Book Reviews (Page 3)

Kingpin: How One Hacker Took Over the Billion-Dollar Cybercrime Underground

Explores the early days of large-scale credit card theft, detailing the mechanics of how hackers stole credit card numbers, manufactured fake cards, and employed a team of buyers to make fraudulent purchases with the cards.

4-stars

Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man’s Fight for Justice

Browder documents his fight against crooked oligarchs and his long campaign for justice for one of his lawyers, Sergei Magnitsky, who was murdered while in Russian detention.

4-stars

The Case Against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money

GMU prof Bryan Caplan recoils in horror at the low societal ROI of our trillion-dollar annual investment in education (for comparison, Caplan notes, we spend only $700 billion on the dreaded "military industrial complex" annually)

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2018 Focus: Crime and Punishment

Heists, smuggling, white collar, deception, corruption, and violence - this year's reading theme is "Crime and Punishment." Let's get cracking.

4-stars

American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road

The "Silk Road" online drug market roared to life during my last year of college and the founder, Ross Ulbricht, was taken down shortly after I graduated. A thought-provoking inside-look at the investigation.

3-stars

Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI

As the unsolved murders piled up, the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover stepped in. The Osage murders were among Hoover's earliest major cases as director and his reputation was riding on their successful resolution. As we follow the undercover agents infiltrating the Osage reservation...

4-stars

The Club Dumas

A delightful, dark mystery set in the world of rare book collecting and forgery. The sneering protagonist, Lucas Corso, finds himself in the middle of a real-life Dumas novel.

3-stars

Master Thieves: The Boston Gangsters Who Pulled Off the World’s Greatest Art Heist

As the largest unsolved art heist in history, the ISGM heist should have made for a fascinating book. Yet "Master Thieves" often repeats itself, meanders wildly, and drags on to an inconclusive conclusion.

3-stars

Believe Me: A Memoir of Love, Death, and Jazz Chickens

True to form, Eddie's memoir "Believe Me" is rambling and hilarious. Several sections of the book are surprisingly touching - Eddie's artistic perseverance hit me right in the feels. As he says, the most important part of his success was "stamina, perseverance, and determination."

5-stars

The Force

A gritty, corruption-infused NYC cop tale that steams and rages with the frenetic pulse of the City. Our anti-hero, NYPD cop Denny Malone, ricochets from bad to worse as his crooked ways catch up to him and his partners.

3-stars

Rationality: From AI to Zombies

Internet rationality celebrity Eliezer Yudkowsky drags us through an epic logical journey to the land of the "Bayesian Conspiracy" and the idea that real rationality is about "winning."

3-stars

Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter

If you can get past the nuttery, Adams makes clear recommendations for how to apply insights from behavioral psychology to develop a "weapons-grade" persuasion capability. The main takeaway is that we're way less rational than we think we are and that visual persuasion is most powerful.

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2017 - The Best Books I Read This Year

The 10 best books I read in 2017: How to Live, The Bet, Endurance, Ranger Games, Kindly Inquisitors, Lords of the Sea, Paradise Lost, Norse Mythology, The Day of the Jackal, and Artemis

2-stars

Dragon Teeth

Crichton's fictionalization draws upon the incredible true story of the "Bone Wars" between Yale's O.C Marsh and Philadelphia's Edward Drinker Cope - a bit of Yale history that I had no idea existed.

5-stars

Artemis

A heist novel set on the moon. While very different than The Martian (though only slightly less profane), Artemis proved that Andy Weir is giving Neal Stephenson some stiff competition for the title of our generation's master of "hard" sci-fi.

3-stars

How Economics Shapes Science

Stephan reveals how economic incentives have made American science risk averse and turned our universities into lobbying superpowers and employment pyramid schemes.

3-stars

The Fold

Writing good sci-fi is hard. Peter Clines' "The Fold" starts at about 4 stars and ends with a 3... and he's lucky not to get a 2. He's got a fun take on the classic sci-fi trope of top-secret government labs, but the ending is contrived and doesn't

5-stars

Predictable Revenue: Turn Your Business Into A Sales Machine

I've been thinking a lot about how we build out our sales team at SilviaTerra. I asked a friend whose company is a few years ahead of ours if he had any relevant book recs and he immediately suggested Aaron Ross's "Predictable Revenue", calling it "The Bible&

3-stars

The Theory And Practice Of Gamesmanship; Or, The Art Of Winning Games Without Actually Cheating

A wickedly dry satire dressed up as a self-help manual. Published in 1953 by British Gamesman Stephen Potter, this tiny book covers all phases of a game, from the pre-game disorientation with bad driving directions to "luncheonship" and "losemanship" (how to win, even if you lose)

4-stars

True Style: The History and Principles of Classic Menswear

I've always been a slob when it comes to clothing. I straight up wore sweatpants for all of sophomore year in college (note: this is not the "Ivy Style" that Boyer refers to in the book). The difference between a suit, a tuxedo, and a blazer? Hell if

4-stars

Cat's Cradle

"Cat's Cradle" is satire of the most sulfuric potency. I laughed a few times, but mostly Vonnegut made me sad. His cynicism is complete and his wordcraft is devastating. Vonnegut sneers at the stupidity of the common man and leaves the reader feeling bemused but hopeless. He's a

3-stars

Timberland Investments: A Portfolio Perspective

"Timberland Investments" is more interesting than useful. Written in 1992 before timberland investing had become as mainstream as it is today among pension funds and endowments, Zinkhan's book offers a perspective from an interesting point in time. However, the landscape has become significantly more crowded and the world

5-stars

The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival

The cover of "The Tiger" had me anticipating a bloodthirsty, high-voltage romp through remote villages in the jungle. What Vaillant delivers is a slow-burn thriller that deftly weaves in the landscape, history, and character of the Russian Far East. We follow Yuri Trush, the leader of Inspection Tiger,

2-stars

The Warrior Ethos

In "The Warrior Ethos," Pressfield plucks a few gems from a variety of ancient sources but adds little new. The book seems to be the result of calculated marketing acumen - "How can I recycle ancient wisdom to create a tiny book that will sell well with

5-stars

Ranger Games: A Story of Soldiers, Family and an Inexplicable Crime

In preparation for my "Year of Crime" reading theme for next year, I've been looking for some books on true crimes. I saw an ad for "Ranger Games" in The Atlantic and picked it up on a whim. Ben Blum immediately swept me up into his