Ben Davis

Biography of Moore

Revisado: 07-13-22

I came into this book expecting it to be centered on Moore’s Law and the implications from it. While you do get a lot of information about it, this story is more focused on Gordon Moore’s life and personal interactions. I felt the book went too far in this direction, constantly focusing on Moore’s family life, his personal life outside of work, and much of him and his wife traveling on vacations and buying new houses. These tangents were a little long, and at times it makes you forget that this is a technology book. The other half of it was great though. It’s just chopped up with these sections of focusing on his personal life which is disconnected from the story. It just messed with the flow. Also the narrators a little slow so it might be helpful to speed up to 1.2x for it to sound better.

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Not just a biography

Revisado: 07-07-22

I don’t usually write reviews, but I wanted to point out that this book went way beyond my expectations for a biography of Oppenheimer. Some biographies have a very narrow scope and focus only on the character, but this one included much of the setting that influenced the course of Oppenheimer’s life. It’s a necessarily long read because it provides a detailed overview of the times during World War 2 and the Cold War respectively. There was a lot going on and the writer did a nice job tying Oppenheimer’s life together with the chaotic atmosphere that he was living through. Also, you get a good deal of character build up for Oppenheimer’s colleagues and acquaintances, which many biographies forget to do justice to. The other figures are described on a personal level so you get a good sense of their character and relationship with Oppenheimer. Therefor this biography felt complete in the end. Yes, I learned a lot about Oppenheimer, but I learned just as much about other things, like the relationship between science and government, and the nature of physics during that time in the early twentieth century. It was well worth the time to purchase and listen to this book.

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Dated

Revisado: 04-06-22

A lot of this book seemed like a summary of the current cosmology at the time it was written. However there are a lot of speculations that would later be proved false (example: the accelerated universe). Everything is framed in the light of “the latest experiment” and “current cosmology predicts…”, so it feels like a lot of the information you are hearing is uninformative and irrelevant since so much research has been done since this book was released that covers the same topics that Weinberg was puzzling over in the book. Also, the physical copy is probably a better option for this one since there’s a lot of numbers. Not many equations but a shit ton of statistics of stuff like particle mass and density values that are read in scientific notation without any effort to make the values seem intuitive.

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Long book but feels short

Revisado: 01-03-22

Surprisingly, I went through this book faster than I finish 10 hour books on audible in the past. It’s one of those books that you don’t want to turn off from the suspense. The amount of information packed in this book is incredible. I’ll have to buy the paperback because it was hard to keep track of the names of the German characters because they all sound the same but are spelled differently. It wasn’t too dense with the historical details with the exception of a few long stretches covering Hitler’s relationships with the other nations. There’s a lot of background leading up to the war, especially about Hitler, so I recommend sticking with it because the pace picks up significantly in the second half of the book. They didn’t go too deep into the Holocaust stories or the battle stories because the writer was more focused on the dynamics and timeline with the war and the information is just too immense. I don’t blame him though because he chose the right topics to cover and kept a steady pace through the war until Hitler’s death in the end. He wasn’t too biased towards either side and provided a lucid description of the facts of the war and kept his personal opinions to a minimum, just how it should be. My understanding of the war has increased significantly compared to where I was before reading the book. In the end, I loved the book and highly recommend it to anyone who wants to dive deep into the brutal reality that took place in Germany during this tragic period. I guarantee that you will learn something new from reading this book.

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Very detailed analysis

Revisado: 08-31-21

This book focuses on a specific group, Police Batalion 101 of the SS, and is based on court documents following the interrogation and investigation of these men. The writer covers the demographic of these men and the evolution of their behavior in the SS with great detail. The description of their actions is very thorough and accurate, with the writer almost adopting a text book style approach. This was good because it eliminated all personal bias that could mess with the validity of the book, but sometimes it feels a little too dry and specific. He focuses on individuals of the group rather than the whole unit, and covers the spectrum of their behaviors from cautious bystander to malevolent participant. This book answers a lot of my questions as to why ‘ordinary men’ would turn into Nazis. In the end he debunks the hypothesis that antisemitism was the driving force behind their actions, and rather that peer influence and conformity to authority played the largest role in shaping their behaviors. In the end the book is quite informative and I’d recommend it if you’re willing to put up with the disturbing content about the gross actions that these ordinary men took part in.

