| Inventions of the Great War |
audio |
pdf/txt |
- interesting book full of ww1 know-how
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claims the best submarine-detection techniques used in the war are
still classified at the time of writing, and are thus missing
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the tone predictably follows the maxim about the winners writing history,
and is slightly dismissive of german innovations
- in the public domain
|
1919 |
| The Right Way to Do Wrong |
audio |
pdf/txt |
- reminders that most crime doesn't pay much
- detailed techniques of professional criminals of the era
- in the public domain
|
1906 |
| A German Deserter's War Experience |
audio |
online |
- invasion of Belgium
- battle of the Marne
- examples of casual kindness and casual cruelty perpetrated by both soldiers and civilians
- overall seems more realistic than most accounts of ww1
- in the public domain
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1917 |
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| Panic: The Story of Modern Financial Insanity |
audio |
text |
- befores and afters of financial panics since the 1980s
- describes moods and general assumptions at the time of each upheaval
|
2009 |
| The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements |
audio |
text |
- explicitly generalizes to both religious and political ideologies
- key behavior of true believers is independent of specific dogmas
- several insights into the dynamics of intense personal belief
- several insights into the dynamics of group behavior
- many of the smaller points are detabable
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followers as potentially exchangeable/convertable among competing
movements, especially those which are most violently opposed to each
other; arguably not always true empirically, but gives interesting
examples in favor of this point
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repeatedly hits too close home for many people: plenty could easily
despise this book out of sheer denial
-
Mr. Eisenhower
and Mrs. Rodham-Clinton
have both recommended the book to staff and collaborators, deeming it
a strategically valuable guide
|
1951 |
| The Lessons of History |
audio |
text |
- philosophical points about history
- tries to reach very high-level insights and stay general
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the goal of equality in society is doomed to biological/ecosystem
failure: the authors get it, which is a rare achievement
|
1968 |
| The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature |
audio |
text |
evolution keeps requiring more to stand out, so to speak
the sexes as nothing more than an evolved truce (self-enforced physical
separation in different chromosomes) among gene groups after a long and
extremely wasteful competition
rat-race-like dynamics apply not just to biological evolution, but also
to business, culture, and society
|
1993 |
| The Selfish Gene |
audio |
text |
much of human/animal behavior has ultimately biomolecular roots,
despite plenty of naysayers
author seems commited to honesty, even to the point of coming at odds with
his own political beliefs
there is no conscious manipulation of living creatures, since nucleotide
chains (genes) have no conscious desires: all such talk is a metaphor
|
1976 |
| Fooled by Randomness |
audio |
text |
- luck plays a greater role in life than commonly acknowledged
- we're not wired to intuitively tell luck (good or bad) from skill
|
2001 |
| The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable |
audio |
text |
- the non-linear dynamics of society
- luck is like a great multiplier of talent
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claims a few rare events have disproportionate impact on history and
societies, compared to much commoner and more predictable ones
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the analogy of Mediocristan vs. Extremistan: in the first, the mean
is a useful summary, while in the latter it's a meaningless metric
due to its highly skewed winner-take-all nature
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2007 |
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