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It's uneven in places, but it gives a good overview of evolutionary psychology, and shines some interesting light on the historical patterns of how men with high status do what they can to get as many offspring as possible. The details on harems are especially fascinating, partly because it's so utterly politically incorrect.

However, there are parts of the book that just plain fallover. He claims to have no answer for fashion (given that men don't care about it, why do women do so much work?) without considering that fashion is most often a competition between women over status, where the puted objective (the regard of men) has fallen by the wayside. Women care about fashion because to not care about fashion is, in this society at least, to not be a woman.

So. Good book, says basically the same things as Survival of the Prettiest.

This isn't a book of horror stories. This is a book of dread, and sadness, and bitter regrets. Dried tears, just departed, and knowing that the same tears will be back the next day. It creeps on you, the language does. You don't notice it until it's already upon you.

That being said, The Sloan Men is in a different class than the rest of the stories. And Trombone Slide is so subtle it takes a throwaway line to move it all into focus.

It's a bit silly, but entertaining.

A beautiful coda after the Walking Dead Compendium. Part of this is about Carl, Rick's son. This is an 9 year old living through a zombie apocalypse. He's seen so many people die and killed so many people that he's not even sure if he's a child himself. And yet, he has a father. He has family. And he knows that's not a thing that many people have these days.

It's touching, it's quiet, and its devastating in the small moments.

All I can say is this book dramatically underestimates what organizations can be like, and doesn't take into account the "you won the last argument so I'm going to win this one" power dynamic that can take place between engineers. I like the book... it just doesn't remotely resemble anything I've seen in an actual organization.

It's a fun read, but doesn't tell you anything that you won't already know if you've read Genome.

Very good book that picks out what environment is, and how humans work to preserve or destroy it.

Makes an excellent companion to The Logic of Failure, which talks about much the same problem form a different angle.

It's both funny and disturbing. If this were a "completely realistic" book then it would be horrifying, but the comedy and the extremeness of the art goes to push it toward comedy.

If I had to point to a weakness, I'd say that the comedy doesn't mesh well with Tony's more quiet, personal troubles. But that's a minor point over all.

Too vague. The architecture essays here are tantalizing, but there's very few code samples and meaty technical chunks. No UML diagrams, no careful dissection of parts.

What went wrong with the design? How did it get to the point it did? What doesn't the current design do well? Too many times, the essay only talks about the positives of the architecture, too often sounding like an infomercial or a pitch to a client.

I would have been happier with something like TCP/IP: The Implementation or TEX: The Program... this is a good book for what it is, but it just doesn't do the details to my satisfaction.

A very good book, but Taleb has an ego. He'd actually make his point far better if he took himself out of his writing more.

It's okay. It's clearly a first time book though.

It's good reading if you're new to programming. If you've worked for any length of time as a programmer, you'll either be thinking "my god this is obvious" or you'll be asleep.