#Xkcd simple writer full#

The Lessons of History by Will & Ariel Durant They’re all kind of tricky, but anyone can get to the answer through purely logical reasoning. They all have fundamental insights in physics. It’s all simple physics puzzles that can be explained to a 12-year-old child and can be explained to a 25-year-old grad student in physics. It has this great little pitch that says, “The only book used in both grade school and graduate school.” It’s true. I open this one all the time and I love on the back cover. There’s another great book called Thinking Physics. Thinking Physics: Understandable Practical Reality by Lewis Carroll Epstein He says “up goer.” It’s this thing that goes up. He called the Saturn Five rocket “Up Goer Five.” You can’t define a rocket as a spaceship or a rocket. The Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words by Randall MunroeĪ great book by Randall Munroe (creator of xkcd, a very science-oriented webcomic.) In this book, he explains very complicated concepts, all the way from climate change to physical systems to submarines while only using the 1,000 most common words in the English language. I’ve also been reading Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track by Feynman and re-reading Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman, a biography about him. I love both his demeanor as well as his understanding of physics. I would give my kids a copy of Richard Feynman's Six Easy Pieces and Six Not-So-Easy Pieces: Einstein’s Relativity, Symmetry, and Space. Six Easy Pieces: Essentials of Physics Explained by Its Most Brilliant Teacher by Richard Feynman He is also famous for The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder, and Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and Markets, all of which are worth reading. This is his collection of ancient wisdom. The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms by Nassim Taleb And luckily, it doesn't masquerade as a business book. It's one of the best business books I've ever read. So just look past the attitude and read the book, learn the concepts. He has a bit of an attitude, but he has that because he's brilliant, and it's okay. Lots of good mental models and constructs. The best book I've read in 2018, I highly recommend it. The Evolution of Everything: How New Ideas Emerge The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters I’ve read everything of his, and reread everything of his. Matt is a scientist, optimist, and forward thinker. The most brilliant and enlightening book I've read in years. The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves by Matt Ridley

#Xkcd simple writer full#

There’s lots of great ideas in there and it’s just full of them, chock full per page. Sapiens is the best book of the last decade I have read. The observations, frameworks, and mental models will have you looking at history and your fellow humans differently. Sapiens : A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah HarariĪ history of the human species. Then you naturally gravitate more towards theory, concepts, non-fiction. Read enough, and you become a connoisseur.

The truth is, I don't read for self-improvement. Enjoy this excerpt, and join the email list for updates, new material, and pre-order instructions. This is a peek into the Navalamanack book, published here online ahead of the coming 2020 release.