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Tyler Cowen

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Tyler Cowen is an American economist, who is an economics professor at George Mason University, where he holds the Holbert L. Harris chair in the economics department. He hosts the economics blog Marginal Revolution, together with co-author Alex Tabarrok.
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Working Backwards book cover
Working Backwards
Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon
Colin Bryar - 2021-02-09
Goodreads Rating
"Working Backwards" is a guidebook written by two former Amazon executives that reveals insider secrets to the company's culture, leadership, and best practices. With extensive experience at Amazon, the authors share how the company's principles and practices are applied at all levels and how they have led to scalability and adaptability. This practical guidebook also provides ground-level practices that ensure success, with real-life anecdotes of the authors' personal and professional experiences. Discover the secrets behind Amazon's global success in "Working Backwards."
Tyler Cowen
2021-04-06T23:15:12.000Z
One of the very best management books of recent times:      source
The Infinite Machine book cover
The Infinite Machine
How an Army of Crypto-hackers Is Building the Next Internet with Ethereum
Camila Russo - 2020-07-14
Goodreads Rating
Experience the thrilling story of Ethereum, the second-largest digital asset in the world, and the rise of cryptocurrency. Follow Vitalik Buterin's ingenious idea and the chaotic beginnings of Ethereum. Witness the innovative technology and reckless greed that came with it, resulting in increased regulation and Wall Street interest. Join financial journalist and cryptocurrency expert Camila Russo as she unveils a new foundation for the internet that will transform our ideas about money and revolutionize our future.
Tyler Cowen
2020-03-16T00:00:00.000Z
Yes, this is the story of Vitalik Buterin and Ethereum. Very useful, and I am glad there is now a good book on this topic      source
Recommended by
Linda Xie
The Glass Hotel book cover
The Glass Hotel
A novel
Emily St. John Mandel - 2020-03-24
Goodreads Rating
This captivating novel follows the intertwined lives of a bartender, a hotel owner, a shipping executive, and a woman who disappears from a container ship off the coast of Mauritania. As a massive Ponzi scheme implodes, these characters navigate issues of money, beauty, white-collar crime, ghosts, and moral compromise. The story weaves between the ship, the skyscrapers of Manhattan, and the wilderness of British Columbia, exploring themes of greed, guilt, fantasy, art, and the ghosts of our pasts.
Tyler Cowen
2020-03-16T00:00:00.000Z
I am a big fan of Emily St. John Mandel's novels Station Eleven (about a pandemic, by the way, I promise you that is a coincidence), and the new forthcoming The Glass Hotel.      source
Station Eleven book cover
Station Eleven
Emily St. John Mandel - 2014-09-09
Goodreads Rating
Experience a post-apocalyptic world where a devastating flu pandemic has destroyed civilization as we know it. Follow Kirsten Raymonde, a member of The Traveling Symphony - a small troupe of actors and musicians dedicated to keeping the remnants of art and humanity alive. But when they come across a violent prophet threatening their existence, they must fight for survival. With a unique timeline that jumps between life before and after the pandemic, uncover the twist of fate that connects them all in this National Book Award and PEN/Faulkner Award finalist.
Tyler Cowen
2020-03-16T00:00:00.000Z
I am a big fan of Emily St. John Mandel's novels Station Eleven (about a pandemic, by the way, I promise you that is a coincidence), and the new forthcoming The Glass Hotel.      source
The Power Notebooks book cover
The Power Notebooks
Katie Roiphe - 2020-03-03
Goodreads Rating
"Explore the lives of famous female writers and dive into the contradictions of contemporary womanhood with The Power Notebooks. Author Katie Roiphe weaves together personal experiences with insights on power, relationships, and subjugation. Through her informal musings, Roiphe tackles the uncomfortable question of why powerful women often hold themselves back. This thought-provoking and emotionally intimate work is a must-read for anyone seeking to understand the complexities of modern femininity."
Tyler Cowen
2020-03-10T00:00:00.000Z
Power, sex, dating, and romance, but surprisingly substantive. Much of it is written in paragraph-long segments, and willing to be politically incorrect. “Rebecca West: “Since men don’t love us nearly as much as we love them that leaves them a lot more spare vitality to be wonderful with.      source
Facebook book cover
Facebook
The Inside Story
Steven Levy - 2020-02-25
Goodreads Rating
Discover the definitive history of America's most powerful and controversial tech giant: Facebook. Renowned tech writer Steven Levy recounts the story of Facebook's creation by Mark Zuckerberg in his college years and its explosive growth into the largest social media platform in the world. With access to Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg, Levy's sweeping narrative reveals the inner workings of the company, from its handling of personal data to recent controversies over election-influencing "fake news" accounts. Based on hundreds of interviews, this gripping account offers a deep dive into the company that has changed the world and reaped the consequences.
