History · Ancient Rome
Rome, told by people with something to lose
Almost everything known about Rome comes from nine men who were not disinterested. Each one’s motive, named — and why knowing it makes them more useful, not less.
· 9 works
Essays
The reasoning, written out
The directory says what a field contains and the library says what each work argues. Neither says why a particular set of works belongs together, or what changes once you have read them in order. That is what these are for.
Computer Science · Distributed Systems
What each distributed systems paper killed
Distributed systems is the rare engineering discipline whose canon is mostly negative results. Thirteen papers, and the comfortable assumption each one destroyed.
· 13 works