One of my all-time favorites. Ridley’s best book. I consider myself a rational optimist. This book explains why.

I listened to this on audiobook, and it was poor audio quality. At first I was interested, but it eventually got a bit banal and it wasn’t enough to overcome the annoying audio, so I stopped.

Fascinating stories spanning decades. I felt a mixture of awe at the bravery and daring of these men, as well as a sense of anger and confusion at their arrogance and foolish decision making. Required reading if you’re interested in naval or intelligence history.

This book has an agenda, but it’s so full of historical information about chip manufacturing - and its geopolitical implications - that you must read it if you’re interested in the topic. The book is as much about the current situation as it is how we got here. With AI the situation has only worsene...

This is an academic book and is occasionally dry, but Tainter’s coverage of the topic is excellent and he put forward a compelling argument. He’s especially dismissive of the many hand-wavy arguments about “moral collapse” or other mystical ideas, but doesn’t totally disregard culture either....

This is an interesting book. Is it compelling? Not really. There are elements of the conventional story of Christ that the authors challenge in compelling ways, but their alternative theory doesn’t seem much more plausible....

If you’re unfamiliar with some of the strategies for having difficult conversations, it’s worth listening to. I found it eventually got a bit slow and I stopped.

Discussing high intelligence is difficult, for many reasons. Some of the reasons are due to the problems of defining the term, determining how applicable it is to the subject at hand (or life in general), and the other practical concerns of talking about a complex subject....

I loved the first book but didn’t get far into this one. I should give it another try but I got Alien fatigue.

Sad story, well written. I read quite a few books from the time period last year and enjoyed them. This one had a good balance of story along with historical information.