David Heinemeier Hansson
Athlete, Author, Engineer, Entrepreneur, Executive, Podcaster
David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH) is a Danish programmer who created Ruby on Rails, released in 2004 after he built Basecamp for 37signals. He became a partner and CTO there, co-wrote Rework and Remote with Jason Fried, and won his class at Le Mans in 2014.
David Heinemeier Hansson's 101 Book Recommendations
- I and Thou: “Normally I don't enjoy texts that seem willfully difficult to read... But once you've gone there, it's a welcome way to enjoy the same message in a different form.”
- The Lost Writings: “It's fascinating to read these fragments... It's almost more like mood music. You're not here for a complete story, a narrative, but to bathe yourself in Kafka's mind.”
- The Talent Code: “Ha, rock on. Literally. Great book, right?”
- Punished by Rewards: “If you want to educate yourself on the topic, I can recommend Punished By Rewards as a great book.”
- Understanding Exposure: “Understanding Exposure is a good book to learn.”
- Turn the Ship Around!: “It reminds me of the book, Turn The Ship Around, which is really one of my top three favorite business books of all time.”
- The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine (movie tie-in): “I like The Big Short. I'd read the book already. That was a good one.”
- The Origins of Political Order: “Good time to read up on history: I recommend "The Origins of Political Order" and "Political Order and Political Decay" by @FukuyamaFrancis.”
- The Age of Absurdity: “The one I'm listening to right now, The Age of Absurdity, is really good. Not just because I think it's a great book and funny”
- A Guide to the Good Life: “I found A Guide to the Good Life the introductory text was just an easy way to learn about it and recognize why this resonates.”
- The Sane Society: “Fromm handles it with utter grace and respect.”
- When Prophecy Fails: “Just going to casually recommend a book here”
- Escape from Freedom: “I'd strongly recommend Erich Fromm's classic Escape From Freedom if you'd like to understand the psychology of boot licking more deeply. It's one of my all-time top ten favorite books.”
- Hate Inc: “What's great about this book is that it doesn't need to descend into a fake objective, bothsidism pit to make its point... Highly recommend it.”
- The Management Myth: Why the Experts Keep Getting it Wrong: “This reminded me that I needed to recommend the fantastic book The Management Myth by Matthew Stewart.”
- The Pathology of Normalcy: “What is "normal" is a construct, and Fromm is the master of sociological deconstruction. Highly recommended.”
- Bullshit Jobs: “And yet, I'LL ALLOW IT, because the core concept is so damn strong.”
- Hell Yeah Or No: “The title idea, HELL YEAH OR NO, has articulated a guidance force that has driven me my whole life... Read or listen!”
- Man for Himself: An Inquiry into the Psychology of Ethics: “It's a beautiful, simple, yet counterintuitive notion.”
- The Road to Wigan Pier: “Been reading Orwell's Road to Wigan Pier, and it's amazing how much of the abusive ideology revealed in his account of the miners is still present in today's gig economy.”
- The Myth of the Spoiled Child: “There's also a great book called The Myth of the Spoiled Child, which is even more specific about nurturing and supporting kids and so forth. That's been very inspirational.”
- Political Order and Political Decay: “Good time to read up on history: I recommend "The Origins of Political Order" and "Political Order and Political Decay" by @FukuyamaFrancis.”
- The 4-hour Workweek: “I had read The 4-Hour Workweek sometime in advance of that and so had Jason... We were both just impressed with that.”
- Drive: “Strongly recommended, and it's a short read/listen.”
- Maverick!: “He wrote a fantastic book called Maverick that was great inspiration to me and I know to Jason as well.”
- Bad Therapy: “Can't recommend Abigail Shrier's book Bad Therapy enough for any parent who is considering therapy for their kids or has it pushed upon them by their school.”
- The Courage to Be Disliked: “I highly recommend this book on Alfred Adler's psychology, should you ever find yourself with such a mixed blessing as becoming known”
- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: “Which is exactly what I was thinking about when I cited motorcycle repair. Great book!”
- San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities: “It's a term coined by @shellenberger and the title of his excellent book”
- The Road to Serfdom: “Great book! Finally read it recently.”
- The Quest for Cosmic Justice: “Sowell's The Quest for Cosmic Justice is an excellent book for wrestling with the real-life trade-offs required after the utopian ideals come short. Highly recommended reading!”
- The Vision of the Anointed: “Sowell would dispute this characterization entirely, and does so very successfully in this book. Especially around the consequences that the welfare policies of the 60s had on black family formation. Great read!”
- Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America: “If you'd like to explore the concept further, I highly recommend McWhorter's excellent book on Woke Racism.”
- The Righteous Mind: “I first read Haidt in his excellent book The Righteous Mind from 2012, which presents his research into moral foundations theory.”
- The Comfort Crisis: Embrace Discomfort to Reclaim Your Wild, Happy, Healthy Self: “The Comfort Crisis is a great book on this.”
- Are Your Lights On?: How to Figure Out What the Problem Really Is: “My favorite book on problem restatement is the venerable classic "Are your lights on?"”
- Hannah Arendt: A Life in Dark Times: “Highly recommend Heller's biography. Arendt is not only a spectacular writer and thinker, she's also a deeply fascinating human.”
- Smalltalk Best Practice Patterns: “Smalltalk Best Practice Patterns remain the best book I've ever read on programming - worth rereading every year.”
- Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code: “Refactoring: The fundamental before/after book. Here's some code that could be better, here's how to make it better.”
- Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture: “Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture: Great inventory of many of the patterns that underpin Rails itself... it's an invaluable resource to understanding the differences in architectures and why framework work the way they do.”
- Domain-Driven Design: Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software: “Domain-Driven Design: This is probably the least readable book of the bunch. It's a slug to work through, but the ideas are worth it. It's a great primer on how to turn a problem space into a beautiful OO domain model.”
- The Elements of Style: “If you consider programming to be a subset of writing, and I certainly do, then you would also do well to read Elements of Style and On Writing Well.”
- On Writing Well: “If you consider programming to be a subset of writing, and I certainly do, then you would also do well to read Elements of Style and On Writing Well.”
- The Halo Effect: “Lovely take-down of Good to Great, Built to Last, and other These Are The Secrets To Business Success stables.”
- Winners Take All: “Economic win-win thinking has taken over the world of politics and charity, and we're all worse of for it... Really good.”
- Permanent Record: “I'm about 2/3s through. Great book.”
- Masters of Doom: “Great book.”
- The Divide: Global Inequality from Conquest to Free Markets: “That lead me to read his book The Divide, which expands on all these topics, and is truly an illuminating treatises while still being readable!”
- Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World: “This is imperative reading for anyone living, working, or succeeding under capitalism as we know it today.”
- The Uninhabitable Earth: “If you read The Uninhabitable Earth by Wallace-Wells or Hickel's Less Is More in isolation (two books I've highly recommended!), you'll almost certainly come away in both a state of panic and with a passion of #degrowth.”
- Apocalypse Never: “Michael Shellenberger's exposition of energy sources in Apocalypse Never was as argumentatively piercing as it was intellectually compelling.”
- A Conflict of Visions: “The book was originally published in 1987, but you'd be hard pressed to find a more decisive inquiry into what motivates political conflicts 35 years later.”
- The Coddling of the American Mind: “I'm a big fan of Jonathan Haidt's work on What Happened In 2013, which he captured in The Coddling of the American Mind. That was a very balanced book”
- Facing Reality: Two Truths About Race in America: “It's a short book, but perhaps the most explosive of all on the list.”
- The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap: “Put this recent slap on the wrist to the bankers of fraud in context by reading @mtaibbi's excellent book The Divide.”
- The New Jim Crow: “If you liked such lovely stats, please read The New Jim Crow. Fantastic book and research on the broader topic.”
- Liar's Poker: “Just finishing Liar's Poker. Wonderful book.”
- Quiet: “You should really read @susancain's great book on introverts.”
- Animal Farm: “Speaking of totalitarianism, I thoroughly enjoyed this audiobook rendition of Animal Farm on flight'n'drive today.”
- Why We Sleep: “Amazing book. Recommend it to everyone who mistakenly think they're "just fine" on 6-7h.”
- The Trial: “The Trial is perhaps my favorite novel of all time”
- Debt: The First 5,000 Years: “It's truly eye-opening, and the lines trace disturbingly well from millennia.”
- Either/Or: A Fragment of Life: “But then you reach Kierkegård's own writing, and instantly the fog lifts! He's funny, he's straight forward (even when sarcastic), he's INTERESTING.”
- Blue Ocean Strategy, Expanded Edition: “I was also going to pick Maverick, but if I should pick a second one that's full on the business book is Blue Ocean Strategy... It's a phenomenal book and I don't say that about a lot of business books.”
- The Fourth Turning: “Really good book, The Fourth Turning.”
- The Manual: A Philosopher's Guide to Life: “It's also why I try to read The Manual by Epictetus at least twice a year. It's a cognitive double espresso. Such punch in such a small cup.”
