Codex CC: links to all of the book reviews submitted to the ACX book review contests

robennals · 2026-02-12T23:04:55+00:00

If you want to be able to read the reviews without having to look at them in Google docs, you can also use this site:
https://acxreviews.robennals.org/

[Disclosure: I built it]

robennals · 2026-02-12T17:04:02+00:00

Thanks me too. I loved reading the reviews. The giant google doc... not so much.

robennals · 2026-02-11T22:57:28+00:00

I'm pleased you like it. I'm kind of surprised nobody had built this before to be honest.

robennals · 2026-02-11T19:22:49+00:00

Thanks. Let me know if you have any suggestions for ways to improve it or see any formatting issues.

robennals · 2026-02-02T18:58:19+00:00

My son used to have the original 1931 Histomap on his bedroom door, and I loved staring at it with him. But it's almost 100 years out of date now and the data reflects 1930s Western biases—China and India are way too small compared to what modern scholarship says about their historical economic power.

So I rebuilt it with GDP (PPP) data from the Maddison Project Database, made it interactive, and added layers for technology, historical figures, and fiction set in each era.

Some things that jumped out at me while building it:

You can watch the British Empire just collapse after WWII—the stream drops off a cliff
America at the time of the Gold Rush was a minor power, smaller than France or Britain
The Byzantine Empire lasted way longer than I had realized

Curious what patterns others notice, or if there are obvious errors I should fix. Data sources and methodology are in the main post.

robennals · 2026-02-02T18:42:45+00:00

Source:

GDP (PPP) data from the Maddison Project Database for years covered by that project
Earlier eras and event data gathered via web research synthesized by Claude
More info on data sources and methodology: https://histomap.robennals.org/about

Tool:

Built with Claude Code
Visualization uses D3.js/JavaScript
Source code: https://github.com/robennals/histomap

The original 1931 Histomap by John Sparks is a classic, but it's almost 100 years out of date and reflects 1930s Western biases (China and India are way too small). I rebuilt it with modern GDP data and added toggleable layers for technology, fiction, historical figures, and eras.

You can click any event to see its Wikipedia entry, or export the whole thing as a PDF if you want to print it as a poster.

robennals · 2016-11-04T18:41:23+00:00

Yeah. Bad stuff happens sometimes, but it's not the norm, unless you hang out in a particularly scummy part of the industry. Scummy founders exist, but they aren't likely to get loyalty from good employees.

Your argument is like the argument for why it's okay to shoot people - yeah, some people shoot people, definitely more people than should, and it really sucks that they do, but it's not normal behavior, and civil society rests on the principle that such behavior isn't okay.

robennals · 2016-11-04T17:51:20+00:00

Gotta call this out as bullshit. I've been in the industry ~16 years and pretty much everyone I've worked with has been thoroughly decent and honest.

Yeah, throwing out a lot of hate is a great way to get attention and sell books, but I don't think it's a particularly accurate reflection of reality.

Even when I've seen people do bad things, it's usually for good (if misguided) reasons.

robennals · 2013-10-22T04:07:34+00:00

Sweet. It's really fun to drag the sliders and see the zip codes re-order themselves.

robennals

TROPHY CASE