Endure by Alex Hutchinson

What hackers pick instead

• Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas HofstadterRecommended for its playful exploration of self-reference, logic and consciousness. Common caveat: it is digressive and some find it slow going.47recommend
• Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel KahnemanWidely recommended for changing how you think about decisions and biases; critics say many of its studies, especially on priming, have failed to replicate.17recommend
• Thinking in Systems by Donella MeadowsPeople recommend it for changing how they see cause and effect, with names for patterns and a clear split between stocks and flows.17recommend
• The Selfish Gene by Richard DawkinsRecommended for teaching how evolution works from the gene's view and building evolutionary thinking. Critics say its story is detached from how systems survive change.14recommend
• Cosmos by Carl SaganRecommended for making the universe vivid and accessible in both book and TV form, though one critic calls it popular rather than scientific.13recommend

Every quote

The 4 most detailed of 4 comments. Each links to the original.

1. Fascinating (to me) book, basically setting up the question, is human endurance limiting factor physical or psychological

   Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “Ask HN: What are you reading?”

2. which I highly recommend to anyone ever slightly interested in human performance

   Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “Ask HN: What did you read in 2025?”

3. When we ran it on our CodeSlick codebase, it flagged the exact module behind our worst production incident.

   Recommends · Mar 2026

4. a research-driven attempt to analyze structural resilience in modern, AI-accelerated systems

   Recommends · Feb 2026