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Books

I just finished The Greatest Story Ever Told -For Now by Lawrence Kraus. He's a particle physicist and he tells the story of physics from Faraday till the present. He tries to make it very accessible (there is no math), but parts of it are extremely esoteric, I thought. This planet has produced some amazingly smart people.

I'm currently reading Danubia, about the history of the Austrian Hapsburgs with a few mentions of the Spanish branch. It's a weird book with a bunch of anecdotes and jokes from the author. Not what I was expecting, but enjoyable so far.
 
I like Lawrence Krauss. He did a lot a good debates a few years back and he also hosts a lot a cool events for the Origins Project at ASU.
 
Just finished The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis about Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, who more or less invented behavioral economics. Not sure if I have brought it up previously, but 'Thinking Fast and Slow' by Kahneman is as impactful a book as I believe exists (maybe their academic text 'Heuristics and Biases' is better, but a less riveting read). Read it four years ago and I really don't think I could recommend anything more highly. These two guys basically explain - and prove with backing experimental evidence - the inescapable biases that every human mind contains and which impact every decision we make. It should be required reading IMO. We are all irrational thinkers. Without exception. And knowledge of this and the consistent way our decision making is skewed would be a significant step forward for civilization.
 
I'm finally reading Moneyball. Very interesting. Had to set aside Wold Hall. It's a very very wordy fictional depiction on Henry 8. Yawner
 
deeyoukayeee said:
Just finished The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis about Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, who more or less invented behavioral economics. Not sure if I have brought it up previously, but 'Thinking Fast and Slow' by Kahneman is as impactful a book as I believe exists (maybe their academic text 'Heuristics and Biases' is better, but a less riveting read). Read it four years ago and I really don't think I could recommend anything more highly. These two guys basically explain - and prove with backing experimental evidence - the inescapable biases that every human mind contains and which impact every decision we make. It should be required reading IMO. We are all irrational thinkers. Without exception. And knowledge of this and the consistent way our decision making is skewed would be a significant step forward for civilization.
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I'm a big fan of the Kahneman/Tversky stuff (I work in an adjacent field and occasionally get to read/cite their work). If you like studies that poke holes in the idea that humans are rational actors, Duke prof Dan Ariely's popular-social-science books are great; he's a really engaging writer and storyteller in addition to being a good scientist. If you haven't read him yet, I'd suggest starting with his first, Predictably Irrational.
 
Ron Chernow (Hamilton) book on US Grant coming out next week. Looking forward to it.
 
I haven't. We were interns together when he was a prelim and then he went off to psych. He's a nice guy.
 
Blood Meridian is his best book, imo. It's a tough read though. He has some more accessible work. Particularly in recent years, starting with The Border Trilogy, he's gone more mainstream. I loved The Crossing though. I found The Road to be pretty overrated.

Of his older work, I would also recommend Suttree.
 
rome8180 said:
Blood Meridian is his best book, imo. It's a tough read though. He has some more accessible work. Particularly in recent years, starting with The Border Trilogy, he's gone more mainstream. I loved The Crossing though. I found The Road to be pretty overrated.

Of his older work, I would also recommend Suttree.
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Blood Meridian is fantastic, and is probably the most defining "Cormac McCarthy" book. I do disagree with you about The Road. The pace of The Road is unlike any of his other books, IMO. You can't put it down.
 
I just thought the writing was much less inventive on a sentence by sentence level. And the story felt simplistic, though I knew he was going for paired down/mythical.
 
rome8180 said:
I just thought the writing was much less inventive on a sentence by sentence level. And the story felt simplistic, though I knew he was going for paired down/mythical.
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Well, the story is simplistic, but I think if you consider that the narrative is effectively the point of view of a desperate, starving, dying man in a barren, ruined world, there's not too much room in that addled brain for the typical sweeping narratives of his previous subjects. Just MO. One man against the world.
 
I'm a simpleton and have a difficult getting into his writing. I do own The Road, but I just struggle getting into it.
 
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