Software Engineering at Google: Lessons Learned from Programming Over Time


Titus Winters - 2020
    With this book, you'll get a candid and insightful look at how software is constructed and maintained by some of the world's leading practitioners.Titus Winters, Tom Manshreck, and Hyrum K. Wright, software engineers and a technical writer at Google, reframe how software engineering is practiced and taught: from an emphasis on programming to an emphasis on software engineering, which roughly translates to programming over time.You'll learn:Fundamental differences between software engineering and programmingHow an organization effectively manages a living codebase and efficiently responds to inevitable changeWhy culture (and recognizing it) is important, and how processes, practices, and tools come into play

Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives


John Palfrey - 2008
    Our economy, our politics, our culture, and even the structure of our family life will be forever transformed." "Based on extensive original research, including interviews with Digital Natives around the world, Born Digital explores a broad range of issues, from the highly philosophical to the purely practical: What does identity mean for young people who have dozens of online profiles and avatars? Should we worry about privacy issues - or is privacy even a relevant concern for Digital Natives? How does the concept of safety translate into an increasingly virtual world? Are online games addictive, and how do we need to worry about violent video games? What is the Internet's impact on creativity and learning? What lies ahead - socially, professionally, and psychologically - for this generation?" A smart, practical guide to a brave new world and its complex inhabitants, Born Digital will be essential reading for parents, teachers, and the myriad of confused adults who want to understand the digital present - and shape the digital future.

What Should We Be Worried About? Real Scenarios That Keep Scientists Up at Night


John Brockman - 2014
    He asked them to disclose something that, for scientific reasons, worries them—particularly scenarios that aren't on the popular radar yet. Encompassing neuroscience, economics, philosophy, physics, psychology, biology, and more—here are 150 ideas that will revolutionize your understanding of the world.Steven Pinker uncovers the real risk factors for war * Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi peers into the coming virtual abyss * Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek laments our squandered opportunities to prevent global catastrophe * Seth Lloyd calculates the threat of a financial black hole * Alison Gopnik on the loss of childhood * Nassim Nicholas Taleb explains why firefighters understand risk far better than economic "experts" * Matt Ridley on the alarming re-emergence of superstition * Daniel C. Dennett and george dyson ponder the impact of a major breakdown of the Internet * Jennifer Jacquet fears human-induced damage to the planet due to "the Anthropocebo Effect" * Douglas Rushkoff fears humanity is losing its soul * Nicholas Carr on the "patience deficit" * Tim O'Reilly foresees a coming new Dark Age * Scott Atran on the homogenization of human experience * Sherry Turkle explores what's lost when kids are constantly connected * Kevin Kelly outlines the looming "underpopulation bomb" * Helen Fisher on the fate of men * Lawrence Krauss dreads what we don't know about the universe * Susan Blackmore on the loss of manual skills * Kate Jeffery on the death of death * plus J. Craig Venter, Daniel Goleman, Virginia Heffernan, Sam Harris, Brian Eno, Martin Rees, and more

What You Do Is Who You Are: How to Create Your Business Culture


Ben Horowitz - 2019
    Ben Horowitz has long been fascinated by history, and particularly by how people behave differently than you’d expect. The time and circumstances in which they were raised often shapes them—yet a few leaders have managed to shape their times. In What You Do Is Who You Are, he turns his attention to a question crucial to every organization: how do you create and sustain the culture you want?To Horowitz, culture is how a company makes decisions. It is the set of assumptions employees use to resolve everyday problems: should I stay at the Red Roof Inn, or the Four Seasons? Should we discuss the color of this product for five minutes or thirty hours? If culture is not purposeful, it will be an accident or a mistake.What You Do Is Who You Are explains how to make your culture purposeful by spotlighting four models of leadership and culture-building—the leader of the only successful slave revolt, Haiti’s Toussaint Louverture; the Samurai, who ruled Japan for seven hundred years and shaped modern Japanese culture; Genghis Khan, who built the world’s largest empire; and Shaka Senghor, a man convicted of murder who ran the most formidable prison gang in the yard and ultimately transformed prison culture.Horowitz connects these leadership examples to modern case-studies, including how Louverture’s cultural techniques were applied (or should have been) by Reed Hastings at Netflix, Travis Kalanick at Uber, and Hillary Clinton, and how Genghis Khan’s vision of cultural inclusiveness has parallels in the work of Don Thompson, the first African-American CEO of McDonalds, and of Maggie Wilderotter, the CEO who led Frontier Communications. Horowitz then offers guidance to help any company understand its own strategy and build a successful culture.What You Do Is Who You Are is a journey through culture, from ancient to modern. Along the way, it answers a question fundamental to any organization: who are we? How do people talk about us when we’re not around? How do we treat our customers? Are we there for people in a pinch? Can we be trusted?Who you are is not the values you list on the wall. It’s not what you say in company-wide meeting. It’s not your marketing campaign. It’s not even what you believe. Who you are is what you do. This book aims to help you do the things you need to become the kind of leader you want to be—and others want to follow.

