Unbroken
On a May afternoon in 1943, an Army Air Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean and disappeared, leaving only a spray of debris and a slick of oil, gasoline, and blood. Then, on the ocean surface, a face appeared. It was that of a young lieutenant, the plane’s bombardier, who was struggling to a life raft and pulling himself aboard. So began one of the most extraordinary odysseys of the Second World War. The lieutenant’s name was Louis Zamperini. In boyhood, he’d been a cunning and incorrigible delinquent, breaking into houses, brawling, and fleeing his home to ride the rails. As a teenager, he had channeled his defiance into running, discovering a prodigious talent that had carried him to the Berlin Olympics and within sight of the four-minute mile. But when war had come, the athlete had become an airman, embarking on a journey that led to his doomed flight, a tiny raft, and a drift into the unknown. Ahead of Zamperini lay thousands of miles of open ocean, leaping sharks, a foundering raft, thirst and starvation, enemy aircraft, and, beyond, a trial even greater. Driven to the limits of endurance, Zamperini would answer desperation with ingenuity; suffering with hope, resolve, and humor; brutality with rebellion. His fate, whether triumph or tragedy, would be suspended on the fraying wire of his will.
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What Hacker News says
- list of (most of) the books mentioned in this thread so far. I tried reading every comment but used chatGPT instead.
1. The Big Rich - Texas oil boom.
2. Barbarians at the Gate - Private equity origins.
3. Masters of Doom - John Carmack and Id Software.
4. Einstein by Walter Isaacson - Einstein's discoveries.
5. Houdini!!! - The escape artist and magician.
6. The Double Helix - DNA discovery.
7. Stress Test by Tim Geithner - Financial crisis.
8. Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl - Concentration camp survival.
9. The Chariots of Apollo - NASA's space program.
10. Across the Airless Wilds by Earl Swift - Development of the moon buggy.
11. Apollo: The Race to the Moon by Charles Murray and Catherine Bly Cox - Apollo missions.
12. The Secret Life of Groceries by Benjamin Lorr - Food supply chains.
13. The Prize by Daniel Yergin - Oil industry evolution.
14. Shadow Divers by Robert Kurson - Ambitious wreck divers.
15. The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes - Manhattan Project.
16. American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin - Robert Oppenheimer.
17. Conquistador by Buddy Levy - Hernán Cortés and the Aztecs.
18. Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner - Water infrastructure in the American West.
19. The Wright Brothers by David McCullough - The invention of flight.
20. Walt Disney by Neal Gabler - Vision and innovation in entertainment.
21. Tuxedo Park by Jennet Conant - Invention of radar.
22. Insisting on the Impossible - Edwin Land and instant photography.
23. The Logic of Failure - Understanding and avoiding failure.
24. The Big Short by Michael Lewis - 2008 financial crisis.
25. The Box by Marc Levinson - Shipping container revolution.
26. Latitude by Nicholas Crane - Cartography innovations.
27. When the Heavens Went on Sale by Ashlee Vance - Space startups.
28. The Founders by Jimmy Soni - PayPal's early days.
29. The Perfectionists by Simon Winchester - Precision engineering.
30. The Little Engine That Could - Children's classic.
31. Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell - Success mechanics.
32. Shoe Dog by Phil Knight - Founding of Nike.
33. Black Hole Blues by Janna Levin - Building LIGO.
34. Freedom’s Forge - WWII industry mobilization.
35. Empires of Light by Jill Jonnes - Electrification by Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse.
36. The Path Between the Seas by David McCullough - Panama Canal construction.
37. Annapurna by Maurice Herzog - Climbing a Himalayan peak.
38. Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder - Data General engineers.
39. Showstopper by G. Pascal Zachary - Development of Windows NT.
40. Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand - WWII survival.
