Here are 100 books that Flying Blind fans have personally recommended if you like
Flying Blind.
Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.
Being able to understand and change reality through our knowledge and skill is literal magic. We’re building systems with so many exciting and unexpected properties that can be exploited and repurposed for both good and evil. I want to keep some of that magic and help people engineer – build great systems that make people’s lives better. I’ve been securing (and breaking) systems, from operating rooms to spaceships, from banks to self-driving cars for over 25 years. The biggest lesson I’ve learned is that if security is not infused from the start, we’re forced to rely on what ought to be our last lines of defense. This list helps you infuse security into your systems.
This book captures lessons from many authors at Google, some of whom I’ve worked with over the years. The chapters on availability (7, 8, 9) were a revelation to me. I had no idea how Google approaches the topic of resilience and recovery in their systems, and I now think of the whole topic very differently. The biggest takeaway is how to think about the design of systems.
Can a system be considered truly reliable if it isn't fundamentally secure? Or can it be considered secure if it's unreliable? Security is crucial to the design and operation of scalable systems in production, as it plays an important part in product quality, performance, and availability. In this book, experts from Google share best practices to help your organization design scalable and reliable systems that are fundamentally secure.
Two previous O'Reilly books from Google-Site Reliability Engineering and The Site Reliability Workbook-demonstrated how and why a commitment to the entire service lifecycle enables organizations to successfully build, deploy, monitor, and maintain…
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
Being able to understand and change reality through our knowledge and skill is literal magic. We’re building systems with so many exciting and unexpected properties that can be exploited and repurposed for both good and evil. I want to keep some of that magic and help people engineer – build great systems that make people’s lives better. I’ve been securing (and breaking) systems, from operating rooms to spaceships, from banks to self-driving cars for over 25 years. The biggest lesson I’ve learned is that if security is not infused from the start, we’re forced to rely on what ought to be our last lines of defense. This list helps you infuse security into your systems.
When I worked in application security at Microsoft, we still had products that shipped every few years. I learned to scale application security in that world, but many people live in a different world now. AAS helped me understand which of our approaches translated well, which had to be transformed, and which needed to be discarded or replaced. I regularly refer back to it, even a few years later.
Agile continues to be the most adopted software development methodology among organizations worldwide, but it generally hasn't integrated well with traditional security management techniques. And most security professionals aren't up to speed in their understanding and experience of agile development. To help bridge the divide between these two worlds, this practical guide introduces several security tools and techniques adapted specifically to integrate with agile development.
Written by security experts and agile veterans, this book begins by introducing security principles to agile practitioners, and agile principles to security practitioners. The authors also reveal problems they encountered in their own experiences with…
Being able to understand and change reality through our knowledge and skill is literal magic. We’re building systems with so many exciting and unexpected properties that can be exploited and repurposed for both good and evil. I want to keep some of that magic and help people engineer – build great systems that make people’s lives better. I’ve been securing (and breaking) systems, from operating rooms to spaceships, from banks to self-driving cars for over 25 years. The biggest lesson I’ve learned is that if security is not infused from the start, we’re forced to rely on what ought to be our last lines of defense. This list helps you infuse security into your systems.
Loren’s been contributing to security for over 40 years, and this book captures his hard-won wisdom in a way that’s both humble and accessible. It scales from principles and design approaches to in-depth explanations of exactly how things go wrong and how to avoid those problems. (Also, I was honored to write the foreword.)
Designing Secure Software consolidates Loren Kohnfelder's more than twenty years of experience into a concise, elegant guide to improving the security of technology products. Written for a wide range of software professionals, it emphasizes building security into software design early and involving the entire team in the process. The book begins with a discussion of core concepts. The second part, perhaps this book's most important contribution, covers the process of designing and reviewing a software design with security considerations in mind. The final section details the most common coding flaws that create vulnerabilities, making copious use of code snippets written…
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
I am an international authority for my award-winning research on the Vested® business model for highly collaborative relationships. I began my research in 2003 researching what makes a difference in successful strategic business deals. My day job is being the lead faculty and researcher for the University of Tennessee’s Certified Deal Architect program; my passion is helping organizations and individuals learn the art, science, and practice of crafting highly collaborative win-win strategic business relationships. My work has led to seven books and three Harvard Business Review articles. I’ve also shared my advice on CNN International, Bloomberg, NPR, and on Fox Business News.
You might ask why I am recommending a book on change management for a book list on structuring business deals. It is because anytime two organizations come together in a business deal something will change within their organizations. All too often people rush to sign the deal and forget there that often hundreds of critical changes behind the scenes are needed for the deal to be a success long after the ink is dry. If you are structuring a big business deal this book will help you think two steps ahead to lay the foundation so the organization can implement the changes needed.
