| Favorites |
The following favorites are neither complete, nor systematic - but highly subjective and somewhat dynamic!
Best books
| A History Of The World in 6 Glasses written by Tom Standage. How six popular beverages contributed to the development of civilizations and shaped the world. |
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| A Short History Of Nearly Everything written by Bill Bryson. The title says (nearly) everything. The details: From quantum mechanics to dinosaurs. From outer space to Mendel's backyard. From ... |
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| The Physics of Superheroes written by James Kakalios. Why can Superman jump so high? Is Antman blind? Why did Spiderman screw up when trying to save Gwen? Those and many more questions illustrated by a physics professor. Plus the foundation for the formula: Science Fiction + Time = Science. |
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| The Swarm - A Novel of the Deep written by F. Schätzing. I long resisted to read this book (hey, it's from a German author); that was stupid. A vivid view into the depths of the ocean and the things lurking there to punish us for our stupidity. Reserve a weekend for reading... |
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| Why Things Break - Understanding the World by the Way it comes Apart written by Mark E. Eberhart. A clever insight into material sciences, combined with many anecdotes. An an explanation why, not when, things give up their sense of cohesion. |
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| Set This House In Order - A Romance Of Souls written by Matt Ruff. Unlike his other books it is not funny, but very interesting to see inside someone's brain - and find a house - with many characters - and a history - a cruel one - actually twice. Opens - well ... multiplies - your mind! |
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| Gunpowder written by Jack Kelly. The story of gunpowder and its impact on the development of our civilization. |
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| The Black Dahlia / L.A. Confidential written by James Ellroy. I don't like murder novells. In general. Those two are plain brilliant, rich in story and fascinating. Stories of desperate love, madness, and (brutal) death in the Hollywood of the 1950s. Insomnia-inducing... (P.S.: The movies are nice, but nothing (!) compared to the books.) |
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| Live. An Unauthorized Biography. A Natural History of the First Thousand Million Years of Life on Earth. written by Richard Fortey. From the first plankton to modern mankind. A fascinating description of the development of the species; interwooven with some funny anecdotes and interesting info trivia. Looking forward to the 2nd part - due in the year 3.000.007. |
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| 1815 The Waterloo Campaign written by Peter Hofschröer. You need some affiliation to the military to be interested in this minute description of the activities around the famous Waterloo battle. The most fascinating part for me is how the actions and decisions of individual officers in a 250.000+ warrior campaign can be traced with hourly granularity almost 200 years after the fact. |
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| Otherland (4 volumes) written by Tad Williams. Ca. 4.000 pages - that's a long read; and it starts to be interesting after about 500 pages. But when you have a long holiday this is a nice, twisted, complicated, very detailed, epic science fiction story. |
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| Pattern Recognition written by William Gibson. Not connected to his previous works it is taking place now. Like really now. Around us. Marketing, Internet, New Russia, Community, Bibendum,... Few recognize the pattern. - Did I mention that it is exciting, wonderful, great? |
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| Schott's Original Miscellany written by Ben Schott. A wild collection of trivia, somewhere between fascinating and totally useless. Examples: Sushi terminology, "I love you" in 40 languages (inkl. Braille, Morse and Urdu), how to bind a sari, and the essential hierarchy of devils. |
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| The Baroque Cycle: Quicksilver / The Confusion / The System of the World written by Neal Stephenson. He's the best SF author alive. And he has written an imaginative account of the baroque times - alchemists, cryptographers, natural philosophers, Louis XIV, Isaac Newton, war, love, sheep intestines, religion - it's all there. |
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| Round Ireland with a Fridge written by Tony Hawks. A stand-up comedian who looses a stupid bet, has to hitch-hike around Ireland with a fridge (!) and experiences the madness of live. |
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| Lamb: The Gospel according to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal written by Christopher Moore. You noticed that the bible just starts when Jesus is 30? Here's the account of Jesus' turbulent youth by his best friend Biff. Not for the true believers... |
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| Getting Even / Side Effects written by Woody Allen. Yes, that Woody Allen. And he has written a set of great and unbelievably funny short stories, like the memoires of Hitler's barber or about a remote chess duel. The first book this year that left me laughing (very) loud. |
