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!
October monthly round-up
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I'm happy to say I cleaned up both the All Summaries and Blog Posts archives this month so you can now sort by things like author, title, date, rating and topic. I've kept the old pages for now in case of teething issues—please let me know if you see any! During October, I posted 2 book summaries and 3 blog posts: Book summaries
Blog posts
My next summary will be for Inadequate Equilibria: Where and How Civilizations Get Stuck by Eliezer Yudkowsky, a thought-provoking book pushing back against "modest epistemology"—the idea that you should defer to "experts" or "the crowd" since the average person won't be able to outperform them. It was interesting to read this shortly after The Scout Mindset. The two books don't exactly contradict each other (and I found both to be valuable), but there's definitely a conflict in the general 'vibes'. Thanks for subscribing! Until next time, 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!
March was a quieter month with only 2 book summaries: Why We’re Polarized by Ezra Klein (25 mins) — published in 2020, Ezra Klein looks at how US politics got to be so polarized. A Hacker’s Mind by Bruce Schneier (25 mins) — Schneier applies his background in computer security to looking at how market, legal, political, and cognitive systems can also be "hacked". I'm also planning to take some time off next month, so I'll see you in May! Thanks for subscribing and until next time, To Summarise
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...