My latest summary is for A Hacker’s Mind: How the Powerful Bend Society’s Rules, and How to Bend them Back by security expert Bruce Schneier. It's an interesting look at the systems around us through the lens of hacking. As usual, the key takeaways are below, and you can find the full summary by clicking the link above. KEY TAKEAWAYS A hack is an activity allowed by the system that subverts the goal or intent of the system. Hacks exploit a vulnerability in the system to advance the hacker’s...
10 days ago • 1 min read
If, like me, you’ve been watching US politics recently and wondering how it got to be the way it is, you might find my latest summary for Why We’re Polarized by Ezra Klein to be an enlightening read. As usual, the key takeaways are below, and you can find the full summary by clicking the link above. KEY TAKEAWAYS America has polarized significantly over the past few decades: Political polarization has increased. Swing voters who are genuinely persuadable are going extinct. Polarization by...
21 days ago • 1 min read
Hope you're doing well. This month I posted 2 summaries and 2 blog posts. Book summaries The Art of Learning by Joshua Waitzkin (24 mins) — Waitzkin won 8 National Championships in Chess and later became a world champion in Tai Chi Push Hands. This is partly a memoir and partly a self-improvement book, explaining the principles that helped him succeed. The Book of Why by Judea Pearl and Dana McKenzie (20 mins) — explains how statisticians misunderstood causality for a long time and how causal...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
This summary of The Book of Why: The New Science of Cause and Effect by Judea Pearl and Dana McKenzie explains how causal models can help us to better understand and control the world around us. This was a difficult one and I'm not sure how intelligible the key takeaways alone will be, as the diagrams are crucial to this book. Nevertheless, as usual I've set them out below and you can find the full summary (with diagrams) by clicking the link above. KEY TAKEAWAYS Statisticians woefully...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
Joshua Waitzkin was a chess prodigy who won 8 National Championships before the age of 20. He later took up Tai Chi and became a world champion within 6 years. His book The Art of Learning is partly a memoir and partly a self-improvement book, explaining the principles that helped him succeed in disciplines as different as chess and martial arts. As usual, the key takeaways are below, and you can find the full summary by clicking the link above. KEY TAKEAWAYS Mastering the fundamentals will...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
Hope you've had a good start to 2025. January's been a busier one with 2 book summaries and 4 blog posts: Book summaries The Art of Logic by Eugenia Cheng (28 mins) — explains how maths and logic work using real-world examples (and very few numbers). I found the sections on the limits of logic particularly useful. The Pyramid Principle by Barbara Minto (21 mins) — explains how to make non-fiction writing clearer by imposing a logical structure on it. So a rather logic-filled month with the...
2 months ago • 1 min read
My latest summary is for The Pyramid Principle: Logic in Writing and Thinking by Barbara Minto, which explains how to make your writing clearer by imposing a logical structure on it. While the book focuses on writing in a business context, most of the principles—including the key pyramid structure—can apply to many other forms of non-fiction writing. As usual, the key takeaways are below, and you can find the full summary by clicking the link above (estimated time: 21 mins). KEY TAKEAWAYS To...
2 months ago • 1 min read
Happy New Year, everyone! Hope 2025 is going well for you so far. My first summary for the year is for The Art of Logic: How to Make Sense in a World that Doesn’t by Eugenia Cheng. The book takes ideas from math and formal logic and explains how they can be applied in the real world. As usual, the key takeaways are below, and you can find the full summary by clicking the link above (estimated time 29 mins). I've also published my criticisms of the book alongside the summary. KEY TAKEAWAYS...
3 months ago • 2 min read
Another year is nearly behind us. December was a quieter one, with only 1 book summary and my short yearly round-up: Book summaries Why Are the Prices So D*mn High? by Eric Helland and Alex Tabarrok (19 mins) — another free book looking at why services like education and healthcare have become so much more expensive since 1950, even as manufactured goods have gotten much cheaper . Blog posts 2024 round-up (5 mins) — I pick out my 3 favourite books this year and give a brief overview of how...
3 months ago • 1 min read