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| Rats - Observations on the History and Habitat of the City's most unwanted Inhabitants written by Robert Sullivan. You don't see them. If you do, you don't like them. But its fascinating to read more about their lifestyle (aehem) and role in ancient and modern history. |
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| Water Music written by T.C. Boyle. Part history lesson, part imaginative epos - the quest to survive in Victorian London and to find the source of the river Niger. |
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| Inviting Disaster - Lessons from the Edge of Technology written by James R. Chiles. One of many disaster books, but this one with excellent analysis of the "why" and the "what to do". |
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| Why Smart Executives Fail written by Sydney Finkelstein. Bright managers with visionary ideas, good intentions and big budgets - and why they wreak havoc. So far my business book of the year 2004. |
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| Archipel Gulag written by Alexander Solschenizyn. This is reality - beyond imagination, beyond believe, beyond humanity. |
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| 100 Suns created by Michael Light. Actually a picture book of the 100 most fascinating (above surface) nuclear explosions out of 216 such US tests between 1945 and 1962. The perverse beauty of destruction? See also at www.100suns.info. |
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| The DaVinci Code written by Dan Brown. Just another novel of knights, conspiracy, secret sects, Leonardo, hidden codes, murder, the holy grail? Yes - but extremely clever, multi-layered, breathtaking, ... and almost plausible. And there came Angels and Demons - even better! |
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| The Sword and The Shield - The Mitrokhin archive and the secret history of the KGB written by Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin. 600 pages of excerpts from formerly secret and hidden KGB archives, smuggled out of Russia and brilliantly summarised and put into historical context. The recent past will never be again as it was. |
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| Plane Insanity written by Elliott Hester. An account of a life as a male flight attendant. Tales of madness, sex, rage and queasiness above the clouds. Think again when the nice stewardess brings the next cocktail - it could be Big Bertha. |
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| Prey written by Michael Crichton. The next level of civilization is insects? Naaah - Nanobots - and it is scary. |
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| Pastwatch - The Redemption written by Orson Scott Card. How a distant future can change the course of Christopher Columbus to save mankind. And you should think how you survive reading this book without food and sleep, as you won't be able to put it aside. |
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| Sophie's World written by Jostein Gaarder. A novel about philosophy? Yes, and an exciting one, too. When you read through page 300 it starts to be really interesting... |
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| The Elegant Universe. Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory written by Brian Greene. In the wake of my Feynman experience (see below) I thought it was time to catch up on cosmology and the underlying particle physics - and I found its bible. |
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| The Guns of August written by Barbara W. Tuchman. A historical account of the first month of World War I. Pulitzer invented a new price category just to honour this book! |
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| The Mummy Congress - Science, Obsession, and the everlasting Dead written by Heather Pringle. A broad look at the science, history and cult of mummyfication. |
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| Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! written by Richard P. Feynman. OK - he was the best theoretical physicist since Einstein, and, Yes - he did win the nobel price. But the stories of his life are still just marvelous. In summary: After this, I bought all available books written by him. |
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| Dead Reckoning - The New Science of Catching Killers written by Micahel Baden & Marion Roach. Forensic science at its best! Or did you know how to identify a headless corpse based on its teeth? |
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| Danach war schon / Davor kommt noch written by Thomas Kapielski (German only). This is the most weird and funny type of autobiography you can get from a poet and artist. ROFL! |
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| Computer Related Risks written by Peter G. Neumann. A compilation of risks and resulting events involving computers and modern technology based on the RISKS forum. If you want to know what can go wrong (and already has ...). |
