Reading in 2024
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2024: the year of the Very Short Introduction!
My plan for 2024 is to read (at least) one Very Short Introduction per week. Here’s my progress so far.
Wk | Starting | n | Title |
---|---|---|---|
1 | 2024-01-01 | 1 | The Periodic Table |
2 | 2024-01-08 | 2 | Risk |
3 | 2024-01-15 | 3 | Global Catastrophes |
4 | 2024-01-22 | 4 | The Earth |
5 | 2024-01-29 | 5 | The Laws of Thermodynamics |
6 | 2024-02-05 | 6 | Magna Carta |
7 | 2024-02-12 | 7 | Statistics |
8 | 2024-02-19 | 8 | Tides |
9 | Earth System Science | ||
9 | 2024-02-26 | 10 | The Ice Age |
11 | Geophysics | ||
10 | 2024-03-04 | 12 | Planets |
11 | 2024-03-11 | 13 | Newton |
14 | Isotopes | ||
12 | 2024-03-18 | 15 | Weather |
13 | 2024-03-25 | 16 | Climate |
17 | Climate Change | ||
14 | 2024-04-01 | 18 | The First World War |
19 | Keynes | ||
15 | 2024-04-08 | 20 | Human Evolution |
21 | Stars | ||
16 | 2024-04-15 | 22 | The Sun |
17 | 2024-04-22 | 23 | Geology |
18 | 2024-04-29 | 24 | Mathematics |
19 | 2024-05-06 | 25 | Symmetry |
20 | 2024-05-13 | 26 | Geography |
21 | 2024-05-20 | 27 | Biogeography |
22 | 2024-05-27 | 28 | Waves |
23 | 2024-06-03 | 29 | Chemistry |
30 | Globalization | ||
24 | 2024-06-10 | 31 | Particle Physics |
25 | 2024-06-17 | 32 | Plate Tectonics |
26 | 2024-06-24 | 33 | Magnetism |
Notes
I’m trying to remember three things from each book. Here are some of my notes.
Title | Description | Reading Time | |
---|---|---|---|
Accounting VSI | The earliest human written records are all accounts; expenses use assets so are entered on the left. | 1 min | |
Chemistry VSI | Bonds: ionic, covalent, metallic; reactions: proton transfer, electron transfer, radical, Lewis acids | 5 min | |
Climate and Climate Change VSIs | “IPCC 2021 states that the evidence for climate change is unequivocal, and there is a very high confidence that this warming is due to human emissions of GHGs.” | 19 min | |
Earth System Science VSI | The Earth has experienced huge changes over very long time frames but feedback induced stability over shorter time frames. | 10 min | |
Geography VSI | Space, place, and environment. | 5 min | |
Geophysics VSI | To do | 1 min | |
Global Catastrophes VSI | Meteorites will kill us…or maybe a volcano or our own stupidity. Landslides could flood the US East Coast. | 1 min | |
Human Evolution VSI | Out of Africa or multiregional? | 3 min | |
Isotopes VSI | Same on the outside but different on the inside; detect one atom in \(10^{-15}\); cosmogenic creation | 12 min | |
Keynes VSI | Economists should strive to be as useful as dentists. | 2 min | |
Magna Carta VSI | Charters were common; John was a really bad king; original MC included enforcement by 25 barons. | 6 min | |
Newton VSI | Newton: scientist, alchemist, anti-Trinitarian, MP, Master of the Mint. | 10 min | |
Particle Physics VSI | There are seventeen fundamental particles: six quarks, six leptons, and five bosons. | 27 min | |
Planets VSI | The asteroid Apophis will have a close encounter with the Earth miss on 2029-04-13, which is a Friday! | 11 min | |
Plate Tectonics VSI | Lithosphere takes tens of millions of years to warm up when subducted into the asthenosphere. | 16 min | |
Risk VSI | Normative - descriptive - prescriptive: What should we do? What do we do? How can we improve? | 3 min | |
Stars and The Sun VSIs | We are all made of atoms created in stars! | 39 min | |
Statistics VSI | The technology of extracting meaning from data and of handling uncertainty. Mechanistic vs empirical models. | 2 min | |
