Tag

Non-Fiction

195 reviews

Books

  14. A Primate's Memoir

    Robert M. Sapolsky

    Part African travelogue, part baboon behavioral study. The travelogue parts are interesting since traveling in Africa, especially in the 1980s, is always an adventure. But the stories of the baboons, and how similar they are to humans, are the highlight for me.

  16. The Racket

    Conor Niland

    I know basically nothing about tennis, but this was a great read. Goes into the details of what it takes to succeed at the top level, and how unglamorous it is unless you’re at the very top. You can read a pretty representative excerpt first to decide if it’s your type of thing.

  41. Conquerors

    Roger Crowley

    The history of Portugal’s colonization in the Indian Ocean. Does a really good job of showing how out of their element the Portuguese were, how they got incredibly lucky to be able to establish a multi-century foothold in Asia.

  45. Zonal Marking

    Michael Cox

    Walks through the evolution of soccer tactics in Europe from the 1990s to 2020, with a focus on countries that influenced the game the most: The Netherlands, Italy, France, Portugal, Spain, Germany, and England.

  51. You Can Just Do Things

    Cate Hall, Sasha Chapin

    Like many self-help books, this one really depends on your similarity to the author. I share some strengths and weakness with Cate Hall, so this book resonates with me, but I know plenty of people for whom this would be a terrible fit. If you enjoy the blog post that inspired the book or the rest of her blog posts, then the book is definitely worth reading.

  67. Careless People

    Sarah Wynn-Williams

    Damning first-person account of working at Facebook during the 2010s. In particular, Joel Kaplan and Sheryl Sandberg come off especially poorly. A style nit: I know it’s technically a memoir, but veers a bit too much into the personal at times instead of focusing on Facebook.

  149. Blank Space

    W. David Marx

    Not sure I’m convinced by the primary thesis here (that culture and artistic innovation have stagnated in the 21st century), but does a good job of giving a history of the last 25 years and just how much cultural production has changed in such as short time. Even though I lived through all these years, a lot of the fashion and celebrity stuff was new to me.

  167. A Pattern Language

    Christopher Alexander

    This book is somewhat famous in software circles as a shining example of documenting best practices. It’s definitely interesting to skim through, but unless you’re an urban planner or something it’s not a particularly great read as it’s just a huge list of best practices for physical spaces.

  188. The Creative Act

    Rick Rubin

    Zen advice on the creative process, can dip in and out of the book depending on where you are in a project. I wish he’d used specific examples from his work, but the book is probably already a bit longer than it could be anyway.

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