The (Mis)Behaviour of Markets: A Fractal View of Risk, Ruin and Reward
No Filter: The Inside Story of Instagram by Sarah Frier
Winner of the 2020 Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award * Finalist for SABEW'S Inaugural Best in Business Book Award
In this “sequel to The Social Network” (The New York Times), award-winning reporter Sarah Frier reveals the never-before-told story of how Instagram became the most culturally defining app of the decade.
“The most enrapturing book about Silicon Valley drama since Hatching Twitter” (Fortune), No Filter “pairs phenomenal in-depth reporting with explosive storytelling that gets to the heart of how Instagram has shaped our lives, whether you use the app or not” (The New York Times).
In 2010, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger released a photo-sharing app called Instagram, with one simple but irresistible feature: it would make anything you captured look more beautiful. The cofounders cultivated a community of photographers and artisans around the app, and it quickly went mainstream. In less than two years, it caught Facebook’s attention: Mark Zuckerberg bought the company for a historic $1 billion when Instagram had only thirteen employees.
That might have been the end of a classic success story. But the cofounders stayed on, trying to maintain Instagram’s beauty, brand, and cachet, considering their app a separate company within the social networking giant. They urged their employees to make changes only when necessary, resisting Facebook’s grow-at-all-costs philosophy in favor of a strategy that highlighted creativity and celebrity. Just as Instagram was about to reach a billion users, Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg—once supportive of the founders’ autonomy—began to feel threatened by Instagram’s success.
Frier draws on unprecedented access—from the founders of Instagram, as well as employees, executives, and competitors; Anna Wintour of Vogue; Kris Jenner of the Kardashian-Jenner empire; and a plethora of influencers worldwide—to show how Instagram has fundamentally changed the way we show, eat, travel, and communicate, all while fighting to preserve the values which contributed to the company’s success. “Deeply reported and beautifully written” (Nick Bilton, Vanity Fair), No Filter examines how Instagram’s dominance acts as lens into our society today, highlighting our fraught relationship with technology, our desire for perfection, and the battle within tech for its most valuable commodity: our attention.
No Filter: The Inside Story of Instagram
Da Vinci's Ghost: Genius, Obsession, and How Leonardo Created the World in His Own Image by Toby Lester
In Da Vinci's Ghost, critically acclaimed historian Toby Lester tells the story of the world’s most iconic image, the Vitruvian Man, and sheds surprising new light on the artistry and scholarship of Leonardo da Vinci, one of history’s most fascinating figures.
Deftly weaving together art, architecture, history, theology, and much else, Da Vinci's Ghost is a first-rate intellectual enchantment.”—Charles Mann, author of 1493
Da Vinci didn’t summon Vitruvian Man out of thin air. He was inspired by the idea originally formulated by the Roman architect Vitruvius, who suggested that the human body could be made to fit inside a circle, long associated with the divine, and a square, related to the earthly and secular. To place a man inside those shapes was to imply that the human body could indeed be a blueprint for the workings of the universe. Da Vinci elevated Vitruvius’ idea to exhilarating heights when he set out to do something unprecedented, if the human body truly reflected the cosmos, he reasoned, then studying its anatomy more thoroughly than had ever been attempted before—peering deep into body and soul—might grant him an almost godlike perspective on the makeup of the world.
Written with the same narrative flair and intellectual sweep as Lester’s award-winning first book, the “almost unbearably thrilling” (Simon Winchester) Fourth Part of the World, and beautifully illustrated with Da Vinci's drawings, Da Vinci’s Ghost follows Da Vinci on his journey to understanding the secrets of the Vitruvian man. It captures a pivotal time in Western history when the Middle Ages were giving way to the Renaissance, when art, science, and philosophy were rapidly converging, and when it seemed possible that a single human being might embody—and even understand—the nature of the universe.
Da Vinci's Ghost: Genius, Obsession, and How Leonardo Created the World in His Own Image
The Value of Science: Essential Writings of Henri Poincare by Henri Poincare
More than any other writer of the twentieth century, Henri Poincaré brought the elegant, but often complicated, ideas about science and mathematics to the general reader. A genius who throughout his life solved complex mathematical calculations in his head, and a writer gifted with an inimitable style, Poincaré rose to the challenge of interpreting the philosophy of science to scientists and nonscientists alike. His lucid and welcoming prose made him the Carl Sagan of his time. This volume collects his three most important books: Science and Hypothesis (1903); The Value of Science (1905); and Science and Method (1908).
