Shane Parrish

Author, Entrepreneur, Executive, Investor, Podcaster, Writer

Shane Parrish is a Canadian writer and investor who spent years at Canada's Communications Security Establishment, a signals-intelligence agency. In 2008 he started the blog that became Farnam Street, launched The Knowledge Project podcast in 2015, and founded the investment firm Syrus Partners.

Shane Parrish's 689 Book Recommendations

• The Reluctant Mr. Darwin: An Intimate Portrait of Charles Darwin and the Making of His Theory of Evolution (Great Discoveries): “David Quammen is an excellent scientific writer – Song of the Dodo is a prime example and something we’ll come back to soon. The Reluctant Mr.”
• The Ten Golden Rules of Leadership: “A book that offers a practical philosophical underpinning that fosters mental discipline and a spirit of critical self-examination. “Leadership,” in the words of the author, “is an uncommon composite of skill, experience, and ripened personal perspectives regarding the nuances and complexities of life.”
• The Devil's Financial Dictionary: “Inspired by Ambrose Bierce’s masterpiece The Devil’s Dictionary, Jason Zweig takes an equally beautiful and cynical view of the entire finance industry.”
• The Laws of Thermodynamics: A Very Short Introduction: “The author, Peter Atkins, is one of the world’s leading authorities on thermodynamics. Who better to give me an introduction? The book, which I’m working my way through after the recommendation of an incredibly smart friend, explains the four laws and how they work in relatively accessible language.”
• Superforecasting: “Attentive readers will note this is the second time I’ve read this book this month. I’m interviewing the author for The Knowledge Project soon”
• Shortcut: “Analogies are used to frame, persuade, and drive our emotional brain, says John Pollack, the former Presidential speechwriter. I thought I’d skim this book but I had a hard time putting it down”
• Maestro: “Research for a The Knowledge Project interview with Alexander Shelley, the Music Director of Canada’s National Arts Centre Orchestra.”
• Simple Rules: “I just started this based on the recommendation of a Wall Street friend. Way more useful than I would have guessed based on the title”
• Managing Oneself: “Managing Oneself by Peter Drucker — This is an excellent short read. There is a strong argument to be made that knowing how you work and your strengths and weaknesses is more important than ever in the knowledge economy.”
• A Practical Guide for Policy Analysis: “Not as boring as it sounds but not as thoughtful as I had hoped. There are tidbits of gold but mostly the book walks through the steps you should take to make a good decision.”
• Charlie Munger: “This book will become my new default for people interested in an introduction to the thinking of Charlie Munger. Griffin does an extraordinary job of curating, synthesizing, and organizing the vast wisdom Munger has left for humanity”
• Seeking Wisdom: “8. Seeking Wisdom — Peter Bevelin is one smart dude. Inspired by Munger, he’s put together a book of the big ideas that carry a lot of weight in life. Finding this book new is difficult, just buy a used copy.”
• Meditations: “3. Meditations and Montaigne’s Essays — Reading these guys, along with Seneca, has really helped foster my interest in philosophy. So much of what they say speaks to me that I’m often left with entire pages underlined and margins filled with thoughts.”
• Antifragile: “6. Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder This book changed how I see the world. As if that wasn’t enough, it also introduced me to iatrogenics, fragilistas, and connected inversion and via negativa (something I should have connected much sooner).”
• This Is Water: “If you don't buy this book and read the compilation of interviews, at least watch his 2005 commencement speech, This is Water. If the goal of an artist is to forever change someone, DFW has accomplished that with me.”
• The Sunday Philosophy Club: “When Nassim Taleb recommends a fictional novel, I read it. ... A great read.”
• A Few Lessons from Sherlock Holmes: “A Few Lessons From Sherlock Holmes: Peter is easily one of my favorite authors.”
• Enchiridion: “Enchiridon (“The Manual”) is a short read on stoic advice for living. These practical precepts might change your life.”
• The Song Of The Dodo: “David Quammen is an excellent scientific writer – Song of the Dodo is a prime example”
• Atomic Habits: “Is anyone else reading Atomic Habits again?”
• Courage Is Calling: Fortune Favors the Brave: “I'm a fan (and friend) of Holiday's and eagerly awaited the release of this book, the first in his series on the four Stoic virtues.”
• The Obstacle Is the Way: “If you're curious about philosophy but are not sure where to get started, I'd recommend The Obstacle is the Way.”
• The Laws of Human Nature: “The Laws of Human Nature offers a revealing look at human nature and our tendencies. You'll never look at yourself or others the same.”
• The Essays of Warren Buffett: “I read The Essays of Warren Buffett and added all my highlights to the repository.”
• The Creative Act: “The excerpt is from The Creative Act (members can access my highlights in the repository).”
• Only the Paranoid Survive: “Most of the research came from the following sources: The Life and Times of an American by Richard S. Tedlow, Only the Paranoid Survive by Andy Grove…”
• Andy Grove: The Life and Times of an American Business Icon: “Most of the research came from the following sources: The Life and Times of an American by Richard S. Tedlow, Only the Paranoid Survive by Andy Grove…”
• Swimming Across: “Sources for this episode include Swimming Across (Book), Only the Paranoid Survive (Book) and The Life and Times of an American (Book).”
• The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success: “The research came from Distant Force… and The Outsiders by William N. Thorndike, Jr.”
• First a Dream: “Then Warren Buffett read his autobiography. Days later, Berkshire Hathaway bought Clayton Homes for $1.7 billion in cash. Members have access to all 92 of my highlights and notes from Jim's biography.”
• Personal History: “This episode is full of practical lessons I learned reading her memoir, Personal History.”
• Grinding It Out: “Members have access to my highlights from Grinding it Out, the book used as the basis for this episode.”
• Hold Me Tight: “…her breakout bestseller, Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love, which is hands down the best relationship book I've ever read.”
• Storyworthy: “Matthew Dicks is the world's best storyteller. His book Storyworthy: Engage, Teach, Persuade, and Change Your Life through the Power of Storytelling is worth a read.”
• The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership: “My guest is Jim Dethmer, co-author of the insightful book, The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership.”
• Thinking, Fast and Slow: “His work was summarized in the perennial best-selling book Thinking Fast and Slow, which has been a major catalyst in introducing the idea of cognitive biases to the mainstream zeitgeist.”
• Infinite Powers: “His most recent book, Infinite Powers explores the power of calculus in reshaping our world, from its role in ensuring NASA's rocket wouldn't miss the moon, the development of technologies like GPS, cell phones, and ultrasound.”
• What It Takes: “He recently captured much of his hard earned wisdom in the New York Times best-selling book, What it Takes. We discuss some of those lessons in this interview.”
• Same as Ever: A Guide to What Never Changes: “Such a great book! So much effort. Congrats man.”
• Source Code: My Beginnings: “Our "Parrish family" book club this month is "source code".”
• How to Win Friends and Influence People: “Seven Rules For Making Your Home Life Happier. Interestingly, this section was included in the original 1936 edition of How to Win Friends and Influence People but omitted from the revised 1981 edition.”
• Antigone: “If you’re curious, I’d recommend you give Antigone a read. It’s short, only 50 pages or so, and will give you an unconventional lens on decision making.”
• Mindset: “Mindset: The New Psychology of Success is a must read for anyone looking to explore our mindset and how we can influence it to be a little better. Carol Dweck’s work is simply outstanding.”
• Daily Rituals: “After reading Mason Currey’s fantastic book, Daily Rituals, the answer is lots.”
• Drive: “Dan Pink wrote an excellent book on motivation called Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. We’ve talked about the book before, but it’s worth going into a bit more detail.”
• The Most Important Thing: “If you’re into this stuff, check out Howard Marks’ memos to his clients, or check out his excellent book, The Most Important Thing. Nate Silver also has an interesting similar idea about the difference between risk and uncertainty. And lastly, another guy that understands risk pretty well is Jason Zweig, who we’ve inte”
• The Little Book of Common Sense Investing: “Still Interested? Read more about Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger, whose ideas on investing have influenced generations of wise and successful investors. The best books we know of on the topic are The Intelligent Investor, Poor Charlie’s Almanack, Berkshire Hathaway’s Letters to Shareholders, and John Bogle’s book Th”
• Judgment in Managerial Decision Making: “Max Bazerman, the author of the best book on general decision making that I’ve ever read, Judgment in Managerial Decision Making, came out with 7 book recommendations1.”
• Merchants of Doubt: “Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway’s masterful work Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming, was recommended by Elon Musk.”
• The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals: “Still Interested? The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals is one of the best food books we’ve ever read.”
• How Not to Be Wrong: “We’ll get to why “significance can be insignificant,” and why that’s so important, in a moment. But let’s make sure we’re fully on board with the importance of sorting chance events from real ones with another illustration, this one outlined by Jordan Ellenberg in his wonderful book How Not to Be Wrong. Pay close atten”
• Hackers & Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age: “All of the essays in Hackers & Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age are worth reading and thinking about.”
• Zero to One: “Peter Thiel, the founder of PayPal (as well as an early investor in Facebook and Palantir), considers power laws to be a crucial concept for all businesspeople to understand. In his fantastic book, Zero to One, Thiel writes:”
• Yes!: “If you want to become more persuasive, you should read Yes!: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to be Persuasive and Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion”
• Mindwise: “Understanding the minds of others—what they think, believe, feel, and want—is the key to social success. While our minds generally function pretty well in this area there is room for improvement.”
• Consider the Lobster: “Still curious? Learn more about David Foster Wallace by reading Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace. If you want to read some of his work, start with Consider the Lobster and work your way up to The Pale King, which was left unfinished at the time of his suicide, and Infinite Jest, his mas”
• Infinite Jest: “Still curious? Learn more about David Foster Wallace by reading Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace. If you want to read some of his work, start with Consider the Lobster and work your way up to The Pale King, which was left unfinished at the time of his suicide, and Infinite Jest, his mas”
• 10% Happier: How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, and Found Self-Help That Actually Works: “In the back of his excellent book, 10% Happier: How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, and Found Self-Help That Actually Works–A True Story, he writes a section that he wanted to call “The Ten Pillars of Cutthroat Zen” but ended up calling The Way of the Worrier.”
• Envisioning Information: “Still curious? Tufte’s Envisioning Information, written in 1990, still remains a must-read. Learn more about Tufte’s Feynman diagrams.”
• The Catcher in the Rye: “The Catcher in the Rye — Believe it or not, I read this for the first time last year.”
• The Signal and the Noise: “The Signal and the Noise — “examines the world of prediction, investigating how we can distinguish a true signal from a universe of noisy data.” I loved this book. (Pair with Bayesian updating.)”
• The Black Swan: Second Edition: “If you haven’t read it already, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable Fragility, is a must-read.”
• Good Calories, Bad Calories: “If you want to learn more about the science behind why we get fat, I recommend brushing up on your biology a little and reading Why We Get Fat. Taubes also wrote Good Calories Bad Calories.”
• The Rational Optimist: “Matt Ridley is a longtime favorite. Originally a PhD zoologist, Ridley went on to write great books like The Red Queen and The Rational Optimist, and wrote for The Economist for a while. This book makes the argument for how trial-and-error style evolution occurs across a wide range of phenomena. I don’t know that I agr”
• Titan: “Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller by Ron Chernow (This has been on my shelf since Charlie Munger recommended it, time to pull it out.)”
• The Essential Wooden: A Lifetime of Lessons on Leaders and Leadership: “A lot of people argue about whether Wooden or Dean Smith was a better coach. I don’t have an opinion but figured I’d start with Wooden. In addition to explaining Wooden’s famous Pyramid of Success, the book is full of personality and keen insights into human nature”
• The Power of Full Engagement: “I read this book years ago when a former boss left it on my desk. I remember changing some things afterward and noticing a big improvement in my energy and focus but had totally forgotten about the book until I started doing a some of the research for my webinar.”
• When Genius Failed: “I’ve been a huge fan of Roger Lowenstein since reading one of the books that literally changed my life (Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist). While I’d read When Genius Failed before, it was great to re-read this.”
• The Three Marriages: Reimagining Work, Self and Relationship: “A beautiful and thought-provoking book that argues we should stop thinking in terms of work-life balance. “Work-life balance is a concept that has us simply lashing ourselves on the back and working too hard in each of the three commitments.”
• The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy: “Anthropologist David Graeber traces the peculiar history of bureaucracy and “reveals how it shapes our lives in ways we may not even notice.” At times depressing, at times hilarious, at times hard to follow (I don’t subscribe to the bureaucracy as state violence argument – for instance), the book is a worthy…”
• Dying Every Day: Seneca at the Court of Nero: “I loved that this biography of Seneca digs into his contradictions without judging — how can such a seemingly wise man tutor Nero, the monster; how can a man who shuns comfort enjoy the fruits of great wealth. Instead, James Romm, the author, seeks to understand these contradictions.”
• Steal Like an Artist: “Despite what we think, nothing is original, it’s all one variation of combinatorial creatvity and play”
• Stress Test: “This is a really good book but if you’re looking for something neat and tidy about how this will be the last financial crisis, this isn’t the book for you.”
• Letters of Note: “This book is full of interesting letters from the likes of Eudora Welty, Hunter Thompson, E.B. White, Virginia Woolf, Galileo Galilei, and more”
• Xenophon's Cyrus the Great: The Arts of Leadership and War: “Amazing. Cyrus was pretty awesome. His insights about leadership have “inspired great men from Julius Caesar to Benjamin Franklin to Lawrence of Arabia.” Peter Drucker called this book — Xenophon’s biography of Cryus — “the best book on leadership.” You’ll learn about Cyrus’ various campaigns as he conquers Babylon.”
• Just Babies: The Origins of Good and Evil: “I’m fascinated by morality. Some people believe that morality is mostly learned. Others think that we are born with a deep sense of good and evil. The truth is we acquire morality from both. We are born with a moral sense — a capacity to distinguish between kindness and cruelty.”
• The War of Art: “After my post Anne Lamott: Some Instructions on Writing and Life a voracious reader and best-selling author sent me a note on Lamott’s book telling me that it’s full of terrible advice.”
• The Hard Thing About Hard Things: “This is the best business book I’ve read in a long time. Perhaps one of the best ever. Ben Horowitz has been to hell and back and he’s got the scars to prove it.”
• My Share of the Task: A Memoir: “I could hardly put this book down. General Stanley McChrystal is way more fascinating than I first thought. I’ve never been one to read a ton of personal memoirs but I’m starting to warm up to the idea.”
• Fooled by Randomness: “As hard as it is to believe, I’d never read Fooled by Randomness until now. The core of Taleb’s other books — The Black Swan and Antifragile — can be found in this early work. One of the best take-aways for me was the concept of alternative histories.”
• Hooked: “A book about, as you can probably guess, what compels people to use a product regularly. While some products become habit-forming through luck, others can be manufactured into habits if you understand what makes users tick.”
• Contagious: “An interesting exploration of what makes thing popular. Despite what you think it’s not just about influence and word of mouth. The author, Johah Berger, breaks it down into six principles: Social Currency, Triggers, Emotion, Public, Practical Value, and Stories.”
• Bird by Bird: “This is a beautiful book. If you’ve ever wanted to write better — from the first draft to the final product — I highly recommend this readable book. Make no mistake, it’s not a ‘how to’ book, rather it is an exploration of the process of writing and what it means to write”
• Growth Hacker Marketing: A Primer on the Future of PR, Marketing, and Advertising: “A short book by Ryan Holiday on the changing landscape of marketing and what that means to anyone in sales. And, if you believe Daniel Pink, which I do, we’re all in sales. I read the kindle edition but the paperback comes out in September”
• The Antidote: “I had this book on my shelf for a while and while I’ve skimmed it I missed an incredible chapter on goals and why trying to control the future doesn’t work. Oliver Burkeman convincingly argues that our pursuit of happiness is what makes us miserable. The alternative?”
• The Metamorphosis: “Gregor Samsa worked himself ragged to pay off his parents’ debts—they were not as bad off as he believed.”
• Average Is Over: “As algorithmic intelligence takes over, Tyler Cowen envisions a world with a shrinking middle class. The key question for workers is whether you are good at working with, or augmenting, intelligent machines or not? In other words, do you make the computer better? If not, Cowen believes you might be in trouble.”
• To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others: “I’ve now bought this book three times. I bought it last year and lent it to a friend before I had a chance to read it. They never returned it. Then I bought a paperback, forgetting that I already had a kindle copy. The book is on the changing role of sales. We’re all in sales. Yes, you too.”