The international bestseller--now with a new preface by author John Kotter. Millions worldwide have read and embraced John Kotter's ideas on change management and leadership. From the ill-fated dot-com bubble to unprecedented M&A activity to scandal, greed, and ultimately, recession--we've learned that widespread and difficult change is no longer the exception. It's the rule. Now with a new preface, this refreshed edition of the global bestseller Leading Change is more relevant than ever. John Kotter's now-legendary eight-step process for managing change with positive results has become the foundation for leaders and organizations across the globe. By outlining the process every…
Also known as “Margaret Mead among the Starfleet,” I’m a Princeton professor who has been embedded with NASA missions for two decades as a social scientist. I’ve observed missions to Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Pluto, and beyond; consulted with NASA as a sociological expert; and written two books, with a third on the way. Growing up, I always loved science and technology, but not just for the ideas: for the people behind the findings, the passion they bring to their work, and the ways in which culture and politics play a role in how science gets done. Writing about this, I hope to humanize science and make it accessible for everyday readers.
What happens when a sociologist who studies white-collar crime and deviant behavior in corporations turns to one of the biggest technological catastrophes of the twentieth century?
Hauntingly, Vaughan finds that there were no evil masterminds, greedy administrators, or risk-taking rebels behind the Challenger launch after all—just a group of highly talented engineers doing their jobs.
I enjoyed her thick description of the routine checks, risk analyses, and exacting reviews that go into engineering a space shuttle, but they’re also deeply unsettling: because she shows us that the certainty that comes from our everyday activities can lead us all astray.
A masterpiece of historical sociology, rigorously documented down to the last detail, this classic changed how I think about the role organizations can easily play in producing disasters.
When the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded on January 28, 1986, millions of Americans became bound together in a single, historic moment. Many still vividly remember exactly where they were and what they were doing when they heard about the tragedy. Diane Vaughan recreates the steps leading up to that fateful decision, contradicting conventional interpretations to prove that what occurred at NASA was not skullduggery or misconduct but a disastrous mistake. Why did NASA managers, who not only had all the information prior to the launch but also were warned against it, decide to proceed? In retelling how the decision unfolded…
As someone who has experienced a lot of loss in my life, I’ve done a good amount of research and exploration into the soulful nature in all of us (the living and the dead) through reading nonfiction (Laura Lynn Jackson, Brian Weiss, Edgar Cayce, Jane Roberts, John Edward and Suzane Northrop among them) and fiction that deals with strong soulful connections. Through my own work as an author, I seek to provide the message love, in any form, transcends life and death. We only have to be open to the possibility to know it and experience it. Nothing is a coincidence and we are all connected. I hope these selections open you to the possibility.
When Chris, the main character of this novel, dies, he teeters between a majestic heaven and the depths of hell when he can’t let go of his life because of his wife’s descent into depression.
This is a love story about a spirit that cannot move on because his soul is so deeply connected to his wife in the human world even though the peace heaven offers is tempting. This is the first novel opened my mind to the connections between souls on earth and those in the afterlife.
What happens to us after we die? Chris Nielsen had no idea, until an unexpected accident cut his life short, separating him abruptly from his beloved wife. Now Chris must discover the true nature of life after death. He also has to risk his very soul to save Annie from an eternity of despair.
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
I'm a death professional who lives in a world where nobody wants to talk about my specialist subject, so I hoover up any books that discuss mortality and our relationship to it. To do my job well, I need to face death on a daily basis in a matter-of-fact way, without losing that reverence, but equally not getting lost in the reverence because there is plenty to smile at, laugh at and be brutally honest about. These things make me the rounded human that is needed to perform the task well and the kind of people who write these books typically embody those qualities and inspire me. I hope they can inspire you too.
I read this book when I was in a slump whilst working on my own and it really inspired me.
The job depicted here is fascinating but the woman carrying it out is doubly so.
Sandra - originally a married with kids man called Peter, who had suffered violence as a child - has been a drag queen, a sex worker, undergone gender reassignment, and takes all of this suffering and rich experience into her work cleaning up death scenes and hoarder houses.
The latter involving working with the damaged living who are often resistant. The human side of her job is beautiful and I saw the parallels with my own work and started writing again with vigour.
Husband, father, drag queen, sex worker, wife. You've got to hear Sandra's incredible story.
