This book by long time Apple engineering manager, as well as startup employee, Michael Lopp is a guide to how to manage geeks. That wasn’t really what I was expecting — which is sort of the inverse. I was hoping for a book about how to be a geek who has to deal with management….
Tag: non_fiction
Bad Science
I’ve been trying to read one non-fiction book a month recently, and this is the one for January. This book is simply excellent and I’m glad I read it. It is clearly written, entertaining, and easy to understand. Yet it covers complex issues about how mis-reporting of medicine result in people dying. It covers statistical…
Why Can’t Elephants Jump?
This is another fun book from New Scientist’s Last Word column and I enjoyed it. A good read, and I actually learnt some stuff (some of it possibly true) along the way. Title: Why Can't Elephants Jump? Author: New Scientist Genre: Science Publisher: Profile Books Release Date: October 7, 2010 Pages: 240 Well, why not?…
Mars: A Survival Guide
This book, written in the style of a travel guide, was an impulse purchase the other day as a brand new book. That’s rare because I don’t tend to buy new, and certainly not in Australia (everything is so expensive!). However, this book isn’t available on Amazon because its from the ABC, and looked good,…
I Know You Got Soul
This is a collection of relatively short Clarkson articles about machines he thinks are inspiring. I don’t agree with all his choices, and many of the articles are clearly biased against America. For example, he insists that everyone on an aircraft carrier is stupid. Why? Because they didn’t let him film a fighter with one…
The World According to Jeremy Clarkson
Like On Cars, this book is a collection of Clarkson’s newspaper articles. These articles are relatively recent though (post 2001), and cover a much smaller span. This book focuses on things other than cars, and Clarkson’s opinions range from sensible and thoughtful to outright weird. I read this book during a series of take offs…
Longitude
This is the story of John Harrison, the inventor of modern accurate clocks. Its an interesting read, and very engaging for a non-fiction book. I think this is helped by the conversational style of the book, and the fact that its not terribly long. A good read. [isbn: 1857025717]
Some Girls: My Life in a Harem
This is the memoir of a Jewish girl from New York who ends up working in the Harem of a Prince of Brunei. Its not so much a story about Harem life, although that’s mentioned in places. Its more about Jillian’s psychological journey, her troubled childhood, and working out who she is in the world….
The Man in the Rubber Mask
I’d been looking for this book for ages, as it is quite rare, so it was exciting to find it at Gould’s the other day. This is the memoir of the dude inside the rubber mask that Kryten wears in Red Dwarf. The book is an easy read, and entertaining, although I wouldn’t call it…
On Cars
Jeremy Clarkson isn’t one of those people you can read hundreds of pages of at once. That’s probably why he writes articles instead of books. This book is a collection of these articles, and it is an interesting and entertaining read. However, I couldn’t read it front to back. Instead I read it over a…