• Confessions of a Sociopath: “A great read. Like some introverts, sociopaths mimic the way other people behave so they can “hide in plain sight.” The book takes you into the mind of an intelligent sociopath and is hard to put down. Maybe not a book you want to read in public though, lest people get the wrong idea about you”
• Zen in the Art of Archery: “The author, Eugen Herrigel, spent time in Japan after World War II and wanted to better understand Zen Buddhism. This is impossible to understand through books and requires an activity. He picked archery and found a Zen master who reluctantly accepted him as a student.”
• The Last Lecture: “What would you tell people if you knew you were going to die? I’d seen the lecture and wanted to revisit it. The book—actually 61 mini lectures—is filled with living-life-to-the-fullest advice from an amazing professor who only had a few months to live.”
• The 4-hour Body: “If you’ve resolved to eat healthier and get into better shape this year, start here”
• Brave New War: “A fascinating read about how warfare is evolving. Robb examines Fourth Generation Warfare (4GW), which is essentially loosely networked groups against states. 4GW is the first generation of non conventional wars. There are no pivotal moments on a battlefield that decide the war.”
• How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: “I love Dilbert. Among other things Scott Adams’ book will show you that goals are for losers, passion is bullshit, and mediocre skills can make you valuable if you have enough of them. The best part of the book, however, was the discussion on systems and goals. Systems trump goals. See here for more details”
• Slouching Towards Bethlehem: “I’d never heard of Joan Didion until recently. Yes, to preempt you, that does mean I’ve been under some sort of literature rock for years. Anyways, this, a collection of essays, is her first non-fiction work. What really roped me in was her essay On Keeping a Notebook”
• Love and Math: “What if you had to take an art class in which you were only taught how to paint a fence? What if you were never shown the paintings of van Gogh and Picasso, weren’t even told they existed? Alas, this is how math is taught, and so for most of us it becomes the intellectual equivalent of watching paint dry.”
• The Book of Five Rings: ““When the undefeated samurai Miyamoto Musashi retreated to a cave in 1643 and wrote The Book of Five Rings, a manifesto on swordsmanship, strategy, and winning for his students and generations of samurai to come, he created one of the most perceptive and incisive texts on strategic thinking ever to come from Asia.””
• Choose Yourself!: “It’s your life, you control it. No one is going to come and save you. So, basically, get off your ass and do something about it. James Altucher can be your guide as you hack your way through life”
• The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus: “A Syrian slave, Syrus is full of timeless wisdom. Want an example? “From the errors of others, a wise man corrects his own.” Here is another: “It is not every question that deserves an answer.” Ok, one more? “To do two things at once is to do neither.” And he didn’t even know of Facebook and Twitter.”
• The Box: “If this book wasn’t recommended to me by so many smart people, I never would have read it. In fact, when I asked > 15k people to name the best book they’ve read this year, this was the second most popular book. And it’s wayyyy better than I imagined”
• David and Goliath: “This is Gladwell’s best book. Gladwell’s writing is getting better, something I didn’t think possible. Yes, I’ve read Chris Chabris’ scathing review in the Wall Street Journal as well as other criticisms against the book.”
• Body of Work: Finding the Thread That Ties Your Story Together: “Body of Work: Finding the Thread That Ties Your Story Together — Essentially a book about finding your core.”
• Napoleon: “I’ve never read a book about Napoleon before. In the end—and this is a lesson for organizations—he didn’t like to delegate any thinking. He promoted people not for their brain but rather for their ability to carry out orders with precision.”
• How to Live: “In this clever biography, Sarah Bakewell brings Montaigne to life while addressing fundamental question of how to live. If you’re too intimidated by The Complete Essays, this is a good warm up”
• Hunger: “This book, which has been called, “one of the most disturbing novels in existence,” is a chilling first-person narrative about the conflict between self-preservation and death. The narrator is starving. He wants to write to earn some money so that he can eat.”
• Leadership and Self-deception: “Through a story everyone can relate to about a man facing challenges on the job and in his family, the authors expose the fascinating ways that we can blind ourselves to our true motivations and unwittingly sabotage the effectiveness of our own efforts to achieve success and increase happiness”
• The Botany of Desire: “(4 Stars) Whereas once humankind exerted its will in the relatively small arena of artificial selection (the arena I think of, metaphorically, as a garden) and nature held sway everywhere else, today the force of our presence is felt everywhere.”
• Playing to Win: “Given that one of the authors, A.G. Lafley, recently took over the CEO spot at Procter and Gamble for the second time, I thought I’d re-read most of this book. (Pairs with Good Strategy Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters (see my post) and The Strategy Paradox)”
• The Unwinding: “This book was described by Atul Gawande as a “sickening, riveting page turner on the financial destruction of the working class.” (I just started this so I don’t have any comments yet.)”
• Fragments: The Collected Wisdom of Heraclitus: “I’ve underlined something on nearly every page of this short book. Consider this: “Many fail to grasp what they have seen, and cannot judge what they have learned, although they tell themselves they know.” If that doesn’t justify reading this ancient wisdom, I don’t know what will”
• Eleven Rings: “Phil Jackson won more championships than any coach in the history of professional sports. He’s also a master at employing social dynamics to build a team. A great memoir, even for the non sports fan”
• The Prince: “I have a lot to read in my pile but after reading Blood & Beauty last week — an excellent read by the way — I was inspired to pick up this masterful work again”
• Amusing Ourselves to Death: “RECOMMENDED READING 2015: Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business”
• Damn Right!: Behind the Scenes with Berkshire Hathaway Billionaire Charlie Munger: “RECOMMENDED READING 2015: Damn Right: Behind the Scenes with Berkshire Hathaway Billionaire Charlie Munger”
• Becoming Wise: “ A refreshing signal in a world of noise that should be read and immediately re-read. There is so much goodness in here that scarcely will you find more than a page or two in my copy without a mark, bent page, or highlight. The entire book offers texture to thoughts you knew you had but didn’t know how to express”
• Seveneves: “We don’t often recommend novels, but I’ve dug into this one by Neal Stephenson lately in my pre-bed reading time and found it a fun read. It’s a sci-fi novel (and a longer one) based on the moon blowing up into 7 pieces and humanity trying to come up with a plan.”
• Tribal Leadership: “A fascinating book that shows how to access the tribes in your organization (and your own behaviours) on a scale of one to five. The book offers practical suggestions and indicators of success to elevate people from one stage to the next.”
• The Age of the Unthinkable: Why the New World Disorder Constantly Surprises Us and What We Can Do About It: “The book outlines how our antiquated and often linear thinking is getting us in trouble. It proposes that this new age needs a new way of thinking, a shift in our paradigms to embrace complexity and unpredictability.”
• The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing: “A book from the 1990s that’s still in print today, in part because it’s still relevant with a compendium of twenty-two innovative rules for understanding and succeeding in the international marketplace”
• Straw Dogs: “John Gray is a modern English philosopher who, to be frank, writes stuff that makes me uncomfortable. But that’s why I read him. He’s got provocative ideas on free will, on drug use, on where scientific thinking is taking humanity, and a host of other big ideas affecting modern human life.”
• The Sovereign Individual: “The book, which argues “the information revolution will destroy the monopoly power of the nation-state as surely as the Gunpowder Revolution destroyed the Church’s monopoly,” is making the rounds in Silicon Valley and being passed around like candy.”
• The Vital Question: “Biologist Nick Lane is trying to answer what he considers the unanswered question in biology: What is the origin of complex life? How was life synthesized from inorganic matter like carbon and hydrogen?”
• To Kill a Mockingbird: “I know, I know. Hear me out. Someone I respect mentioned that he thought Atticus Finch was the perfect blend of human characteristics. Tough and skilled, yet humble and understanding. He’s frequently rated as a “most admired” hero in fiction, yet he’s a lawyer competing with Jedis, Detectives, Spies, and Superheroes.”
• Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking: “Intuition Pumps And Other Tools for Thinking, by Daniel Dennett.”
• The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America: “The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America, by Daniel Boorstin.”
• On the Rock: Twenty-Five Years in Alcatraz: “On the Rock: Twenty-Five Years in Alcatraz The Prison Story of Alvin Karpis as told to Robert Livesey.”
• How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life: “I’ve changed my mind about books that are “accessible introductions” to harder books. I used to be pretty ambivalent about them, but I realized over the years that if they’re done well, they’re very valuable. The reason is simple: Opportunity cost. No one can ever get to all the great books.”
• The Wright Brothers: “The great biographer McCullough is back with another one — a short biography of The Wright Brothers.”
• The Gene: “Siddhartha Mukherjee wrote the bestselling (and Pulitzer-Prize winning) Emperor of all Maladies, a history of cancer. He’s matched that feat here with The Gene. The book is a history of genetics, our search for the gene, and what’s possible with the modern understanding of how genes work (good and bad).”
• The Serengeti Rules: “An easy and short read, but worth the time to pick up some useful nuggets on biology and ecology through the stories of the scientists who figured them out. The author bounces around as he describes various efforts over the years to figure out “how the world works” when it comes to life on earth.”
• Everybody Matters: “I hate the title and had the person who sent it to me not been a friend, I might not have even looked at it. Title aside it’s an interesting book written by Bob Chapman, CEO of the $1.7 billion manufacturing company Barry-Wehmiller. It’s full of anecdotes on useful topics.”
• Ego Is the Enemy: “A book about how we can overcome ourselves and do our best work. Ego impedes learning. Ego impedes understanding. Ego can blind us. Yet ego can also fuel us and cause us to do otherwise impossible things. Self-awareness is the first step to reducing its negative impacts and harnessing its power”
• The Master Algorithm: “I recently had a fascinating multi-hour dinner with the author, Pedro Domingos, on where knowledge comes from. Historically, at least, the answer has been evolution, experience, and culture. Now, however, there is a new source of knowledge: Machine learning.”
• Six Easy Pieces: “Feynman is the best physics teacher ever, maybe the best teacher of scientific concepts we’ve seen. His clarity of thought is incredible, which means he can explain things in an equally clear way. This is a short book with six chapters on some of the big, fundamental ideas of physics, explained in plain English.”
• Why Don't We Learn from History?: “This is a short (~120pp) book by the military historian and strategist B.H. Liddell Hart, a man who not only wrote military history but surely influenced it, especially in Germany in the World War period.”
• Start with Why: “I picked this up because I thought it would be a good beach read and further my understanding of why some companies are able to trounce the competition with less talent, less money, and no structural advantage. On this it delivered”
• The Lean Startup: “This book has become part of the cultural fabric of the startup community”
• Getting to Yes: “I recently read one of Roger Fisher’s other books — Getting it Done — and decided to read his bestseller on negotiation as well. The book has sold a zillion copies for a good reason — he offers a way “out” of highly contested negotiation.”
• When Breath Becomes Air: “It’s been a while since I’ve cried reading a book. This beautifully written memoir, by a young neurosurgeon diagnosed with terminal cancer, attempts to answer the question What makes a life worth living? If you read this and you’re not feeling something you’re probably a robot”
• The Sense of Style: “ Cognitive psychologist Stephen Pinker has written a style guide for the 21st Century and it’s awesome. Pinker updates Strunk & White for modern writers while avoiding hard rules and focuses much more on what makes our writing readable and enjoyable.”
• Deep Work: “Cal Newport’s new book is a great read on a subject I’ve been thinking a lot about lately. In a world of distraction, how you organize your time and days makes an enormous difference. Read this”
• Sapiens: “One of the best books I’ve come across in a long time. Sapiens is a work of “Big History” — in the style of Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel— that seeks to understand humanity in a deep way.”
• River Out of Eden: “This is, perhaps, Richard Dawkins’ simplest and most straightforward book on evolutionary theory, but note that it is wrapped in his usual religious debunking, which value lies in the eye of the beholder. I find it interesting, although occasionally unnecessary.”
• It's Your Ship: “The subtitle is Management Techniques from the Best Damn Ship in the Navy. I’ve read a lot of leadership books and this might just be the best damn leadership book.”
• Shoe Dog: “So many people have recommended this to me that I’ve lost count. Now that I’ve finally read it, I get why. If you want to understand what it’s like to start and run a business – the uncertainty, the sweat, the stress, the self-doubt – this is among the best books available.”
• Tribe of Mentors: “The interview with Graham Duncan is profound. In the interview, Graham offers three incredibly useful mental models that will help you better understand people”
• Leonardo da Vinci: “A remarkable look at Da Vinci, the master polymath. I’ve read a few Da Vinci biographies, and Isaacson’s is by far the best, offering a magnificent tour of his life. Not only did Da Vinci create some of the most famous painting in history, he was also intensely curious about the workings of life.”
• Principles: “One of the most interesting books I’ve read in a long time. Ray Dalio, the author, is the founder of Bridgewater Associates, the largest hedge fund in the world. His TED Talk, released this week, explains how he fosters and idea-meritocracy at his workplace. After nearly going bankrupt, Dalio had to change course.”
• The Great Escape: “Winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize in economics. At first, I felt a little underwhelmed and I wasn’t sure why — the writing is clear and the topic is interesting. Then it hit me – for the first time in ages I wasn’t been manipulated to support a specific argument.”
• Good to Great: “I love this short lesson from Jim Collin’s Good to Great: “Put your best people on your biggest opportunities, not your biggest problems.””
• Energy and Civilization: “If you’ve ever read any of Vaclav Smil’s books, you’ll know that they’re dense. Packed. He doesn’t cut any corners. In fact, I doubt the guy has any hobbies. Just about every year he comes out with an information-packed book on a different subject. I’ve learned so much from him.”
• Perennial Seller: The Art of Making and Marketing Work that Lasts: “I typically don’t read the newest marketing books, since they are generally rehashed information that’s been around a long time, but Ryan is different. He always brings a unique perspective to his books that spark connections in my mind that I couldn’t see before.”
• A Full Life: “A great read if your confidence in political leaders is low. With an unlikely rise from submariner to President, the book is full of stories I hadn’t heard before. Carter took office when confidence in political leaders was low — not long after Watergate.”
• The Education of a Coach: “I’m a huge fan of looking to sports and war as a way to quickly filter what works and what doesn’t. When people have a lot of skin in the game and success matters a lot, you’re going to find a higher signal to noise ratio.”
• The Coaching Habit: “A great practical book that you can immediately put into practice. What I liked most was how it saves time by learning how to have better conversations. Not only better as in more effective and more efficient but better as in less BS and more win-win. (We did exclusive AMA with the author in the Learning Community.)”
• Option B: “I started reading this book during a hockey game and stopped watching the game because I had tears in my eyes. This book is for anyone who has ever lost anyone or had a misstep (like mine) *AND* importantly for anyone who wants to be a better friend tending to the needs of a person going through something.”
• How We Got to Now: “I loved this book. In a short 250 pages or so, Steven Johnson discusses the development of six things that we all totally take for granted: Glass, refrigeration, recorded sound, modern cleanliness, modern timekeeping, and electric light.”
• Milk and Honey: “I feel like I’m the outsider when it comes to poetry. I remember sitting in English class in University and listening to the professor interpret the author in such a way that I’d often think I read the wrong poem. Every now and then, however, I pick up a poetry book and it just gets me.”
• Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers: “This isn’t a new one, but if you want to understand stress, go to the best. Robert Sapolsky is a neuroscientist who spent many years living with baboons (and you thought you were accomplished), who understands the physiology of stress as well as anyone in the world.”
• The Prophet: “Philosopher Kahlil Gibran’s 1923 masterpiece is a collection of poetic essays traversing time and discipline. In 28 chapters he covers love, marriage, giving, children, crime and punishment, and more.”
• The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds: “I think Lewis is an awesome writer. His three non-fiction books became movies—some of them about arcane topics like finance—for good reason. He’s an incredibly talented storyteller who knows how to make his subjects interesting.”
• Quiet: “(Re-Read) Great book. Well researched and well written. We are all somewhere on the introversion/extroversion scale, and this book really made me want to embrace and develop my more introverted qualities.”
• Liars and Outliers: Enabling the Trust That Society Needs to Thrive: “Reaches across academic disciplines to develop an understanding of trust, cooperation, and social stability.”
• AI Superpowers: “I love broad books like this one. One of the most interesting things in this book for me was the exploration of the differences between what’s culturally acceptable in China vs. the U.S. and how that environment shapes the people, technology, and companies that emerge.”
