Posts: 168
Threads: 0
Joined: Dec 2012
The Big Ass Book Challenge
12-15-2012, 12:22 PM
I think 14 days is a good time limit. I'm starting with Snowball, Warren Buffett's biography which is over 800 pages by Alice Schroeder. After that I'll read the Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson. I have another big ass book I have to tackle which is Private Empire, Steve Coll's book on ExxonMobil.
John D. Rockefeller's biography Titan by Ron Chernow was mentioned in this thread. I definitely recommend it! The guy built an empire. He is the richest person in human history. Adjusted for inflation his net worth would today be in the hundreds of billions. Other than dictators and royal families no one comes even close.
Posts: 213
Threads: 0
Joined: Nov 2012
Reputation:
2
The Big Ass Book Challenge
12-16-2012, 10:05 AM
Probably a little late to the thread, but here are some big ass book recommendations.
John Adams by David Mccollough-awesome book. I think I actually had a tear in my eye when I finished it.
The teddy Roosevelt series by Edmund Morris- three books on the life of teddy Roosevelt all over 500 pages. Fantastic read about one of the greatest people in American history. This guy did everything.
I haven't read this one yet, but the last lion by William Manchester. 3 books on the life of Winston Churchill, although each book is running like 800 pages. Might be a little much, but I have heard good things.
If you like American history, there is a series called "the Oxford history of the United States" or something like that in which a expert on a particular area writes a book about a time period of US history. Early history include "the glorious cause", "empire of liberty", what god hath wrought", "battle cry of freedom" and I forget what is after that. All over 500 pages.
Steve jobs by Walter issacson was great.
I haven't read the mark twain biography yet, but I've heard good things.
Some good recommendations on here. That's all I got off the top of my head.
Posts: 1,682
Threads: 0
Joined: Aug 2011
Reputation:
25
The Big Ass Book Challenge
12-16-2012, 02:01 PM
I get a guilty conscience every time I open a book that isn't part of my curriculum. This is torture! so much good stuff to read, so little time!
A year from now you'll wish you started today
Posts: 1,363
Threads: 0
Joined: Oct 2011
Reputation:
5
The Big Ass Book Challenge
12-16-2012, 06:31 PM
I've had this 800 page biography of Cromwell sitting on my bookshelf for ages. Time to hit it!
Posts: 328
Threads: 0
Joined: Oct 2011
Reputation:
0
The Big Ass Book Challenge
12-16-2012, 06:49 PM
Been reading Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 for like a year now but am still only 16% of the way through it. Maybe during my winter break I'll buckle down and read this thing. I've always been interested in the history of NYC
Posts: 4,687
Threads: 0
Joined: Sep 2011
Reputation:
47
The Big Ass Book Challenge
12-16-2012, 07:01 PM
Just started and I'm 30 pages in
Posts: 1,363
Threads: 0
Joined: Oct 2011
Reputation:
5
The Big Ass Book Challenge
12-17-2012, 08:18 AM
Oh screw it. I'm putting Cromwell back on the shelf.
I just bought the big ass book on Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (see my avatar). Going to read it in the kindle edition.
Posts: 297
Threads: 0
Joined: Jul 2012
Reputation:
2
The Big Ass Book Challenge
12-17-2012, 08:24 AM
Quote: (12-17-2012 08:18 AM)ColSpanker Wrote:
Oh screw it. I'm putting Cromwell back on the shelf.
I just bought the big ass book on Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (see my avatar). Going to read it in the kindle edition.
Lol, do you have Turkish ancestry?
He was a great politician, maybe the best Turkish Prime Minister and his life is interesting, but it seems like every Turkish man adores him to the point of stupidity.
I lost count of the tattoo with his signature and/or face, gadgets and paintings of him while I was in Turkey.
The state contributes actively to his cult of personality and it's almost forbidden to talk bad about him (to the point that you can risk to go to jail).
Back on the big book challenge, I'm reading Mastery by Robert Greene.
It' probably a little less 500 pages but I'm reading the whole book in a language that's not my native one (English) so it requires me more energy.
Hope it can fit the challenge... xD
Her pussy tastes like Pepsi Cola...
Posts: 919
Threads: 0
Joined: Apr 2011
Reputation:
12
The Big Ass Book Challenge
12-17-2012, 01:10 PM
I just started Dark Alliance. Ever since I read "The Power of the Dog" and found out about the whole Iran-Contra thing, Ive been interested in the topic. Really creepy stuff.
Posts: 1,209
Threads: 0
Joined: Apr 2012
Reputation:
28
The Big Ass Book Challenge
12-28-2012, 05:08 PM
Just finished A Short History of Nearly everything. 544 pages, but it is actually only 476 not counting the notes and index.
Very informative and entertaining. You can tell that the author has no science background because he breaks things down in a very accessible manner, as if he were trying to explain something to you the way he wished it had been told to him.
