7 stories to read this weekend

(gigaom.com) -- It is a really long weekend here in United States, and what that means is a lot of time to read this weekend. I certainly plan to do that. Here is a short list of my recommendations for the weekend.

• The story of an eye witness: Jack London, a San Francisco writer, wrote about the 1906 earthquake that almost destroyed the city by the bay. This is amazing writing from an amazing writer whose words make that tragedy come alive, a century later.

• Rajat Gupta’s lust for zeros: He had the world on a string and then he made bad choices. His worst was picking to fraternize with the wrong kind of guy and he is now paying the price for it. He was indicted in the largest insider trading case in U.S. history. What a fall for a guy who once ran McKinsey & Company.

• 1977: my own year of living dangerously: My friend Martin Varsavsky goes back in time, to a city he loved and grew up in — Buenos Aires — and tells his story. I have never known Martin like this. Amazing story.

• Gentrification in Buffalo: Cities and communities are people. And that is why we can reinvent, remix and thrive in them.

• Can you redesign the razor? Some gentlemen want to know and are talking about it.

• Counter-terrorisim and the legacy of Philip K. Dick. The New Yorker writer reflects on his piece, Too Much Information, from 2002. It is pretty amazing and far-sighted piece considering it was written over a decade ago.

• How Facebook and Brooklyn killed America’s obsession with cars. The headline says it all.