TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking by Chris J. Anderson My rating: 4 of 5 stars There’s a bunch of really solid material in here. Though, as a word of warning, this book is best used as a reference manual rather than something to be read straight...
A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing by Lawrence M. Krauss My rating: 4 of 5 stars Not at all bad. I was mostly interested in exploring the apparent paradox of why there is still matter when it should have been eliminated with its respective antimatter...
From Impossible to Inevitable: How Hyper-Growth Companies Create Predictable Revenue by Aaron Ross My rating: 3 of 5 stars Despite being not at all what I expected, this was still a solid book. It was definitely geared WAY more than I’d planned to early-stage start-ups. Additionally, it was less focused...
For We Are Many by Dennis Taylor My rating: 4 of 5 stars Just as solid as the first. The endings are a bit less satisfying than those of book 1, but that’s to be expected (and excused) with a trilogy. I’m gonna have a hell of a time charting...
Anything You Want by Derek Sivers My rating: 4 of 5 stars I prefer Sivers in interviews rather than in written word, but this little booklet is still saturated with insight. I could see some of these bite-sized anecdotes-turned-philosophies coming off as facile our hackneyed but, if you’re at all...
Show Your Work!: 10 Ways to Share Your Creativity and Get Discovered by Austin Kleon My rating: 2 of 5 stars Not bad, but it seems to be more a collection of aphorisms and quotes that is strung together by the author’s filler than a coherent philosophy or approach. Useful...
We Are Legion (We Are Bob) by Dennis E. Taylor My rating: 4 of 5 stars I’m always happy to discover modern science fiction that I can really dig. Neat premise(s), and Taylor takes no time to get to the action. View all my reviews Update: There are a...
Islam and the Future of Tolerance: A Dialogue by Sam Harris My rating: 5 of 5 stars “No idea is above scrutiny, and no person is beneath dignity.” An exceptional book! Formatted as a dialogue, Harris (a strident and vocal atheist) and Nawaz (a former radical Islamist who is now...
Free Will by Sam Harris My rating: 4 of 5 stars It’s turtles all the way down. A dense-but-quick survey of current arguments for and against (mostly against) the existence of free will (in the conventional sense). It’s a philosophical concept I’ve often gnawed on over the years, and I...
At least once a year, I reread Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive series. Each novel is a good thousand pages long but, luckily (and sadly), there are only currently two volumes published. By this point, I’ve read the first of these books – ‘The Way of Kings’ – six or seven times....
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