• The Coddling of the American Mind: “While every generation thinks the one that follows is more coddled than itself, Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt argue that this time it really is different. I read this book as preparation for an interview with Jonathan for The Knowledge Project.”
• The Book of Why: The New Science of Cause and Effect: “An amazing exploration of cause and effect, allowing us to not only understand how we know things, improve our decision making and reasoning ability but also allow us to see what could have been. If you want to understand how you think or just get a firmer grasp on artificial intelligence, read this.”
• The Razor's Edge: “It’s been a while since I recommended fiction and this philosophical exploration of life will not disappoint. Larry Darrell comes back from the war and pursues a life of meaning rather than what society and his fiancée Isabel expect of him.”
• The Order of Time: “This is an exceptional book, both in its content and aspirations. The science it discusses is modern, but the concepts it explores are about the fundamentals of what it means to be human, questions that we have been questioning and struggling with since forever.”
• Mastering the Market Cycle: Getting the Odds on Your Side: “and The Most Important Thing by Howard Marks in preparation for our podcast interview with him on The Knowledge Project. While aimed at a financial audience, both books contain lessons for everyone. Howard is amazing at pulling lessons from history to better understand what’s likely to happen in the future”
• This Is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor: “A hilarious, heartbreaking, and—according to my doctor friends—accurate look inside the medical establishment. The number of life or death decisions made by people on little to no sleep will leave you horrified. I couldn’t put it down”
• High Growth Handbook: “I loved this book, which is a collection of interviews and insights from some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley like Reid Hoffman, Marc Andreessen, Patrick Collison and more. They talk about the role of a CEO, managing a team, and most importantly growing a business.”
• Gridiron Genius: “This book comes out Tuesday and I’ve been waiting to tell you about it since the first draft that Mike sent me so many months ago. This is one of the best books I’ve read this year.”
• Black Edge: “If you’ve ever wondered who and what you could be up against as an individual investor, this book is a good primer. On the outside, it’s a book about the pursuit of Steven Cohen for insider trading. On the inside, however, we explore the intersection of leverage, money, and power.”
• Red Notice: “Three things about this book. 1) Whoever ghost wrote this with Browder is a genius. Not only is the story crazy but the writing is exceptional — this is Michael Lewis like. 2) It was hard to actually put this book down. 3) If you like politics, financial crime, thrillers or conspiracies …. read it”
• Bad Blood: “This book is incredibly well done. What do you get when you mix reality distortion, charisma, a noble aim, poor governance, healthcare, a desire to be rich, narcism, and a lot of people (partners/investors) who failed to do even basic diligence? Theranos.”
• Origin Story: “Most history books examine a small block of time in extreme detail. In contrast, this remarkable book offers a sweeping history of the universe, from the big bang until now (13.8 billion years).”
• Masters of Doom: “My inner geek, (remember I have a computer science degree,) resonated a lot with this book which tells the story of John Carmack and John Romero (think of them as the Lennon and McCartney of video games). Carmack’s ingenious insight brought Nintendo style gaming to the PC.”
• Tiger Woods: “Even if you don’t like golf, this book is hard to put down. One of my working hypotheses is that people with extreme abilities are not balanced. Attempts to address the imbalance usually cause them to lose some or all of their advantage, which contributed to the outlier success. Tiger is fascinating.”
• The Death of Expertise: “Tom Nichols shows us why the surge in narcissistic and intellectual egalitarianism has crippled informed debates. “All voices, even the most ridiculous, demand to be taken with equal seriousness, and any claim to the contrary is dismissed as undemocratic elitism.””
• 1491: “Charles C. Mann – Amazing! Despite it’s size and density, I read this cover to cover in a week. Mann is a good writer, especially because he injects his excitement and enthusiasm for his subjects right into his prose.”
• Skin in the Game: “Of course I’m reading this. Love him or hate him (and no one I know is neutral), Taleb is generally worth reading even if you don’t agree with what he’s saying or how he’s saying it. I loved the part on the reliability of knowledge, which triangulates well with our approach to using time-tested mental models.”
• Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue: “There is an old Scottish motto that no one attacks me with impunity. You know that moment when someone slights you, and you decide that it’s too much. The moment you decide that you’re not going to take it anymore. You don’t always respond like the boxer would, throwing an immediate counterpunch.”
• The Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dream: “We’re becoming more risk-averse, moving less, productivity is declining outside of tech, and more medicated. Individually we’re settling, but collectively this has massive impacts like screwy politics and reduced competitiveness on an international level”
• Thinking in Bets: “, which comes out this week. I was lucky to have an advance copy. I read this in preparation for having Annie Duke on the podcast. Anyone interested in making better decisions can learn a lot from this book”
• Ten Discoveries That Rewrote History: “Archeologist Patrick Hunt walks us through ten archeological discoveries that redefined how we view human history. For each, Hunt succinctly explains the circumstances of its discovery, the process to study or decode it, and how it changed our view of the past.”
• The Idea Factory: “A friend of ours, at the helm of a leading-edge R&D team within a tech giant, first recommended this book to us. As he prepared for his role, this book provided useful examples of how to do innovation well within a large company.”
• The River of Doubt: “After losing his bid for re-election as President in 1912, Theodore Roosevelt decided to join an expedition to map an uncharted swath of the Amazon rainforest.”
• Natural Born Heroes: “This book explores multiple disciplines to uncover the secrets behind human endurance. McDougall’s investigation into endurance connects World War II history, ancient Greek history, nutrition, genetics, strength and conditioning science, and even parkour.”
• Love, War, and Circuses: The Age-Old Relationship Between Elephants and Humans: “― Elephants have played a unique role in human history. By some accounts, they may have directed our early migrations and helped shape the landscapes that enabled our evolution.”
• Draft No. 4: “John McPhee is a living legend in the creative nonfiction genre; this is his handbook on writing. He is the author of 33 books. McPhee won the Pulitzer Prize after four nominations, has written for The New Yorker for 53 years, and is in his 45th year teaching creative writing at Princeton University.”
• Stillness Is the Key: “The latest book from our former Knowledge Project guest is now available. Here is an overview: “All great leaders, thinkers, artists, athletes, and visionaries share one indelible quality. It enables them to conquer their tempers. To avoid distraction and discover great insights.”
• The Snow Leopard: “Winner of the National Book Award in 1979 for non-fiction, The Snow Leopard recounts Peter Matthiessen’s epic journey on foot into the Himalayas in 1973. The book is a classic travel memoir (in diary format) that weaves the struggle of the journey with Matthiessen’s mourning for his late wife.”
• Indistractable: “Our friend, and previous Learning Community AMA guest, Nir Eyal, who literally wrote the book on how to make technology addictive published the antidote. Nir is a behavioral design expert who taught at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business.”
• Range: “While I wish I wrote this book, David Epstein is a much better writer so you should read it from him. The messages in the book will resonate with all FS readers. The book is a compelling argument that generalists, not specialists, are primed to excel.”
• The Demon Under the Microscope: From Battlefield Hospitals to Nazi Labs, One Doctor's Heroic Search for the World's First Miracle Drug: “There is a definite divide in human history between those who came before antibiotics and vaccines, and those who came after. Life was far more precarious before we understood bacteria and viruses, with people dying from what we now consider minor irritations.”
• The Uninhabitable Earth: “I don’t know a lot about climate change, but I’m interested in learning more in this big gnarly topic. Wallace-Wells offers a potential portrait of what could happen, using science to show us how our lives will almost inevitably change.”
• The Upside of Stress: “Defining stress she writes: “Stress is what arises when something you care about is at stake. This definition is big enough to hold both the frustration over traffic and the grief over a loss.”
• Pride and Prejudice: “I thought I’d start the year off with a classic and what better one to start with than a reminder from Jane Austen about the folly of judging things based on first impressions. When I read this book as a teenager in first year English, I gave up out of boredom and watched the movie instead.”
• The Biggest Bluff: ““Most real-world environments are … “wicked”: there’s a mismatch between action and feedback because of external noise. Activities with elements of surprise, uncertainty, the unknown: suddenly, you’re not sure whether what you’ve learned is accurate or not, accurately executed or not. There’s simply too much going on.”
• Very Important People: ““Free things are a clear marker of status in the VIP world. Free entry, drinks, and dinners signal recognition of a person’s social worth. “I always said, in nightlife it’s not what you spend, it’s what you get for free. That’s real power,” said Malcolm, the promoter I followed in New York and Miami.”
• How to Keep Your Cool: An Ancient Guide to Anger Management: “I picked this up a few days ago after losing my cool. The book is a short selection of essays by Seneca for anyone trying to keep themselves in check. Seneca wrote them for Nero, who he was trying to influence”
• How Emotions Are Made: ““When scientists set aside the classical view and just look at the data, a radically different explanation for emotion comes to light. In short, we find that your emotions are not built-in but made from more basic parts. They are not universal but vary from culture to culture. They are not triggered; you create them.”
• The Way to Love: “The most important things in life can be learned but not taught. “You can get someone to teach you things mechanical or scientific or mathematical like algebra or English or riding a cycle or operating a computer. But in the things that really matter, life, love, reality, God, no one can teach you a thing.”
• The Four Agreements: ““In your whole life nobody has ever abused you more than you have abused yourself. And the limit of your self-abuse is exactly the limit that you will tolerate from someone else. If someone abuses you a little more than you abuse yourself, you will probably walk away from that person.”
• A Guide to the Good Life: “Published ten years ago, this small guide to practicing Stoicism in the modern world remains popular and relevant as stoicism continues to proliferate across the personal development space.”
• Nudge: “* “This book is terrific. It will change the way you think, not only about the world around you and some of its bigger problems, but also about yourself.” -Michael Lewis”
• Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior: “What makes people act irrationally? This book explores the submerged mental drives that undermine rational action, from the desire to avoid loss to a failure to consider all the evidence or to perceive a person or situation beyond the initial impression and the reluctance to alter a plan that isn’t working”
• The Paradox of Choice: “…we are faced with far too many choices on a daily basis, providing an illusion of a multitude of options when few honestly different ones actually exist”
• Judgment Under Uncertainty: “This volume is an important collection of papers, with relevance to anyone working in fields where decision-making is at the core. This is THE book”
• A Short History of Financial Euphoria: “In this small but witty and well-crafted book, Galbraith chronicles the major speculative episodes, from the seventeenth-century tulipmania to the junk-bond follies of the eighties”
• Discover Your Inner Economist: “An engaging narrator, Cowen offers idiosyncratic strategies for appreciating museum art, for building family trust and cooperation, for writing a personal ad, for reading classic novels that seem boring on first inspection, for surviving torture, for properly practicing self-deception and for most effectively giving…”
• The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains: “The most compelling exploration of the Internet’s intellectual and cultural consequences published.”
• The Halo Effect: “This book “…brilliantly reveals the flaws in just about every best-selling strategy book of the past three decades. Second, and more importantly, it reveals just how skeptical and sharp-minded today’s business leaders must be in order to avoid falling victim to the latest and greatest guru thinking.”
• How Will You Measure Your Life?: “The Financial Times reviewed this book as “an intriguing paradox. A self-help book that is not a self-help book, based on rigorous research but enlivened by anecdotes about the experiences of a man who is hailed as a model by his students.”
• Behind the Beautiful Forevers: “From Pulitzer Prize-winner Katherine Boo, a landmark work of narrative nonfiction that tells the dramatic and sometimes heartbreaking story of families striving toward a better life in one of the twenty-first century’s great, unequal cities.”
• Berkshire Hathaway Letters to Shareholders : “I learned more from a summer with Buffett’s letters than two years doing an MBA. On the flip side, I didn’t meet as many people”
• The Righteous Mind: “The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt”
• The Checklist Manifesto: “The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right by Atul Gawande”
• Predictably Irrational, Revised and Expanded Edition: “Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely — Mentioned by many others. Outstanding experimentally-driven analysis of human irrationality.”
• Adapt: “Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure by Tim Harford”
• Sex at Dawn: “Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What It Means for Modern Relationships by Christopher Ryan & Cacilda Jetha”
• The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature: “The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature by Matt Ridley”
• My Turn: A Life of Total Football: “Source: My Turn: A Life of Total Football (Members can access all 55 of my Kindle highlights here).”
• My Life in Full: Work, Family, and Our Future: “Source: My Life in Full: Work, Family, and Our Future (Members can access my highlights here).”
• This Town: Two Parties and a Funeral-Plus, Plenty of Valet Parking!-in America's Gilded Capital: “A book detailing the insidious culture of Washington where everyone is a Facebook friend.”
• Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944–1956: “At the end of World War II, the Soviet Union to its surprise and delight found itself in control of a huge swath of territory in Eastern Europe. Stalin and his secret police set out to convert a dozen radically different countries to Communism, a completely new political and moral system.”
• The Evolution of Everything: “Matt Ridley is a longtime favorite. Originally a PhD zoologist, Ridley went on to write great books like The Red Queen and The Rational Optimist, and wrote for The Economist for a while. This book makes the argument for how trial-and-error style evolution occurs across a wide range of phenomena.”
• The Tiger: “A Ryan Holiday recommendation, The Tiger is the story of a man-eating tiger in Siberia. Like, not that long ago.”
• Creativity, Inc.: “I really loved this book. It’s written by Ed Catmull, who along with John Lasseter built the modern Pixar, which is now part of Disney. Catmull talks about the creative process at Pixar and how their movies go from a kernel of an idea to a beautiful and moving finished product.”
• The Song Machine: Inside the Hit Factory: “This is a tough recommendation because it simultaneously fascinates and horrors me. The book is about the development of modern glossy pop music.”
• Plato at the Googleplex: “Does philosophy still matter? Rebecca Goldstein, who is a modern analytical philosopher, goes after this topic in a pretty interesting way by exploring what it’d be like if Plato were interacting with the modern world. Very quirky subject matter and approach, but I actually appreciated that.”
• Alexander Hamilton: “Farnam Street related travel has brought me to quite a few airports recently. I make a habit of checking out the airport bookstores because bookstores are awesome. Recently, I noticed that Chernow’s biography of Hamilton was suddenly sitting amongst the bestsellers.”
• Buffett: “This book, perhaps more than any other, has changed the lives of many of my friends and investors because this is how many of them first discovered Warren Buffett and value investing”
• Rework: “Seth Godin sums it up best: “This book is short, fast, sharp and ready to make a difference. It takes no prisoners, spares no quarter, and gives you no place to hide, all at the same time….I can’t imagine what possible excuse you can dream up for not buying this book for every single person you work with, right now.””
• Letters from a Stoic: “It’s clear from reading Seneca that he’s full of wisdom. His letters deal with everything we deal with today: success, failure, wealth, poverty, grief. His philosophy is practical and useful. Not only will reading this book help equip you for what comes in life, but it’ll help you communicate with others”
• Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son: “This no-nonsense collection of 20 letters from a self-made man to his son is nothing short of brilliant as far as I’m concerned. This is a great example of timeless wisdom. The broad theme is how to raise your children in a world where they have plenty, but the lessons apply to parents and non-parents alike”
• The Intelligent Investor: “Described as “by far the best book on investing ever written” by none other than Warren Buffett. “Chapters 8 and 20 have been the bedrock of my investing activities for more than 60 years,” he says.”
• The Little Book That Still Beats the Market: “As Buffett says, investing is simple but not easy. This book focuses on the simplicity of investing. Greenblatt, who has average annualized returns of about 40% for over 20 years, explains investing using 6th grade math and plain language. Putting it into practice is another story”
• Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits: “Buffett used to say that he was 85% Benjamin Graham and 15% Phil Fisher. That was a long time ago, the Buffett of today resembles more Fisher than Graham. Maybe there is something to buying and holding great companies”
• Bull!: A History of the Boom, 1982-1999: “The first and perhaps best book written on the market’s historic run, which started in 1982 and ended in the early 2000s. Mahar reminds readers that euphoria and blindness are a regular part of bull markets – lessons we should have learned from studying history”
• Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions: “This book will help you improve your influence. After all, the best ideas sometimes need a little psychological help”
• Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids: “Our sacrifices and fears stem from deep misconceptions about nature and nurture. According to economist Bryan Caplan, research shows that the long-run effect of parenting is surprisingly small.”
• The True Believer: “A great primer for anyone wishing to understand mass movements, be they religious movements, social revolutions or nationalist movements. A sample”
• Nature and Selected Essays: “Nature and Selected Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson”
• Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault: “Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault”
• Made to Stick: “Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, by Chip and Dan Heath.”
