Fool

Fast easy read, nice for its summaries of the existing research of sleep across a broad range of issues by a leading contributor to the field. Includes an appendix with some straightforward tips for sleeping better.

Nice look at Debian hacker community and the free code movement in general from an anthropologist who studied them “in the field.” Also interesting look at conflicts within the movement and differing interpretations of freedom.

Huge impact on me as a kid, remember adopting its cosmology as my own religion because, you know, beat any of the obvious alternatives out there at the time.

Interesting read. The book is somewhat split in half. Half of it tries to use the life of the protagonist as a way to explore the triggers of a “run” of innovations, while the final portion focus, in a much more fragmented and less thorough way on his relationship to questions of faith, politics, and the US. It felt a little hurried and stretched in the second half and too much time was spent on trying to laud Priestley's important role, rather than dig deeper into some of the encounters and issues involved.

The translation from French comes across as clean but the style and approach of the original assumes a bit too much from a non-French audience in places. If you are looking for a general work on Jesuits, look elsewhere, but if you are interested in a fresh take on some of the most important Jesuit minds of the past few centuries these chapters are great to consult.