How the Internet Happened: From Netscape to the iPhone


Brian McCullough - 2018
    In How the Internet Happened, he chronicles the whole fascinating story for the first time, beginning in a dusty Illinois basement in 1993, when a group of college kids set off a once-in-an-epoch revolution with what would become the first “dotcom.”Depicting the lives of now-famous innovators like Netscape’s Marc Andreessen and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, McCullough also reveals surprising quirks and unknown tales as he tracks both the technology and the culture around the internet’s rise. Cinematic in detail and unprecedented in scope, the result both enlightens and informs as it draws back the curtain on the new rhythm of disruption and innovation the internet fostered, and helps to redefine an era that changed every part of our lives.

The Filter Bubble: What the Internet is Hiding From You


Eli Pariser - 2011
    Instead of giving you the most broadly popular result, Google now tries to predict what you are most likely to click on. According to MoveOn.org board president Eli Pariser, Google's change in policy is symptomatic of the most significant shift to take place on the Web in recent years - the rise of personalization. In this groundbreaking investigation of the new hidden Web, Pariser uncovers how this growing trend threatens to control how we consume and share information as a society-and reveals what we can do about it.Though the phenomenon has gone largely undetected until now, personalized filters are sweeping the Web, creating individual universes of information for each of us. Facebook - the primary news source for an increasing number of Americans - prioritizes the links it believes will appeal to you so that if you are a liberal, you can expect to see only progressive links. Even an old-media bastion like "The Washington Post" devotes the top of its home page to a news feed with the links your Facebook friends are sharing. Behind the scenes a burgeoning industry of data companies is tracking your personal information to sell to advertisers, from your political leanings to the color you painted your living room to the hiking boots you just browsed on Zappos.In a personalized world, we will increasingly be typed and fed only news that is pleasant, familiar, and confirms our beliefs - and because these filters are invisible, we won't know what is being hidden from us. Our past interests will determine what we are exposed to in the future, leaving less room for the unexpected encounters that spark creativity, innovation, and the democratic exchange of ideas.While we all worry that the Internet is eroding privacy or shrinking our attention spans, Pariser uncovers a more pernicious and far-reaching trend on the Internet and shows how we can - and must - change course. With vivid detail and remarkable scope, The Filter Bubble reveals how personalization undermines the Internet's original purpose as an open platform for the spread of ideas and could leave us all in an isolated, echoing world.

The Supermen: The Story of Seymour Cray and the Technical Wizards Behind the Supercomputer


Charles J. Murray - 1997
    This is the story of a technical genius who, against all odds, created a series of machines that revolutionized the computing industry. Chronicling each major breakthrough, Murray takes us behind the scenes to witness late-night brainstorming sessions, miraculous eleventh-hour fixes, and flashes of insight when bold new ideas were cooked up. Drawing from rare in-depth interviews with Seymour Cray, Murray gives us an unparalleled portrait of the man and his methods, reporting not only Cray's personal reflections, but the recollections of his closest colleagues and the truth behind the rumors.

No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State


Glenn Greenwald - 2014
    That source turned out to be the twenty-nine-year-old NSA contractor Edward Snowden, and his revelations about the agency's widespread, systemic overreach proved to be some of the most explosive and consequential news in recent history, triggering a fierce debate over national security and information privacy.Now Greenwald fits all the pieces together, recounting his high-intensity eleven-day trip to Hong Kong, examining the broader implications of the surveillance detailed in his reporting for The Guardian, and revealing fresh information on the NSA's unprecedented abuse of power with documents from the Snowden archive. Fearless and incisive, No Place to Hide has already sparked outrage around the globe and been hailed by voices across the political spectrum as an essential contribution to our understanding of the U.S. surveillance state.