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Perfect summary of this field

Revisado: 03-02-21

I knew nothing of chaos coming into this book other than the butterfly effect. It was a great introduction to this new kind of science. This book will teach you about the creation of chaos theory and all of the significant figures involved. The author writes beautifully and the narrator did a great job. I found that the beginning was a little slow but it gets very interesting in the middle. The material was complicated but not too confusing. Great book for the intellectually curious reader.

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Good ending

Revisado: 01-30-21

This book has been on my wish list for a while and I finally purchased it to see what the hype was all about. This is the first book I’ve read from Stephen Hawking. I’ve only taken a few physics courses in college so I’m no expert, but I was still looking for a somewhat challenging book to listen to. I’ve listened to many physics books for laymen and I prefer the ones that dive deep into these incomprehensible ideas rather than just scratching the surface of historical physics. Therefore, my goal was to learn something new from this book.

I was surprised at how slow paced the first half of the book was. If you’ve read any physics books before, you have almost certainly heard of all the historical details than Stephen Hawking covers in the beginning. It was just your basic textbook facts about all the significant physics giants of the past. Maybe this section of the book seemed more interesting back in the day, but now it’s very unoriginal considering that every physics book goes over the same details as this one. Also this book is obviously dated so there’s a lot of things that have changed in science since it’s publication.

It wasn’t until later that the text became interesting. I love Stephen Hawking’s philosophical interpretation of these grand ideas. Some physicists avoid these big questions, but Hawking tackles them head on. I only wish this book was longer so that these ideas could be covered more thoroughly. The ending seemed to come very quickly when the book was just starting to seem engaging. Even though this book seemed underwhelming, I’m still looking forward to reading more of Hawking’s books.

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Good ending

Revisado: 01-30-21

This book has been on my wish list for a while and I finally purchased it to see what the hype was all about. This is the first book I’ve read from Stephen Hawking. I’ve only taken a few physics courses in college so I’m no expert, but I was still looking for a somewhat challenging book to listen to. I’ve listened to many physics books for laymen and I prefer the ones that dive deep into these incomprehensible ideas rather than just scratching the surface of historical physics. Therefore, my goal was to learn something new from this book.

I was surprised at how slow paced the first half of the book was. If you’ve read any physics books before, you have almost certainly heard of all the historical details than Stephen Hawking covers in the beginning. It was just your basic textbook facts about all the significant physics giants of the past. Maybe this section of the book seemed more interesting back in the day, but now it’s very unoriginal considering that every physics book goes over the same details as this one. Also this book is obviously dated so there’s a lot of things that have changed in science since it’s publication.

It wasn’t until later that the text became interesting. I love Stephen Hawking’s philosophical interpretation of these grand ideas. Some physicists avoid these big questions, but Hawking tackles them head on. I only wish this book was longer so that these ideas could be covered more thoroughly. The ending seemed to come very quickly when the book was just starting to seem engaging. Even though this book seemed underwhelming, I’m still looking forward to reading more of Hawking’s books.

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Another great book by Max Tegmark

Revisado: 01-28-21

I’m surprised at how much work Max Tegmark puts into his books. Just like Our Mathematical Universe, this book is full of valuable information and insight. The combination of physics and AI research is what makes this book special. Max Tegmark is optimistic but still covers all the potential dangers of AI that could end us as a species. Max leaves the reader to ponder many questions for themselves throughout the book. I loved the extra involvement included in this book that made it feel almost interactive. Rob Shapiro does an excellent job narrating this book as well. Highly recommend this book to anyone reading this review, you won’t be disappointed.

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Complicated things explained simply

Revisado: 01-22-21

I was surprised at how well Brian Greene conveyed some of these abstract ideas. String theory is obviously not designed to be explained to the average person. The use of analogies and imagery really helped explain parts of String Theory, and in the end I learned a lot from this book. The most complex chapter was ‘Quantum Geometry’ which is the only part I had to listen to multiple times in a row. I wouldn’t say you need much of a physics background for this book. It is more important that you are intellectually curious and are intrigued by challenging concepts such as extra (or fewer) dimensions, calabi yau manifolds, inflation theory, multiverses, folds and punctures in space time, and the relationships between variations of String Theory (all five are discussed plus M-theory). He describes the relationship between String Theory and the standard model which leads to a good explanation of Supersymmetry. Also, in the end he talks about black holes and other cosmological implications of String Theory. Brian Greene covers these ideas in the simplest possible way, and that’s what makes this book stand out from the rest. Loved it from beginning to end.

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