N + 5 useful books

Hello! This is the fifth list of useful books since 2010. Got just a dozen in two years. See what you can download on the road or just read when there is time, and share, please, in the comments with your own (I will raise them in the post). This compilation contains quite a lot of sotstsinzhininga, more precisely, those around him. Go.

Constructions, or why things do not break, J. Gordon
Beautiful, albeit a very long thing, which tells us about iron casing in simple words and almost for children. But at the level of hard hardcore. In its usefulness for understanding physics around, it can be compared to a no less wonderful modern “Quantum Universe. How we can't see ”Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw. I recommend both. There will be something to read on the road, if you suddenly feel that you are tired of playing on the tablet. And what to think about when it turns out that all that garbage that you were given in the lessons of chemistry, physics and other things at school and university suddenly begins to line up into a coherent theory.
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Evil by Design, Chris Nodder
One of the best approaches to designing something good is to design the worst possible thing first. The user usually does not say how to do him well, but he knows exactly how bad it is. For example, the user does not say “I want when I click on the password reminder link, the mail has already been entered in the field,” but it is quite capable of saying, “listen, it makes me wildly angry, when you log in, you are shown a new page about the fact that the password is not I came up, and in order to restore it, you need to enter your mail one more time. ” Chris's entire book consists of such “dark” patterns, when some reptiles deliberately mislead you. He is very worried about ethics there, so you should skip the entries. The only book in this review in English, but quite simple.

The Third Wave, Alvin Toffler
The book is already the year 1980, which tells about how the civilization of muscular energy and manual labor was transformed into a civilization of steam and electricity and mass production, and then moved to the third level - the civilization of mass individualization. Excellent work that comprehensively considers the society of the future. How the change of basic energy affects the traditional family, why the concept of time has changed in an industrial society (so that everyone comes to production and live according to a schedule) and many other things. Reading the 37-year-old uncle with a book somehow I can’t believe that he didn’t know about cool Data Mining and what we have right now in the yard. A surprisingly modern thing, even though the author sometimes tries to extrapolate the development of computers using the “calculator becomes twice as much” technique.

Buyer on the hook, Nir Eyal, Ryan Hoover
For business owners, this is the second most useful book on marketing (after “Selling the Invisible”, of course), and for us it is also a manual for social engineering. We consider the classic trigger chain on the example of network pieces (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) and offline products. A proper understanding of such triggers is the essence of modern sales. Surprisingly good additions come from articles about the logistics of multiplayer games - for example, this one .

Essays on informal social engineering, Mikhail Kozharinov
An old communications engineer describes, in a methodical, communal manner, the principles of forming groups, connections between them, and other useful things from mass social engineering. This is a little higher than the sotsinzhiniring - the creation of group ecology. I pulled out a lot of useful in the application to social networks. Since the main focus is on role-playing and informal musicians, it is worth at least roughly representing one of these subcultures.

Discovering the Future Organizations, Frederick Lalu
This one thing turned the world around a bit and taught me to look at the business processes in a different way. I hope. Inside, there are several stories of organizations with a network structure instead of a hierarchy, where decisions are made not by consensus, not a dictator, not by an alling, but simply by the node that is better able to do it. A completely different unusual business architecture. For example, the Netherlands, social workers for pensioners. Each team of 5-8 people is looking for an office on its own, planning expenses on its own, draws up schedules itself, chooses the size of a district by itself - no bosses. If something is needed, there is an internal social network - through it all the work is done, for example, the search for nurses who understand how to draw up an office contract. Read a must.

Game: how it affects our imagination, brain and health, Stuart Brown, Christopher Vaughan
On this book on the back cover is my review, so probably I am a little biased. But in short, simple and understandable chewing of what a game is like a phenomenon and why it is needed in life. Some things to me (after many years in GameDev) seemed very cool. But the humanities wrote, so be prepared for the fact that the logic, order and sequence of presentation is not all good.

Overcoming the abyss, Jeffrey Moore
A classic American treatise chewing on the fingers of several basic things. But excellent basic things about how the product develops and how to capture the market. Surprisingly sober approach to why startups die by their architecture.

ZMOT: Conquering the Zero Moment of Truth, Jim Lesinski
Working with a “zero moment” is the most important thing you can do online, selling real goods. I even have a squeeze about it. The book also explains where it all came from, plus there are links to research. You should not buy it, it is scrolled, but not read. And available online.

Practice of free travel (hitchhiking), Anton Krotov
At first glance it may seem that this is an incredibly cool book about hitchhiking. But in reality it is pure social engineering, with Russian and very high quality. And immediately marketing. One of the best things in “non-business” genres that is worth reading, even if you are not going to directly apply knowledge on the topic - well, on hitchhiking.

History of graphics and art books, Yu.Ya. Gerchuk
Damn interesting book book. The first half is read in one breath, and then the details begin, probably interesting only to specialists in graphics and in general to people of art. But in general - cool.

Being a boss is fine, Bruce Tulgan
In general, a fairly sensible thing (though not about Russia), which, together with the “Manager Tattoos,” may well be given to those who have just taken the leading position. A few years ago I would miss her very much. Written for those who never led, because a lot of educational program.

We look at the suffering of others, Susan Sontag
A very small and very useful book in terms of studying cognitive processes. I mentioned it several times before, but now I can show it in Russian. In Sontag, “On photograpy” or “About photography” is also worthy of mention, which now also has a good translation. But if you do not photograph or draw - take only “We look at the suffering of others”, you will not regret.

I remind you, there are still previous posts for business books: one , two , three and four .

Just in case: most of the books can be downloaded right now with a fair wind. And, traditionally - if there are 5 minutes, do not bookmark the post, it is better to immediately type the publications.

UPD:
pastuh9090 advises "The Flow" (Mihai Cikszentmihayi)
kovyilin says that "a good book for those who are engaged in advertising and marketing (and not only) -" Predictable Irrationality "by Dan Arieli".
Chesheer recalls Jack Trout and his In Search of the Obvious . How to get rid of chaos in marketing and business strategy. ”