Tyler Cowen
2020-03-10T00:00:00.000Z
Probably the best history of the company we're are going to get, at least for the earlier years of the company. Even the jabs at the company seem perfunctory, for the most part this is quite objective as a treatment.      source
Wicked City book cover
Wicked City
The Many Cultures of Marseille
Nicholas Hewitt - 2019-11-01
Goodreads Rating
Explore the fascinating city of Marseille through the eyes of artists, writers, and cultural icons. Wicked City delves into the notorious history of this frontier city and its association with exoticism and illicit activity, while highlighting its cultural richness and cosmopolitanism. Discover Marseille's impact on the national imagination and international importance, as well as its rich history as home to migrants, workers, and organized criminals. This complex and vivid portrait of one of the Mediterranean's great cities goes beyond the stereotypes and encapsulates the true essence of Marseille.
Tyler Cowen
2020-03-10T00:00:00.000Z
Every city should have a good book about it, and now Marseille does. I would say you have to already know the city, however, to appreciate this one.      source
The Cure That Works book cover
The Cure That Works
How to Have the World's Best Healthcare -- at a Quarter of the Price
Sean Masaki Flynn - 2019-06-18
Goodreads Rating
Discover a groundbreaking cure for the healthcare crisis in "The Cure That Works". Economics expert Sean Masaki Flynn reveals how forgotten American ideas have cut healthcare costs by 75% and provided universal access, preexisting condition coverage, and a safety net. Learn how simple strategies like competition, price transparency, and plentiful health savings contributions can crush costs and provide equal access to the best healthcare services in the world.
Tyler Cowen
2020-03-10T00:00:00.000Z
A look at how to translate ideas from Singapore’s health care system into the United States. It overreaches, but still a useful overview and analysis.      source
Quarantined book cover
Quarantined
Life and Death at William Head Station, 1872-1959
Peter Johnson - 2013-11-15
Goodreads Rating
Experience the heartbreaking true story of the forgotten immigrants who arrived on Vancouver Island in the late 19th century, only to be struck by illness and abandoned by an unsympathetic government. Quarantined explores the struggles to establish a federally funded quarantine station, and serves as a chilling reminder of the dangers of neglect towards national health-care issues affecting the poor and disenfranchised. A cautionary tale with just as much relevance today as it did 100 years ago.
Tyler Cowen
2020-03-10T00:00:00.000Z
British Columbia had a quarantine station that late, and this is its story. Leprosy, smallpox, and meningitis are a few of the drivers of the narrative. It continues to startle me how much pandemics and quarantines are a kind of lost history, though they are extremely prominent in 19th century fiction.      source
New Atlantis Revisited book cover
New Atlantis Revisited
Paul R. Josephson - 1997-07-07
Goodreads Rating
Discover a scientific utopia, Akademgorodok, based on Francis Bacon's vision of a "New Atlantis." Soviet scientists constructed this community 2,500 miles east of Moscow with the aim of surpassing the West in all fields. In New Atlantis Revisited, Paul Josephson offers a lively history of this city, highlighting its successes and setbacks in scientific research - from nuclear physics to recombinant DNA. Explore the most complete analysis available of the factors that shaped Soviet science during the de-Stalinization era.
Tyler Cowen
2020-03-10T00:00:00.000Z
Imagine the Soviets trying to build a “city of science,” and meeting problem after problem. Yet “Marchuk acknowledged that in a number of fields researchers had contributed to…the speeding up of scientific technological progress. The physicists built synchroton radiation sources with broad applications; the biologists tacked plant and animal husbandry with vigor; the mathematicians, computer specialists, and economists were engaged in modeling and management systems.      source
The Origins of You by Jay Belsky
Very Important People by Ashley Mears
Free to Move by Ilya Somin
The Industrialists by Jennifer A. Delton
The Idealist by Samuel Zipp
Children of Ash and Elm by Neil Price
The American Dream Is Not Dead by Michael R. Strain
The Decadent Society by Ross Douthat
Conviction Machine by Harvey Silverglate
Golden Gates by Conor Dougherty
Sunnis and Shi'a by Laurence Louër
The Bomb by Fred Kaplan
Dante by John Took
The Age of Entitlement by Christopher Caldwell
Fully Grown by Dietrich Vollrath
Booze Control by Professor David Nutt
Social Democratic Capitalism by Lane Kenworthy
A Treatise on Northern Ireland, Volume I by Brendan O'Leary
A Treatise on Northern Ireland, Volume II by Brendan O'Leary
A Treatise on Northern Ireland, Volume III by Brendan O'Leary
The Senkaku Paradox by Michael E. O'Hanlon
Generation Priced Out by Randy Shaw
The Qur'an and the Bible by Gabriel Said Reynolds
Cognitive Gadgets by Cecilia Heyes
The Wizard and the Prophet by Charles Mann
Against the Grain by James C. Scott
The Ideas Industry by Daniel Drezner
Leonhard Euler by Ronald S. Calinger
The Revolt of The Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium by Martin Gurri
Confessions of a Sociopath by M. E. Thomas
Cognitive Surplus by Clay Shirky
Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky
Everything Is Miscellaneous by David Weinberger
Wikinomics by Don Tapscott
The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa
Individualism and Economic Order by F. A. Hayek