The world's most infamous hacker offers an insider's view of the low-tech threats to high-tech security
Kevin Mitnick's exploits as a cyber-desperado and fugitive form one of the most exhaustive FBI manhunts in history and have spawned dozens of articles, books, films, and documentaries.
A roller-coaster ride through the unpredictable, exciting, and challenging universe of computers, games, puzzles, mazes, and computer art. "Pickover's dazzling array of tortuous mind-benders and arcane minutiae delights and surprises. It's easy to get trapped in his enticing labyrinth of seductive mind games".--Science News.
This is lesser-known Calvino, but actually my favorite of his works that I've read. It's just so weird! — a collection of stories about the deep history of the universe, featuring decidedly atypical protagonists (particles, formulae, evolving organisms, etc.) and a range of witty magical realism… Reads like vignettes from a strange alternate history of the cosmos…
All about form and structure — how things are made, and how they're constrained, from the structural efficiencies and limitations of natural materials, to differences in building/manufacturing practices we might consider in light of what we want to optimize for… It's not only well-written, but graced with lovely illustrations on almost every page, of things ranging from cell structures to ancient tools to the various ways things can break. It also works up to some interesting conclusions…moving from elements of form and structure, to historical and evolutionary influences, the "dictates of chance" on what things exist, and unifying principles of the physical world.
* Added "Bolo'bolo"
Weird and wonderful little book that proposes a whole societal structure of radical autonomous communities — complete with an invented language to describe the parts of this new community vision, and their machinations. Very eye-opening; in some ways it's a strange and impractical utopian dream; in others it's a sobering and critical plea for reorganizing society along lines of greater sustainability and social cohesion. Very interesting whichever way you look at it!
An incredible book about the art of translation, and a million other very welcome tangents. Hofstadter spins endless threads of ideas around a fascinating central premise: that a specific favorite poem of his, by a fairly obscure 16th century French poet, can spark an infinite variety of translations. There are 80+ of these translations sprinkled throughout the book, from friends and family, students and colleagues, noted translators and computer programs (and many by Hofstadter himself). Among them, a feast of academic lessons and personal reflections interwoven into a testament to the complexity and magic of translation and a whole lot of fascinating problems posed by language, literature, cognition and more. I've owned Hofstadter's infamous Gödel, Escher, Bach for a few years now, and still haven't finished swashbuckling my way through it — but I found this one thematically related yet more accessible, a great entrance point to a capacious and curious mind.
Really wonderful book about nature, the passage of time, and really paying attention to the world around you. The whole book could almost be categorized as prose poetry; it's not a large volume but took me a while to get through just due to the sheer density of lush and sensitive description. It chronicles a year in which both nothing and everything seems to happen; Dillard mostly hangs out around her home and its backyard creek (or at least, the book is constrained mostly to these experiences) but manages to evoke transcendent beauty and spirituality, capturing cycles of predator and prey, weather, and her own reactions to the unfolding of life in its infinite forms.
It is impossible to overstate the importance of this book.
Michelle Alexander shows how slavery in the United States has not disappeared - it has just changed shape, into the mass incarceration of black men.
The author, a former supreme court justice aid, meticulously describes and delineates the "War on Drugs" as being a system designed to 1) repress inner city lower income communities and effectively turn them into red zones, 2) place "criminals" under constant supervision and monitoring of the state, 3) prescribe harsh and unhelpful sentences for drug use and possession beyond the range of 'justice,' 4) criminalize poverty, 5) reward state and local drug enforcement agencies in the form of cash (federal subsidies for picking up and prosecuting drug criminals), and 6) effectively remove on third of the population from being able to vote in elections.
