What Do You Care What Other People Think?
Based on the description of “A thoughtful companion volume to the earlier Surely You Are Joking…” I was expecting something similar to Surely You’re Joking, but this book was quite different. Publishers Weekly sums it up well: “In this posthumous miscellany, theoretical physicist Feynman displays only sporadically the adventurousness that captivated readers of Surely You’re […]
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Kingpin
Kingpin tells the story of an elite hacker who stole tons of credit card numbers online and became the center of the cybercrime community. It exposes some of the wild antics of the fraudsters and the efforts of law enforcement officials to put an end to the crimes. The story is pretty interesting, but I […]
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The Cuckoo’s Egg
Cliff Stoll is a real astronomer who got caught up in chasing a hacker through the global networks of the late 80s. The book is a detailed account of his experience with the chase, which is probably one of the most interesting true stories that have occurred in the last couple decades. There aren’t too […]
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Catch Me If You Can
This is a well told true story. Frank Abagnale was a real swindler and this is his tale. It is fun because it is so out of the ordinary. He really went through a lot of situations where he cunningly deceived others and subsequently he spent a lot of time in prisons. For me it […]
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Prime Obsession
In order to find out what all the fuss was about with regards to the Riemann hypothesis, I decided to read this exposition of it. My general impression was that it provided a good overview, with just a little bit too much breakdown of the math for my level (meaning there were explanations of very […]
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Archimedes: What Did He Do Besides Cry Eureka?
This book was more mathematical than I expected. It is really just a condensed and highly simplified translation of Archimedes more famous works. There are some genuinely good ideas found in his methods, however one can usually see quickly the modern replacement that is more effective. His study on levers was very insightful, but the […]
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Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla
Seifer presents a wealth of information on Nikola Tesla in this biography. There is enough detail to make it quite boring at times, but there are enough interesting events in Tesla’s life to keep the reader awake. Interesting facts are found intermittently, making it difficult to say what parts are the best to read. This […]
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Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!
The autobiography of the great physicist is a very fun read. It focuses on what seem to be events that he values the most- the social and cultural aspects of life. He tends to favor telling of instances where he impressed others with his intelligence, showing that he thoroughly enjoys receiving positive attention. His exploits […]
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My Inventions: The Autobiography of Nikola Tesla
Upon reading this autobiography, you will be convinced that Tesla was an amazing man. He was central to so many modern creations that it came as a big surprise to me that he is not more famous than Thomas Edison. Tesla describes many normal life events, but also focuses on his not so normal love […]
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Einstein: The Formative Years
This is basically a collection of academic papers about Einstein’s work prior to general relativity. I have to say that it is pretty bad because the information is so indirect and worthless that it is extremely boring. When you write entire sections on the biography of the person who wrote a book that Einstein once […]