Top all-time · #1379
Mr. and Mrs. Psmith’s Bookshelf
Personal blog · thepsmiths.comwritinghistoryculture
Mr. and Mrs. Psmith’s Bookshelf is a personal blog at thepsmiths.com about writing, history and culture. Since 2023, 51 different Hacker News readers have linked it 86 times, most often “Review: Reentry, by Eric Berger”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-08-31, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (23) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Mr. and Mrs. Psmith's book reviews, which cover history, science, politics and class. Commenters cite them for points on the Aztecs, Boeing, math circles and other topics.
- Recommended for · 5 comments
- Called a good phrase, a very interesting article, a fun book review, a good read, and an interesting review.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 23 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
The P is silent, as in pshrimp or pseudonym. Click to read Mr. and Mrs. Psmith’s Bookshelf, a Substack publication with tens of thousands of subscribers.
Most-linked posts?
- Review: Reentry, by Eric Berger10 people · 10 mentions · first linked 2024-12-09
- Aztecs by Inga Clendinnen: Disorienting and nauseating as cosmic horror itself4 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2026-08-31
- Math from Three to Seven3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2024-10-01
- “Scaling People,” by Claire Hughes Johnson2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-09-20
- Review: Cræft, by Alexander Langlands2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-03-24
- Book Review – Leap of Faith: America's Greatest Foreign Policy Tragedy2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-07-10
- Review: Energy and Civilization, by Vaclav Smil2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-05-20
- Guest Joint Review: Important People, by Ashley Mears2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-12-23
- The Domestic Revolution, by Ruth Goodman2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-05-23
- Review: Storia Do Mogor, by Niccolao Manucci2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-01-25
What Hacker News says?
I read these three books last year and I believe that each would be interesting to you: Undaunted Courage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undaunted_Courage This is about doing something extremely hard with a huge amount of unknowns, and the type of person it takes to succeed. How Big Things Get Done https://www.amazon.com/How-Big-Things-Get-Done/dp/0593239512 This is about project planning and has plenty of real examp…
Comment linking /p/review-the-education-of-cyrus-by
on “Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things”Submitted Math from Three to Seven as a story · 345 points
HN discussion>[1]( https://www.thepsmiths.com/p/review-aztecs-by-inga-clendinne ...) "Starbucks-and-airport-lounges class" is a good phrase. I'm gonna use that one.
Comment linking /p/review-aztecs-by-inga-clendinne
on “Why the Bronze Age Collapsed”Submitted Joint Book Review: Class, by Paul Fussell as a story · 37 points
HN discussionI am definitely not an expert. This is from [this book review]( https://www.thepsmiths.com/p/review-aztecs-by-inga-clendinne... ): "This same zero-sum competition extended to the Mexica army, which as soon as battle was joined became not an army but a swirling melee of individual glory-seekers. The purpose of the Mexica warrior was not the victory of the group, but competition with his peers, and the way to win the…
Comment linking /p/review-aztecs-by-inga-clendinnen
on “Why the Bronze Age Collapsed”Submitted Review: The Variational Principles of Mechanics as a story · 35 points
HN discussionI just found out this [1] book review today about the Aztec society today and my takeway is that the Aztecs were a highly militaristic death cult. Almost all men were warriors educated for war at young age and competing with each other to get as most captives as possibles because this is what gives you status. It doesn't mention the spanish conquest but I wouldn't be surprised if all those tribes living under Aztec…
Comment linking /p/review-aztecs-by-inga-clendinnen
on “Why the Bronze Age Collapsed”Submitted Review: Demons, by Fyodor Dostoevsky as a story · 31 points
HN discussionὕλημπίλιες: https://www.thepsmiths.com/p/review-sea-people-by-christina-...
Comment linking /p/review-sea-people-by-christina-thompson
on “Math from Three to Seven”Submitted Review: Reentry, by Eric Berger as a story · 17 points
HN discussionhttps://www.thepsmiths.com/p/review-the-spirit-of-the-mounta... ὕλημπίλιες?
