Rating: 8.3/10. Book about the electricity grid, focusing on America and its history. Though the grid is usually hidden away in our lives, it is actually a complex arrangement of different local systems that has physical constraints, as all power generation must match usage at all times because it is not possible to store large…
Category: Topics
Cobalt Red by Siddharth Kara
Rating: 7.5/10. Book of investigative journalism covering the DRC (Congo), where 70% of the world’s cobalt mining occurs. Cobalt is a metal that is crucial for the development of high-efficiency lithium-ion batteries that are used in smartphones, other electronic devices, and most importantly, electric vehicles; the Congo has some of the purest forms of the…
Too High and Too Steep by David B. Williams
Rating: 7.8/10. Too High and Too Steep: Reshaping Seattle’s Topography by David B. Williams Book about the history of Seattle focusing on how humans have changed its natural landscape, eg by filling in the shoreline and tide flats, creating artificial islands, and leveling hills near the city center. The landscape has changed quite drastically since…
Digital Empires by Anu Bradford
Rating: 7.6/10. Digital Empires: The Global Battle to Regulate Technology by Anu Bradford Book about models and recent trends in tech regulation — it is written in a fairly academic tone but contains many insights. I found it somewhat heavy and stopped reading about halfway through the book. The tech world is dominated by three…
AI Agents in Action by Michael Lanham
Rating: 7.5/10. Book about the latest developments in AI agents, covering a lot of common patterns like all use agentic loops, using prompt engineering and no-code tools to build and configure their agent and evaluate it. Most of the book consists of walkthroughs of various different agent libraries and platforms and tutorials of how to…
Empire of AI by Karen Hao
Rating: 8.5/10. Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI by Karen Hao Book about the recent history of AI, focusing on OpenAI, but also covering the broader industry as well. It starts with the life of Sam Altman, who was born in 1985 to a middle-class family and quickly proved himself to be…
Journey by James A. Michener
Rating: 8.0/10. Fairly short novel set around 1896 during the Klondike Gold Rush, focusing on a group of English aristocrats who venture into Dawson City, not through any of the conventional routes, but through one of the most difficult routes overland from Edmonton and down the Mackenzie River. It is led by Lord Luton and…
Adaptive Markets by Andrew W. Lo
Rating: 8.2/10. Adaptive Markets: Financial Evolution at the Speed of Thought by Andrew W. Lo Book covering various aspects of the Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH), modern hedge funds, and systemic risks leading to financial crashes. The Efficient Market Hypothesis is one of the most controversial theories in economics – it states that any public information…
The First 90 Days by Michael D. Watkins
Rating: 7.7/10. Book for those who are promoted or hired into leadership positions, managing large teams, and what they need to do in their first 90 days to establish credibility in the organization and set themselves up for future success. It’s non-technical and applicable to any field, as long as it involves management and leadership. As…
Confident Cloud by Adora Nwodo
Rating: 7.1/10. Book about cloud computing and provides a high-level overview of some concepts and technologies at a beginner level. Overall I was disappointed with the depth of the content, it contained mostly high-level information about a lot of topics but very little specifics – seems that the author worked with these technologies at a…
The Robotic Process Automation Handbook by Tom Taulli
Rating: 6.3/10. Book covering the basics of RPA from a high-level business perspective rather than a technical one. The author is a tech journalist rather than an engineer, so overall the book was disappointing for me due to its lack of depth on various topics. Instead of providing specific details, it contains brief, vague, and…
The Box by Marc Levinson
Rating: 7.9/10. The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger by Marc Levinson Book about the history of the shipping container and how it changed global trade. The shipping container revolution began in 1956 and has made the transportation of goods across the world extremely fast and efficient,…