Stats for nerds
2recommend
2mentions
2people
2010–2011years
100% recommend
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- I recently read "More With Less", Paul Ciottis biography of Paul MacCready; if you want to dive deeper into the fascinating story of the creation of the Gossamer planes (starting with MacCready's unique background and network, the team re-shuffles [and alienations], tons and tons of iterations, all the downs for several very big ups; sounds like a start-up, doesn't it?), I certainly recommend it.
It required a man of extraordinary skills _and_ stubbornness to pull it all off. Only in retrospect, the solution seems (kinda) obvious.
http://www.amazon.com/More-Less-MacCready-Efficient-Flight/d...
- The best book I read in 2009 was The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. It's surprisingly accessible (I've never taken a biology class), and talks a lot about evolutionary game theory which I found fascinating.
Some other books I read last year:
How the Mind Works by Steven Pinker. It was a great book, Pinker's writing is accessible and entertaining. Much more so than On Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins.
More with Less: Paul MacCready and the Dream of Efficient Flight by Paul Ciotti. I really enjoyed this one, it was the story of the first team to cross the English channel with human-powered flight.
What the Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell. I liked this one better than Gladwell's other books. There is less theorizing and arguing a point and more telling stories, which is what Gladwell excels at.
The Mind's I by Douglas Hofstadter and Daniel Dennett. If you are patient with what is sometimes (in my humble opinion) pointlessly arguing semantics, some of the sections are interesting.