• How to Measure Anything: “How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of “Intangibles” in Business”
• A Whole New Mind: “A Whole New Mind by Dan Pink”
• Twelve Years a Slave: “A true story about a freeman who was lured out of the safety of his state under false pretences, kidnapped, sold as a slave, and shipped south. “Let not those who have never been placed in like circumstances, judge me harshly.”
• Walden: “Rarely out of print since its first publication in 1854, Walden has been called one of the most influential philosophical works in all American literature. Despite that, it remains largely unread — by myself included. The book is a reflection on simplicity.”
• Think Twice: “I’m going to be interviewing the author, Michael Mauboussin, this week for one of the first episodes of my podcast. Yes a podcast. Finally. Now don’t get your expectations too high, I’m a rookie at this stuff.”
• Thinking with Type, 2nd revised and expanded edition: “As I start to put together more content for Farnam Street, I’ve been exploring a bit of design theory. You may think that you don’t need to worry about how things like kerning, grids, and typography work but these are all tools that help you communicate effectively.”
• Wild: “Longtime readers will know that I’m a fan of Cheryl Strayed. Her previous books — Wild and Dear Sugar — ran me through the range of emotions from happy to crying. Tiny Beautiful Things remains one of my favorite posts. This book, a quote-book, is more of an abbreviated version of her wit and wisdom. Well worth picking up and makes the perfect gift for anyone going through something difficult in li”
• The Soul of the World: ““Renowned philosopher Roger Scruton defends the experience of the sacred against today’s fashionable forms of atheism. He argues that our personal relationships, moral intuitions, and aesthetic judgments hint at a transcendent dimension that cannot be understood through the lens of science alone.”
• The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York: “Robert Caro’s masterpiece on New York political power between the 1920s and the 1960s, focuses on Robert Moses — the creator of institutions like the Parks Commission and the Bridge, Port, and Tunnel Authorities. Sound mundane? You’ll have to read the book to see what kind of power that gave him.”
• The Honest Truth About Dishonesty: “This is a fascinating look at our own propensity to cheat and rationalize our dishonesty. Ariely has used a clever series of experiments to expose how context plays a dominant role in how and why we cheat. What seems like obvious cheating at one time seems perfectly OK at another time.”
• The Lessons of History: “A concise book of lessons drawn from the survey of history. The book comes highly recommended by someone I met at the Berkshire Hathaway meeting last weekend. I can’t believe I haven’t read this before. I’ll be re-reading this a few times and I’ve started listening to the audio version in the car as well”
• The Creative Society: “An interesting take that creative decay is normal a la revision to the mean. The author argues that by knowing how and why this happens, countries and organizations can enable more creativity and adaptability. You can pair this with Where Good Ideas Come From, which I liked better”
• The Emotionally Intelligent Investor: “This book has less to do with investing and more to do with decision making than the title suggests. The book is broken down into three parts: Self-Awareness, Social Awareness, and Intuition. It also indirectly explains why most self-help books fail, how context is important, and asks you to be more introspective”
• The Back of the Napkin: “A book recommended by a participant in Re:Think Decision Making 2015. As someone with zero artistic talent I find that drawing things forces me to reduce and simplify, which is a natural way to help me find out what matters. A picture is worth a thousand words. Consider this a smart primer on visual thinking”
• The Adventures of Henry Thoreau: “A worthwhile chronicle of Thoreau’s formative years that acts as a rich backdrop to deepen our understanding of Walden and Civil Disobedience. Like Van Gogh, Thoreau lived in near poverty, relying on the generosity of others to get by.”
• The Art of Scientific Investigation: “Originally published in 1950, the book endeavors to understand the methods by which discoveries have been made and form some general observations. “Most books on the scientific method,” the author writes, “treat it from the logical or philosophical aspect.”
• Primed to Perform: “Yet another book on unleashing human performance. The book addresses the reasons we work (play, purpose, potential, emotional pressure, economic pressure, and inertia) and presents these in a good narrative. The framing and stories will resonate with many. I, however, think we’re starting to get lost in all the noise.”
• Mindware: “(Highly recommended) Richard Nisbett, a world-renowned psychologist, explores how scientific and philosophical concepts change the way we solve problems by helping us think better.”
• Pebbles of Perception: “This book is an invitation to be curious, build character, and make better choices. Very much in line with the Farnam Street ethos — so much that I’m mentioned in the acknowledgements. It belongs on your shelf next to Seeking Wisdom”
• Mindfulness in Plain English: “This is a great follow up to Sit Like A Buddha. This book deepens our understanding of the nuts-and-bolts of meditation including the how, what, where, when and why but also how to deal with distractions and common challenges people face along the way.”
• Living within Limits: “Filters Against Folly and Living within Limits (by Garrett Hardin) — One of us is revisiting the brilliant two books by the ecologist/economist Garrett Hardin. Hardin is famous for the Tragedy of the Commons idea. Hardin focused primarily on ideas related to overpopulation, but like Charlie Munger or Nassim Taleb, you need to read the source material over and over in order to soak up the available”
• City of the Century: “In light of hosting several Re/Think events in Chicago, I wanted to read about the history of the Chicago fire. This was the most referenced book I could find and it did not disappoint. Hint: Mrs. O’Leary’s cow had nothing to do with it”
• Filters Against Folly: “and Living within Limits (by Garrett Hardin) — One of us is revisiting the brilliant two books by the ecologist/economist Garrett Hardin. Hardin is famous for the Tragedy of the Commons idea.”
• In Praise of Slowness: “An interesting history of our relationship with time that tackles some consequences. Everything has a pace and somewhere someone is trying to increase that pace — to go faster. Sometimes, however, the thing to do to create something lasting and meaningful is to go slower”
• Lives of the Eminent Philosophers: “Responding to our piece on why the map is not the territory, a brilliant friend of mine passed along a related quote by Bion of Borysthenes: ‘we should not try to alter circumstances but to adapt ourselves to them as they really are, just as sailors do.”
• Brave Enough: “Longtime readers will know that I’m a fan of Cheryl Strayed. Her previous books — Wild and Dear Sugar — ran me through the range of emotions from happy to crying. Tiny Beautiful Things remains one of my favorite posts. This book, a quote-book, is more of an abbreviated version of her wit and wisdom.”
• Made In America: “5. Sam Walton: Made In America The big lesson I took away from Sam Walton, the founder of Walmart, is that you don’t need to come up with all the ideas yourself. Instead, you can look around and copy the best of what other people are doing. That attitude aligns with the tagline of this website: Mastering the best of what other people have already figured out.”
• Poor Charlie's Almanack: “4. Letters to Berkshire Hathaway Shareholders and Poor Charlie’s Almanack — Because I have an MBA a lot of people inevitably ask me if they should pursue one. If it’s knowledge and not credentials you’re after, save your money and read these two. The letters are freely available on Berkshire’s website but I find the paperback collection works best for me. If you’re scared t”
• Man's Search For Meaning: “1. Man’s Search For Meaning A gift from a friend. As hard as you think your life is, it pales in comparison to Auschwitz. I took two big things away from this book: (1) the ultimate freedom is the ability to choose your attitude in the face of any circumstance and (2) the more you target success, the more you will miss it.”
• Against Interpretation: “Against Interpretation, Susan Sontag’s second book, was published in 1966, but some of the essays date back to 1961, when she was still writing for The Benefactor. Sontag had come to New York in the early 60’s, eager to become the writer she so longed to become. Her ideas at the time of a writer was someone interested in “everything.””
• The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms: “The Bed of Procrustes by Nassim Taleb I finally got around to reading this. “Playful and irreverent, these aphorisms will surprise you by exposing self-delusions you have been living with but never recognized.””
• Science of Hitting: “The Science of Hitting by Ted Williams and John Underwood. Not normally a baseball fan, I came by this recommendation through Warren Buffett and I’m glad I did. It is way more fascinating than I would have guessed.”
• Homo Deus: “Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Harari, the author of the absolutely incredible and incendiary book Sapiens, is back with another one. This one is even more controversial because Harari predicts a bad future if we’re not careful with our AI technology. But don’t read it for that. Seriously. Read it because it’s absolutely chock full of interesting thoughts about the human condition”
• Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me!): “Mistakes Were Made (but not by me) by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson — The book shakes the foundations of our long cherished beliefs. Not any beliefs in particular, but the system of believing itself. It shows how some of our survival mechanisms lead us to make truly awful decisions, all in the name of protecting our view of world and self. It reveals how much energy we put into shoring up our ow”
• Influence: “When faced with a decision, we all believe we’re weighing the facts objectively and making rational, thoughtful decisions. In fact, science tells us that in situations requiring careful judgment, every individual is influenced by his or her own biases to some extent. Drawing on the very latest behavioral decision research this book examines judgment in a variety of managerial contexts and provides”
• The 48 Laws of Power: “The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene — I’ve never read this book in a cover-to-cover sense, but I’ve read each law. More than that, I’ve broken each of the laws.”
• Stumbling on Happiness: “Stumbling Toward Happiness, by Dan Gilbert Very engaging book, focusing mostly on how we go awry when we try to make decisions based upon our recollection of past events or beliefs about how we will feel in the future. (I also really enjoyed Haidt’s Happiness Hypothesis, though it’s less focused on decision making than this book is.)”
• On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You're Not: “On Being Certain by Robert Burton A fascinating account of the neuroscience behind the feeling of “rightness” we get when we make decisions.”
• Men and Rubber: The Story of Business: “Harvey Firestone was one of the best businessmen you've never heard of. His book, Men and Rubber, has become my go-to gift for my ambitious friends.”
• Sons of Wichita: How the Koch Brothers Became America's Most Powerful and Private Dynasty: “This book is a fascinating tale of how the Koch family became one of America's most private and influential families. The book has everything you want in a good story.”
• 7 Strategies for Wealth & Happiness: Power Ideas from America's Foremost Business Philosopher: “Despite the cringy title, I enjoyed Jim Rohn's book, 7 Strategies for Wealth and Happiness.”
• The Great Depression: A Diary: “I've been reading Benjamin Roth's The Great Depression: A Diary, and I was repeatedly struck by his timeless insights.”
• The Richest Woman in America: Hetty Green in the Gilded Age: “I can't remember what prompted me to re-read The Richest Woman in America: Hetty Green in the Gilded Age, but I enjoyed it the second time more than the first.”
• Thanks for the Business: K.C. Irving, Arthur Irving, and the Story of Irving Oil: “K.C. Irving is one of the best entrepreneurs you've never heard of. This story is a great example of his resourcefulness and determination.”
• Reading Dante: From Here to Eternity: “RECOMMENDED READING 2015: Reading Dante: From Here to Eternity”
• Mellon: An American Life: “This episode draws primarily from two foundational books: David Cannadine's Mellon: An American Life, the first comprehensive published biography of Andrew W. Mellon.”
• Anna: The Biography: “This episode is loosely based on Amy Odell's Anna: The Biography.”
• Built from Scratch: How a Couple of Regular Guys Grew The Home Depot from Nothing to $30 Billion: “This episode is based on the book: Built From Scratch. Members have access to all of my highlights from Built from Scratch.”
• The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt: “Sources for this Outliers episode on Cornelius Vanderbilt: The First Tycoon and Tycoon's War.”
• Tycoon's War: How Cornelius Vanderbilt Invaded a Country to Overthrow America's Most Famous Military Adventurer: “Sources for this Outliers episode on Cornelius Vanderbilt: The First Tycoon and Tycoon's War.”
• It's How We Play the Game: Build a Business. Take a Stand. Make a Difference: “Source for this Outliers episode on Ed Stack: It's How We Play the Game: Build a business. Take a stand. Make a difference.”
• Overnight Success: Federal Express and Frederick Smith, Its Renegade Creator: “Source for this Outliers episode on Fred Smith: Overnight Success: Federal Express and Frederick Smith, Its Renegade Creator.”
• Distant Force: A Memoir of the Teledyne Corporation and the Man Who Created It: “The research came from Distant Force: A Memoir of the Teledyne Corporation and the Man Who Created It… and The Outsiders by William N. Thorndike, Jr.”
• Hetty: The Genius and Madness of America's First Female Tycoon: “Sources for this Outliers episode on Hetty Green: Hetty: The Genius and Madness of America's First Female Tycoon and The Richest Woman in America.”
• Invention: A Life: “This episode is based on James Dyson's two autobiographies, Against the Odds: An Autobiography and Invention: A Life.”
• The Mary Kay Way: Timeless Principles from America's Greatest Woman Entrepreneur: “Members have access to all 90 of my highlights and notes from Mary Kay's biography, The Mary Kay Way.”
• The Women of Berkshire Hathaway: Lessons from Warren Buffett's Female CEOs and Directors: “The research is from "Women of Berkshire Hathaway" and oral history interviews with Rose Blumkin and her daughter, Frances.”
• Sol Price: Retail Revolutionary and Social Innovator: “This episode is based on the book Sol Price: Retail Revolutionary by his son Robert Price.”
• iWoz: From Computer Geek to Cult Icon: “Members have access to all 87 of my highlights and notes from Steve's biography, iWoz.”
• How to Make a Few Billion Dollars: “Brad wrote an incredible book, appropriately called How to Make a Few Billion Dollars.”
• Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids: How to Stop Yelling and Start Connecting: “Her most recent book, Peaceful Parenting, is full of brilliant insights into parenting, including discipline, effective communication, fostering self-reliance and confidence in children, and so much more.”
• The Half-Life of Facts: Why Everything We Know Has an Expiration Date: “Sam's also written two books that I love: The Half-Life of Facts and Overcomplicated.”
• Overcomplicated: Technology at the Limits of Comprehension: “Sam's also written two books that I love: The Half-Life of Facts and Overcomplicated.”
• All I Want To Know Is Where I'm Going To Die So I'll Never Go There: Buffett & Munger – A Study in Simplicity and Uncommon, Common Sense: “These came from my friend Peter Bevlin's book All I Want to Know is Where I'm Going to Die. On a wisdom per page scale, it's one of the best books on Buffett and Munger out there.”
• The Stopwatch Gang: “I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the first book I ever read cover to cover for pleasure: The Stopwatch Gang. The book, about some of the greatest Canadian bank robbers, opened my eyes to reading.”
• The Craft of Interviewing: “At the recommendation of Warren Buffett's Biographer, Alice Schroeder, I've been reading The Craft of Interviewing.”
• Words Like Loaded Pistols: Rhetoric from Aristotle to Obama: “If you have a fascination with politics and/or Rhetoric… then we highly recommend you read Words Like Loaded Pistols.”
• My Life in Middlemarch: “Rebecca Mead has written a book like no other I've come across. My Life In Middlemarch is an irresistibly creative story about how her favorite book, George Eliot's Middlemarch, changed her.”
• The Accounting Game: Basic Accounting Fresh from the Lemonade Stand: “If you’re looking to learn accounting also check out The Accounting Game: Basic Accounting Fresh from the Lemonade Stand, I’m serious. This is the book I recommend”
• The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back Again): “The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back Again) is worth reading.”
• Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End: “Atul Gawande is one of my favorite writers. Aside from the amazing work he did getting us talking about the power of simple checklists, he’s also pointed out why most of us should have coaches. Now he’s out with a new book, Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End, which adds to our ongoing conversation on wh”
• The Way to Wealth and Other Writings on Finance: “Still Interested? Check out Franklin’s Rule for Decision Making, and check out the excellent book The Way to Wealth and Other Writings on Finance for an edited and condensed look at Franklin’s various essays on economics, business, and finance.”
• Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace: “If you’re curious about DFW, I highly recommend Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace.”
• Blind Spots: Why We Fail to Do What's Right and What to Do about It: “I recommend you purchase Judgment in Managerial Decision Making and Blind Spots.”
• Economics Without Illusions: Debunking the Myths of Modern Capitalism: “Still Interested? Try reading more from the wonderful book Economics Without Illusions, where Heath takes on some fallacies from the left and some fallacies from the right in the economic debate.”
