Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

list of (most of) the books mentioned in this thread so far. I tried reading every comment but used chatGPT instead.

1. The Big Rich - Texas oil boom.

2. Barbarians at the Gate - Private equity origins.

3. Masters of Doom - John Carmack and Id Software.

4. Einstein by Walter Isaacson - Einstein's discoveries.

5. Houdini!!! - The escape artist and magician.

6. The Double Helix - DNA discovery.

7. Stress Test by Tim Geithner - Financial crisis.

8. Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl - Concentration camp survival.

9. The Chariots of Apollo - NASA's space program.

10. Across the Airless Wilds by Earl Swift - Development of the moon buggy.

11. Apollo: The Race to the Moon by Charles Murray and Catherine Bly Cox - Apollo missions.

12. The Secret Life of Groceries by Benjamin Lorr - Food supply chains.

13. The Prize by Daniel Yergin - Oil industry evolution.

14. Shadow Divers by Robert Kurson - Ambitious wreck divers.

15. The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes - Manhattan Project.

16. American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin - Robert Oppenheimer.

17. Conquistador by Buddy Levy - Hernán Cortés and the Aztecs.

18. Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner - Water infrastructure in the American West.

19. The Wright Brothers by David McCullough - The invention of flight.

20. Walt Disney by Neal Gabler - Vision and innovation in entertainment.

21. Tuxedo Park by Jennet Conant - Invention of radar.

22. Insisting on the Impossible - Edwin Land and instant photography.

23. The Logic of Failure - Understanding and avoiding failure.

24. The Big Short by Michael Lewis - 2008 financial crisis.

25. The Box by Marc Levinson - Shipping container revolution.

26. Latitude by Nicholas Crane - Cartography innovations.

27. When the Heavens Went on Sale by Ashlee Vance - Space startups.

28. The Founders by Jimmy Soni - PayPal's early days.

29. The Perfectionists by Simon Winchester - Precision engineering.

30. The Little Engine That Could - Children's classic.

31. Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell - Success mechanics.

32. Shoe Dog by Phil Knight - Founding of Nike.

33. Black Hole Blues by Janna Levin - Building LIGO.

34. Freedom’s Forge - WWII industry mobilization.

35. Empires of Light by Jill Jonnes - Electrification by Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse.

36. The Path Between the Seas by David McCullough - Panama Canal construction.

37. Annapurna by Maurice Herzog - Climbing a Himalayan peak.

38. Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder - Data General engineers.

39. Showstopper by G. Pascal Zachary - Development of Windows NT.

40. Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand - WWII survival.

41. The Measure of All Things by Ken Alder - Defining the meter.

42. The Cuckoo’s Egg by Clifford Stoll - Tracking a hacker.

43. The Man Who Knew Infinity by Robert Kanigel - Srinivasa Ramanujan.

44. The Power Broker by Robert Caro - Robert Moses and New York infrastructure.

45. How Big Things Get Done - Large-scale project execution.

46. Dealers of Lightning by Michael A. Hiltzik - Xerox PARC.

47. Built by Roma Agrawal - Civil engineering insights.

48. The Will to Keep Winning by Daigo Umehara - Competitive gaming.

49. Absolute Zero and the Conquest of Cold - Low-temperature physics.

50. Carrying the Fire by Michael Collins - Apollo 11.




51. The Dream Machine - A deep dive into the history of computing.

52. Mindstorms by Seymour Papert - Groundbreaking work on computers in education.

53. Sunburst and Luminary: An Apollo Memoir by Don Eyles - The Apollo Guidance Computer.

54. Build by Tony Fadell - Memoir and innovation lessons.

55. Fall of Carthage by Adrian Goldsworthy - Punic Wars and Carthage's fall.

56. Making PCR - The story of polymerase chain reaction development.

57. Moonwalking with Einstein - Memory training and championship.

58. The Rickover Effect by Theodore Rockwell - First nuclear-powered submarine.

59. The Idea Factory - Bell Labs and American innovation.

60. Hackers by Steven Levy - History of computer hackers.

61. Fire in the Valley - Personal computing revolution.

62. Monk in the Garden - Life of Gregor Mendel.

63. Leadership Moment - Lessons from leaders in crises.

64. The Man Who Discovered Quality - W. Edwards Deming and quality management.

65. Eccentric Orbits - Iridium satellite network's rescue.

66. The Road to Character - Human nature and moral development.

67. The Spy and the Traitor - Soviet spy Oleg Gordievsky's story.

68. Billion Dollar Spy - Cold War espionage.

69. Skunk Works - Lockheed's F-117 and SR-71 programs.

70. Working by Robert Caro - Insights into Caro's research.

71. The Wager by David Grann - 18th-century British maritime disaster.

72. Caro's LBJ Series - Biography of Lyndon B. Johnson.

73. The Prize by Daniel Yergin - Oil industry history.

74. The Invention of Nature by Andrea Wulf - Alexander von Humboldt's contributions.

75. Bad Blood by John Carreyrou - Theranos scandal.

76. Losing My Virginity by Richard Branson - Memoir and business insights.

77. The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz - Leadership lessons.

78. Billion Dollar Loser by Reeves Wiedeman - WeWork's rise and fall.

79. Tuxedo Park - Invention of radar during WWII.

80. Insisting on the Impossible - Edwin Land and instant photography.


81. Failure is Not an Option by Gene Kranz

82. Mrs. P’s Journey by Phyllis Pearsall

83. River of Doubt by Candice Millard

84. Longitude by Dava Sobel

85. Dreaming in Code by Scott Rosenberg

86. The Last Viking - A biography of Roald Amundsen

87. The Wager by David Grann

88. Simply Fly by Captain G. R. Gopinath

89. Engines That Move Markets by Alasdair G. M. Nairn

90. The Education of Cyrus by Xenophon

91. Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War by Robert Coram

92. Madhouse at the End of the Earth by Julian Sancton

93. How to Make a Spaceship by Julian Guthrie

94. West with the Night by Beryl Markham

95. The Age of Uncertainty by Tobias Hürter

96. American Steel by Richard Preston

97. Showstopper by G. Pascal Zachary

98. Eccentric Orbits by John Bloom

99. The Great Bridge by David McCullough

100. Loonshots by Safi Bahcall

101. The Art of Doing Science and Engineering by Richard Hamming

102. Where Wizards Stay Up Late by Katie Hafner

103. The Evening Star by Henry S. F. Cooper




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: