The Man Who Solved the Market: What Jim Simons Actually Built
I read Zuckerman's book on Jim Simons while running my own iron condors. Medallion's edge was thin and executed at scale. My system has so far shown it survives, not that it pays.
The Library
Everything worth a proper write-up, read or listened to. Not summaries, not star ratings: an account of what changed when I finished the last page, what the author was doing beneath the surface argument, and what it might mean for someone building things in the real world.
Reading in progress has a shelf of its own: gentler on-ramps to cybernetics, from a cartoon to Ashby.
34 reviews, 5 on audio. Shelved by theme.
Where to start
The reviews readers and search find most.
- Who Was Steve Prefontaine? Tom Jordan's Biography, Reviewed
Pre ran every race from the front, lost the Munich 5,000 that way, and refused to change. Tom Jordan's biography of Steve Prefontaine, read by someone who runs but does not race.
- The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are by Alan Watts
Watts's short 1966 book argues that the skin-encapsulated ego is a useful fiction, that you came out of the universe rather than into it, and that a culture forbids us to notice.
- Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson: The Algorithm and Its Cost
I'm mid-listen on Isaacson's Elon Musk, read by Jeremy Bobb, and I keep hearing Musk's five-step engineering algorithm in my own work. I admire the deletion discipline; the mania has a human cost.
- What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami
Murakami's memoir treats running and writing as one daily discipline. I read it as a runner on Nevada's open BLM land who also keeps a daily freewriting journal, and it named things I had felt.
- The Information by James Gleick: The Book That Sent Me Looking for Meaning
James Gleick's The Information is the clearest history we have of how the world learned to measure the signal. It is also the book that showed me, by drawing the boundary so cleanly, the one thing the science of information set aside on purpose: meaning. This review is the origin story of the work I have been doing since I closed it.
- Masters of Doom by David Kushner: How Two Johns Built id Software
I finished the Masters of Doom audiobook narrated by Wil Wheaton and it was marvelous. The two-founders, build-from-nothing, ship-relentlessly story of id Software stuck with me. I miss it already, the same way I miss Shoe Dog.
- Born to Run by Christopher McDougall: The Book That Changed How We Think About Running
McDougall went to Mexico's Copper Canyons asking why his feet hurt and came back with the Tarahumara, the endurance running hypothesis, and a case against cushioned shoes that fed the barefoot movement.
- Gertrude Stein’s Essay on Writing Masterpieces: A Revolutionary Perspective
A twenty-page lecture I read twice in one sitting. Stein's claim is that a masterpiece has no sense of time in it, and that breaking from convention that completely is why there are so few.
- The Tao of Pooh & The Te of Piglet: Eastern Wisdom Through the Hundred Acre Wood
Hoff explains Taoism through Pooh and Piglet: wu wei and the uncarved block in the first book, inner virtue and the power of the small in the second. I keep catching myself being Rabbit.
- Genius Makers by Cade Metz: The People Behind Deep Learning
An in-progress read of Cade Metz's Genius Makers (2021): Hinton through the AI winter, the talent war at Google and Facebook, DeepMind's AGI goal. It ends before ChatGPT, and I read it in doses.
Money & Markets
Risk, trading, and the people who turned markets into machines.
Technology & Builders
How the machines, and the people obsessed with them, actually got built.
Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson: The Algorithm and Its Cost
I'm mid-listen on Isaacson's Elon Musk, read by Jeremy Bobb, and I keep hearing Musk's five-step engineering algorithm in my own work. I admire the deletion discipline; the mania has a human cost.
Masters of Doom by David Kushner: How Two Johns Built id Software Audiobook
I finished the Masters of Doom audiobook narrated by Wil Wheaton and it was marvelous. The two-founders, build-from-nothing, ship-relentlessly story of id Software stuck with me. I miss it already, the same way I miss Shoe Dog.
Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software
Petzold starts with two kids signaling with flashlights and climbs, relay by relay and gate by gate, to a working processor. It changed how I think about the machines I use every day.
The DevOps Handbook: Why Elite Teams Ship Fast Without Breaking
The DevOps Handbook is the clearest account I have read of why some teams ship small changes often without breaking things. A walk through the Three Ways, the technical practices, and what has dated.
Insanely Great: The Life and Times of Macintosh, the Computer That Changed Everything by Steven Levy
Levy wrote Insanely Great ten years after the Mac shipped, close enough to have the people and the fights fresh. I came for the engineering culture of the small team, and that is where it is best.
Hackers: The Heroes of the Computer Revolution, A Historical Perspective
I write software, and I read Levy's Hackers to see where the habits I take for granted came from, from the all-night MIT model railroad club to Homebrew and the fight over free code.
Grit & Ambition
Founders, athletes, and operators who kept going past the sensible point.
Born to Run by Christopher McDougall: The Book That Changed How We Think About Running
McDougall went to Mexico's Copper Canyons asking why his feet hurt and came back with the Tarahumara, the endurance running hypothesis, and a case against cushioned shoes that fed the barefoot movement.
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami
Murakami's memoir treats running and writing as one daily discipline. I read it as a runner on Nevada's open BLM land who also keeps a daily freewriting journal, and it named things I had felt.
Who Was Steve Prefontaine? Tom Jordan's Biography, Reviewed
Pre ran every race from the front, lost the Munich 5,000 that way, and refused to change. Tom Jordan's biography of Steve Prefontaine, read by someone who runs but does not race.
Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike by Phil Knight Audiobook
I listened to Shoe Dog while working on my own projects. Knight's Nike story is one long cash crunch, a bank that kept pulling credit, and a team of obsessive runners, told without the mythology.
Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life...And Maybe the World by Admiral William H. McRaven
I listen to Admiral McRaven's commencement speech every week, usually Sunday night or Monday morning. The book expands that University of Texas address into ten lessons from SEAL training.
Science & the Cosmos
Astronomy, evolution, and the long view of where we sit.
The Information by James Gleick: The Book That Sent Me Looking for Meaning
James Gleick's The Information is the clearest history we have of how the world learned to measure the signal. It is also the book that showed me, by drawing the boundary so cleanly, the one thing the science of information set aside on purpose: meaning. This review is the origin story of the work I have been doing since I closed it.
Pale Blue Dot by Carl Sagan: We Live in Space Audiobook
I bought Pale Blue Dot as a student for its cover, then wore out Sagan's own audiobook reading on long drives. Its point still holds: we are not on Earth so much as in space, moving.
Pink Boots and a Machete: My Journey From NFL Cheerleader to National Geographic Explorer
Mireya Mayor went from Miami Dolphins cheerleader to primatologist tracking lemurs in Madagascar. What stayed with me is that she never chose between the two and does not apologize for either.
The Dragons of Eden by Carl Sagan
Sagan's Pulitzer book on how intelligence evolved, from the triune brain to why so many cultures tell stories about dragons. Dry in places, and its warning about AI reads differently now.
Craft & Writing
Books about the work of putting words down honestly.
Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
Some writing books feel like technical manuals, others like stern lectures. Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life is so...
Gertrude Stein’s Essay on Writing Masterpieces: A Revolutionary Perspective
A twenty-page lecture I read twice in one sitting. Stein's claim is that a masterpiece has no sense of time in it, and that breaking from convention that completely is why there are so few.
On Writing by Stephen King
Stephen King's On Writing is two books in one cover, a memoir of how he became a writer and a plain toolbox for being one. The early-life half was my favorite part.
Fiction & Story
Novels that left a mark, from the absurd to the epic.
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
The famous line about the universe conspiring left me ambivalent. What stayed with me was the crystal merchant, who loves his dream of Mecca more than he would risk the trip. I know that person.
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Pip comes into a secret fortune and gets worse before he gets better, ashamed of Joe the blacksmith, the kindest man in the book. A slow Victorian serial about how money changes a person.
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
Doerr's Pulitzer novel keeps the war mostly offstage and follows two children, a blind French girl and a German orphan with a gift for radios, until their paths cross in Saint-Malo.
Adultery by Paulo Coelho Audiobook
I listened to Coelho's Adultery on audiobook. Linda, a journalist in Geneva with the life she is supposed to want, starts an affair, and the book is really about her boredom and numbness.
The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom Audiobook
I heard Albom's novel on audiobook during a flight and could still hear the narrator weeks later. Eddie, a pier mechanic, dies and meets five people, and it turns out to be a book about forgiveness.
Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
I came to Golden's novel through the dispute with Mineko Iwasaki, the geisha he interviewed, and finished it more curious about her own memoir. A beautiful, slow book about having no choice.
The Stranger by Albert Camus
Fine writing early on, the funeral, the heat, the beach, but Meursault read to me as a man short on social skills, not a philosopher. The trial was the part that rang true. Three out of five.
Philosophy & the Examined Life
Stoicism, taoism, mindfulness, and arguments about how to live.
The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are by Alan Watts
Watts's short 1966 book argues that the skin-encapsulated ego is a useful fiction, that you came out of the universe rather than into it, and that a culture forbids us to notice.
Out of Your Mind by Alan Watts: The Universe Listening to Itself
Out of Your Mind is Alan Watts' archival lectures in his own voice, laugh included. I keep them on a loop, transcribed the program for a film series, and found the bedrock under how I think about the stars.
The Tao of Pooh & The Te of Piglet: Eastern Wisdom Through the Hundred Acre Wood
Hoff explains Taoism through Pooh and Piglet: wu wei and the uncarved block in the first book, inner virtue and the power of the small in the second. I keep catching myself being Rabbit.
Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Taleb's Antifragile rearranged how I think about risk: the fragile, robust and antifragile triad, the barbell, via negativa, and skin in the game. Arrogant, repetitive, and worth the argument.
Peace in Every Breath by Thich Nhat Hanh
A reread on a flight. Thich Nhat Hanh's short book on mindful breathing, breath as the anchor that pulls you back into the moment, and practice that lives in washing dishes and walking.
Life & Reflection
Memoir and the rest of the shelf that resists a tidy label.
Born a Crime by Trevor Noah: A Voice Telling Its Own Life
I'm mid-listen on the Born a Crime audiobook, narrated by Trevor Noah himself, and it is one of the best-told things I have ever put in my ears. A story of apartheid, a fierce mother, language as survival, and lightness pulled out of hardship.
Genius Makers by Cade Metz: The People Behind Deep Learning
An in-progress read of Cade Metz's Genius Makers (2021): Hinton through the AI winter, the talent war at Google and Facebook, DeepMind's AGI goal. It ends before ChatGPT, and I read it in doses.