• The Contrarian's Guide to Leadership: “In Steven Sample’s excellent book, The Contrarian’s Guide to Leadership, he talks about the law of a higher good, which he took from Machiavelli’s The Prince. ”
• Good Strategy Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters: “In the book Good Strategy, Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt (highly recommended, and we’ve written about it before), the author is clear that what makes a good strategy is that it’s clear and that it’s precise, a real call to a specific action:”
• Ten Years in the Tub: A Decade Soaking in Great Books: “I’m not sure how I missed Nick Hornby’s Ten Years in the Tub: A Decade Soaking in Great Books when it was released a few years ago. If you don’t know him, Hornby is the English author of novels like About a Boy, Fever Pitch, and High Fidelity. (All three became movies — Fever Pitch twice.) The book is a collection of t”
• Situations Matter: Understanding How Context Transforms Your World: “Situations Matter is an excellent book that should give you a leg up in life.”
• The Moment of Clarity: Using the Human Sciences to Solve Your Toughest Business Problems: “In the wonderful book The Moment of Clarity: Using the Human Sciences to Solve Your Toughest Business Problems, the authors write:”
• The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction: “For more on the subject, I highly recommend reading The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction in conjunction with How to Read a Book. Those of you interested in better understanding how technology affects reading—Jacobs is a fan of the Kindle—should add The Shallows, and Cognitive Surplus to this list. Make no ”
• Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning: “Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning is worth reading in its entirety.”
• Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother: “My favorite book in this category remains the Tiger Mom Book.”
• Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It: “If you want to learn more about the science behind why we get fat, I recommend brushing up on your biology a little and reading Why We Get Fat. Taubes also wrote Good Calories Bad Calories.”
• CrazyBusy: Overstretched, Overbooked, and About to Snap! Strategies for Handling Your Fast-Paced Life: “I read his book, CrazyBusy: Overstretched, Overbooked, and About to Snap! Strategies for Handling Your Fast-Paced Life, a few years back. He claims we have “culturally generated ADD.””
• Zibaldone: “I highly recommend you pick up a copy to put on your bookshelf and pull out when you need some inspiration or just to flip to a random page on a rainy day.”
• The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do: “Still Interested? It’s highly recommended that you read both of her books in full: The Nurture Assumption and No Two Alike.”
• No Two Alike: Human Nature and Human Individuality: “Still Interested? It’s highly recommended that you read both of her books in full: The Nurture Assumption and No Two Alike.”
• The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing: “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing explores how putting your space in order causes “correspondingly dramatic changes in lifestyle and perspective.” Marie Kondo, the author, recommends that you defy conventional wisdom and start by discarding and only then thoroughly o”
• Letters to a Young Scientist: “I bought this little book blindly at a small bookstore in Mystic, CT. What a great find. It is written as a series of letters to an aspiring scientist, from one of the world’s great biologists and scientific authors, Edward O. Wilson — known for his theory of Sociobiology, among other things.”
• 101 Things I Learned in Engineering School: “My undergrad was computer science not engineering. I’ve always wanted to learn more about the discipline though, so when I saw this book I had to pick it up. It’s a great short introduction to some important engineering concepts. Enough to get you curious to look into the topics that interest you in more detail.”
• Information: A Very Short Introduction: “We live in an age awash with information but few of us understand the philosophical concept of information. In this book, one of the world’s leading authorities on the philosophy of information explores information as it relates to both philosophy and science.”
• Sit Like a Buddha: A Pocket Guide to Meditation: “If I could encourage you to look into one thing to think and focus better, this would be it. This is an enormously powerful little book that will help you focus your mind, open your heart, and think with more insight.”
• How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading: “In preparation for a summer of reading, reflecting, and connecting, I chose to re-read this book. If you believe that you’re not getting everything out of your reading that you should, this book is awesome. When is the last time someone intelligent showed you how to read, skim, and evaluate what you’re reading?”
• Applied Minds: How Engineers Think: “This book examines the enormous impact of engineering on our world (including constraints and trade-offs) and introduces to us the toolkit of modular systems thinking”
• The Unquiet Grave: A Word Cycle by Palinurus: “To sum up this is “a highly personal journal written during the devastation of World War II, filled with reflective passages that deal with aging, the break-up of a long term relationship, and the horrors of the war.” The collection of aphorisms and quotations from European literature is extensive for such a short work”
• Diaminds: Decoding the Mental Habits of Successful Thinkers: “RECOMMENDED READING 2015: Diaminds: Decoding the Mental Habits of Successful Thinkers”
• Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error: “I’m a huge fan of the author and pick this book up on occasion for reasons I can’t quite articulate. For a quick summary – that fails to do the book justice – go here”
• Who Says Elephants Can't Dance?: Leading a Great Enterprise through Dramatic Change: “This is the second time I’ve read this book. The first was either as part of my MBA or right before I started. It’s such a good book that I’m inclined to believe that it wasn’t part of my MBA. Gerstner’s ideas were controversial and we know, with hindsight, they were right.”
• Immortality: The Quest to Live Forever and How It Drives Civilization: “A book about life and death in the form of a philosophical investigation into our desire to perpetuate ourselves into the future; our will toward immortality, if you will. The book looks at this through the four basic immortality narratives: Staying Alive, Resurrection, Soul, and Legacy”
• Mess: One Man's Struggle to Clean Up His House and His Act: “In the Inferno, Dante placed the hoarders in the fourth circle of hell. That circle would be overflowing today if you look around. This is the story of one man, a writer, who engages his clutter, “in all aspects, as an all encompassing project.” The most intersting bits for me were the psychological exploration.”
• Happiness: A Philosopher's Guide: “This is a great book that walks us through some of history’s greatest thinkers and their answers to what is happiness and how do we achieve it? A bit of a warning, once you start exploring these questions and shining the light on your own life, things might never be the same.”
• Posterity: Letters of Great Americans to Their Children: “Offers a glimpse into the hearts and minds of some of American history’s most admired figures. Spanning more than 300 years, the letters offer timeless advice on life and love”
• How to Get Lucky: 13 Techniques for Discovering and Taking Advantage of Life's Good Breaks: “Some people are luckier than others and it’s not always by chance. Lucky people tend to position themselves in the path of luck. They take risks but not stupid ones. They know when to give up on love, stocks, and even opinions. A great read”
• Bet With the Best: Expert Strategies from America's Leading Handicappers: “and Bet With the Best 2: Longshots — I read significant portions of both books. The Crist essay in the first book is well worth the price of the book alone. It’s also the most applicable outside the world of handicapping horse betting.”
• Gabriel García Márquez: The Last Interview and Other Conversations: “Especially fascinating because I haven’t read any of his writing. His insight into why some online videos for pleasure leave us wanting more is spot on and I found his thoughts on love piercing”
• Different: Escaping the Competitive Herd: “I loved her analysis on how when the number of products in a category expands, the differences – or competition – between them become increasingly trivial. In business school we talked about differentiation a lot and this book reminds us that we sometimes forget what it means to be different.”
• The Letters of William Godwin, Volume 1: 1778-1797: “Between Letters of Note and van Gogh’s Letters, I’m suddenly finding old letters a lot more interesting than I would have imagined. Godwin, an original thinker, became a leading intellectual during the crisis in British politics, which followed in the wake of the French Revolution.”
• David Foster Wallace: The Last Interview and Other Conversations: “A.O. Scott of the New York Times called DFW “the best mind of his generation.” This short book offers an intimate look at his thoughts on the state of modern culture, entertainment, adulthood, and literature”
• Goethe's Poems and Aphorisms: “A lot of the poems were lost on me. The aphorisms, however, were well worth the price of the book. Piercing, insightful, and generally still as relevant today as when they were written, they should be read in small batches and not all at once”
• Adultery: “Adultery: A novel, by Paulo Coelho (author of The Alchemist) — A gripping and chilling exploration of how the life that everyone dreams of can sometimes leave us torn between the terror that things might stay the same and dying to feel something different. In this situation, people find themselves living in emptiness, yearning to feel alive again. They must choose between two things that will almo”
• Dataclysm: Who We Are (When We Think No One's Looking): “A look at how the way we interact online uncovers general truths that you can only find looking at large-scale data. “Even at the person-to-person level,” the author writes, “to be universally liked is to be relatively ignored. To be disliked by some is to be loved all the more by others.”
• Obvious Adams: “, a short, yet important, book that I wish more people would read and think about.”
• Get Smarter: Life and Business Lessons: “This book distills a lifetime of business lessons by one of Canada’s most prominent (and wealthy) business leaders. While a lot of it would be material that’s familiar to Farnam Streeters, it’s got more than a few key insights that make it worth the price of admission”
• The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere: “An excellent counterbalance to our endless diet of movement and stimulation”
• Powers of Two: Finding the Essence of Innovation in Creative Pairs: “Parts of this book were great. I’m not a fan of the cultural mythology around the idea of the lone genius. One interesting note is that pairs develop their own language.”
• Walter Benjamin: A Critical Life: “As one critic put it — “a portrait of this elusive but paradigmatic thinker that deserves to be ranked among the few truly indispensable intellectual biographies of the modern era.” Benjamin was a German philosopher and critic of culture.”
• The Education of a Value Investor: My Transformative Quest for Wealth, Wisdom, and Enlightenment: “A great book by a great person on being human, stumbling down the wrong path, and changing directions. Full of practical insight on life, not investing”
• Buddha Standard Time: Awakening to the Infinite Possibilities of Now: “Buddha Standard Time: Awakening to the Infinite Possibilities of Now Now is the only time we have.”
• Plato's Revenge: Politics in the Age of Ecology: “Plato’s Revenge: Politics in the Age of Ecology A great and under-appreciated book mixing Plato and ecology.”
• The Power of Noticing: What the Best Leaders See: “The Power of Noticing: What the Best Leaders See Harvard professor Max Bazerman’s latest.”
• Berkshire Beyond Buffett: The Enduring Value of Values: “I love Lawrence Cunningham, he’s the editor and publisher of one of the books I most frequently give away: The Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Corporate America”
• The Glass Cage: Automation and Us: “Nick Carr is one of my favorite writers. I’ll read him on any subject but I’m particularly interested in his views on how technology affects humans”
• The End of Absence: Reclaiming What We've Lost in a World of Constant Connection: “It used to take us hours to get bored. Now it’s like 10 seconds. Another book exploring the intersection of technology and culture. Are we at another Gutenberg moment?”
• Decide: Work Smarter, Reduce Your Stress, and Lead by Example: “A practical guide to cut through excuses and reframe how you make decisions. McClatchy attempts this meaningful undertaking by re-framing around two broad categories of tasks: Gain and Preventing Pain. Gain tasks are what give us meaning and energy. They let us grow.”
• Learn or Die: Using Science to Build a Leading-Edge Learning Organization: “This is by far the best book I’ve read on the subject of learning. I emailed the publisher and suggested they rename it The Art and Science of Learning.”
• The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety: “Watts convincingly argues that much of our anxiety results from our tendency to avoid the present.”
• Mirror Worlds: or the Day Software Puts the Universe in a Shoebox...How It Will Happen and What It Will Mean: “I got this recommendation from Marc Andreessen. Written in 1993, this lucid account of the software revolution foreshadows second life and the internet of things. Gelernter also elaborates on how software design can enable combinatorial creativity”
• Aristocratic Experience and the Origins of Modern Culture: France, 1570-1715: “Ironically, the conflicting demands of seventeenth-century aristocratic culture created an untenable state that nurtured the more egalitarian ideologies of the eighteenth century and the weakening of the patriarchal ideology”
• 18 Minutes: Find Your Focus, Master Distraction, and Get the Right Things Done: “Clutter builds up in our lives. We’re busy. But there are ways that people use to cut through distractions and find a way to focus. These are the people worth studying and learning from. In this over-crowded sector, however, the problem is separating the wheat from the chaff.”
• What W. H. Auden Can Do for You: “I was excited to crack this one open for two reasons. First, I have no experience with W.H. Auden, who many consider one of the best poets of the twentieth century. While I’ve heard good things, I’ve never really looked into him.”
• The Accidental Connoisseur: An Irreverent Journey Through the Wine World: “An accessible look at wine and wine culture from the new world to the old. Wine is full of weird vocabulary. Does your wine really taste like caramelized apples with a hint of rosemary? I’m not sure. This book makes me feel a little more comfortable in my rather unsophisticated palate.”
• Euripides: Fragments: Oedipus-Chrysippus. Other Fragments: “A worthy addition to any library. The guy is full of wit and wisdom. Consider #583, which says “That (you) know nothing of your mistakes is sufficient to kindle your bravado.” Or #1042: “We are all wise in giving advice, but we don’t realize it when we ourselves go wrong.””
• A Prescription for Adversity: The Moral Art of Ambrose Bierce: “Ambrose Bierce fought in some of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War before he went on to become a prolific journalist and storyteller. Known for his slashing sarcasm he was a feared antagonist. This book is an overview of Bierce’s work, which can be followed up with his most notable works.”
• Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Curating: But Were Afraid to Ask: “Through a series of interviews with Hans Ulrich Obrist the book explores what it means to curate in the artistic sense. With the web and sites like Farnam Street, curation has evolved from its traditional core yet many things remain the same.”
• The Nature of Value: How to Invest in the Adaptive Economy: “The author is a long-time Farnam Street reader who sent me a pre-release copy of the book.”
• A Philosopher's Notes: On Optimal Living, Creating an Authentically Awesome Life and Other Such Goodness: “Another book in the how to live category. The idea of learning about life through Marcus Aurelius, Emerson, Nietzsche, Buddha, and others is a good one. In many ways it reminds me of Farnam Street: I’m trying to help you live a more meaningful life. I think that’s why a friend passed it along.”
• Living with Wine: Passionate Collectors, Sophisticated Cellars, and Other Rooms for Entertaining, Enjoying, and Imbibing: “A beautiful book about wine collecting with fascinating pictures of amazing wine cellars. As I embark this year to make wine — from sourcing grapes to charring oak barrels you can expect a few more wine books to appear. This makes an awesome gift for someone who loves wine”
• The Philosophy of Epictetus: “A thematically organized version of Epictetus’ writings with repetitions omitted. A great introduction if you’re looking for one”
• Risk Savvy: How to Make Good Decisions: “The book argues that in a world full of information and complexity sometimes our best bet is to use simple heuristics to avoid problems. Just as increasing debt rarely solves a debt problem, complex problems are rarely solved with complexity.”
• The Tyranny of Experts: Economists, Dictators, and the Forgotten Rights of the Poor: “An incredible read. For the longest time we’ve seen poverty through the lens of a ‘technical problem’ that requires ‘expert’ solutions. Well, experts have been recommending technical solutions for years and the problem doesn’t seem to be getting better.”
• No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State: “No Place to Hide I could hardly put this book down.”
• The Philosophy of Chrysippus: “Unlike a lot of books on Stoic philosophy, this is a tough one to read. While it delivers a solid and well-researched account of Chrysippus, someone I’ve been wanting to know more about, the real gold is the bibliography. This alone is worth the price of the book”
• Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time: “A lot of you email me and ask about productivity and time management. This book is a journey of one woman’s quest to find out what ripped her leisure time to shreds and take it back. To find insights, she speaks to neuroscientists, sociologists, and productivity gurus. This is what she found out along the way”
• Tower of Basel: The Shadowy History of the Secret Bank That Runs the World: “The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) was the brainchild of eccentric Bank of England governor, Montagu Norman.”
• Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War: “This was a book I picked up while reading My Share of the Task. Significant parts of the book overlap in time so it was interesting to see the same situations through very different lenses.”
• The Everything Store: “An inside look at how Amazon came to be the company we know it as today. One important take away is how business, facing new competition, often struggle to cannibalize existing profit areas.”
• Friendfluence: The Surprising Ways Friends Make Us Who We Are: “This book explores the impact our friends have on our personalities, habits, and health. Looks like mom was right after all, friends play a large role in improving our odds of success in life. A quick and easy read. (more)”
• Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect: “At some level, the driver behind most of what we do is to reach out and connect with people. “We have a unique ability to read other people’s minds, to figure out their hopes, fears, and motivations, allowing us to effectively coordinate our lives with one another.”
• Divine Fury: A History of Genius: “This is a chronicle of the evolution of the word ‘genius.’ “The concept of genius has roots in antiquity, when men of prodigious insight were thought to possess—or to be possessed by—demons and gods.”
• The World According to Karl: “Karl Lagerfeld “is a modern master of couture.” That explains why my t-shirt and jean wearing self had never heard of him before picking up this book, which is really a collection of his wit and wisdom in the form of quotations.”
• The Essential Talmud: ““A book of profound scholarship and concise pedagogy, The Essential Talmud succinctly describes the Talmud’s history, structure, and methodology.”