The Earth VSI | The Earth was very different a long time ago; microbes under the seafloor; paleomagnetism and reversals of magnetic field. | 2 min | |
The First World War VSI | “At the end of 1917 the prospects for the Allies still looked grim.” | 8 min | |
The Ice Age VSI | Ice bergs or ice sheets debate; seabed and ice cores; Milankovitch’s three cycles; global impact of Himalayas. | 3 min | |
The Laws of Thermodynamics VSI | Temperature: most probable distribution over available states; conservation of energy; entropy never decreases in an isolated system; as the temperature of a system approaches absolute zero, the entropy of the system approaches a minimum value. | 8 min | |
The Period Table VSI | Potassium-Argon reversal. Where should hydrogen appear? Why the actinides and lanthanides appear along the bottom. Quantum basis for the length of each row. | 9 min | |
Tides VSI | Almost everything you know about tides is irrelevant to how they actually work! It’s all about resonances. | 6 min | |
Weather VSI | Different types of cloud. | 7 min |
No matching items
Read in Prior Years
Year | Title |
---|---|
2023 | Accounting |
2014 | Global Economic History |
2013 | Capitalism |
2012 | Freud |
2010 | Philosophy of Law |
2010 | Darwin |
2009 | Law |
2009 | The Great Depression and the New Deal |
2009 | Marx |
Library
- 003 Buddhism
- 017 Roman Britain
- 028 Marx
- 032 Aristotle
- 035 Darwin
- 045 Freud
- 066 Mathematics
- 069 Quantum Theory
- 086 Globalization
- 090 The Earth
- 108 Capitalism
- 109 Particle Physics
- 118 Climate Change
- 128 Dinosaurs
- 143 Human Evolution
- 145 Global Catastrophes
- 147 Philosophy of Law
- 150 The Roman Empire
- 154 The First World War
- 158 Newton
- 159 Chaos
- 166 The Great Depression and the New Deal
- 180 Law
- 185 Geography
- 190 Relativity
- 196 Statistics
- 226 The Laws of Thermodynamics
- 248 Keynes
- 254 Planets
- 270 Risk
- 282 Global Economic History
- 289 The Periodic Table
- 317 Magnetism
- 321 Magna Carta
- 322 Stars
- 327 The Roman Republic
- 353 Symmetry
- 358 Climate
- 380 The Ice Age
- 383 Accounting
- 417 Chemistry
- 425 Plate Tectonics
- 431 Forests
- 450 Moons
- 453 Black Holes
- 464 Earth System Science
- 476 Isotopes
- 506 Weather
- 512 Gravity
- 560 Geophysics
- 574 Geology
- 590 Waves
- 605 Extinction
- 621 Tides
- 638 The Sun
- 647 Biogeography
Consider
n | Num | Title | Author | Published |
---|---|---|---|---|
1. | 10. | Archaeology | Paul Bahn (illustrato | 2012 |
2. | 16. | History | John Arnold | 2000 |
3. | 18. | The Anglo-Saxon Age | John Blair | 2000 |
4. | 19. | Medieval Britain | John Gillingham, Ralp | 2000 |
5. | 20. | The Tudors | John Guy | 2013 |
6. | 21. | Stuart Britain | John Morrill | 2000 |
7. | 22. | Eighteenth-Century Britain | Paul Langford | 2000 |
8. | 23. | Nineteenth-Century Britain | Christopher Harvie, H | 2000 |
9. | 24. | Twentieth-Century Britain | Kenneth O. Morgan | 2000 |
10. | 44. | Galileo | Stillman Drake | 2001 |
11. | 51. | Cosmology | Peter Coles | 2001 |
12. | 84. | Locke | John Dunn | 2003 |
13. | 88. | The History of Astronomy | Michael Hoskin | 2003 |
14. | 100. | Evolution | Brian Charlesworth, D | 2017 |
15. | 101. | Molecules | Philip Ball | 2003 |
16. | 104. | The Elements | Philip Ball | 2004 |
17. | 141. | Feminism | Margaret Walters | 2005 |
18. | 179. | Nuclear Weapons | Joseph M. Siracusa | 2020 (3rd ed.) |
19. | 182. | Galaxies | John Gribbin | 2008 |
20. | 204. | Superconductivity | Stephen J. Blundell | 2009 |
21. | 216. | The Norman Conquest | George Garnett | 2009 |
22. | 268. | Nuclear power | Maxwell Irvine | 2011 |
