Economist, Financial Times columnist (“The Undercover Economist”) and presenter of the Cautionary Tales podcast.
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Michael Brooks, The Art of More – The history of how ideas in mathematics (such as algebra, geometry, statistics and accountancy) helped to shape the modern world. Given my own predelictions I was delighted with this book.
His annual books-of-the-year list, each title with his own one- or two-line verdict. The post states that its Bookshop and Amazon links may generate referral fees, so every entry from it is marked affiliate.
Every entry is a verbatim quote and a link to the public post it came from. Nothing is paraphrased. If it is not on record somewhere public, it is not here.
The verdict is what they actually said: loved and liked are explicit; recommended means they told others to get it; uses means they only say they use it; read is a book on their public shelf with no verdict; mixed and disliked are kept too.
A dashed affiliate link, sponsored or their own label means the post disclosed a relationship. It is shown, never hidden.
The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is for its kind of thing.
The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is, for its kind of thing. Fully green is recent. It drains a quarter at a time as the post gets older, and is empty once it reads as dated.
What counts as old depends on the thing. A laptop praised four years ago has been replaced twice; a book loved twenty years ago is probably still loved. The shading is gone after about:
Hardware, services4 years
Software5 years
Podcasts, courses, other8 years
Books25 years
Stripes mean the post carries no date and the date shown is an estimate. No date at all, no shading.