The Big Short
This is the amazing story of the individuals who predicted the mortgage crisis and made a ton of money off of it. They were very interesting characters and they went through some surprising challenges. It is just shocking how inefficient the markets can be sometimes. The story makes it clear that independent thinking is still […]
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The Federal Reserve System: Purposes & Functions
Written by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, this is the official book for explaining the FED to the public. It does a fairly good job of explaining what the FED does and how it does it, with the exception of all the interesting stuff that happened since the mortgage crisis. It’s […]
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The Age of Turbulence
Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan gives his perspective on the economy in this semi-biographical work. It is interesting to follow his thought processes through some the economic situations that he navigated, and to a large degree directly influenced. I was curious to see whether he would admit to any major errors in judgement, but […]
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The Intelligent Investor
The Intelligent Investor is one of the most popular investing books for good reason. It advocates a time-tested strategy known as value investing. The idea behind value investing is to determine how much a company is worth and buy it only if it is selling at a significant discount. In essence, the book teaches you […]
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Sex at Dawn
Sex at Dawn explains what life as a hunter-gather may have been like prior to the agricultural revolution with an emphasis on sexuality and pair-bonding. One of the central themes of the book is that humans may not be as monogamous as is often thought. The so called “standard narrative” suggests that couples form pair-bonds […]
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The Knot Book
This is one of those books that you can actually learn math from without trying too hard. The explanations were clear enough that I understood most of the material even though I did not do any of the exercises. I feel like I got a fairly thorough introduction to the mathematical theory of knots. The […]
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Thermodynamics
I didn’t get much out of this book. I was hoping for an elementary explanation of the underlaying principles of thermodynamics, but found only a lot of confusing derivations of formulas. What’s worse is that they are all in the pre-quantum-reformation form, which actually makes them more confusing. I don’t think anyone needs to read […]
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Knot Theory
This book complemented Adams’ book well. Many of the concepts that I was confused about were explained with more sophistication, which actually made them easier to understand because there was no ambiguity. Although this book might be too dense for a first introduction to knot theory, it is a very well written book, and contains […]
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Building Embedded Linux Systems
This book is a good source of information for setting up the Linux software of an embedded system. It does not give a lot of explanation of embedded systems or using the software. Because of its focus, it is not that enjoyable to read and it isn’t a very thorough introduction to embedded system design, […]
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Introduction to Quantum Computation and Information
I think that this book is not quite an introduction. It claims that you only need a knowledge of basic quantum mechanics, but I felt lost for large portions of it. One chapter was actually worth reading: “Quantum Computation: An Introduction”. This chapter explains how quantum computing algorithms work. Also of interest was page 20 […]