{
  "id": 15562899,
  "title": "What I’ve been reading",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/10/19/what-ive-been-reading",
  "topic": "finance",
  "section": "Finance & Markets",
  "published": "2026-10-19T04:29:27.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Marginal Revolution",
    "slug": "marginal-revolution",
    "url": "https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/10/what-ive-been-reading-297.html"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "David Stuart's \"The Four Heavens: A New History of the Ancient Maya\" is a compelling read. Stuart proposes a new perspective on the ancient Maya, avoiding the traditional narrative of rise and fall in favor of a more nuanced view of their numerous periods of growth and decline. James E. Dobson and Rena J. Mosteirin's \"Perceptron\" offers a fascinating biography of Frank Rosenblatt, a pivotal yet often overlooked figure in the history of artificial intelligence. Rosenblatt constructed the Perceptron in 1957, a rudimentary neural network that introduced the concept of adjusting weights. His vision of back-propagation, a method for training neural networks, was also ahead of its time. Marc Levinson's \"The UPS Man\" tells the story of James E. Casey, the man behind modern logistics. Casey, along with his associate Jim Casey, founded the United Parcel Service (UPS) in 1908. Natalia Emanuel and Emma Harrington's \"In Person\" explores the importance of face-to-face interaction in fostering creativity, productivity, and business growth. James Gleick's \"The Telephone: A New History\" provides an insightful look into the technological advancements that led to the invention of the telephone.",
  "summary": "David Stuart, The Four Heavens: A New History of the Ancient Maya. The best book about the ancient Maya that I know of, and also a book about how we keep on discovering more about them. “The model I advocate for here rejects the old idea of the rise and fall of the Maya in […] The post What I’ve been reading appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION .",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}