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Comment by tjalfi | Hacker News Reader

Autobiography/Memoirs:

  Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! - Richard Feynman
  What Do You Care What Other People Think? - Richard Feynman
  Crime and Guilt: Stories - Ferdinand von Schirach

Fiction:

  The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov

Technical:

  Bulldog: A Compiler for VLIW Architectures - John Ellis

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I have never heard of Ferdinand von Schirach, but since the two other books of Feynman are really good, I would also like to know, why you recommend the third book. Could you tell more why his autobiography is worth reading?

Crime and Guilt is completely unlike either of the Feynman memoirs. It is a compilation of two separate short story collections that were originally published in German. The author is a German criminal defense attorney and the stories are fictionalized accounts of some of his cases. I probably should have listed it under Fiction. It is not an uplifting read and some of the stories are quite brutal. I recommended Crime and Guilt because it portrays the best and worst of human beings. You will read about a bank robber who starts a new life in Ethiopia. Another story is about the author defending a nameless assassin. A third is about a petty burglar who steals from the wrong victim.

Here are some links to more articulate reviews.

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/review...

https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2013/01/crime-and-guilt-by-fer...

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/23/books/review/Steinhauer-t....

The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov - this is a great book, I am lucky my Mom gave it to me when I was a kid...

+1. An absolutely wonderful read. I've found myself constantly gifting copies. To anyone looking to purchase, the Alma Books[0] translation is the one I would recommend.

[0] - https://www.amazon.com/Master-Margarita-Mikhail-Bulgakov/dp/...

Thank you for the link and the idea, I will follow your lead and start gifting to friends and coworkers...

I should finish this. I got two or three chapters in on a move interstate, and it got lost in the unpacking process.

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