Ask HN: Inspirational Biographies | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Inspirational Biographies

6 pointslive_to_code7 comments

Hey,

  I'm looking for biographies to read. Some that have really inspired me are:

Nikola Tesla Steve Jobs Steve Woz Larry Ellison Lance Armstrong

HN have suggestions? In general I'm intereted in stories of how everyday individuals became great.

Thanks!

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I enjoyed all of Asimov's autobiographical books: In Memory Yet Green and In Joy Still Felt, and the posthumous memoir, I. Asimov. I'm a huge fan of Asimov's non-style literary style (clarity over all), and it works well in autobiography. If you like scifi, at all, Asimov was an eye witness to nearly its entire history from golden age onward, and thus worth reading. He's also perhaps one of the few truly credible witnesses to that history; a number of other genre favorites and stalwarts had psychological issues (Dick), personal feuds and vendettas (Ellison), an aversion to the community (Lem), or were just batshit crazy (Hubbard), and thus their accounts can't generally be taken without large grains of salt.

There are two biographies that I think should be required reading for wannabe Silicon Valley entrepreneurs: (1) High St@kes, No Prisoners by Charles H. Ferguson and (2) The New New Thing by Michael Lewis, about Jim Clark

And two that, while light on content (i.e. math), never fail to stimulate the childlike nature of my inner aspiring mathematician: (1) The Man Who Knew Infinity by Robert Kanigel, on Ramanujan and (2) The Man Who Loved Only Numbers by Paul Hoffman, on Paul Erdos.

Forgot Jim Clark. Really liked his story too.

"Surely, You're Joking Mr Feynman" was a fun read.

I really enjoyed Isaacson's "Einstein: His Life and Universe".

Chuck Yeager

John von Neumann

Gottfried Leibniz

Helen Keller

Kyle Maynard

Brooke Ellison

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