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Book Review: The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined by Steven Pinker
If you are one of those people constantly watching news and worrying about the sorry state of the world. Read this book. It’ll convince you with data, instead of baseless sensationalism, that life has never been more peaceful, safer and better than right now. I procrastinated on starting reading this book because I already fully…
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Book Review: Kettlebell – Simple & Sinister by Pavel Tsatsouline
This book is almost like a graphic novel, lot’s of pictures (expected) and a big font with lots of padding (not so much). It’s very non-PC, so, if you are easily offended, move on. My review here is of the book and not the program. I still have reasons to believe the program is sound…
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Book Review: Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson
This book was fascinating. I always thought of Leonardo Da Vinci as an artist who did other things aside from painting. This book changed my mind. Leonardo saw himself as a philosopher/scientist/engineer (those were sort of one and the same back then) who also paints; and after reading this book, I have to agree. I…
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Book Review: Advance! The Full Licence Book by Alan Betts, Steve Hartley
This book felt of much lower quality than the previous two. There are many typos and editing errors and I noticed a few technical errors as well. I guess it makes sense the advanced saw less scrutiny than the beginner one as fewer people will ever get to this point. Or maybe it’s my bias…
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The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan
So far the tone of this book is disgustingly hippish. I think it presents some interesting data, but the way it presents it is so annoying: – everything modern is bad – everything mainstream is bad – the only good alternative is primitive farms – food and nature is a mystery that we cannot grasp…
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Book Review: Intermediate Licence – Building On The Foundation by Steve Hartley
I’m not a good person to judge this book because I not only have a technical background in electronics, I also got my American Extra-level license (AC1DM) before this one, so, I had to study all this material a few months ago. This feel like a revision. Something that really surprises me about the book…
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Book Review: American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird, Martin J. Sherwin
For this review I’m considering, without any fact checking or cross referencing, that this biography is factual and true to the events although clearly some of the statements in the book would be hard to evaluate as they describe the feelings of large groups of people. I knew a bit about The Manhattan Project and…
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Book Review: Life in the United Kingdom: A Guide for New Residents by Great Britain Home Office
The only real way to judge this book is whether it helps you pass the Life in the United Kingdom test or not and I don’t yet know that. I’ve read the book (it actually took me one full day to go through all of it) and I’m probably going to re-read at least once,…
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Book Review: Things to Make and Do in the Fourth Dimension by Matt Parker
I was expecting a funny read of math curiosities and indeed there was plenty of humor and curiosities in this book in the style of Matt Parker (Google him and watch his videos, he’s great); but this book had much more than that. Some parts of the book were not easy at all. I’m glad…
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Book Review: The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry by Jon Ronson
I went into this book with the wrong expectation. When it says “A Journey” in the title, it really means it. The book is a journal. It almost feels like the making-of of The Psychopath Test, instead of the book itself. The whole book is written in first person, with no other order than time…