"The Fourth Part of the World: The Race to the Ends of the Earth, and the Epic Story of the Map That Gave America Its Name".

A really interesting history book. I'm now in a great part, about how knowledge of geography (and map projections) was disseminated in Europe through a network of scholars and humanists during the 15th century. There was this huge collaborative effort to reconstruct ancient texts and to bring them in line with (then) current knowledge.

I just read 'The Innovator's Dilemma' by Clayton Christensen and it's awesome.

There's all this talk of "disrupting" everything in the tech world right now and a lot of it is really bullshit. This guy is the one who coined the term disruptive technology, and when you dig into it it's a really interesting concept that he actually backs up with great research on the disk drive industry.

The core of the idea is that 'disruptive' technologies are underdog technologies that actually have worse performance than the leading technologies of their time, but also some other attributes (smaller, lighter, etc) that make them valuable to customers in niche, less profitable markets the big guys aren't interested in. Since technology progresses much faster than our demand for it, those cheaper, crappier technologies improve over time and end up killing the big, expensive players who originally dominated the market.

Really great read

Can anyone recommend some good cypherpunk books, aside from Stephenson? Preferably fiction that communicates ideas revolving around anonymity, crypto, privacy?

I've been trying to read Cryptonomicon, but get turned off by the "hipstery" (for lack of a better word) informal writing style and can't get into it.

1. Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, by James W. Loewen

http://www.amazon.com/Lies-My-Teacher-Told-Everything/dp/074...

2. Clojure Programming, by Chas Emerick

http://www.amazon.com/Clojure-Programming-Chas-Emerick/dp/14...

3. Zorba the Greek, by Nikos Kazantzakis

http://www.amazon.com/Zorba-Greek-Nikos-Kazantzakis/dp/06848...

1. Causation (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Causality-Reasoning-Inference-Judea-...)

2. The Boardman Tasker Omnibus (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Boardman-Tasker-Omnibus-Peter/dp/189...)

Very good book about the tech industry: "rework" by the 37 signals guys.

Other very good non-tech book I've read recently: Walk the Amazon.

I'm actually reading academic papers from ssrn.com about platforms, shorter than most books and usually just as much information/learning and often times more.

For fiction I'm reading stuff my friends write; currently The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There and David Drake's Hammers Slammers omnibus volumes.

1. Red Mars. Read a chapter and digest it. Packed top to bottom with all kinds of ideas.

2. Cyberspace: First Steps. From the early 90s, a collection of academic essays on the concept of cyberspace. Reading it as a kind of retrospective on where we were and where we thought we were going.

3. Rule 34. For fun.

"Another Day of Life" by Riszard Kapuscinski and "Moonwalking with Einstein" by Joshua Foer.

For work: Quine's Word and Object; Dummett's Frege: Philosophy of Language; Plato's Republic; and paper after paper. (I am a philosophy graduate student.)

For pleasure: just started Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse.

Molly Fyde series from Hugh Howey. Loved his WOOL books, so giving this series a go. Like it a lot.

Mindstorms: Children, Computers, And Powerful Ideas - just started this, and enjoying it so far.

The Viral Storm: http://www.amazon.com/The-Viral-Storm-Pandemic-ebook/dp/B004...

Essays and aphorisms by Arthur Schopenhauer

John A. MacDonald: The young politician by Donald Creighton

Comedy of errors by Wm. Shakespeare

Paradise Lost by John Milton

1. 'Classical Mechanics' by Herbert Goldstein 2. 'Operational Amplifiers with Linear Integrated Circuits' by William Stanley 3. 'Chronicle of a Corpse Bearer' by Cyrus Mistry

1.) Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?: Seth Godin

2.)Mastering the Rockefeller Habits: What You Must Do to Increase the Value of Your Growing Firm - Verne Harnish

"The Extraordinary Education of Nicholas Benedict" for myself and "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader"(Chronicles of Narnia Series) for my children.

Zen & The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance

Frank Chimero's The Shape of Design in PDF. Great, thought-provoking book on design in everything in life.

1. Ulysses 2. The Dilbert Principle

The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker

A Beautiful Anarchy: How to Create Your Own Civilization in the Digital Age by Jeffrey Tucker

1. A Lovecraft anthology 2. Programming Clojure (Stuart Halloway)

Both books make me dream.

I'm trying to expand my horizons a bit, so I'm reading "The Omnivore's Dilemma". Amazing!

Empire Express: Building the First Transcontinental Railroad

Where wizards stay up late. The origins of the INTERNET.

Just started "The Connected Company" by Dave Gray.

The Lean Startup for the third time in a row. :)

I'm Dreaming of a Black Christmas (Lewis Black)

Meditations - Marcus Aurelius. Recommend it.

Earth Unaware by Orson Scott Card.

James Bond books by Ian Fleming

Neuromancer by William Gibson.

Coding Horror: The Book