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Every book Rich Barton recommended on podcasts
Rich Barton is a technology entrepreneur who built Expedia and Zillow. He appeared on The Tim Ferriss Show to discuss his career and share various book recommendations and discussions. Barton recommended several works by Mark Helprin, describing him as a brilliant and luscious prose writer whose characters inhabit a similar phase of life to his own. Among Helprin's works, Barton highlighted A Soldier of the Great War as an example of beautiful fiction, mentioned Freddy and Frederica, and discussed rereading A Winter's Tale, calling it a beautiful story of early twentieth-century life near New York City and upstate New York. Barton also recommended Helprin's latest book, The Oceans and the Stars, noting that he had recently given it as a gift. In addition to fiction, Barton discussed software history on the podcast, mentioning DOS for Dummies by Dan Gookin as the foundational text for the Dummies series, which he attempted to bundle with software upgrades early in his career as a young product manager at Microsoft. Finally, he mentioned Neal Stephenson as the author of Snow Crash while recounting meeting him in Seattle.
Books recommended by Rich Barton
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Winter's Tale
Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin is a sweeping, magical realist novel set in a mythical New York City around the turn of the twentieth century.
Recommended“Recently, I gifted The Oceans and the Stars. Do you know Mark Hellprin? He's a guy who's a little older than I am and writes characters that are just about in my phase of life. Like a beautiful, luscious pros writer, really smart, wrote Soldier of the Great War and A Winter's Tale and Freddy and Frederica.”
Where to get it
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A soldier of the great war
A Soldier of the Great War by Mark Helprin is an epic and sweeping historical novel that follows an elderly Italian man reflecting on his youth, art, and his harrowing experiences fighting on the Italian front during World War I.
Recommended“Recently, I gifted The Oceans and the Stars. Do you know Mark Hellprin? He's a guy who's a little older than I am and writes characters that are just about in my phase of life. Like a beautiful, luscious pros writer, really smart, wrote Soldier of the Great War and A Winter's Tale and Freddy and Frederica.”
Where to get it
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Freddy and Fredericka
Freddy and Fredericka by Mark Helprin is a humorous, satirical comic novel set in the contemporary world that follows the comedic misadventures of its royal protagonists.
Recommended“Recently, I gifted The Oceans and the Stars. Do you know Mark Hellprin? He's a guy who's a little older than I am and writes characters that are just about in my phase of life. Like a beautiful, luscious pros writer, really smart, wrote Soldier of the Great War and A Winter's Tale and Freddy and Frederica.”
Where to get it
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The Oceans and the Stars
The Oceans and the Stars by Mark Helprin is a sweeping contemporary novel that weaves together elements of a traditional sea story, a gripping war narrative, and a profound love story.
Recommended“Recently, I gifted The Oceans and the Stars. Do you know Mark Hellprin? He's a guy who's a little older than I am and writes characters that are just about in my phase of life. Like a beautiful, luscious pros writer... This latest one I highly recommend.”
Where to get it
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DOS for Dummies
Discussed“We were working on MS DOS5, which maybe I would say we'll have to go two standard deviations out in your audience distribution curve to find anybody who really knows what MS DOS5 was, but it was a really big operating system for Microsoft at the time and we made an upgrade and the feature was we broke the 640K”
Where to get it
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Snow Crash
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson is a classic cyberpunk science fiction novel known for its prescient exploration of virtual reality, the metaverse, and digital culture.
Discussed“He's the one who wrote Snow Crash. Oh yeah. Okay. So you know him. Had pizza with him in Seattle. So with a couple of other guys.”
Where to get it
