Probably the best book I read last year was Steve Job's biography by Walter Isaacson. I thought it was a fascinating book that showed just what a polarizing figure Steve Jobs actually was. Recently I found myself looking for a new book, and Amazon recommended Walter Isaacson's biography of Albert Einstein, Einstein: His Life And Universe. I recently finished reading it and I wanted to share my review of it here. Einstein in 1921. Photo from Wikipedia. As someone with a physics background, I was impressed with how Isaacson dealt with some of the technical achievements of Einstein, such as the ...

I picked up a new book while camping this weekend, Lords Of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World. Given that I can usually get through most books in a few hours, I'm a bit surprised that I've spent nearly a full day reading this new book and still have about half to go -- so it must be fairly large. Lords Of Finance Lords Of Finance is essentially a history of the modern financial system, with emphasis on the major players throughout the years. I'm currently reading about the Great Depression, and some of the decisions that led up to that. It seems pretty clear that nobody really understands ...

Recently I sat down and watched the movie Food Inc. which is a very informative documentary about where our food actually comes from. One of the chief consultants for that movie was a guy named Michael Pollan, who has written numerous books including The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defence of Food. After watching the movie, I decided to sit down and read The Omnivore's Dilemma, which I actually ordered about a year ago but never found time to read. There's a lot of overlap in the book with the content of the movie, so I had most of the key points already in mind. After reading the book, there are ...

About a year ago I picked up The 4-Hour Workweek, a book by Tim Ferris. I actually saw Tim give a presentation at WordCamp San Francisco last year, but never got a chance to talk to him. There are a few main concepts in the 4-Hour Workweek that I think Tim spells out in a lot of detail. The first concept is the importance of residual income. That is, money that you (as a person or a company) don't have to fight for each and every month. That may be the sale of an eBook from your website, or some photos that you sell on the side, but ultimately he stresses how important it is for most people to ...

About a year ago I picked up The 4-Hour Workweek, a book by Tim Ferris. I actually saw Tim give a presentation at WordCamp San Francisco last year, but never got a chance to talk to him. There are a few main concepts in the 4-Hour Workweek that I think Tim spells out in a lot of detail. The first concept is the importance of residual income. That is, money that you (as a person or a company) don't have to fight for each and every month. That may be the sale of an eBook from your website, or some photos that you sell on the side, but ultimately he stresses how important it is for most people to ...

Courtney Summers is an author of young adult books and also a client of BraveNewCode's; we've been really fortunate to work with her a few times and help her out with a few iterations of her website. A few months ago I was joking on Twitter with Courtney that it would be cool if she found a way to put me in her next book. Well, Courtney got the final version of her book to proof last night, and sure enough, she managed to sneak me in. As you can see, there's a character in her new book, Some Girls Are, named Duane Storey. I can finally scratch "being a character in a young adult book targeted ...

It seems that after eight years of university I've acquired a fairy large array of engineering books. Since I haven't read any of them in years, I figure I might as well sell a few of them off. Here's a list of some of them. If you're interested, drop me a comment. Also, please feel free to forward this list on to any physics or electrical engineering students. Materials Science and Engineering, William D. Callister Digital Signal Processing, Emmanuel C. Ifeachor Introduction to Electrodymanics, Griffiths Introduction to Quantum Mechanics, Griffiths Microprocessor Systems Design, Clements Computer ...