A collection of books that have shaped my thinking, in no particular order. Each entry includes my personal thoughts and what I took away from the experience.
Steven Skiena
TODO
Martin Kleppmann and Chris Riccomini
TODO
Remzi and Andrea Arpaci-Dusseau
TODO
Click here to view my notes on OSTEP and Operating Systems.
Gareth James, Daniela Witten, Trevor Hastie, and Robert Tibshirani
TODO
Mehryar Mohri, Afshin Rostamizadeh, and Ameet Talwalkar
TODO
Bertrand Russell
When Russell needed money during World War II (his pacifist views had cost him academic positions), he turned to lecturing at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia and discovered he could tell the story of Western philosophy as if it were human drama rather than abstract theory. The book divides twenty-five centuries into three acts—ancient, medieval, modern—with philosophers responding to plague and war and political collapse, each thinker shaped by forces larger than himself. Russell's genius lies in his ruthless clarity: he can explain why Aquinas mattered to medieval Europe, then show exactly where his arguments fall apart, and you finish both respecting the man and understanding why his system couldn't survive the Renaissance. Critics attack Russell's biases, his dismissal of German idealism, his weak grasp of medieval thought, but this misses what he accomplished. Russell made philosophy feel urgent again, connected to the crises that produced it, and when the Nobel Committee awarded him the Literature Prize in 1950, they cited this book as proof that ideas have consequences and that someone who can trace those consequences across centuries deserves our attention.
Marcus Aurelius
Meditations captures something extraordinary: the private thoughts of a Roman emperor wrestling with timeless questions while leading a brutal campaign. Between 170 and 180 CE, during the Marcomannic Wars, Marcus Aurelius wrote these reflections while fighting the Germanic Marcomanni and Quadi tribes along the Danube frontier. He penned passages while campaigning against the Quadi on the river Granova in Slovakia and at Carnuntum near Vienna. The work unfolds in fragments—brief notes on managing stress, dealing with difficult people, keeping perspective when everything falls apart. What strikes me most is his silence about Stoicism itself; Marcus never announces his philosophical allegiance, making his wisdom feel immediate rather than academic. His central insight runs deeper than any system: live according to reason, find peace within yourself, focus on what you can control instead of raging against what you cannot. I keep returning to Meditations because its practical wisdom cuts through centuries, offering guidance as relevant today as it was during his war against tribes threatening the Empire's heart.
To know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge.
— Socrates