| Origin - A genetic history of the Americas by Jennifer Raff. Recent evidence of how humans came to the Americas; it's a significantly different story than our conventional wisdom account. Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches by Marvin Harris. How cultural norms establish collective behavior. The Extermination of the American Bison. Written in the late 1800s as the tragedy was unfolding. Lots on great detail on how and why we decimated a keystone species in a matter of a few decades. Plato's Revenge by William Ophuls. A concise manifesto on societal change. Lays out a vision for a new post-growth, post-oil, ecological consciousness that incorporates modern science, religion and philosophy. Four Thousand Weeks. Far from a self-help time-management book, this is more a philosophy book on human's relationship with time. Delightful read. Breath by James Nestor. Modern humans are breathing incorrectly due to factors of modern life. An exploration of the science and art of breathing properly. Bernoulli's Fallacy by Aubrey Clayton. In the statistical wars, this book takes a strong stance: Bayesian is unequivocally better. He exploses the racist/colonial history of frequentist statistics, as well as the fundamental flaws in their math. Posits that mis-applied frequentist methods are to blame for the reproducibility crisis in science. How the World Really Works by Vaclav Smil. A no-nonsense, factual account of the systems that keep our modern globalized society running. Elements of Clojure by Zach Tellman. A concise, high-level philosophy about how we build and compose abstractions. One of those books where every sentence is gold. My only wish that the book wasn't tied to Clojure (most of the book is applicable to any language, despite the title). Tidy First? by Kent Beck. How and when to make structural changes (refactoring, architecture, paying down tech debt) vs behavioral changes (new features, bug fixes). You need both, and you can use economic theory as a guide for when to invest in one or the other. But you need to treat them differently. Numerical Linear Algebra for Programmers by Dragan Djuric. A code-centric introduction to common linear algrebra routines, Using Clojure and the neaderthal library - a high-level API for fast math optimized for CPU and GPU hardware. |