41. The Measure of All Things by Ken Alder - Defining the meter.
42. The Cuckoo’s Egg by Clifford Stoll - Tracking a hacker.
43. The Man Who Knew Infinity by Robert Kanigel - Srinivasa Ramanujan.
44. The Power Broker by Robert Caro - Robert Moses and New York infrastructure.
45. How Big Things Get Done - Large-scale project execution.
46. Dealers of Lightning by Michael A. Hiltzik - Xerox PARC.
47. Built by Roma Agrawal - Civil engineering insights.
48. The Will to Keep Winning by Daigo Umehara - Competitive gaming.
49. Absolute Zero and the Conquest of Cold - Low-temperature physics.
50. Carrying the Fire by Michael Collins - Apollo 11.
- Only scratching the surface here, but there are 2 aspects of worst: there is physical comfort and mental/emotional comfort. Both are important, but in many ways mental/emotional comfort is more important.
Some things in life WILL happen, such as the death of a loved one. Such things are very difficult to bear, but some people adjust easier than others. There are things that MAY happen to you, such as you experiencing divorce, loss of job, failing health, house burns down, etc.
There are things that may happen to a region, most notably very severe weather such as hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, volcanoes, etc. Additionally, there are human-caused things such as riots, spikes in crime, terror attacks, etc. There are things that can happen to you personally too.
My thinking is that you have to assess your own situation and think about the calamities most likely to affect you. Then think about what you can and can't do to mitigate the risks and discomfort associated with them.
One of the things that can be very beneficial is to go tent camping a couple of times a year. This is especially enlightening for those that have never done it. You will quickly learn how to make yourself less uncomfortable in the absence of electricity and comforts of home. Hopefully, you pick up a little self confidence to handle the situation.
Educate yourself on practical steps, skills, and techniques that you might apply to situations most likely to impact you (and your area). Practice them occasionally.
Some people may panic with loss of electricity for an extended period of time. It can be helpful to remind yourself that humanity existed for thousands of years without any electricity. However, if you're completely dependent on it and have no confidence to adapt, that reminder may not be helpful in the moment.
There's an incredible book about personal survival and the will to survive. It's "Unbroken" by Laura Hillenbrand and it tells the true story about a WWII B-24 bomber crew that went down in the Pacific and how one crewman (the focus of the book) survives being in the water for an incredibly long duration (something like 43 days) and is captured by the Japanese and then his survival as a POW. It's kind of a long book, but it's immensely powerful.
Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, faith can be a huge asset to you in troubled times. However, don't wait for the troubled times to start before you start cultivating your faith. An established and well-practiced faith can really help to pull through some of the most difficult situations.
- "Unbroken" by Laura Hillenbrand
- Unbroken - Laura Hillenbrand. Story of human grit and survival in the Pacific WWII theater that I hadn't heard of before. I was blown away by the story, and about what I learned about the War that I didn't already know.
Creativity Inc. Re-read it this year, re-inspired.
The Outsider - Stephen King. Well written, engrossing but a typical Stephen King novel
Shoe Dog - Phil Knight. Story of Nike. Phenomenal.
Bad blood - John Carreyrou. Story of Theranos. Absolutely crazy read.
7 Powers: The Foundations of Business Strategy - Hamilton Helmer. Good insights on strategy
- How We Got to Now, Steven Johnson. Walks you through a half dozen foundational inventions and the process through which they came to be. Fascinating to see what the inventors were trying to solve vs. how the world ended up applying their technology.
Unbroken, Laura Hillenbrand. If you haven't read the book don't judge it by the (awful) movie.
The Liberators: My Life in the Soviet Army. Really opens your eyes to the problems and realities of communism. I love the author's dry sense of humor as he witnesses the absurdity of many of the things he encountered.
Sniper on the Eastern Front, Albrecht Wacker. A view of WWII through the eyes of a German sniper.
Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account, Miklos Nyiszli. A view of the holocaust through the eyes of a Jewish doctor in the Auschwitz concentration camp.
- I gave my father Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand. Horrors of war and the triumph of the human spirit. What a story, what a life!
