Stats for nerds
2recommend
3mentions
3people
2022–2025years
67% recommend33% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Fall of Carthage by Adrian Goldsworthy
Few people understand the Punic wars and what it took to “delete” Carthage from the world. Delenda Cartago Est.
Goldsworthy tells the story accessibly from both sides of the wars. Lessons that echo throughout history.
More of a biography but still fits your criteria is The Wright Brothers by David McCullough. It’s an easy read and hard to put down. I had no idea what it took to make flying a thing until that book. We definitely take for granted how much those two men changed the world.
- 51. The Dream Machine - A deep dive into the history of computing.
52. Mindstorms by Seymour Papert - Groundbreaking work on computers in education.
53. Sunburst and Luminary: An Apollo Memoir by Don Eyles - The Apollo Guidance Computer.
54. Build by Tony Fadell - Memoir and innovation lessons.
55. Fall of Carthage by Adrian Goldsworthy - Punic Wars and Carthage's fall.
56. Making PCR - The story of polymerase chain reaction development.
57. Moonwalking with Einstein - Memory training and championship.
58. The Rickover Effect by Theodore Rockwell - First nuclear-powered submarine.
59. The Idea Factory - Bell Labs and American innovation.
60. Hackers by Steven Levy - History of computer hackers.
61. Fire in the Valley - Personal computing revolution.
62. Monk in the Garden - Life of Gregor Mendel.
63. Leadership Moment - Lessons from leaders in crises.
64. The Man Who Discovered Quality - W. Edwards Deming and quality management.
65. Eccentric Orbits - Iridium satellite network's rescue.
66. The Road to Character - Human nature and moral development.
67. The Spy and the Traitor - Soviet spy Oleg Gordievsky's story.
68. Billion Dollar Spy - Cold War espionage.
69. Skunk Works - Lockheed's F-117 and SR-71 programs.
70. Working by Robert Caro - Insights into Caro's research.
71. The Wager by David Grann - 18th-century British maritime disaster.
72. Caro's LBJ Series - Biography of Lyndon B. Johnson.
73. The Prize by Daniel Yergin - Oil industry history.
74. The Invention of Nature by Andrea Wulf - Alexander von Humboldt's contributions.
75. Bad Blood by John Carreyrou - Theranos scandal.
76. Losing My Virginity by Richard Branson - Memoir and business insights.
77. The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz - Leadership lessons.
78. Billion Dollar Loser by Reeves Wiedeman - WeWork's rise and fall.
79. Tuxedo Park - Invention of radar during WWII.
80. Insisting on the Impossible - Edwin Land and instant photography.
- The Senate didn't surrender, and still maintained the loyalty of the wider governing apparatus that collected resources for its campaigns. To be able to raise two dozen legions after the losses suffered in the first three years of the Second Punic War, suggests to me an extraordinary level of social cohesion and stability of government rule.
I believe you are incorrect about the defections as well. One source supporting this notion is Adrian Goldsworthy's "The Fall of Carthage: The Punic Wars 265–146 BC", which, by way of Wikipedia, claims:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Punic_War#Hannibal_cros...
However, the majority of Rome's allies remained loyal, including many in southern Italy.