• The Secrets of Happy Families: Improve Your Mornings, Rethink Family Dinner, Fight Smarter, Go Out and Play, and Much More: ““a blueprint for modern families — a new approach to family dynamics, inspired by cutting-edge techniques gathered from experts in the disciplines of science, business, sports, and the military.”
• 100 Diagrams That Changed the World: From the Earliest Cave Paintings to the Innovation of the iPod: ““A fascinating collection of the most significant plans, sketches, drawings, and illustrations that have influenced and shaped the way we think about the world.””
• How to Run a Country: An Ancient Guide for Modern Leaders: “I very much enjoyed How To Win An Election so it was only natural that I’d read the follow-up. Freeman does a good job at selecting relevant excerpts from Cicero’s work pertaining to governance. The topics Cicero speaks of — tribalism, ideology, greed, and power — have changed little over the years”
• Decoded: The Science Behind Why We Buy: “Phil Barden reveals what decision science explains about people’s purchase behaviour. If you’re selling things to people and need a good primer on the latest research behind consumer motivations, this is a good read”
• Webs of Influence: The Psychology of Online Persuasion: “Nathalie Nahai draws from the worlds of psychology, neuroscience and behavioural economics to better influence. She not only covers the theory but also shows you how to put it into practice online”
• The Laws of Simplicity: “Author John Maeda proposes ten laws for simplifying complex systems in business and life-but mostly in product design”
• Radical Abundance: How a Revolution in Nanotechnology Will Change Civilization: “Eric Drexler is the founding father of nanotechnology—the science of engineering on a molecular level. Rapid scientific progress, thanks to atomically precise manufacturing, promises to give us the power to produce more of what people want at a lower cost.”
• Your First 1000 Copies: The Step-by-Step Guide to Marketing Your Book: “If you’re trying to build a connection with readers, this is for you. Author Tim Grahl is a great guy and his advice is behind some of the changes you’ve seen recently on Farnam Street”
• New: Understanding Our Need for Novelty and Change: “Robert Caro’s masterpiece on New York political power between the 1920s and the 1960s, focuses on Robert Moses — the creator of institutions like the Parks Commission and the Bridge, Port, and Tunnel Authorities. Sound mundane? You’ll have to read the book to see what kind of power that gave him. Moses outlasted mayors and governors for a reason. Caro subsequently became known for his four (going ”
• Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life: “Behavioral science writer Winifred Gallagher persuasively argues that if you want to change your life consciously choose what you pay attention to”
• The Paleo Manifesto: Ancient Wisdom for Lifelong Health: “This was the best book I’ve read in a long time. This is not another paleo diet book but rather a fascinating exploration of our human species. I especially appreciated the parts on fasting as a means to protect against infections (some excerpts.)”
• Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration: “How do groups come to ideas? Keith Sawyer spent some time discovering the structural rules embedded within group creativity”
• The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way: “In this eye opening book, investigative journalist Amanda Ripley explores various countries and why they are successful at educating their youth. In Korea kids seemingly spend 18 hours a day studying. But that’s not the key to success because Finland and Poland are equally impressive without the long days.”
• Conversations with David Foster Wallace: “DFW’s insights into culture and the role of fiction fascinate me. If you don’t buy this book and read the compilation of interviews, at least watch his 2005 commencement speech, This is Water. If the goal of an artist is to forever change someone, DFW has accomplished that with me.”
• Maximize Your Potential: Grow Your Expertise, Take Bold Risks & Build an Incredible Career: “A follow up to their first book, Manage Your Day-to-Day, this one revolves around tapping into your true potential. If you’re feeling stuck at work, this should inspire you to you get unstuck”
• Made in the USA: The Rise and Retreat of American Manufacturing: “Bill Gates says it better than I would, Smil “brings remarkable insight to every topic he examines, combining his vast knowledge of science and energy, history and business to address some of the most pressing issues we face today.””
• The Manual of Ideas: The Proven Framework for Finding the Best Value Investments: “The Manual Of Ideas by John Mihaljevic This book offers a lot of investment strategies to navigate the world of investing and stands out as more signal than noise in a field dominated by noise.”
• Seeing What Others Don't: The Remarkable Ways We Gain Insights: ““Both scientifically sophisticated and fun to read, Seeing What Others Don’t shows that insight is not just a “eureka!” moment but a whole new way of understanding.” Klein is also the author of Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions”
• A Technique for Producing Ideas: “First presented to students in 1939, published in 1965, and now reissued for a new generation looking to jump-start their creative juices, this short guide details a five-step process for gathering information, stimulating imagination, and recombining old elements into dramatic new ideas”
• Pandolfini's Ultimate Guide to Chess: Basic to Advanced Strategies with America's Foremost Chess Teacher: “Bruce Pandolfini, America’s foremost chess teacher, offers a comprehensive course covering all aspects of the game, to improve your technique whether you are a newcomer or a longtime fan. What attracted me to Bruce’s book wasn’t learning about chess, but rather that he teaches thinking, not chess”
• Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman: “Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard expands on the history of the company as well as how his business philosophy has changed over time. I had no idea they almost went bankrupt a few times. (He summarizes the book pretty well in this hour long talk.)”
• The Art of Thinking Clearly: “Author Rolf Dobelli is an eye-opening look at human psychology and reasoning — essential reading for anyone who wants to avoid “cognitive errors” and make better choices in all aspects of their lives”
• Personal Development for Smart People: The Conscious Pursuit of Personal Growth: “Despite promises of ‘fast and easy’ results from slick marketers, real personal growth is neither fast ‘nor’ easy. The truth is that hard work, courage, and self-discipline are required to achieve meaningful results – results that are not attained by those who cling to the fantasy of achievement without effort.”
• The Crooked Timber of Humanity: Chapters in the History of Ideas: “Isaiah Berlin exposes the links between the ideas of the past and the social and political cataclysms of our own time: between the Platonic belief in absolute truth and the lure of authoritarianism; between the eighteenth-century reactionary ideologue Joseph de Maistre and twentieth-century Fascism; between the…”
• The Art of Worldly Wisdom: A Pocket Oracle: “(4.5 Stars) With aphorisms ranging from “find everyone’s weak spot” to “quit whilst fortune is smiling, as all good gamblers do,” this engrossing classic of the Spanish Golden Age offers pragmatic, hardheaded, and coldly- calculated advice on how to thrive in a cut-throat world”
• Fate of the States: The New Geography of American Prosperity: “Author Meredith Whitney points out that it wasn’t just consumers who binged on debt. So did state and local governments. The book is worth reading to better understand the position of a lot of major U.S. cities. Detroit is just the start and the ramifications are worth noting.”
• Autopilot: The Art and Science of Doing Nothing: “This is a book about being idle. No really. We’re bombarded with non-stop messages of increasing productivity, doing more, working harder — all with the aim to get an ever increasing amount of work done. This book is the opposite to all of that, a look at why we should actually get less done.”
• The Modern Utopian: Alternative Communities of the '60s and '70s: “A quirky and often interesting look at the alternative communities of the 60s and 70s. Receiving less attention than the drugs, sex, and rock and roll, they helped define the era.”
• Prosperous Friends: “Christine Schutt, whose prose has been compared to Emily Dickinson, examines the spectacle of love.”
• Getting Ahead: Three Steps to Take Your Career to the Next Level: “Not a typical book that I’d buy these days but the right person sent it to me and it has a foreword by Marshall Goldsmith so it was worth checking out. The book is essentially a guide for improving perception, increasing visibility, and exerting influence at work.”
• On Machiavelli: The Search for Glory: “Machiavelli is often misunderstood and more often taken out of context. Everyone has an opinion, yet few people have read The Prince or Discourses on Livy.”
• One Simple Idea: How Positive Thinking Reshaped Modern Life: “As a balance to The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking I thought I’d read this book, an exploration of the roots and methods of positive thinking. For better or worse, “positive thinking” has become the “unifying element” of the Western search for meaning.”
• The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays: “This book deals with answering the question: is it legitimate and necessary to wonder whether life has a meaning.”
• The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives: “A great book for me to read so soon after finishing Fooled By Randomness as they both approach the same subject from vastly different angles. Mlodinow’s book is a gentler, though not necessarily better, introduction than Taleb’s.”
• The Poverty of Historicism: “ This classic by the 20th-century philosopher Karl Popper is his refutation of the idea that history has some pre-determined outcome or inevitable destiny; that there are “laws of progress” or that history has an unavoidable outcome like anarchy, fascism, or capitalistic rule.”
• The Essential Blake: “Why Blake? Maybe it was because Steve Jobs was a huge William Blake fan. Or, maybe it was because of his background. Either way this served as a gentle introduction to Blake, who was considered a crank and madman by his contemporaries.”
• The Divine Comedy: Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso: “The Divine Comedy, by the poet Dante, is a masterpiece. Despite this common knowledge most people have never read the adventure story: “a journey into the mysteries of the afterlife, a pilgrimage through hell, purgatory, and paradise towards a final, face-to-face meeting with God.” At a broader level, the poem deals with themes of life most of us grapple with: what matters? how should we judge beh”
• What He's Poised to Do: Stories: “I came across this diverse and moving collection of ‘witty and haunting stories’ about love, infidelity, and the vanishing art of letter writing through a conversation at a bookstore. Upon the recommendation of the book-lover, I opened to a random page that read “She’s older.”
• Last Ape Standing: The Seven-Million-Year Story of How and Why We Survived: “The fascinating and somewhat counter-intuitive tale of how being born more prematurely than others, a uniquely long and rich childhood full of play actually helped us increase the odds of survival. While this isn’t as good as Song of the Dodo in terms of science writing, it’s up there”
• Lead with a Story: A Guide to Crafting Business Narratives That Captivate, Convince, and Inspire: “One thing I need to get better at is telling stories. “Experience is the best teacher,” writes Paul Smith, “a compelling story is close second.” Effective stories allow an audience to feel and see things for themselves.”
• Tempo: Timing, Tactics and Strategy in Narrative-Driven Decision-Making: “A lot of books talk about the what and how in decision-making. This book also talks about the when, where, and who, with when being the driving question the book seeks to explore. Tempo has three elements: rhythm, emotion, and energy. Usually we adapt to the tempo of our environment.”
• Focus: Use Different Ways of Seeing the World for Success and Influence: “Explores how our focus changes what we see and how we are influenced. While we have a tendency to be promotion-focused or prevention-focused, we can be fairly ambidextrous. When we’re promotion-focused, we’re focused on avoiding missed opportunities.”
• Breakpoint: Why the Web Will Implode, Search Will Be Obsolete, and Everything Else You Need to Know about Technology Is in Your Brain: “Good ideas, when taken too far, die under the weight of success. “[W]e often destroy our greatest innovations by the constant pursuit of growth.” The book is about identifying and understanding breakpoints. In an example, the author predicts Facebook will shrink under its own weight.”
• The Stoic Art of Living: Inner Resilience and Outer Results: “An interesting introduction to three stoic philosophers: Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. The book explores selected excerpts of their work and shows us how inner resilience leads to inner peace. In the words of the author, “The Stoics saw what we need.”
• Scaling Up Excellence: Getting to More Without Settling for Less: “I was fortunate enough to receive a pre-release copy of this book. While generally not a fan of books that promise “getting to more without settling for less,” two parts at the back of the book really made this worth reading for me. The first was the part on the premortem.”
• The Little Guide to Your Well-Read Life: “I read this as research for a project I’m working on. Mary Hart, a professor at Harvard Business School, summed the book up: “Perfect for all of us who can never get enough time with good books.”
• What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast: And Two Other Short Guides to Achieving More at Work and at Home: “A quick and entertaining look at how and why successful people use mornings as an engine towards getting things done”
• The Power of Communication: Skills to Build Trust, Inspire Loyalty, and Lead Effectively: “If you can’t communicate effectively you cannot lead. This is the best book I’ve read so far on the link between leadership and communication. Effective communication is hard. Ineffective communication begins with ‘What do we want to say?’ “That’s both selfish and self-indulgent,” according to the author.”
• How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character: “A book too interesting to skim. We’re raising kids to never fail so they can’t ever deal with adversity. We’re losing our toughness. More worrisome, we’re failing to teach them how to think and falsify our ideas. The chapter “How to think” is worth its weight in gold. I’ll have much more to say on this book”
• Resilience: Why Things Bounce Back: “We can’t avoid shocks–we can only become more robust and resilient. Antifragile is better but this book serves as a gentle overview of fragility”
• The Unwritten Laws of Engineering: “A lot of engineering and computer science people face problems in organizations. This is a list of generalizations, to which there are always exceptions, but if followed in general will ensure that you are not labelled as an organizational anarchist.”
• The Secret World of Sleep: The Surprising Science of the Mind at Rest: “After reading the article The Science of Sleep, one extremely well-read reader pointed me towards this book, which is the best book I’ve read on sleep yet.”
• The Optimism Bias: A Tour of the Irrationally Positive Brain: “At first, I thought I’d just skim this book. To my surprise I ended up reading it cover-to-cover.”
• F for Effort: More of the Very Best Totally Wrong Test Answers: “The hilarious sequel to F in Exams: The Very Best Totally Wrong Test Answers. While most of these students probably got zero for their answers, some of them are incredibly creative”
• The Big Payback: The History of the Business of Hip-Hop: “The book takes on the business journey of hip hop from the early 70s till about 2007. Along the way you find out some fascinating stories. Did you know MC Hammer was part of a Christian rap group?”
• The Quotable Kierkegaard: “You know that awkward moment when you find yourself reading the same thing Mike Tyson is reading at the same time? Yea, that. ‘Everyone loves philosophy until they get punched in the face.’”
• What Jefferson Read, Ike Watched, and Obama Tweeted: 200 Years of Popular Culture in the White House: “An informative look at how culture has affected presidents and how presidents have affected culture. Politics is divisive but culture brings us together. Presidents are consumers and creators of culture and, as with anything presidential, strategically wield this power for political advantage”
• Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much: “When something you need is scarce or not there (say time if you’re a busy person, money if you’re poor) it narrows what your mind can see. This has negative effects, such as amplifying cognitive biases. This, in turn, increases the odds of making poor decisions”
• Musonius Rufus: Lectures and Sayings: “Continuing my exploration of philosophy, Rufus was one of the “four great Roman Stoic philosophers,” the other three being Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, and Musonius’ pupil Epictetus. “Because Stoicism was, for Musonius, not merely a philosophy but a prescription for daily living, he has been called ‘the Roman Socrates.'””
• Parkinson's Law: Or the Pursuit of Progress: “I consider Parkinson the original Dilbert. “Parkinson’s Law states that ‘work expands to fill the time available’. While strenuously denied by management consultants, bureaucrats and efficiency experts, the law is borne out by disinterested observation of any organization.”
• Blood & Beauty: The Borgias: “Author Sarah Dunant has an exceptional talent for breathing life into history. From the jacket “Rooted in the brutal and corrupt world of 15th-century Italy, Blood & Beauty opens with Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia, clever and charismatic, buying his way to the Papal crown.”
• Yoga Wisdom at Work: Finding Sanity Off the Mat and On the Job: “Recommended by a friend, this helped put a few things into perspective. A gentle and practical introduction to a zen mindset”
• The 5 Elements of Effective Thinking: “This was a great read. I liked the first element the best, focus on deeply understanding basic ideas. (Summary)”
• The Climate Casino: Risk, Uncertainty, and Economics for a Warming World: “We’re rolling the dice according to economist William Nordhaus. There is still time of course to back out of this deal with the devil. I’m sure there are better books out there on the subject, but I’m largely unfamiliar with it, so this was a good starting point”
• Epistles, Volume I: Epistles 1-65: “After reading this I immediately ordered the others (66-92, and 93-124). The more Seneca I read, the more I wonder why I waited so long”
• Permanent Present Tense: The Unforgettable Life of the Amnesic Patient, H. M.: “Permanent Present Tense: The Unforgettable Life of the Amnesic Patient Henry Molaison, by Susan Corkin. This is an interesting look at how memory is related to identity. If we can’t hold on to experiences long enough to create narratives, then what sense of self do we have? The book is a tribute to Henry, who, without knowing it, completely transformed neuroscience.”
• Grow Regardless: Of Your Business' Size, Your Industry or the Economy... and Despite the Government!: “RECOMMENDED READING 2015: Grow Regardless: Of Your Business’s Size, Your Industry or the Economy… and Despite the Government!”
• When We Were Romans: “When We Were Romans, by Matthew Kneale. A great beach book.”