- What's Our Problem?: “Tim Urban introduced me to the motte-and-bailey fallacy in his excellent book What's Our Problem. I highly recommend it.”
- Elon Musk: “Walter Isaacson's new book about Elon Musk is a fine biography, but a better business book... Isaacson's book is easily worth the read for the countless case studies illustrating exactly how these points are applied.”
- Notes from Underground: “Notes from Underground is a remarkable book, and a mercifully short one too, compared to the rest of Dostoevsky's works. I can't recommend it highly enough.”
- Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change: “If you haven't yet read Beck's seminal work, I strongly encourage you to do so.”
- What Do You Do with a Chance?: “What do you do with a chance? is a great book exactly because it's not just for the boys, but for me too.”
- The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master: “Great book, just not really about the nitty gritty in the same way that those other three are.”
- The Secrets of Consulting: A Guide to Giving and Getting Advice Successfully: “Gerald is a treasure trove of wisdom. I can also highly recommend the Quality Software Management series (hard to find!), The Secrets of Consulting, An Introduction to General Systems Thinking, and Becoming A Technical Leader. All left a permanent impression on me.”
- An Introduction to General Systems Thinking: “An Introduction to General Systems Thinking is a book I first read maybe 15 years ago... this was right up there.”
- Becoming a Technical Leader: An Organic Problem-Solving Approach: “Gerald is a treasure trove of wisdom. I can also highly recommend the Quality Software Management series (hard to find!), The Secrets of Consulting, An Introduction to General Systems Thinking, and Becoming A Technical Leader. All left a permanent impression on me.”
- Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble: “What a wonderful mirror for much of the contemporary bullshit around startups... Strongly recommended.”
- The Daily Stoic: “It's great to have the hardest lessons presented repeatedly from different angles and different texts. Good stuff.”
- The Intelligent Investor: “If you read just one book on the market or investing, make it this one.”
- Riding Man: “Ad man decides to quit his job to follow his dream of racing the Isle of Man TT. Great story telling”
- Why Nations Fail: “It's a little slow to get going, but once you get rolling it's hard to put it down.”
- Insanely Simple: “Yes, there's enough Steve Jobs hero worship tomes to last anyone a lifetime, but this one is full of specific examples that you can use in your own business.”
- Greatness and Limitations of Freud's Thought: “What follows is a master class in a critical reading of a great master... Really good.”
- The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time: “It's really well-told too... Really enjoyed this one.”
- Making Sense of the Troubles: “I never really understood the underlying dynamics. This book lays it all bare.”
- To Have or to Be?: “Fromm's diagnoses of the modern predicament is unrivaled in my readings so far”
- Existentialism Is a Humanism: “This description of existentialism really resonated with me and provides a wonderful alternative vision to the stoic philosophy.”
- Fear and Trembling: “But it was a fascinating read none the less, and Kierkegaard's language and metaphors and incredible depth is inspiring.”
- Meditations: “In that sense, it's equally powerful, and perhaps even more inspiring, than The Manual.”
- Thirst: “It's also just a feel-good story that inspires you to care.”
- How to Break Up with Your Phone: “So I've started taking more sabbaticals from my phone and the addictive apps on it. I credit this book for finally getting that going.”
- Bad Blood: “Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup is a gripping tale of a fake-it-till-you-make-it bet that did not pay off”
- Capital in the Twenty-First Century: “You'd do yourself a great service by reading his Capital in the 21st Century book. Essential education on one of the most pressing problems of our time. Highly recommended!”
- The Better Angels of Our Nature: “Great reminder that for all that is terrible in modern societies, we've still made dramatic leaps over even the pretty recent past.”
- The Self-Driven Child: The Science and Sense of Giving Your Kids More Control Over Their Lives: “It's a great book with tons of practical examples for parents on how to learn to let go”
- Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic: “It's really an interesting tale of medical hubris, corporate greed, the devastation of whole areas to addiction”
- The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves: “It's immensely readable, and the whole book is refreshingly succinct as well.”
- Man's Search For Meaning: “It's exceedingly well written, and wonderfully short... it's probably the best book on the philosophy of life that I've read outside of the Stoic classics. Very highly recommended.”
- The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin: “It's a great refresher on post-WWII history, the cold war, KGB, but above all, on the forces present in Russia.”
- The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds: “Michael Lewis is just a great storyteller, and tell a story in this he does.”
- The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays: “It's surprisingly readable, unlike many other mid 20th century philosophers, yet no less deep or pointy.”
- Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now: “I can heartily recommend Jaron Lanier's book Ten Reasons To Delete Youe Social Media Accounts Right Now.”