The Value of Science: Essential Writings of Henri Poincare
The Lumumba Plot: The Secret History of the CIA and a Cold War Assassination by Stuart A. Reid
The New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice • A spellbinding work of history that reads like a Cold War spy thriller—about the U.S.-sanctioned plot to assassinate the democratically elected leader of the newly independent Congo
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New Yorker, The Economist, Financial Times
“This is one of the best books I have read in years . . . gripping, full of colorful characters, and strange plot twists.” —Fareed Zakaria, CNN host
It was supposed to be a moment of great optimism, a cause for jubilation. The Congo was at last being set free from Belgium—one of seventeen countries to gain independence in 1960 from ruling European powers. At the helm as prime minister was charismatic nationalist Patrice Lumumba. Just days after the handover, however, the Congo’s new army mutinied, Belgian forces intervened, and Lumumba turned to the United Nations for help in saving his newborn nation from what the press was already calling “the Congo crisis.” Dag Hammarskjöld, the tidy Swede serving as UN secretary-general, quickly arranged the organization’s biggest peacekeeping mission in history. But chaos was still spreading. Frustrated with the fecklessness of the UN and spurned by the United States, Lumumba then approached the Soviets for help—an appeal that set off alarm bells at the CIA. To forestall the spread of Communism in Africa, the CIA sent word to its station chief in the Congo, Larry Devlin: Lumumba had to go.
Within a year, everything would unravel. The CIA plot to murder Lumumba would fizzle out, but he would be deposed in a CIA-backed coup, transferred to enemy territory in a CIA-approved operation, and shot dead by Congolese assassins. Hammarskjöld, too, would die, in a mysterious plane crash en route to negotiate a cease-fire with the Congo’s rebellious southeast. And a young, ambitious military officer named Joseph Mobutu, who had once sworn fealty to Lumumba, would seize power with U.S. help and misrule the country for more than three decades. For the Congolese people, the events of 1960–61 represented the opening chapter of a long horror story. For the U.S. government, however, they provided a playbook for future interventions.
The Lumumba Plot: The Secret History of the CIA and a Cold War Assassination
A Treatise on Probability by John Maynard Keynes
In 'A Treatise on Probability,' the renowned philosopher and mathematician John Maynard Keynes takes readers on a profound exploration of probability theory, logic, and epistemology.
This seminal work not only delves into the mathematical foundations of probability but also examines its philosophical and practical implications. Keynes' intellectual rigor and insights provide a comprehensive view of the world of probabilities.
This book is essential reading for those interested in the intersection of mathematics and philosophy. Keynes' exploration of the nature of probability and its role in our understanding of the world remains a classic in the field. Whether you're a mathematician, philosopher, or simply curious about the principles that govern our thinking and decision-making, 'A Treatise on Probability' offers a deep and timeless examination of the topic.
The Economic Consequences of the Peace by John Maynard Keynes
"John Maynard Keynes's timeless classic offers a profound exploration of the economic turbulence unleashed by the Treaty of Versailles. His sharp analysis and prescient warnings about the pitfalls of punitive reparations and unsustainable economic policies still echo through history."
The Economic Consequences of the Peace
How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking by Sönke Ahrens
This is the second, revised and expanded edition. The first edition was published under the slightly longer title "How to Take Smart Notes. One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking - for Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers".
The key to good and efficient writing lies in the intelligent organisation of ideas and notes. This book helps students, academics and other knowledge workers to get more done, write intelligent texts and learn for the long run. It teaches you how to take smart notes and ensure they bring you and your projects forward.
The Take Smart Notes principle is based on established psychological insight and draws from a tried and tested note-taking technique: the Zettelkasten. This is the first comprehensive guide and description of this system in English, and not only does it explain how it works, but also why. It suits students and academics in the social sciences and humanities, nonfiction writers and others who are in the business of reading, thinking and writing.
Instead of wasting your time searching for your notes, quotes or references, you can focus on what really counts: thinking, understanding and developing new ideas in writing.
Dr. Sönke Ahrens is a writer and researcher in the field of education and social science. He is the author of the award-winning book “Experiment and Exploration: Forms of World Disclosure” (Springer).
How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking
El libro mamut del ajedrez by Graham Burgess
Nueva característica: ¡cada diagrama es también un enlace a un tablero de análisis de lichess!
Un libro que pueda consultar durante muchos años, un libro que no dejará de serle útil cuando se convierta en un jugador experimentado, que siempre le abrirá sus puertas con ejercicios de mate que no requieren más que el conocimiento de las reglas.
Esta cuarta edición contiene una importante revisión y actualización del contenido hasta el día de hoy. La mayoría de los ejemplos proceden del siglo XXI, y muchos lo son de 2020 o 2021. Aunque el número total de ejemplos es algo menor que en anteriores ediciones, se han examinado en mayor profundidad, extrayendo de cada uno muchos aspectos instructivos. Esto le concede al libro una cualidad holística: encontrará lecciones sobre todos los aspectos del ajedrez, sobre todo estrategia, a todo lo largo del libro, aunque cada sección se centra especialmente en su tema esencial.
Dos nuevos capítulos pasan revista a dos áreas importantes de la actividad ajedrecística, que quedan un tanto al margen del juego ante el tablero: los estudios de finales y los problemas. Aunque ambos son campos para especialistas, hay mucho contenido en ambos accesible a los jugadores de todos los niveles.
El nuevo material incluye algunas de las mejores partidas del ajedrez internacional jugadas después de que el libro se publicase por primera vez.