READ ANY GOOD BOOKS LATELY? (Recommedations?)

[rbw1966]

State of Fear by Michael Crichton

[sobo]

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, A History of Nazi Germany, by William Shirer:

 

A similar, but much shorter, book, The Burden of Guilt, a Short History of Nazi Germany, 1914 to 1945, by Hannah Vogt, is a great read. I finished it in only one sitting late one night. Fascininating.

[KaskadskyjKozak]

The Decameron. Original translation into English. Mirthful, entertaining, enlightening view into the medieval world.

[wayne]

angels and demons, dan brown

[crackers]

Frank McCourt was my high school english sub teacher. He was a great teacher, much better than he was a writer!

 

Everybody should read eric hoffer's True Believer and anybody working with economics, banking or foreign exchange should read the second edition of Fooled by Randomness by Nicholas Nassim Taleb.

 

If it's winter and you don't ice climb and like ships and war, consider the esteemable fiction of Patrick O'Brian. The Aubrey-Maturin series are a highlight of historical fiction. Plus, there are 20 of them. BTW, he translated Papillon into English.

 

patrick leigh fermour's travelogues are pretty damn good.

 

neil gershenfeld's the nature of mathematical modeling is one of my favorite books to curl up with. It covers analytical, observational and numerical models in clear concise form with a minimum of bs. If you work with numbers, you really should have a copy lying around for inspiration. It's like schaum's outline for mathematical modeling, but written well and beautifully made. Its a work of art.

 

I also like the Grammar of Graphics and any book by Tukey or Cleveland for graphics. Tufte is a tool.

[cj001f]

anybody should read the second edition of Fooled by Randomness by Nicholas Nassim Taleb.

 

 

edit: and Bulgakov is always good (see below recs)

[foraker]

haven't read it in a couple of years, but Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov is always on my recommend list.

[gavastik]

Master and Margarita is the #1 book I give to people as present (some of them have smiled politely while pointing to their bookshelves where it can already be found).

 

Storming the Court by Brandt Goldstein (my spelling may be off). It's the story of a bunch of Yale law students who sued the US government over the handling of Haitian refugees in the early 1990s. Reads like Law & Order, couldn't put it down.

[astrov]

"Endurance" by Alfred Lansing

[mvs]

Collapse, by Jared Diamond.

I second the recommendation for "Rise and Fall of the 3rd Reich" too, super book.