Anyway, here are a few interesting things I learned:
-The average species on earth lasts for only about 4 million years.
-What would happen if you traveled to the edge of the universe? You can’t because the universe bends. If you traveled outward in a straight line, you would never arrive at an outer boundary; instead you’d end up right where you began. The analogy the book uses is to imagine someone from a universe of flat surfaces who has never seen a sphere and travels to earth. No matter how far he roamed across the planet’s surface, he would never find an edge and he would eventually wound up where he started.
-None of the maps we have ever seen of the solar system are drawn even close to scale. On a diagram drawn to scale with the earth reduced to the size of a pea, Jupiter would be a ping pong ball over a thousand feet away.
-A nineteenth century Swedish chemist named J.J. Berzelius was the one who decided to abbreviate elements on the basis of their Greek or Latin names (iron is Fe from the Latin ferrum for example). That so many other abbreviations are based on their English names (N for nitrogen for example) is because the English word is rooted in Latin or Greek.
-Marie Curie discovered that certain rocks (e.g. uranium) converted mass into energy. She dubbed it “radioactivity.” For a long time after it was thought that something so natural and energetic must have been beneficial. In the 1920s a hotel in New York advertised the therapeutic effects of its “Radioactive mineral springs.” Sounds like something from Fallout. To this day Marie Curie’s notes and lab books are considered too dangerous to handle. Anyone who desires to look at them has to wear protective clothing.
-One atom is to the width of a millimeter line as the thickness of a sheet of paper is to the height of the Empire State Building.
-All atoms are mostly empty space and the solidity we experience is an illusion. When two billiard balls come together they don’t actually strike each other. The negatively charged fields of the two balls repel each other, were it not for their electrical charges they could pass right through each other. You’re not actually sitting in that chair, but levitating at one angstrom (a hundred millionth of a centimeter) above it. Your electrons and its electrons are keeping you from touching.
-One-tenth of the weight of the average pillow is made up of dead skin cells, mites, and mite dung.
-Stretch your arms to their fullest extent and imagine the width as the entire history of earth. On this scale the distance from the fingertips of one hand to the wrist of the other is the Precambrian, all of complex life is in one hand, and in a single stroke of a nail file you could eradicate human history.
Posts: 19,387
Threads: 0
Joined: Aug 2008
Reputation:
414
The Big Ass Book Challenge
12-28-2012, 06:48 PM
Big Ass Book challenge.... complete.
It took me 13 days to finish The Landmark Thucydides. It was probably not a good idea to pick this book because of how dense it was, as it took me about 75 minutes to read 25 pages. I had to average over 2 hours a day to get it done within two weeks time.
Reading it quickly was positive in the sense that all day I'd think of the book. I even had a dream about it. I took some good notes that I will share in a future review.
This was perhaps the hardest and longest book I've read. Reading the ancients is not impossible. It just takes time. If you have to re-read a paragraph fives time to understand just 50% of it, so bet it.
Posts: 468
Threads: 0
Joined: Aug 2012
Reputation:
10
The Big Ass Book Challenge
12-28-2012, 10:14 PM
Good job Roosh, that book sounded very tough when you announced the Big Ass Book challenge, defintely want to see the review.
I loved American Caesar by William Manchester. MacArthur was definitely a WWII badass. Everyone knows the famous "I shall return" quote which he fulfilled in retaking the Phillipines but it's less known how he conducted the Pacific war. Compared to the European theatre the losses under MacArthur in the Pacific were relatively light because he employed the tactic of bypassing the enemy where they were strong and hitting them where they were weak then wearing them down. The major Pacific debacles like Iwo Jima were under Nimitz who MacArthur's superiors forced him to let operate on his own and against his recommendations.
The most powerful part of the book was when the Japanese surrendered. The guy had balls of steel, flying in with only a small planeload of soldiers to guard him against the entire nation of Japan, he was literally one of the first there and they had no idea how they would be received or if it was a trap. He insisted on doing it, a move that earned him humongous respect in Japan which he ruled like an enlightened king. Japan went from having an emperor who was worshipped like a god to a democracy in the blink of an eye under MacArthur and it was done 99% peacefully.
This was definitely one of the best biographies I've read. I've been reading a lot of WWI and WWII and it just amazes me how American men were back then, they literally scared the shit out of the entire world.
Posts: 1,363
Threads: 0
Joined: Oct 2011
Reputation:
5
The Big Ass Book Challenge
12-29-2012, 02:29 PM
Damn. Work and the holidays are digging into my reading of the Ataturk bio. And it's not very scholarly. It reads like an "official" biography.
The man was still impressive as hell.
Posts: 288
Threads: 0
Joined: Mar 2011
Reputation:
2
The Big Ass Book Challenge
12-29-2012, 04:29 PM
I finished Pacific Crucible. Engrossing.
