Set in an alternate future where North America has become one state and Quebecois radicals want to secede, the action happens at a tennis academy and a nearby halfway house in Boston, Massachusetts, this book will expand your mind with a mere attempt to read it. It's brilliant, funny, and sad, but it's also packed with interesting ideas about entertainment, addiction, self-development, being human, the civic ideal, setting and meeting expectations, family, and a whole lot more. It's also got tons of footnotes and plenty of fascinating factual asides about pharmacology, tennis, Alcoholics Anonymous, and much more.
I believe this book deserves to be on the list because it is a fantastic treatment of an uncovered topic, self control. It presents an interesting angle, with a psychologist and a science-writer teaming up to deliver this excellent treatment.
- fixed a bug where table header was rendered for titles with no book
children
- now correctly parsing url (some of the record whereat parsed properly)
Losing My Virginity is the unusual, frequently outrageous autobiography of one of the great business geniuses of our time. When Richard Branson started his first business, he and his friends decided that "since we're complete virgins at business, let's call it just that: Virgin." Since then, Branson has written his own "rules" for success, creating a group of companies with a global presence, but no central headquarters, no management hierarchy, and minimal bureaucracy.
Part memoir, part master class by one of the bestselling authors of all time, this superb volume is a revealing and practical view of the writer's craft, comprising the basic tools of the trade every writer must have.
Brilliantly structured, friendly and inspiring, On Writing will empower and entertain everyone who reads it—fans, writers, and anyone who loves a great story well told.
This book is Freakonomics #1. Freakonomics #2 titled SuperFreakonomics has already been included in the list.
Which is more dangerous, a gun or a swimming pool? What do schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers have in common? Why do drug dealers still live with their moms? How much do parents really matter? How did the legalization of abortion affect the rate of violent crime?
It is used as the textbook for algorithms courses at many universities and is commonly cited as a reference for algorithms in published papers, with over 8900 citations documented. The book sold half a million copies during its first 20 years. Its fame has led to the common use of the abbreviation "CLRS" (Cormen, Leiserson, Rivest, Stein).
This title covers a broad range of algorithms in depth, yet makes their design and analysis accessible to all levels of readers. Each chapter is relatively self-contained and can be used as a unit of study. The algorithms are described in English and in a pseudocode designed to be readable by anyone who has done a little programming. The explanations have been kept elementary without sacrificing depth of coverage or mathematical rigor.
Why should we bother fighting ego in an era that glorifies social media, reality TV, and other forms of shameless self-promotion? Armed with the lessons in this book, as Holiday writes, “you will be less invested in the story you tell about your own specialness, and as a result, you will be liberated to accomplish the world-changing work you’ve set out to achieve.”
Kingpin by Kevin Poulson - expose of the construction and takedown of one of the worlds largest cybercrime forums ~ a trip down the rabbit hole for any reader curious about the mechanics and culture surrounding credit card theft (http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9319468-kingpin)
* Add Historical Fiction Book (#65)
The Pillars of the Earth
* Add "The Diamond Age" (#66)
* Adding Spycraft to list of books (#67)
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/971936.Spycraft
Excellent book to understand the world of espionage and the tools used to spy
* added An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth
