7 ms·
Ask HN: Books about people who persevered when no one else believed in them?
Looking for suggestions. Can be fiction or non-fiction.
- Group_B 4y agoWalter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs
- wj 4y agoAyn Rand novels have this theme IIRC.
- garrickvanburen 4y agoIt’s been a few decades, though I recall Rand’s antagonists fully believing in the protagonist’s chance of success - and actively discouraging it. To me there’s a distinction between this and disbelief.
- brian_spiering 4y agoNewton the Alchemist: Science, Enigma, and the Quest for Nature's "Secret Fire" by William Newman details Isaac Newton's long-term studies in alchemy.
- h2odragon 4y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Sold_the_Moon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Sold_the_Moon
- njessop 4y agotwo from finance: Confidence Game: How Hedge Fund Manager Bill Ackman Called Wall Street's Bluff // Christine Richard Fooling Some of the People All of the Time // David Einhorn
- effnorwood 4y ago
- francogt 4y agoBall Lightning by Cixin Liu is about a scientist who decides to dedicate his life to studying ball lightning (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_lightning https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_lightning) when nobody takes it seriously Lift Off by Eric Berger details early days of SpaceX
- iorek_dev 4y agoMartin Eden by Jack London
- rkk3 4y agoThe Splendid and the Vile
- haider_a 4y agoJames Dyson's autobiography "Against the Odds". It is an excellent book about original thinking and it is hugly underrated.
- barrenko 4y agoMoby Dick. NN Taleb basically has a book trilogy dedicated to making complicated life bets. Start with Black Swan. You can skip some.
- VoodooJuJu 4y agoThe Bible.
- haakonhr 4y agoJet Man by Duncan Campbell-Smith about Frank Whittle who invented the jet engine (in parallel with Hans von Ohain)
- mwattsun 4y agoCassandra was a Trojan priestess of Apollo in Greek mythology cursed to utter true prophecies, but never to be believed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassandra https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassandra https://www.google.com/search?q=books+about+cassandra+of+troy https://www.google.com/search?q=books+about+cassandra+of+tro...
- atmosx 4y agowhich makes you wonder why would anyone name a distributed database acting as a “source of truth” Cassandra…
- filoleg 4y agoBecause according to the mythology, Cassandra's prophecies actually were predicting the truth. I think the part where people didn't believe her wasn't relevant, when it came to the DB product naming. She was a "source of truth" regardless of people's belief in it.
- anon2020dot00 4y agoIsaac Newton, Wright Brothers, almost any pioneer is doubted since it hasn't been done until they did it
- glaucon 4y agoA book on the Wright brothers I would very much recommend is "The Bishop's Boys", fascinating story with a lot of detail I was unaware of. From my recollection it wasn't so much no-one believed in them as they just didn't give a dam what others thought, they just were interested in trying. I should clarify that by saying that they were certainly interested in learning what others had done but, as far as I recall, they weren't concerned what others thought about the probability of success. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23827.The_Bishop_s_Boys https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23827.The_Bishop_s_Boys
- keiferski 4y agoNietzsche wrote most of his books in isolated obscurity and had to personally pay to get some of them published.
- supertrope 4y agoBiographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society. e.g. Peter Mitchell's chemiosmotic theory of how living cells power themselves at a molecular level was not accepted for many years.
- jmpman 4y agoNot quite what you’re looking for, but highly recommend: A Message to Garcia This generation needs this mindset. My first manager gave it to me.
- DougMellon 4y agoA Message to Garcia [0] was often passed around while I was in the Navy. That in addition to Iron and the Soul by Henry Rollins [1]. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Message_to_Garcia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Message_to_Garcia [1] https://www.nerdfitness.com/iron-and-soul/ https://www.nerdfitness.com/iron-and-soul/
- rakejake 4y ago+1 for Iron and the Soul. Really spoke to me.
- type0 4y agoGregor Mendel
- sealaska 4y agoNeptune's Apprentice is a memoir by Marie DeSantis, who was one the first woman to break into the commercial fishing industry in California in the 1960's. I'm biased because I work in commercial fishing myself, but this was a very good read.
- alexrson 4y agoLongitude - nonfic by dana sobel About a scientist/engineer who developed a sufficiently accurate clock to calculate longitude on an oceangoing ship in the age of sail. Which was of vast importance to sailing. The establishment was strongly in favor of astronomy based methods of calculating longitude. Barbara McClintock is a real scientist who fits this mold, but I haven't read a biography of her to specifically recommend.
- yesenadam 4y agoThere's an excellent British TV movie version of Longitude (200 minutes, 2000, Jeremy Irons, Michael Gambon) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0192263/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0192263/
- morelisp 4y agoA Confederacy of Dunces.
- nickkell 4y agoThe sign of a person with taste and decency, theology and geometry.
- elliekelly 4y agoNon-fiction: -Papillion by Henri Charrière: https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/bbd4b0ce-baad-4f04-9e98-d4fb5470f34c https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/bbd4b0ce-baad-4f04-9e98-... -Escape from Camp 14 by Blaine Harden: https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/112010c8-be72-4ddc-b5e5-60694fb73c2f https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/112010c8-be72-4ddc-b5e5-... -The Naked Don't Fear the Water by Matthieu Aikins: https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/2572756e-ab98-4376-94be-5b86368acad7 https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/2572756e-ab98-4376-94be-... -Barbie & Ruth by Robin Gerber: https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/69d6197f-f9dd-465f-bc3a-c0d3f9343cc4 https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/69d6197f-f9dd-465f-bc3a-... -The Fish That Ate the Whale by Rich Cohen (Starts slow but the story is wild.): https://app.thestorygraph.com/browse?button=&search_term=fish+ate+the+whale https://app.thestorygraph.com/browse?button=&search_term=fis... Fiction: -The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas: https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/abd1c172-fbba-469d-a99c-7202a44a8abe https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/abd1c172-fbba-469d-a99c-... -Hatchet by Gary Paulson: https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/8a8b0f34-bdec-4e08-bad8-fe6af63a14a5 https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/8a8b0f34-bdec-4e08-bad8-... -The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah (This one is kind of a rough read.): https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/8a740c2e-a536-47c8-8d67-fefb20af3c8c https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/8a740c2e-a536-47c8-8d67-... -Pachinko by Min Jin Lee: https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/c906e464-dc41-4f82-9601-77d9f3717994 https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/c906e464-dc41-4f82-9601-... -The Beekeeper of Aleppo by Christy Lefteri: https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/297187a2-ad88-4b2b-a453-6c7db117c3d8 https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/297187a2-ad88-4b2b-a453-... -Bear Town by Fredrik Backman (It's not quite what you're looking for, but close, and really good.): https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/1e759f91-b8e7-4a7b-b10a-7fca49810ed7 https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/1e759f91-b8e7-4a7b-b10a-...
- mistertester 4y agoA choice of weapons - Gordon Parks
- atmosx 4y agoThemistocles[1] was convinced that the Persian empire will attack the Greeks for a second time, so he pushed for crating a naval fleet. Athenians (democracy eh?) were not on board, so he played an entire city by knowingly lying to them (those politician sucked from day one) effectively saving the city and to an extend western civilization as we know it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Themistocles https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Themistocles
- 8bitsrule 4y agoA Melville bio might be sobering. Melville's Moby Dick was so widely ignored (at best) that he quit writing prose for decades before starting Billy Budd a few years before his death. By that time, Moby was out-of-print ... it wasn't a 'work of genius' or a 'great American classic' for decades longer.
- PickledHotdog 4y agoThe Little Engine That Could
- pjacotg 4y agoNot a book, but the podcast Without Fail discusses these sort of stories. It's by Alex Blumberg the same person who did the Start Up podcast.
- muzani 4y agoPerseverance/patience/persistence (sabr) is the common theme in the Quran. It's said to be one of the two core traits of faith, the other being gratefulness. The idea is that anyone can profess faith, but the real test of faith is whether they believe things will be fine when pitted against all odds. Not so much light triumphing against dark, but faith that God is ultimately in control. The Quranic take on David vs Goliath was that it required perseverance to follow David, who did not look much like a King. And after marching, they were exhausted and thirsty, reached the river, but were only allowed to take a single sip. Anyone who took more than a sip would not be part of the battle with Goliath. So there were only a few in the battle, which made the odds seem impossible, and so they prayed to God for perseverance (2:250) and Goliath was defeated in the most unexpected way. Most tales about a Prophet is a story of perseverance.