Rating: 7.6/10. Modern CSS with Tailwind: Flexible Styling Without the Fuss by Noel Rappin A short book of around 80 pages, covering the basics of Tailwind CSS, a modern utility framework. Tailwind simplifies various aspects of CSS, making a book on it relatively concise. While online documentations cover this content, having it presented in book…
Author: Bai Li
In Pursuit of the Traveling Salesman by William J. Cook
Rating: 8.5/10. In Pursuit of the Traveling Salesman: Mathematics at the Limits of Computation by William J. Cook Book about the Traveling Salesman Problem, written by a University of Waterloo professor and a leading researcher on this topic. The TSP is NP-hard, meaning there’s no efficient algorithm to solve it for all cases (unless P…
Modern Front-end Architecture by Ryan Lanciaux
Rating: 8.1/10. Modern Front-end Architecture: Optimize Your Front-end Development with Components, Storybook, and Mise en Place Philosophy by Ryan Lanciaux A fairly short book about modern frontend development centered around building components. The first part of the book introduces the concept of components and the benefits of having a consistent set of reusable components. It…
Retail Therapy by Mark Pilkington
Rating: 7.7/10. Retail Therapy: Why the Retail Industry is Broken – and What Can Be Done to Fix It by Mark Pilkington Book written by a retail executive from the UK, about the business of retail. The first section discusses the decline of numerous retail chains during the 2010s, such as the downfall of Toys…
A Philosophy of Software Design by John Ousterhout
Rating: 8.5/10. A fairly short book on aspects of software engineering and design, especially on how to manage complexity. At 170 pages, it is very short and more opinionated than some larger tomes like Code Complete, some of the advice is not universally agreed upon by all software engineers, but they are well reasoned. This…
Notes on the Piano by Ernst Bacon
Rating: 7.1/10. A collection of relatively short essays about classical piano, each approximately 10 pages long, by an American pianist and composer. All these essays are independent, each exploring a different aspect of the subject, and are organized into five distinct sections: The Performer: talks about the role of the performer in interpreting the composer’s…
Like, Comment, Subscribe by Mark Bergen
Rating: 8.3/10. Like, Comment, Subscribe: Inside YouTube’s Chaotic Rise to World Domination by Mark Bergen Book about the history of YouTube, from its inception to the present day, covering its ups and downs, as well as the controversies it faced. As YouTube exploded in popularity, right now hundreds of hours of videos are uploaded every…
The Color of Air by Gail Tsukiyama
Rating: 7.8/10. A historical novel set in Hilo, Hawaii in 1935 and centers around the Japanese community there. The story follows Daniel, a young doctor who returns after a brief trip to the mainland United States. There is not much of a plot, rather the book mostly revolves around Daniel rediscovering his family’s past and…
This is Paradise by Kristiana Kahakauwila
Rating: 7.9/10. A set of 6 short stories that take place in modern Hawaii. The people in each story are different, but all of them depict struggles, sadness, and despair, aiming to dispel the myth that Hawaii is a paradise. These stories showcase the everyday challenges that normal Hawaiians face, even though they may appear…
Founding Sales by Peter Kazanjy
Rating: 8.5/10. Founding Sales: The Early Stage Go-to-Market Handbook by Peter Kazanjy Book about how to do sales from first principles, for the founder of a startup who has never done sales before. The approach to startup sales is different from that of a bigger company, and you should do work that doesn’t scale. Firstly,…
The Nurture Assumption by Judith Rich Harris
Rating: 7.4/10. The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do by Judith Rich Harris Book about parenting, arguing for the thesis that parents essentially have no effect on how children turn out. Except in cases of extremely severe abuse, parents have no effect on children, after accounting for factors like genetics. Culture…
Video Making for Beginners by TechEd Publishers
Rating: 6.8/10. A short self-published book about the basics of filmmaking. Before making a film, you need to decide on the story you want to tell, who is the target audience, and what you hope to accomplish with the film. Write an outline first, then progress to a more detailed storyboard and script, making notes…