N + 5 useful books



    Hello! This is the fifth list of useful books since 2010. Just a dozen in two years. See what you can download on the road or just read when there is time, and please share your comments in the comments (I will raise them in the post). There are quite a lot of social engineering in this collection, more precisely, the ones around it. Go.

    Designs, or why things don't break, J. Gordon
    A beautiful, albeit a very long thing that tells about sopromat in simple words and almost for children. But at the level of hard hardcore. By its usefulness for understanding physics, it can be compared with the equally beautiful modern “Quantum Universe. How is it that we cannot see, ”Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw. I recommend both. There will be something to read on the road if you suddenly feel tired of playing on the tablet. And what to think about when it turns out that all that garbage that you were given in chemistry, physics and other things at school and university suddenly starts to line up in a coherent theory.

    Evil by Design, Chris Nodder
    One of the best approaches to designing something good is to first design the worst thing possible. The user usually will not say how to make him feel good, but he knows exactly how bad it can be. For example, the user doesn’t say “I want when I click on the password reminder link, the mail has already been entered there”, but it’s quite capable of saying: “Listen, it infuriates me wildly, when you log in, you are shown a new page about the fact that the password is not approached, and in order to restore it, one more fucking time to enter the mail. " The whole book of Chris consists of such "dark" patterns, when some reptiles deliberately mislead you. He is very worried about ethics there, so it’s better to skip the introduction. The only book in this review in English, but quite simple.

    Third Wave, Alvin Toffler
    The book is already in 1980, in which it tells how the civilization of muscle 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. A wonderful work that comprehensively examines 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 together and lives on a schedule) and many other things. Reading the guy with the book 37 years ago, somehow I can’t believe that he did not know about the cool Data Mining and what we now have right in the yard. Surprisingly modern thing, although the author sometimes tries to extrapolate the development of computers according to the method of “the calculator will be twice as large.”

    The buyer is 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 you and me there’s also a guide to social engineering. The classic trigger chain is considered on the example of network pieces (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) and offline products. The correct understanding of such triggers is the essence of modern sales. Surprisingly good additions come from articles about the logistics of the multiplayer games - for example, this one .

    Essays on Informal Social Engineering, Mikhail Kozharinov
    The old communications engineer describes, in a methodological communard manner, the principles of the formation of groups, relations between them and other useful things from mass social engineering. This is just above social engineering - creating the ecology of groups. I pulled out a lot of useful in the application to social networks. Since the main focus is on role-players and informal musicians, it is worth at least roughly representing one of these subcultures.

    Discovering the organizations of the future, Frederic Lalu
    This thing turned my world up a bit and taught me to look differently at the business processes. I hope so. Inside, there are several histories of organizations with a network structure instead of a hierarchy where decisions are made not by consensus, not by dictator, not by alting, but simply by the node that can do this better. A completely different unusual business architecture. For example, the Netherlands, social workers for retirees. Each team of 5-8 people is looking for an office itself, plans expenses itself, draws up schedules, and chooses the size of the district 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 a contract for an office. Read necessarily.

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

    Bridging the chasm, Jeffrey Moore
    A classic American treatise with chewing on the fingers of a few basic things. But on the other hand, great basic things about how the product develops and how to capture the market. A surprisingly sober approach to why startups are dying in their architecture.

    ZMOT: Winning the Zero Moment of Truth, Jim Lesinski
    Working with the “zero moment” is the most important thing you can do online by 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 is scrolling, but not read. And available online.

    Practice of free travel (hitchhiking), Anton Krotov
    At first glance, it might seem that this is an incredibly cool book about hitchhiking. But in reality it is pure engineering, moreover, Russian and very high quality. And marketing right away. 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, hitchhiking.

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

    Being a boss is normal, Bruce Tulgan.
    On the whole, a rather robust thing (albeit not about Russia) that, along with Manager Tattoos, can be given to those who have just occupied a leading position. A few years ago I would really miss her. It is written for those who never directed, because there is 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. Sontag also deserves mentioning “On photograpy” or “About photography”, which now also has a good translation. But if you don’t take pictures or draw, take only “We look at the suffering of others”, you will not regret it.

    Darknet mirror allows you to open all the books in the catalogI remind you that there are previous posts of books for business: 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 is 5 minutes, do not bookmark the post, it is better to immediately type publications.

    UPD:
    pastuh9090 advises the "Stream" (Mihai Chiksentmihayli)
    kovyilin says that “A good book for those involved in advertising and marketing (and more) is Dan Ariel’s Predictable Irrationality.”
    Chesheer recalls Jack Trout and his quest for the obvious. How to get rid of chaos in marketing and business strategy. ”

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