2020

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky. I have tried reading this book before, and this year I finally finished. I had high expectations about the philosophical content on it, unfortunately I was a bit dissapointent when I actually read it. I also found the practice of using different names for the same character extremely confusing(probably why I stopped reading the book earlier).
Why the Dutch are different by A summary of Dutch history and culture. Very entertaining though a little light on the historical content.
1493 1493 is an excellent book about the encounter of the American and European continent. I find shocking that I never learned about many of the facts of found in this book. Moreover it highlights the importance of SouthAmerica in the development of world. I think a lot of these ideas need to be taugh widely to provide more tools to understand the current state of America, and to help heal the wounds created by the euro-american encounters. Here are some facts that were completely unknown to me before I read this book: The Andean region in South America, provided a key ingredient for the stabilization of the European continent and its eventual economical sucess. Embargoes imposed on Haiti, starting after its independence, have caused great damage to its economy. Further, the first embargo imposed on Haiti, was in retaliation to Haitian’s successful independence!!. In the sixteen century, many of the globe’s richest cities located in South America and Mexico.
Quantum Computing for Computer Scientists. A book on the basic of quantum computing
21 lessons for the 21st century An interesting book on how different current events can/will shape the next decades of human society. Harari makes a good argument on why developing skills such as kindness, generosity, self-knowledge will be more important than ever. I felt this book had a dystopian tone on the average. The one idea that stuck to me through the book was the fact people around the world are more similar to each other now more ever before. I certainly have more in common with someone aroudn my same age living in say Vietnam, than someone who lived in my same from geographical location 100 or even 50 years ago.

January 1, 0001