Paul Graham
Author, Entrepreneur, Investor, Writer
Paul Graham is a programmer, essayist and investor who co-founded Viaweb in 1995, sold it to Yahoo in 1998 and co-founded Y Combinator in 2005. He wrote On Lisp (1993), ANSI Common Lisp (1995) and Hackers & Painters (2004).
Paul Graham's 71 Book Recommendations
- The Complete Calvin and Hobbes
- The Iliad
- How to be Topp
- A Mathematician's Apology
- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
- The Ancient City
- Moab is My Washpot
- The Origin of Species
- Sea Flight
- Memoirs of My Life and Writings
- The Inimitable Jeeves
- Moorish Spain
- Good Night, Little Bear
- My Family and Other Animals
- On Bullshit
- An Autobiography of Anthony Trollope
- A Story Lately Told
- Medieval Technology and Social Change
- Clocks and Culture, 1300-1700
- Very Good, Jeeves!
- No Easy Day
- Sunset at Blandings
- Guns, Sails and Empires
- Diocletian and the Roman Recovery
- Complete Sherlock Holmes
- Blankie
- The Fry Chronicles
- Benjamin Franklin: An American Life
- Born Red
- With the Old Breed
- The Complete Novels of Jane Austen
- The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress
- A Sense of Where You Are
- Barbarian Days
- The Double Helix
- The Quest for El Cid
- Wing Leader
- Life in the English Country House
- How to Win Friends and Influence People
- German Generals Talk
- The Making of Europe
- My Forty Years with Ford
- The Soul of A New Machine
- The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
- Plagues and Peoples
- The Golden Trade of the Moors
- Mohammed and Charlemagne
- The Gallic Wars
- Lives of the Artists
- The Old Way
- Founders at Work
- The Harmless People
- The Copernican Revolution
- From Galileo to Newton
- The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form: “Reading The Nude is like a ride in a Ferrari.”
- Lord of the Flies: “Like a lot of American kids, I read this book in school.”
- Revolution in The Valley: “In Andy Hertzfeld's book on the Macintosh, he describes how they'd come back into the office after dinner and work late into the night.”
- Descartes: The Life and Times of a Genius: “I'm reading Grayling's biography of Descartes.”
- Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: “I'm reading The Goblet of Fire to my sons right now.”
- Civilisation: A Personal View: “And if you read only one book about art history, Civilisation is the one I'd recommend.”
- The C Programming Language: “The book should be thin, well-written, and full of good examples. K&R is the ideal here.”
- Kelly: More Than My Share of It All: “I've read it. Excellent book.”
- I Want to Be a Mathematician: An Automathography: “I bought Halmos's book on your recommendation, and it's fabulous, probably the best book I've read this year.”
- Elizabethan Architecture: Its Rise and Fall, 1540-1640: “a huge coffee table book you actually want to read”
- The Garden of the Gods: “There is a third volume of Gerald Durrell's Corfu memoirs! So good I'm reading slow to make it last.”
- Period Piece: A Cambridge Childhood: “Gwen Raverat's Period Piece is startlingly good, maybe the best book I've read this year.”
- The Essays: “Rereading Francis Bacon's essays”
- Shakespeare's Professional Career: “Like most really good books, it covers much more than its title implies.”
- Don Quixote: “I'm reading J. M. Cohen's translation and it's very funny.”
- The World of Mr. Mulliner: “I've been reading The World of Mr. Mulliner... Wodehouse is background radiation.”
- Lions' Commentary on UNIX 6th Edition, with Source Code: “Most of the people who read the source read it in illicit photocopies of John Lions' book”