Reading Log

Thiel, entrepreneur of PayPal, Facebook and Palantir fame gives a look in to where he sees value in startups, and how aspiring entrepreneurs should identify untapped markets. The title gives some of this away - where can your company find itself a total monopoly and become the one?

My one critique would be that Norman ought to refer to Tufte and Binghurst for tips on book design - the book has an unclear heading hierarchy, and don’t start a chapter on a verso page!

Similar to Edward R. Tufte’s Visual Display of Quantitative Information, this is an authoritative text on typography in printed design.

This short book is a wonderful exploration into the emergent complexity, and seeming intelligence that can emerge from simple agents following simple rules around their environment. Vehicles presents a different and though-provoking view in to the world of robotics.

One of my all-time favourite books. A well reasoned, clear and concise discussion of the history and how to best-present visual information with many great examples thought the book of maps, charts and figures. The book itself is stunning to look at, too, and its typesetting style has heavily influenced the layout of this site. A bible for any statistician, journalist, data scientist and visual communicator.

My all-time favourite (thus far…) programming language book. Reads well, is a comprehensive introduction to C that uses the standard library functions as examples. Will leave you feeling that you understand C at a why and under-the-hood level. Also includes a formal grammar and reasonable reference in the appendices. Cannot recommend highly enough for those looking at C, UNIX and systems programming.