Comment linking /p/review-the-spirit-of-the-mountains
on “Math from Three to Seven”Submitted Review: Reentry, by Eric Berger as a story · 12 points
HN discussionwrt https://www.thepsmiths.com/p/review-scaling-people-by-claire... , something else about the early middle ages: During the XIII, tournaments were open invite, and were pretty much war games held over the fields in between villages. Of course, it's very unlikely that anyone not already an aristo could show up with horses and panoply, let alone show up and prove de facto effective, but the few that did had a chance…
Comment linking /p/review-scaling-people-by-claire-hughes
on “Dance training superior to physical exercise in inducing brain plasticity (2018)”Submitted Reentry, by Eric Berger as a story · 12 points
HN discussionShirts are topologically indistinguishable from crotchless pants; do we have a metric here? https://www.thepsmiths.com/p/review-scaling-people-by-claire... goes into the differences between (in 1984 terms) inner- and outer-party expertise (aka foxes and lions? psychopaths and clueless? morlocks and eloi?). Yeah, when you've already known since ever to discount the wandering ones, what're a few more transients* to ig…
Comment linking /p/review-scaling-people-by-claire-hughes
on “Dance training superior to physical exercise in inducing brain plasticity (2018)”Submitted Aztecs by Inga Clendinnen: Disorienting and nauseating as cosmic horror itself as a story · 3 points
HN discussionIt looks like shepherd.com is a book review site that doesn't have any reviews, just ratings. It links to Amazon. Is this really the sort of content Google should be returning? Edit: it seems I missed the link to the actual book reviews because the link text is uninformative: "Chosen by 1 person - see why." ( Sometimes it goes to reviews, sometimes not.) And the word "review" never appears on the pages that have rev…
Comment linking /
on “Hi Google, please stop pooping the bed: a desperate plea from the indie web”Submitted Review: The Real North Korea, by Andrei Lankov (2024) as a story · 3 points
HN discussionAbout a year ago I came across the concept of ‘math circles’, here on HN. It was this longish but very interesting article: https://www.thepsmiths.com/p/review-math-from-three-to-seven... The key element here is nurturing curiosity. Since then i and my 10yr old have been sitting through a virtual math circle led by Aylean McDonald on parallel.org.uk an organization run by Simon Singh
Comment linking /p/review-math-from-three-to-seven-by
on “Don't force your kids to do math”Submitted Joint Book Review: Class, by Paul Fussell as a story · 3 points
HN discussionClickable: https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/03/16/book-review-seeing-lik... , https://www.thepsmiths.com/p/review-the-art-of-not-being-gov...
Comment linking /p/review-the-art-of-not-being-governed
on “James C. Scott, author of Seeing Like a State, has died”Submitted The Wizard and the Prophet as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThe real red pill is always in the comments/blog posts: https://www.thepsmiths.com/p/review-road-belong-cargo-by-pet... > You may remember that Guns, Germs, and Steel is framed as a reply to a man named Yali, a “remarkable local politician” whom Diamond encountered while walking on the beach in New Guinea in July of 1972. > Yali asked a question that Diamond spends a couple of paragraphs boiling down to something li…
Comment linking /p/review-road-belong-cargo-by-peter
on “What's happening to reading?”Submitted The Domestic Revolution, by Ruth Goodman as a story · 3 points
HN discussion疑 is a common failure mode for foxes, yes. 惑 might be interesting for me to consider in the musk-jobs case studies (roughly corresponding to where the confidence shall be reconsidered?) How about OCD? Subset of 惑? Could lead to failure-to-ship for designers.. https://www.thepsmiths.com/p/review-reentry-by-eric-berger > Part of what makes “founder mode” so effective is that startup founders have both a compensation s…
Comment linking /p/review-reentry-by-eric-berger
on “Flattening ASTs and other compiler data structures (2023)”Submitted Book Review – Leap of Faith: America's Greatest Foreign Policy Tragedy as a story · 3 points
HN discussionHere's a fun book review: https://www.thepsmiths.com/p/review-the-variational-principl...
Comment linking /p/review-the-variational-principles?r=otan&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
on “Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics (2014)”Submitted Review: Reentry, by Eric Berger as a story · 3 points
HN discussion>How about South Africa not doing so well currently? I recently read a book review that discussed South Africa today. One of the many points it made about the dire state of things is that the air force planes that flew overhead during Mandela's inauguration were, a decade later, completely inoperable. < https://www.thepsmiths.com/p/review-south-africas-brave-new-... >.
Comment linking /p/review-south-africas-brave-new-world
on “Chatham House Rule is suddenly everywhere in the Bay Area”Submitted The Real North Korea, by Andrei Lankov as a story · 3 points
HN discussion
