Some nerd-tastic books coming out this week from friends and colleagues:
Ananyo Bhattacharya’s stunning and deep intellectual biography of John von Neumann, “The Man From The Future”. Looks beautiful, full of telling detail and packed with ideas about group theory, game theory, computer science and more.
Adam Rutherford and Hannah Fry offer us their “Complete Guide to Absolutely Everything” – joyful stuff. I sense this will be the pop-science book of choice this Christmas.
David Spiegelhalter and Anthony Masters weigh in with “Covid by Numbers”, which is a laudable effort to provide structure, balance, context and insight to what is still a fast-moving subject. They’ve done a remarkable job:
We nerds are spoiled for choice! Meanwhile I have been reading a rather older book, “Business Adventures” by John Brooks. It’s a really interesting read – like picking up the New Yorker from the 1960s, with a focus (of course) on management and business. Occasionally it is strange to read an up-close view of what happened in (say) 1959, written shortly after the events in question – but mostly it’s delightful, especially since Brooks writes very well and with a gentle humour.
Also on my radar this week was Reid Hoffman’s review of Anne-Marie Slaughter’s book “Renewal“. AMS is a very interesting thinker and the lens of seeing things through who has the good fortune to be able to take risks is thought-provoking.
One more thing: I was recently interviewed at length by the Rewired Soul podcast – check it out!
The paperback of “The Next 50 Things That Made The Modern Economy” is now out in the UK.
“Endlessly insightful and full of surprises — exactly what you would expect from Tim Harford.”- Bill Bryson
“Witty, informative and endlessly entertaining, this is popular economics at its most engaging.”- The Daily Mail
I’ve set up a storefront on Bookshop in the United States and the United Kingdom – have a look and see all my recommendations; Bookshop is set up to support local independent retailers.