23. | 276. | Viruses | Dorothy H. Crawford | 2022 (3nd ed.) |
24. | 280. | Developmental biology | Lewis Wolpert | 2011 |
25. | 285. | The Cell | Terence Allen, Graham | 2011 |
26. | 303. | Stem Cells | Jonathan Slack | 2021 |
27. | 307. | Plague | Paul Slack | 2021 |
28. | 309. | Engineering | David Blockley | 2012 |
29. | 310. | Probability | John Haigh | 2012 |
30. | 311. | Rivers | Nick Middleton | 2012 |
31. | 312. | Plants | Timothy Walker | 2012 |
32. | 324. | Radioactivity | Claudio Tuniz | 2012 |
33. | 331. | Civil engineering | David Muir Wood | 2012 |
34. | 352. | Bacteria | Sebastian G. B. Amyes | 2013 |
35. | 359. | The Palestinian–Israeli Conflic | Martin Bunton | 2013 |
36. | 370. | Astrobiology | David C. Catling | 2013 |
37. | 385. | Physical chemistry | Peter Atkins | 2014 |
38. | 394. | Hormones | Martin Luck | 2014 |
39. | 399. | Genes | Jonathan Slack | 2014 |
40. | 401. | Structural engineering | David Blockley | 2014 |
41. | 404. | The Middle Ages | Miri Rubin | 2014 |
42. | 405. | Materials | Christopher Hall | 2014 |
43. | 406. | Minerals | David Vaughan | 2014 |
44. | 409. | World War II | Gerhard L. Weinberg | 2014 |
45. | 413. | Microbiology | Nicholas P. Money | 2014 |
46. | 418. | Human Anatomy | Leslie Klenerman | 2015 |
47. | 438. | Nuclear Physics | Frank Close | 2015 |
48. | 440. | Water | John Finney | 2015 |
49. | 444. | Mountains | Martin F. Price | 2015 |
50. | 446. | Light | Ian A. Walmsley | 2015 |
51. | 454. | The Body | Chris Shilling | 2016 |
52. | 455. | Fungi | Nicolas P. Money | 2016 |
53. | 456. | The History of Chemistry | William H. Brock | 2016 |
54. | 469. | Crystallography | A. M. Glazer | 2016 |
55. | 470. | Astrophysics | James Binney | 2016 |
56. | 473. | Agriculture | Paul Brassley, Richar | 2016 |
57. | 485. | Molecular Biology | Aysha Divan, Janice R | 2016 |
58. | 486. | Blood | Christopher Cooper | 2016 |
59. | 500. | Measurement | David J. Hand | 2016 |
60. | 502. | Rocks | Jan Zalasiewicz | 2016 |
61. | 503. | Banking | John O. S. Wilson, Jo | 2016 |
62. | 509. | The Industrial Revolution | Robert C. Allen | 2017 |
63. | 514. | Navigation | Jim Bennett | 2017 |
64. | 518. | The Atmosphere | Paul Palmer | 2017 |
65. | 519. | Infinity | Ian Stewart | 2017 |
66. | 520. | Organic Chemistry | Graham Patrick | 2017 |
67. | 529. | Oceans | Dorrik Stow | 2017 |
68. | 535. | Mammals | T. S. Kemp | 2017 |
69. | 547. | Lakes | Warwick F. Vincent | 2018 |
70. | 549. | The History of Physics | J. L. Heilbron | 2018 |
71. | 555. | Applied mathematics | Alain Goriely | 2018 |
72. | 558. | Anthropocene | Erle C. Ellis | 2018 |
73. | 559. | Genomics | John M. Archibald | 2018 |
74. | 576. | The Book of Common Prayer | Brian Cummings | 2018 |
75. | 582. | Adam Smith | Christopher J. Berry | 2018 |
76. | 583. | Glaciation | David J. A. Evans | 2018 |
77. | 588. | Biometrics | Michael Fairhurst | 2018 |
78. | 592. | Mathematical finance | Mark H. A. Davis | 2019 |
79. | 599. | Matter | Geoff Cottrell | 2019 |
80. | 606. | Physics | Sidney Perkowitz | 2019 |
81. | 620. | Energy Systems | Nick Jenkins | 2019 |
82. | 652. | Soft Matter | Tom McLeish | 2020 |
83. | 659. | Global Islam | Nile Green | 2020 |
84. | 660. | Volcanoes | Michael J. Branney, J | 2020 |
85. | 661. | Enzymes | Paul Engel | 2020 |
86. | 674. | Biochemistry | Mark Lorch | 2021 |
87. | 693. | Planetary Systems | Raymond T. Pierrehumb | 2021 |
88. | 708. | Fluid mechanics | Eric Lauga | 2022 |
89. | 709. | Insects | Simon Leather | 2022 |
90. | 722. | Condensed Matter Physics | Ross McKenzie | 2023 |