• 30 Lessons for Living: Tried and True Advice from the Wisest Americans: “30 Lessons for Living: Tried and True Advice from the Wisest Americans by Karl Pillemer. “To learn how to live without regret, persevere through hard times, find fulfillment, and age fearlessly and well, there is no one better to ask than the people who have done it themselves.””
• The Information Diet: A Case for Conscious Consumption: “The Information Diet: A Case for Conscious Consumption by Clay Johnson. “Just as we have grown morbidly obese on sugar, fat, and flour—so, too, have we become gluttons for texts, instant messages, emails, RSS feeds, downloads, videos, status updates, and tweets.””
• How to Get People to Do Stuff: Master the Art and Science of Persuasion and Motivation: “How to Get People to Do Stuff: Master the art and science of persuasion and motivation by Susan M. Weinschenk. Language Intelligence: Lessons on persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga by Joseph Romm.”
• Language Intelligence: Lessons on Persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga: “Language Intelligence: Lessons on persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga by Joseph Romm. This book aims to help us “become more persuasive, more memorable and harder to manipulate.””
• The Rational Imagination: How People Create Alternatives to Reality: “The Rational Imagination: How People Create Alternatives to Reality by Ruth Byrne. Explores one avenue of imagination, specfically, the creation of counterfactual alternatives to reality, and claims that imaginative thoughts are guided by the same principles that underlie rational thoughts.”
• La Seduction: How the French Play the Game of Life: “La Seduction: How the French Play the Game of Life, by Elaine Sciolino. “In english, ‘seduce’ has a negative and exclusively sexual feel; in French, the meaning is broader. The French use ‘seduce’ where the British and Americans mught use ‘charm’ or ‘attract’ or ‘engage’ or ‘entertain’. .. A grand seducteur … might refert o someone who never fails to persuade others to his point of view.”
• It's Not All About Me: The Top Ten Techniques for Building Quick Rapport with Anyone: “It’s Not All About Me: The Top Ten Techniques for Building Quick Rapport with Anyone, by Robin Dreeke. Excellent. Robin Dreeke is the lead instructor at the FBI’s Counterintelligence Training Center in all behavioral and interpersonal skills training. Here are ten techniques to build rapport with anyone.”
• Collected Maxims and Other Reflections: “La Rochefoucauld — Collected Maxims and Other Reflections, by François de La Rochefoucauld. Deceptively brief and easy to read, La Rochefoucauld’s shrewd, unflattering analyses of human behavior have influenced writers, thinkers, and public figures as various as Voltaire, Proust, de Gaulle, Nietzsche, and Conan Doyle. This is the fullest collection of La Rochefoucauld’s writings ever published in ”
• Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking: “Analogy is the core of all thinking. This one isn’t for the beach”
• The Great Inversion and the Future of the American City: “The Great Inversion and the Future of the American City by Alan Ehrenhalt. (Pair with Jane Jacobs’ The Death and Life of Great American Cities.)”
• The Plateau Effect: Getting from Stuck to Success: “The Plateau Effect: Getting from Stuck to Success, by Hugh Thompson and Bob Sullivan. I’m not entirely swayed by this book, but the parts on Angela Duckworth (pages 65-73), peak listening (183-185), and spaced repetition were pretty neat.”
• Manage Your Day-to-Day: Build Your Routine, Find Your Focus, and Sharpen Your Creative Mind: “A follow up to their first book, Manage Your Day-to-Day, this one revolves around tapping into your true potential. If you’re feeling stuck at work, this should inspire you to you get unstuck.”
• Once Upon a Number: The Hidden Mathematical Logic of Stories: “Once Upon A Number: The Hidden Mathematical Logic Of Stories, by John Allen Paulos.”
• The Tyranny of E-Mail: The Four-Thousand-Year Journey to Your Inbox: “RECOMMENDED READING 2015: The Tyranny of E-Mail: The Four-Thousand-Year Journey to Your Inbox”
• Pax Romana: War, Peace and Conquest in the Roman World: “ A comprehensive and engaging history of Roman peace, which was brought on not by words but dominance. Goldsworthy recounts the civil rebellions of the conquered, including why they broke out and how the Romans responded. Compelling throughout and offers many lessons of power”
• Management Lessons from Mayo Clinic: Inside One of the World's Most Admired Service Organizations: “The Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota is one of the most remarkable organizations in the world. It was founded around the time of the Civil War and is still considered one of the premier healthcare organizations in the United States, with a distinctly unique operating model.”
• Who's in Charge?: Free Will and the Science of the Brain: “This is a fascinating (and readable for the non expert) take on free will and the human mind by the cognitive neuroscientist Michael Gazzinaga, a pioneer in studying split-brain patients and the human mind.”
• The Psychology of Man's Possible Evolution: “These lectures, which were originally called Six Psychological Lectures, were first privately printed in the 1940s. Of the first run of 150 copies, none were sold. The essays were published once again after Ouspensky’s death, and unlike last time became a hit.”
• The Origin of Wealth: Evolution, Complexity, and the Radical Remaking of Economics: “Traditional economics has been upended again and again over the last fifty years. The latest incarnation is a strain called complexity economics. Pulling from physics, biology, and complexity theory, Eric Beinhocker describes a new and more robust framework to think about economics.”
• The Smith Tapes: Lost Interviews with Rock Stars & Icons 1969-1972: “I came across this book in the Harvard bookstore on a random browsing session. How I ended up in music, a section I typically avoid, is beyond me. The book is a compilation of transcribed interviews by Village Voice “Scenes” columnist, WPLJ FM radio host, and cult figure Howard Smith.”
• Unsubscribe: How to Kill Email Anxiety, Avoid Distractions, and Get Real Work Done: “Not the typical book you’d see on my list but Jocelyn Glei is always worth reading.”
• Henry Clay Frick: The Gospel of Greed: “A decent biography of one of history’s relatively unknown capitalists and member of the so called robber-barrons. Henry Clay Frick, a friend of the Mellons and for most of his life Carnegie, shunned publicity and left an enduring legacy of silence.”
• The Island of Knowledge: The Limits of Science and the Search for Meaning: “Imagine the sum of our knowledge as an Island in a vast and endless ocean. This is the Island of Knowledge. The coastline represents the boundary between the known and unknown. As we grow our understanding of the world, the Island grows and with it so does the shores of our ignorance.”
• Travels with Herodotus: “In the 1950s, renowned journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski finished university and became a foreign correspondent. He was hoping to see the world, and over the next few decades this was successful. Interestingly, he travelled the world with a copy of Herodotus’ Histories in tow.”
• Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble: “A fun read about Dan Lyons, who for 25 years was a magazine writer, until one day when he gets fired from Newsweek, lands at a startup with the value title of “marketing fellow.” The book is an insightful look at HubSpot’s culture as well as a trenchant analysis of the start-up world and the delta between those who…”
• The Happiness Trap: How to Stop Struggling and Start Living: “(unexpectedly life changing) The way most of us search for and attempt to hold onto fleeting moments of happiness ends up ensuring that we’re miserable. A great practical book on developing mindfulness, which is so important in many aspects of your life, including satisfaction.”
• Education of a Wandering Man: “ L’Amour is known as the the King of the Western. He wrote dozens of historically accurate Westerns that depicted life on the frontier, at a time when many frontier men and women and their kin were still alive.”
• Utopia Is Creepy: And Other Provocations: “Nicholas Carr has been on my must-read list since his book The Shallows drew me into the way he writes. Utopia is Creepy gathers a decade’s worth of posts and essays from Carr’s Blog (RoughType.com).”
• Life in Half a Second: How to Achieve Success Before It's Too Late: “Recommended to me by a friend, this is a great short book that I’ve been reading in Greece about achieving success and what that entails (code for what it means to live a meaningful life). Not your typical self-help book, the writing style is direct and clear”
• Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master's Insights on China, the United States, and the World: “If you’re not familiar with Lee Kuan Yew, he’s the “Father of Modern Singapore,” the man who took a small, poor island just north of the equator in Southeast Asia with GDP per capita of ~$500 in 1965 and turned it into a modern powerhouse with GDP per capita of over $70,000 as of 2014, with some of the lowest rates of…”
• The Grapes of Math: How Life Reflects Numbers and Numbers Reflect Life: “In a book the layman will understand, Alex Bellos takes us through a survey of the mathematical world from triangles, rotations, and power laws, to curves and calculus. Perhaps the most precious parts for me, however, were on the history of numbers and our early interactions with them”
• The Odyssey: “If you haven’t tackled reading Homer’s classic, 12,110-line epic poem, this new translation might provide the perfect reason to try. Astonishingly, since its origin nearly three millennia ago, Wilson is the first woman to translate The Odyssey into English.”
• An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments: “Perfect summer reading for adults and kids alike. One friend of mine has created a family game where they all try to spot the reasoning flaws of others. The person with the most points at the end of the week gets to pick where they go for dinner. I have a suspicion his kids will turn out to be politicians or lawyers”
• Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise: “Anders Ericsson has made a living studying the peak performers — chess champions, violin virtuosos, star athletes, and memory mavens. His findings have been interpreted by many over the years, including by Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers.”
• The Seven Sins of Memory: How the Mind Forgets and Remembers: “I found this in the bibliography of Judith Rich Harris’ No Two Alike. Schacter is a psychology professor at Harvard who runs the Schacter Memory Lab.”
• Talk Lean: Shorter Meetings. Quicker Results. Better Relations.: “This book is actually full of useful tips on listening better, being candid and courteous, and learning what derails meetings, conversations, and relationships with people at work. Don’t worry. It’s not about leaving things unsaid that might be displeasing for other people.”
• The Evolution of Money: “An illuminating overview of money, beginning in Mesopotamia and the development of coin money in early Greece and Rome and continuing through to today’s digital currencies like bitcoin. I loved the historical overview but hesitate to believe this book will help us determine money’s next transformative role”
• Windows on the World Complete Wine Course: “ This was research for a podcast I just recorded with Veronique Rivest, one of the best sommeliers in the world. During the interview, which should be posted in the next few weeks, she recommends The World Atlas of Wine, which I just picked up.”
• The Burden of Office: Agamemnon and Other Losers: “ Tussman was a professor at Cal Berkeley in the ’60s and ’70s, and in this book does some very idiosyncratic retelling of a few classic stories: Antigone, the Odyssey, King Lear, and parts of the Bible among them.”
• Fluent in 3 Months: How Anyone at Any Age Can Learn to Speak Any Language from Anywhere in the World: “Apt because I’m rapidly trying to learn French. The author, Benny Lewis, speaks over ten languages that he taught himself. While the book offers a blueprint for hacking learning a language and is full of useful tips, not all of them are practical”
• The Pyramid Principle: Logic in Writing and Thinking: “The international bestseller on how to produce crisp, clear, compelling writing. This was recommended by a participant at one of our Think Week events. The book is phenomenal”
• The Buffett Essays Symposium: A 20th Anniversary Annotated Transcript: “A (previously unseen) transcript of a 1996 symposium held in New York with the likes of Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger, and Bill Ackman.”
• Steal the Show: From Speeches to Job Interviews to Deal-Closing Pitches, How to Guarantee a Standing Ovation for All the Performances in Your Life: “When you’re required to persuade, inform, or even motivate others, you’re required to play a role. If you want to play that role better, you should learn how to prepare for the moments. My copy is loaded with highlights”
• Keto Clarity: Your Definitive Guide to the Benefits of a Low-Carb, High-Fat Diet: “Keto Clarity: Your Definitive Guide to the Benefits of a Low-Carb, High-Fat Diet (A good place to get started if you want to know more.)”
• The Ketogenic Cookbook: Nutritious Low-Carb, High-Fat Paleo Meals to Heal Your Body: “The Ketogenic Cookbook: Nutritious Low-Carb, High-Fat Paleo Meals to Heal Your Body (This has some amazing recipes.) Quick & Easy Ketogenic Cooking: Meal Plans and Time Saving Paleo Recipes to Inspire Health and Shed Weight (Again a few of these hit it right out of the park for me.)”
• Quick & Easy Ketogenic Cooking: Meal Plans and Time Saving Paleo Recipes to Inspire Health and Shed Weight: “Quick & Easy Ketogenic Cooking: Meal Plans and Time Saving Paleo Recipes to Inspire Health and Shed Weight (Again a few of these hit it right out of the park for me.)”
• Well Fed: Paleo Recipes for People Who Love to Eat: “RECOMMENDED READING 2016: Well Fed: Paleo Recipes for People Who Love to Eat”
• Against All Grain: Delectable Paleo Recipes to Eat Well & Feel Great: “(Danielle’s other books were must orders after this one: See Celebrations and Danielle Walker’s Against All Grain: Meals Made Simple: Gluten-Free, Dairy-Free, and Paleo Recipes to Make Anytime)”
• From Brain to Mind: Using Neuroscience to Guide Change in Education: “James Zull explains why action is the key to learning.”
• The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher: “Another shorter book this week – this one by the biologist Lewis Thomas, who died in 1993. Lives of a Cell is one of three collections of his essays written for the New England Journal of Medicine in the ’60s and ’70s (another being The Medusa and the Snail).”
• A Powerful Mind: The Self-Education of George Washington: “What a cool book idea by Adrienne Harrison. There are a zillion biographies of GW out there, with Chernow’s getting a lot of praise recently. But Harrison narrows in on Washington’s self-didactic nature. Why did he read so much? How did he educate himself? Any self-motivated learner is probably going to enjoy this.”
• Rise to Greatness: The History of Canada from the Vikings to the Present: “Not up on Canadian history? Here is a one stop shop that covers very well the American/British/French/Native interconnections that existed (especially in the Northeastern United States) as well as the birth of two nations”
• Inferno: The World at War, 1939-1945: “Ever since reading the unforgettable essay by Lee Sandlin called Losing the War, I’ve become increasingly interested in WWII history. Such an extreme world event has great instructive power, and is simply very interesting to learn about. It wasn’t that long ago when you consider it.”
• The Closing Circle: Nature, Man, and Technology: “A fascinating book from the 1970s offering “the four basic and inescapable laws of ecology,” and thus building on our existing knowledge. Barry Commoner, the author, was a pioneer.”
• Necessary but Not Sufficient: “ The title of this book is a great mental model. Distinguishing the relationship between things at this level helps focus on what matters. Perhaps an easy example will help illuminate: swinging at a pitch in baseball is necessary to hit the ball, but not sufficient to do so.”
• Getting It Done: How to Lead When You're Not in Charge: “I picked up this book because I noticed it had blurbs on the back by Charlie Munger and Robert Cialdini. Hard to miss, right? The title previews the content of the book pretty well — the authors call it Lateral Leadership and discuss how it applies in a few different arenas.”
• The Prince of Medicine: Galen in the Roman Empire: “We owe a lot of modern medicine to Galen of Pergamum (A.D. 129- ca. 216) who began his career tending to wounded gladiators in Asia Minor and rose to one of a few who treated the family of Emperor Marcus Aurelius.”
• The Secret Lives of Color: “A fascinating book on the history of colors. The stories of colors are part history, part science, and do a fair bit to illuminate the human condition. The drive to create and replicate colors is also a chronicle of commerce, religion, art and social values.”
• Economics for Humans: “This book desires to update the study of Economics. It argues that the purely mathematical approach to the field has created artificial constructs that are ultimately undermining economic development.”
• The General vs. the President: MacArthur and Truman at the Brink of Nuclear War: “This book uncovers the relationship between General MacArthur and President Harry Truman in the aftermath of World War II. It’s rare for a military book to not only be this page-turning but also to so brilliantly call to our attention the timeless lessons we can use in our daily lives”
• You Play the Girl: On Playboy Bunnies, Stepford Wives, Train Wrecks, & Other Mixed Messages: “A smart collection of essays exploring how our culture shapes women. While the book explores the stories we’re told about who women are supposed to be, how they are supposed to act, and what they should look like there is a broader point. Culture influences our thinking on who we are and who we are meant to be”
• How to Read Wittgenstein: “How to Read Wittgenstein by Ray Monk — An excellent entrance into the philosopher’s works. This book is very much a tool for understanding, rather than a biography or a description of his philosophy. Not the easiest philosopher, one sometimes does question the value of Wittgenstein in the development of philosophical thought. Monk’s approach is balanced and thoughtful, allowing readers to draw the”
• The Power Paradox: How We Gain and Lose Influence: “Dacher is a future guest on the Knowledge project so this was part of my research for the interview. The book explains some of the various ways that we gain and loses influence. It’s a non-traditional view of power.”