Sarah Krasnostein's The Trauma Cleaner is a love letter to an extraordinary ordinary life. In Sandra Pankhurst she discovered a woman capable of taking a lifetime of hostility and transphobic abuse and using it to care for some of society's most in-need people. Audible's editors fell in love with Sandra because of her warmth, humour and grace, and we think you will, too. Here’s what we thought of The Trauma Cleaner:
"As an acquiring editor at Audible, I read a huge number of books but this…
I love the cold and snow, so it’s no surprise that I ended up studying glaciers and ice sheets. I am also a big fan of history and a professor of Environmental Science who teaches climate and climate change to 200+ college students a year. I grew up reading nonfiction, and nothing changed–that’s my genre. Reading about history and how others have experienced our planet, especially far away and unusual places, intrigues me. My passion is communicating science by writing, speaking, and teaching, and these five books I’ve recommended all do an excellent job of making the science and history of Greenland accessible to everyone.
Zuckoff’s narrative, reliving the first rescue by air of a plane downed on Greenland’s ice sheet, was a page-turner for me. I found Frozen in Time an easy read that told an intriguing story–the daring rescue followed by a tragic loss of life when the plane and its passengers vanish in a sudden fog.
I appreciated the suspense that Zuckoof built, as more than half a century later, he described the expedition that went in search of that missing plane–now deeply buried in ice. Like the book, I’ll keep you in suspense about how the story ends.
#1 New York Times bestseller! Frozen in Time is a gripping true story of survival, bravery, and honor in the vast Arctic wilderness during World War II, from the author of New York Times bestseller Lost in Shangri-La. On November 5, 1942, a US cargo plane slammed into the Greenland Ice Cap. Four days later, the B-17 assigned to the search-and-rescue mission became lost in a blinding storm and also crashed. Miraculously, all nine men on board survived, and the US military launched a daring rescue operation. But after picking up one man, the Grumman Duck amphibious plane flew into…
As someone who has experienced a lot of loss in my life, I’ve done a good amount of research and exploration into the soulful nature in all of us (the living and the dead) through reading nonfiction (Laura Lynn Jackson, Brian Weiss, Edgar Cayce, Jane Roberts, John Edward and Suzane Northrop among them) and fiction that deals with strong soulful connections. Through my own work as an author, I seek to provide the message love, in any form, transcends life and death. We only have to be open to the possibility to know it and experience it. Nothing is a coincidence and we are all connected. I hope these selections open you to the possibility.
Mitch Albom creates a heavenly world for the main character, Eddie, who has just ascended from earth after saving someone at the carnival where he worked; thus, meeting his own tragic demise.
What strikes me most in this story are the seemingly irrelevant connections we make in life and how those connections could have a deep and lasting impact. Every single thing we do or say or the people we touch is purposeful here, and drives us, our souls, to seek grace in all that we do.
A STUNNING 20TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION OF THE MASTER STORYTELLER'S INSPIRATIONAL CLASSIC
To his mind, Eddie has lived an uninspiring life. Now an old man, his job is to fix rides at a seaside amusement park.
On his eighty-third birthday, Eddie's time on earth comes to an end. When a cart falls from the fairground, he rushes to save a little girl's life and tragically dies in the attempt. When Eddie awakens, he learns that the afterlife is not a destination, but a place where your existence is explained to you by five people - some of whom you knew, others…
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
As a kid, I didn’t enjoy science classes in school. During summer break, however, I took courses I thought of as fun, not realizing they were science classes, too. Geology, where I got to collect hundreds of pretty rocks. Archeology, in which I got to dig up “real” dinosaur bones. (Sadly, they weren’t real.) Science was exciting when it became personal! As an author, even though I never considered myself a STEM-focused writer, I realized that science was sneaking into my work and enriching my stories. I love books that are perfectly balanced with fascinating facts and heartrending themes, and that is what I strive to write.
Nova is counting down the days until the Space Shuttle Challenger launches with teacher Christa McAuliffe on board. Nova, who is nonverbal and has autism, struggles to share her true self with the world, and desperately wants to be reunited with her sister. She believes the launch of the Challenger will bring her sister back into her life for good. But when tragedy strikes, Nova must learn to rely on her own strengths and ability to overcome life’s obstacles. This is one of my favorite stories about a kid who loves space…and one that influenced my second novel.
"Tender and illuminating. A beautiful debut." --Rebecca Stead, Newbery Medal-winning author of When You Reach Me
A heartrending and hopeful story about a nonverbal girl and her passion for space exploration, for fans of See You in the Cosmos, Mockingbird, and The Thing About Jellyfish.
Twelve-year-old Nova is eagerly awaiting the launch of the space shuttle Challenger--it's the first time a teacher is going into space, and kids across America will watch the event on live TV in their classrooms. Nova and her big sister, Bridget, share a love of astronomy and the space program. They planned to watch the…