Out of the Ether: The Amazing Story of Ethereum and the $55 Million Heist that Almost Destroyed It All


Matthew Leising - 2020
    It also chronicles the creation of the Ethereum blockchain from the mind of inventor Vitalik Buterin to the ragtag group of people he assembled around him to build the second-largest crypto universe after Bitcoin.Celebrated journalist and author Matthew Leising tells the full story of one of the most incredible chapters in cryptocurrency history. He covers the aftermath of the heist as well, explaining the extreme lengths the victims of the theft and the creators of Ethereum went to in order to try and limit the damage. The book covers:The creation of EthereumAn explanation of the nature of blockchain and cryptocurrencyThe activities of a colorful cast of hackers, coders, investors, and thievesPerfect for anyone with even a passing interest in the world of modern fintech or daring electronic heists, Out of the Ether is a story of genius and greed that’s so incredible you may just choose not to believe it.

Alan Turing: The Enigma


Andrew Hodges - 1983
    His breaking of the German U-boat Enigma cipher in World War II ensured Allied-American control of the Atlantic. But Turing's vision went far beyond the desperate wartime struggle. Already in the 1930s he had defined the concept of the universal machine, which underpins the computer revolution. In 1945 he was a pioneer of electronic computer design. But Turing's true goal was the scientific understanding of the mind, brought out in the drama and wit of the famous "Turing test" for machine intelligence and in his prophecy for the twenty-first century.Drawn in to the cockpit of world events and the forefront of technological innovation, Alan Turing was also an innocent and unpretentious gay man trying to live in a society that criminalized him. In 1952 he revealed his homosexuality and was forced to participate in a humiliating treatment program, and was ever after regarded as a security risk. His suicide in 1954 remains one of the many enigmas in an astonishing life story.

Accelerate: Building and Scaling High-Performing Technology Organizations


Nicole Forsgren - 2018
    Through four years of groundbreaking research, Dr. Nicole Forsgren, Jez Humble, and Gene Kim set out to find a way to measure software delivery performance—and what drives it—using rigorous statistical methods. This book presents both the findings and the science behind that research. Readers will discover how to measure the performance of their teams, and what capabilities they should invest in to drive higher performance.

Underground: Tales of Hacking, Madness, and Obsession on the Electronic Frontier


Suelette Dreyfus - 1997
    Spanning three continents and a decade of high level infiltration, they created chaos amongst some of the world's biggest and most powerful organisations, including NASA and the US military. Brilliant and obsessed, many of them found themselves addicted to hacking and phreaking. Some descended into drugs and madness, others ended up in jail.As riveting as the finest detective novel and meticulously researched, Underground follows the hackers through their crimes, their betrayals, the hunt, raids and investigations. It is a gripping tale of the digital underground.

Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla: Biography of a Genius


Marc J. Seifer - 1996
    Based on original material and previously unavailable documents, this acclaimed book is the definitive biography of the man considered by many to be the founding father of modern electrical technology. Among Tesla's creations were the channeling of alternating current, fluorescent and neon lighting, wireless telegraphy, and the giant turbines that harnessed the power of Niagara Falls.

Billion Dollar Whale: The Man Who Fooled Wall Street, Hollywood, and the World


Tom Wright - 2018
    The dust had yet to settle on the global financial crisis in 2009 when an unlikely Wharton grad was setting in motion a fraud of unprecedented gall and magnitude--one that would come to symbolize the next great threat to the global financial system. Billion Dollar Whale will become a classic, harrowing parable about the financial world in the twenty-first century.

No One Would Listen


Harry Markopolos - 2010
     The only book to tell the story of Madoff's scam and the SEC's failings by those who saw both first hand Describes how Madoff was enabled by investors and fiduciaries alike Discusses how the SEC missed the red flags raised by Markopolos Despite repeated written and verbal warnings to the SEC by Harry Markopolos, Bernie Madoff was allowed to continue his operations. No One Would Listen paints a vivid portrait of Markopolos and his determined team of financial sleuths, and what impact Madoff's scam will have on financial markets and regulation for decades to come.