Writing that works

What Hacker News says

1. a_bonoboMay 2018
   Some books I enjoyed and which could be beneficial:

   - Borges' Aleph, and his essays (for example Other Inquisitions). He was fascinated about concepts programming is famous for now, he would have loved recursion

   - Mann's The Wizard And The Prophet. He uses the life of two highly influential scientists (Borlaug and Vogt) as exemplars for two ways of viewing progress, one highly focused on technological progress, one being sceptical of technological progress

   - Wachter-Boettcher's Technically Wrong, about implicit biases in modern technology and how that excludes or mistreats people. Some good lessons if you want to start a company and get as many customers as possible ;) Similar book with more academic stringency: Weapons Of Maths Destruction

   - Roman's Writing That Works, non-fiction/memo/email advice from big advertising guys, lots of good advice on getting your point across

   - Fromm's The Art Of Loving & The Sane Society, two non-fiction books from a sociologist/psychologist on how to work on your relationships (i.e., love as a movie concept doesn't exist, it's mostly very hard work and self-critique), and how society as a whole has very broken goals. Becker's The Denial Of Death (on how fear of death is a major drive in life) comes from a similar place

   - Wilson's How To Teach Programming - delves deeply into the psychology of learning and how to build stable communities, it's available for free so why not

   - Statistics books are always good to mend your thinking! My favorite layman's introduction is Motulsky's Intuitive Biostatistics (no formulas, plain English), for a non-practitioner Wheelan's Naked Statistics is probably better

   - Seth Godin wrote lots of good business books, pick one (I liked Linchpin)

   - If you haven't read them yet, get the 'classics' of software management: The Mythical Man-Month, and Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering

   - Cuckoo's Egg is a marvellously fun non-fiction book about a programmer tracking a hacker in the 80s, one of the first international computer crime cases, featuring tons of fun low-tech hacks

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2. selleckMar 2015
   For writing, I am almost done with this book and it is great:

   Writing That Works; How to Communicate Effectively In Business by Roman and Raphaelson

   Stresses clarity and writing how you talk.

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3. AhtiKJul 2012
   My favorite book on writing comes from advertising. Two authors, Kenneth Roman (former Ogivly CEO) and Joel Raphaelson (former Ogivly creative director): Writing That Works (http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Works-Communicate-Effectively-...)

   This book has been transforming my long and vague e-mails, letters and blog posts into more crisp and to the point while keeping the tone of the message. Still learning, the book has tons of concrete advice to follow.

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