/lit/ - Literature

Iron Kingdom by Christopher Clark

>>20024564
The Thirty Years War by CV Wedgwood
The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham
Hideyoshi by Mary Elizabeth Berry
Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe
How To Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
Tragedy & Hope by Carroll Quigley
Mao's Great Famine by Frank Dikotter
The Measure of Reality by Crosby
Complications by Atul Gawande
Fooled by Randomness by NN Taleb

>>20024716
never heard of some of these. im not a big history buff but complications and fooled by randomness seem really neat

bad blood by john carreyrou was really good

it's about a tech startup that basically lied it's way to getting huge amounts of money by investors

>>20024564

>>20024814
They're both good books. Atul Gawande has a couple other decent books too, and Taleb has a whole decent series of books he calls "The Incerto" which are all worth a read in my opinion. Just don't look at his twitter or you'll think he's a complete spastic idiot.

Atomic Accidents by James Mahaffey - Reviews every case of a person being harmed by radiation in history, how it happened, how it could have been prevented, etc. Will teach you a ton about nuclear science if you read it carefully.

The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes - less big on the science although there is still a bit there; mostly about the human side of the creation and use of weapons of mass destruction. It's very long and quite dense, but if I had to recommend one non-fiction book to almost anyone it would be this. It's a monumental work.

The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe - about fighter pilots and astronauts, in the typical Tom Wolfe new journalism style. If you like that style, this is about as good as it gets, but if you don't you can skip it.

Behind the Forbidden Door by Tiziano Terzani - Tiziano is an Italian journalist who traveled around China during the Deng era. He's very knowledgeable about the history of China, and I personally find him a charming travel writer as well. If you can find the (now rare) English version of Goodnight, Mr Lenin, that is also lovely, one of my favorite pieces of travel writing. Or you can just learn Italian, it's not a difficult read.

>>20024814
>>20024564
>im not a big history buff
I was like that too, I unironically got interested in it after reading The 48's laws of Power.
The guy that wrote it had a degree on classical studies and studied history as a hobby while working different jobs including showbiz jobs and started connecting the dots between the tactics people used back then and how they were still applied now.
It's a good read because he tells you historical events in an amusing way as examples of each law. And you can skip between the chapters that interest you for pragmatical use.
Is basically a collection of short Interesting historical events imo. The book made see how reading about reality can be just as amusing as fiction.
Overall a good non-fiction book for fun. Just don't fall into the trap of ¨becoming Machiavelli¨ or seeing the whole world thought the laws like many midwits that get attracted to it.

>>20025181
If you liked the 48 Laws of Power you should check out the Laws of Human Nature by the same author. It too follows the format of explaining a concept through historical examples of it's use. It's a much bigger book.

Can anyone recommend me a good non-fiction book detailing the French invasion of Russia? Currently reading War and Peace. I've had to consult wikipedia too much with regards to the battles.

>>20024716
>Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe
>How To Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
Both solid choices

The Road to Reality
A 1136 page book explaining all the laws of the universe.

>>20024716
>Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe
/fit/ would scream at you.

>>20025226
The majority of posters on /fit/ don't even lift. SS is a great book to learn how to do the major barbell lifts and do a beginner (0-6 months) program. Practical Programming covers intermediate lifting programs.

>>20025219
Anyone know other books like this? I mean books that explain complex stuff in a non-dumbed down way but are still made for the average person with an interest on the topic that go beyond pop-science

>>20025372
seconded. i feel the hot zone was good at that

figure i may as well add stuff i've read. pic related is about schizophrenia research starting from i believe the 1890s interspersed with a family that greatly aided research from the 50s on. couple has 12 kids, 6 of which develop schizophrenia

i dont know much about holocaust history itself but pic related is about, as the title suggests, a kid that lies to get into Auschwitz with his father.
Anus Mundi by Wieslaw Kielar is an autobiography of a guy that spent 5 years in the camps

>>20025372
https://theoreticalminimum.com/courses/classical-mechanics/2011/fall

There is a textbook if you're into that/as a companion to the lectures. You need about HS level math, but still way less than an undergrad.

The Red Decade by Eugene Lyons. A comprehensive history of the communist infiltration of American cultural and political life in the 1930’s, as written by a man who was formerly of their ranks. Essential read for an understanding of 20th century American history; if you don’t know about the influence that Stalinism had in American cultural and political life, you don’t know anything about the history of this country. plain and simple

>>20025372
>>20025636
Robert Sapolsky's ¨Behave¨ is basically Neuroscience 101 with 800 pages, It goes beyond the simplistic explanations of the relationship between your brain and behaviour that you tend to see in these kinds of books like prefrontal cortex = rationality, amygdala = fear, etc.
It only reads like pop-science when he isn't explaining how the brain works and the reviews called it challenging but accessible.
It starts getting heavy from the 2nd chapter onwards and you can't understand it if you don't read the 50 page appendix first unless you have previous knowledge about neuroscience. The footnotes and appendix are just as important.

>>20024564
Pop stuff:
Humble Pi - fun examples of how math affects our lives in ways we take for granted
We Have No Idea - great summary of the mysteries of modern physics, with illustrations by the guy who makes phd comics
A Mind at Play - biography of Claude Shannon, one of the most important and fascinating geniuses most people have never heard of

A little more technical, but still highly accessible:
Scale by Geoffrey West - a good intro to systems thinking
Consilience - a call-to-arms on bridging the sciences and the humanities
Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts - beautiful book about old manuscripts

>>20024564
This is fantastic. The title mostly speaks for itself, but the book does cover his entire life, but with a focus on his time as a prisoner and a labourer along with his wife in the Cambodian gulag. It's a miracle he survived and it's an incredibly harrowing story. The way he died in America years later was cheap and cruel, which makes everything about his life sadder. It's a fascinating portrait of life in the worst of the DK labour camps though, and that along with the incredibly engaging storytelling of Dr. Haing S. Ngor, makes for a great read.