December monthly round-up


Another year is nearly behind us. December was a quieter one, with only 1 book summary and my short yearly round-up:

Book summaries

Blog posts

  • 2024 round-up (5 mins) — I pick out my 3 favourite books this year and give a brief overview of how the site's been doing.

I've already prepared my first summary for January for The Art of Logic by Eugenia Cheng and will be posting that in the next week.

Thank you for following and I wish you all the best for 2025!

To Summarise

ToSummarise.com

I summarise non-fiction books with more detail and critical analysis than you'll find elsewhere. Join my newsletter to get new summaries delivered straight to your inbox!

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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...

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...

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...