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| The Silk Code written by Paul Levinson. A novel describing the hunt of a Neanderthal serial killer by a New York forensics officer. Includes a conspiracy by the Amish people, an expedition from the ancient silk road via Madagaskar to Spain in the year 750, and some serious genetic engineering. Levinson's first book - already brilliant. |
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| Failure is not an option written by Gene Kranz. The autobiography of the NASA flight director from the Mercury to the Apollo programs. You have seen the great movie "Apollo 13"? He's the guy with the white vest. |
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| The Club Dumas written by Arturo Perez-Reverte. Fallen angels, satanic manuals, and a passion for the works of Alexandre Dumas woven into a fascinating crime story. A book about books in the best tradition of Umberto Eco. |
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| Fool on the Hill written by Matt Ruff. Hobbits meets Winnie-the-Puuh meets Snowwhite meets Julius-Caesar meets Felidae - exciting, phantastic and funny. And I though my student-live was tough ... |
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| Cryptonomicon written by Neal Stephenson. The best book I read in 2000. To quote VILLAGE VOICE: "What cyberculture needs right now is not another science-fiction novel but its first great historical novel, and Cryptonomicon is it". I have nothing to add! |
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| Snow Crash / The Diamond Age / Zodiac written by Neal Stephenson, drawing a phantastic political, technological and ecological picture of the world in some decades. |
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| Enderīs Game
/ Speaker for the Dead / Xenocide / Children of the Mind plus the parallel story Enderīs Shadow written by Orson Scott Card |
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| Neuromancer / Biochips / Mona Lisa Overdrive plus Cyberspace, a collection of short stories (of which "Johnny Mnemonic" is best known from the respective movie) written by William Gibson, the guy who actually invented the term "Cyberspace". Recently he has started a new thrilling series (or better, family) of novels providing an amazing outview on a not so unlikely future. Read: Virtual Light / Idoru / All Tomorrow's Parties / Count Zero |
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| The Sheep look up written by John Brunner. In 1972 his scenario of living in a world of ecological desaster was visionary, now it looks like an excerpt from tomorrows newspaper. |
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| Distraction written by Bruce Sterling, reinventing politics in a future ruined, and rebuilt, by technology. |
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| Gödel,
Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid written by Douglas R. Hofstadter. The bible of the digerati. |
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| Emergency. Crisis on the Flight Deck written by Stanley Stewart is a detailed analysis of 10 airplane non-crashes. Most of them were used for horrible movies. |
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| Poetry of the Universe written by Robert Osserman, describes the state-of-the art in cosmology. |
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| Virus Hunter written by C.J. Peters & Mark Olshaker. The biography of one of the worldīs top scientists battling deadly viruses and terrible epidemies. If you have seen "Outbreak" - this is the real thing! |
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| Dealers of Lightning - XEROX PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age written by Michael Hiltzik. An account of the most important research establishment in the history of computing. |
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| Sick Societies - Challenging the Myth of Primitive Harmony written by Robert B. Edgerton. Primitve societies were not as noble and nice as we might think - and ours is probably not that bad. |
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| Wild Duck - Empirische Philosophie der Mensch-Computer-Vernetzung written by Gunter Dueck (German only). An amusing, sarcastic, serious, exciting and critical analysis about the optimisation of human desires, and how the computer could help us in achieving an objectively satisfactory life. |
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| Visual Explanations / The Visual Display of Quantitative Information written by Edward R. Tufte. The guru of visualisation of statistical or numeric data-collections. And he proves that the Challenger disaster was predictable... |
Best music
| The diva dance from the movie The
Fifth Element performed by Inva Mulla-Tchako |
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| Money don't matter 2 night performed by Prince and the New Power Generation |
Interesting events in my life
| 05. November 1987 | : | Lunch with Lady Diana in Munich | |
| 24. October 1993 | : | A shearwind on final approach to Aachen almost (~1 second to impact) terminated my promising flying career |
Interesting sites
| My company Blaha Executive Consulting GmbH | |
| WebCam on my favorite airport Aachen Merzbrück | |
| Live: Radio communications on Chicago Approach [RealAudio] | |
| Mensa International | |
| Mensa in Deutschland | |
| Wired Magazine - I prefer the paper version | |
| My golfclub : Mergelhof/Belgium |