What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions

Ofer Gal - Baroque Science. A highly academic history of the scientific revolution, not the most readable book. It focused quite a bit on mathematization, especially in optics (and Kepler's optics revolution in particular), and also in observation via instrumentation like telescopes and microscopes. Paul Nahin - The Logician and the Engineer. About Boole and Shannon's work; I had already learned the material so i skimmed part of it and returned it to the library. Ian Mortimer - The time traveler's guide to medieval england. Talks about what daily life was like for different social classes in 14th century England eg towns & cities, food, clothes, housing, employment, travel etc. I got about halfway through and lost interest in the subject matter.…

Randallstown Monroe's "what if?" From the creator of xkcd. It's a fun and insightful read on how much goes and analyzes the hypothetical questions

Last year I gave myself a Zuckerberg-style goal to read a book every two weeks. It started well, but some months were harder than others (usually when the book wasn't very good, so I would switch to podcasts for a few weeks, before getting back on track). Here's an unordered list of the best: [BUSINESS / SELF-IMPROVEMENT] - "Work Rules!" - about Google's culture and values - "Search Inside Yourself" - about mindfulness, meditation, and the impact on your life. - "What got you here won't get you there" - Liked a lot more than I expected. - "Re-read Innovator's Dilemma" - a great classic; never gets old. - "How will you measure your life" - from the same author. Also excellent. - "The Best Service is No Service" - good overview on why Amazon's customer service is so good - "Crucial Conversations" - half is common sense; half is good tips to practice everyday. [PROGRAMMING] - "Fluent Python" - was afraid it'd be too basic, but not really. Enjoyed it a lot. - "Think Complexity" - about algorithm complexity, data structures, etc. Great read. - "Python Data Science Handbook" - meh. - "Fundamentals of Deep Learning" - good intro. Helped me solidify some concepts from Andrew Ng's ML course…

"The Magicians", "The Magician King", "The Magician's Land" - Lev Grossman. 4/5 "Inside Job" - Connie Willis. 4/5 "Norwegian Wood (Tokio Blues)" - Haruki Murakami. 4/5 "Old Man's War" - John Scalzi. 5/5 "Persepolis" - Marjane Satrapi. 5/5 Non fiction: "The 10,000 year explosion" about recent evolution. 3/5 ton of evidence for their thesis, but lacks predictions. "What if" well known by HN. 5/5 "The nurture assumption" about education, 2/5. Maybe a 4/5 when it was published, but now their ideas are in the water supply. "The man who mistook his wife for a hat", by Oliver Sacks 4/5. Several stories about neurological deficits.