• Tomorrow Is Now: “This book is amazing and eerie. First to the amazing. ER had an incredible life. The changes she witnessed, the people she connected with, the causes she fought for – all of these gave her a unique and wise perspective. This comes across in the book as she discusses everything from economics to education.”
• The Quotable Darwin: “There is so much more to Darwin than The Origin of Species. Janet Browne does an excellent job picking out the signal from the noise. Darwin was a verbose writer and this book is an afternoon read with timeless insights on marriage, mankind, himself, and, of course, evolution”
• Capitalism, Democracy, and Ralph's Pretty Good Grocery: “I can’t for the life of me remember who recommended this book, and I’ve had it on my shelf for quite a while. But I recently picked it up, and oh man — I wish I had read it sooner. Let me explain the weird title and why this book is awesome.”
• Ubiquity: Why Catastrophes Happen: “I recently re-read Ubiquity to prepare for the Farnam Street Reading Group we have going on right now (we’re reading it together). The book tries to address a pretty useful question: How does a complex system tip into massive, consequential events?”
• Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley: “Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, which is considered the first science fiction novel. And some people know that Mary Wollstonecraft wrote the first philosophical work on the equality of women, and she is usually the only female philosopher included in the pre-modern Western canon.”
• A Fortunate Universe: Life in a Finely Tuned Cosmos: “You might never be able to answer the question “why are we here” but you won’t even come close without this book. It explains how far science has gone and analyzes how far science can go in explaining why our universe is the way it is, and what this means for the tiny speck that is humanity. Fascinating”
• The Hedgehog and the Fox: An Essay on Tolstoy's View of History: “Isaiah Berlin – You don’t need to have read War and Peace for this book to be interesting. In a short 80 pages, it explores two timeless questions: How does one find truth in history? And what do you do when what you observe doesn’t match what you believe?”
• George C. Marshall: Rubrics of Leadership: “Learning from history is so useful, but at times so difficult. One big reason is that so many important names, events, and thoughts get lost in the black hole of time. One name that seems to be lost on young people today is George C.”
• The Victorian City: Everyday Life in Dickens' London: “Fascinating. Some things you expect, like the attitudes towards women and the working poor. Other things are surprising, like how it was cheaper to eat on the road than at home, and the home was often a rented bed in a room shared with half a dozen strangers.”
• Thomas Sankara: An African Revolutionary: “Sankara was president of Burkina Faso from 1983-1987. This short account gives a good overview of both Sankara the man and the political situation that led to his rise.”
• Ice Age: “I first came across this short book many years ago when Charlie Munger called it the “best work of science exposition and history that I’ve read in many years!.” At the time, however, I didn’t appreciate the brilliance of John Gribbin or the significance of this work.”
• Wonderland: How Play Made the Modern World: “Wonderland: How Play Made the Modern World by Steven Johnson — Interesting, well-researched and entertaining to read. This book gives a whole new appreciation of how our drives shape our world; how our desire to be entertained helped to create many of our modern structures. Johnson provides a balanced account on the virtues and vices of play as he explores how this fundamental human desire has led”
• Dragon Lady: The Life and Legend of the Last Empress of China: “An interesting book that was very uncomfortable to read. Why? Because the author makes a well-argued and documented case for the inaccuracy of Western scholarship on this period in Chinese history.”
• Mobs, Messiahs, and Markets: Surviving the Public Spectacle in Finance and Politics: “A re-read from a few years ago. This book is chalk full of counterintuitive insights and explanations. Consider it an entertaining criticism of much conventional thinking and an in-depth look at human behavior”
• The Secret History of the Mongol Queens: How the Daughters of Genghis Khan Rescued His Empire: “This book was fascinating. It brought new characters into this part of history, revealing a complex tale of the ebbs and flows of the Mongol Empire. It offers, indirectly, a lot of interesting lessons on leadership and legacy. An informative read”
• The Mathematics of Love: Patterns, Proofs, and the Search for the Ultimate Equation: “Hannah Fry follows the arc of relationships from getting a date to staying married, revealing at each stage the mathematical proof for the ideal behavior (in terms of goal achievement). It is interesting, easy to read, and the author clearly sees as much beauty in math as she does in love”
• The Laws of Medicine: Field Notes from an Uncertain Science: “Siddhartha Mukherjee is an amazing writer (he’s also written The Gene, and The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, for which he won a Pulitzer Prize). In this short book, he explores whether medicine is a Science, and if so, what are its laws?”
• Four Queens: The Provençal Sisters Who Ruled Europe: “This book is a page turner. Goldstone chronicles the stories of four inauspicious sisters who each became Queens. Set amidst the drama of the 13th century, she brings to life the people and the times in which they lived with accessible and vivid detail.”
• Warnings: Finding Cassandras to Stop Catastrophes: “Cassandra, as myth has it, was a beautiful princess of Troy. She was cursed by the God Apollo with the ability to see impending doom and have no one pay attention to her warnings. Her people ridiculed her when she predicted the demise of Troy. She was right. Too right.”
• Problem Solved: A Powerful System for Making Complex Decisions with Confidence and Conviction: “This is not a book about doing the impossible, it is a book about a process for decision making that helps you make better decisions. In an immediate, action packed and complicated world, we are in need of a decision making processes that nudge us to do the work required to make a decision.”
• Storm in a Teacup: The Physics of Everyday Life: “Storm in a Teacup: The Physics of Everyday Life by Helen Czerski — An amazing book. The prose is so elegant that you don’t realize that you are knee-deep in the mathematical concepts that govern our world. Czerski does an incredible job of explaining physics in such a way that you come out of each chapter having actually learned something. Suddenly you can see science everywhere!”
• For All the Tea in China: How England Stole the World's Favorite Drink and Changed History: “For All the Tea in China by Sarah Rose — The tale of the first known corporate espionage in history — the theft of tea from China by the British East India Company. Prior to this, the Chinese had the monopoly on tea, an insanely popular drink worldwide. The British were tired of dealing with the capriciousness that came with such a monopoly, so they set out to steal what they needed to start tea p”
• Come as You Are: The Surprising New Science that Will Transform Your Sex Life: “An intelligent and human approach that merges Emily’s years of experience as a sex educator and the social side of sex with proper science until it dovetails into a fuller understanding of what sex can be to you as a person.”
• The Company of Strangers: A Natural History of Economic Life: “An interesting book that situates economics in a multi-disciplinary perspective on humanity. Drawing on a lot of biology, anthropology, and history, this book makes us understand the role of the economy in our life in a whole new way”
• The Ethics of Ambiguity: “The Ethics of Ambiguity by Simone de Beauvoir. An excellent exploration of what it means to be free. She defines the many constructs that man sets up in opposition to true freedom and provides an analysis of how to break these down. She also offers an insightful ethics on how to manage our freedom in order to support the freedom of others. There is much wisdom in this short book, and I appreciated”
• Perilous Interventions: The Security Council and the Politics of Chaos: “A must read book for anyone who makes decisions that examines the negative consequences that come with most interventions.”
• Operation Kronstadt: The Greatest True Tale of Espionage to Come Out of the Early Years of MI6: “A fascinating book following the stories of two men. Paul Dukes, a concert pianist and spy for England in 1919 St. Petersburg, and Gus Agar, the naval lieutenant MI6 sent to save him.”
• Cleopatra: A Life: “A well researched and evocatively written book that essentially tries to rescue Cleopatra from history. It succeeds by giving a portrayal of the woman as she might have been, which is unlike how she has been depicted throughout most of history. Illuminating”
• Early Greek Philosophy, Volume II: Beginnings and Early Ionian Thinkers, Part 1: “Man, between this and the Ricordi, I feel like I’ve moved my brain in the last few weeks. The section on Thales had me thinking a lot about time this week. No matter how ever present time may be, few of us really grasp the concept or its second and third order implications.”
• Maxims and Reflections (Ricordi): “Considered by many to be one of the major political writers of the Italian Renaissance, none of Francesco Guicciardini’s works were published during his lifetime. A child prodigy, Guicciardini developed a close friendship with Niccolò Machiavelli.”
• Seduced by Logic: Émilie Du Châtelet, Mary Somerville and the Newtonian Revolution: “The fascinating tale of Émilie du Châtelet, who defied the norms of the time and dedicated her life to pursuing her love of mathematics and Voltaire. Despite lacking easy access to academic training and the informal epicenters of intellectual life, she willed herself into a mathematician and trailblazer.”
• Wired to Care: How Companies Prosper When They Create Widespread Empathy: “Very interesting book based on the author’s first hand experiences consulting in large organizations. Supported by psychological theory, he explains how cultivating an empathetic approach in one’s business can lead to better sales and a happier, more productive work force”
• The Twenty-four Hour Mind: The Role of Sleep and Dreaming in Our Emotional Lives: “Leading sleep researcher Rosalind Cartwright unearths how much we’ve learned about sleep and shows just how much more remains undiscovered. It’s a fascinating look at what happens when we close our eyes every night — our minds truly are 24/7”
• The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World: “What an interesting book. I had never heard of Von Humboldt, and by the end I was surprised by this.”
• Genghis Khan and the Quest for God: How the World's Greatest Conqueror Gave Us Religious Freedom: “Genghis Khan lived at a time where Gods flourished and wars of lust and greed had taken a back seat to the bigger threat, religion motivated wars.”
• The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: “ This is a deeply impressive work. First published in 1979, Eisenstein was the first person to bring together a comprehensive look at the changes wrought by the printing press in Western Europe.”
• Life, Work, and Rebellion in the Coal Fields: The Southern West Virginia Miners, 1880-1922: “I liked this book because it dived right into the complexity of history and I learned a lot. It’s fascinating to read about the lives of others and be able to put those individuals into a larger context of social change.”
• Hello World: Being Human in the Age of Algorithms: “Exploring the good, bad, and ugly of an algorithmic world. Mathematician Hannah Fry shows us how human biases creep into code with fascinating stories and accessible explanations. After reading this book, you’ll think about algorithms and the world we live in differently”
• Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray: “This is really a book about how our belief in beauty has become a pursuit in and of itself crowding out scientific observation. Sabine Hossenfelder argues this is why we haven’t seen a major breakthrough in the foundations of physics for more than 40 years.”
• The Life of Frederick Douglass: A Graphic Narrative of a Slave's Journey from Bondage to Freedom: “This is a graphic novel that explores the incredible life of Frederick Douglas — his life as a young slave, his forbidden education, his eventual escape, and his influence throughout the civil war”
• The Machine That Changed the World: The Story of Lean Production: “This is the story of Toyota’s development of lean production in the car manufacturing business.”
• The Country Under My Skin: A Memoir of Love and War: “An unbelievable memoir. Gioconda Belli was born into an upper middle class family in Nicaragua, and ended up joining the Sandinista movement in the 70s in their efforts to overthrow the government.”
• The Rise of Andrew Jackson: Myth, Manipulation, and the Making of Modern Politics: “This book takes a look at Jackson’s rise to the presidency. The story includes archenemies (Henry Clay), a propaganda machine, and a slew of people who wanted him in power. Despite living in a time with different customs and perceptions, the 1828 election would eventually foreshadow the art of the negative campaign.”
• Mr. Nice Guy: “This book is about what happens when two people are totally honest about sex with one another. It gives you pause and makes you think. Here’s my take: Open and honest communication is very important up to a point.”
• We Need to Talk: How to Have Conversations That Matter: “I read this to prepare for my interview with public radio journalist Celeste Headlee. (In case you’re wondering, yes, it’s a bit unnerving having a conversation with someone who has conversations for a living.) The book deep dives into the conversations we have and offers research-backed approaches to improving them.”
• Kids Are Worth It!: Giving Your Child the Gift of Inner Discipline: “I read this book as research for an upcoming episode of The Knowledge Project with author Barbara Coloroso. It’s unlikely you could read this book and not walk away a better parent, partner, or colleague. The book is full of useful tools and scripts you can use with your kids today.”
• Dangerous Games: The Uses and Abuses of History: “This book examines the ways history has been appropriated to support or promote a particular narrative and points out the caution we must exercise when we look to the past in order to understand the present or predict the future.”
• Arrival of the Fittest: Solving Evolution's Greatest Puzzle: “Super interesting, this book explores not how natural selection acts on mutations, but how those mutations arrive in the first place. We seem to default to it being random, but apparently even Darwin himself used ‘random’ only as a placeholder for lack of anything more concrete to offer.”
• Evolution's Bite: A Story of Teeth, Diet, and Human Origins: “Honestly, I thought I was going to skim through this one, as I expected it to be a lot of molar measurements. But this is by far one of the most interesting and accessible books I have read on human evolution. It’s a total page turner.”
• Survival of the Prettiest: The Science of Beauty: “This book looks at beauty from an evolutionary perspective. The arguments for the role that beauty plays in our life are both fascinating and a bit discouraging. What was most interesting was the research that demonstrates that although beauty is hard to define specifically, we all know it when we see it”
• Astroball: The New Way to Win It All: “For those of you who already enjoy baseball, this is a no-brainer. Others are probably thinking baseball? “I can’t read a book about baseball.” Well … I’m not a diehard baseball fan, but I couldn’t put this book down.”
• Nature: An Economic History: “Although somewhat dense in terms of the biological evidence for his theories, this book nonetheless is a new lens on the biological world.”
• The Last Alchemist in Paris and Other Curious Tales from Chemistry: “and other curious tales from chemistry — This book is an accessible and engaging way to understand how chemistry has shaped our societies.”
• The Warrior Queens: “This book looks through history and examines the stories and legends of female rulers who commanded in battle. Fraser is gifted at peeling through the layers of fact, fiction, and myth, and engagingly demonstrates how our notion of history is shaped by both what happened and what we believed happened”
• The Age of Comfort: When Paris Discovered Casual—and the Modern Home Began: “An absolutely fascinating book that relates the development of comfort to social norms that I had mistaken for the human condition. It turns out that we didn’t always want privacy when we went to the bathroom!”
• Off the Clock: Feel Less Busy While Getting More Done: “adds to the growing roster of time management / stressed out books. I loved the discussion of unfilled time on the calendar.”
• More Than You Know: Finding Financial Wisdom in Unconventional Places: “A must read.”
• The 39 Clues: The Maze of Bones: “The kids and I listened to the audio version on our road trip to NYC last weekend. They couldn’t get enough. So much so that I had to have book two waiting for them when we got home.”
• Reading and Language Arts Worksheets Don't Grow Dendrites: 20 Literacy Strategies That Engage the Brain: “How’s this for a reading recommendation you won’t get anywhere else? My quest to reverse engineer learning and better understand the theoretical underpinnings to strategies I know increase retention and recall.”
• Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist: “A friend of mine met the author of this book, Kate Raworth, at TED this year. If you’re a person that thinks economics is broken but can’t really argue why it’s broken, this book will put words to your feelings. While Raworth sets out to reframe our understanding of economics, she ends up broadening our mind”
• The Science of Success: How Market-Based Management Built the World's Largest Private Company: “A business book with a section on mental models, yes please. Most of the models in this book relate to decision making and economics and give you insight into how to run a culture based company”
• Learn Better: Mastering the Skills for Success in Life, Business, and School: “Your future won’t be dictated by what you know today but rather by how fast you learn and adapt. While I read a lot on learning, most of it is incredibly dense.”
• The Opposable Mind: How Successful Leaders Win Through Integrative Thinking: “An insightful read on how successful people think about problems. The most insightful mechanism of which is eliminating the false duality of doing either this or that and creating a new reality, which Roger Martin, the author, calls integrative thinking.”
• Changing on the Job: Developing Leaders for a Complex World: “I hate the title of this book but love the content. The book tackles big questions like: How do we make sense of reality? How do we develop? How do we advance and get better? How do we understand our own growth or lack thereof? How do we understand reality?”
• The Perfect Bet: How Science and Math Are Taking the Luck Out of Gambling: “Before you walk into a Casino you should read this book. Investors will love the section on pari-mutuel betting. Gambling attracts a lot of incredibly intelligent people — like Richard Feynman, Claude Shannon, and Ed Thorp — to see if they can gain an edge over the house.”
• Fear City: New York's Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics: “A fascinating overview of New York’s fiscal crisis and the rise of austerity politics. More than a financial thriller, Kim Phillips-Fein gives you a front-row seat into how seemingly small steps lead to unforeseen outcomes.”
• A Beautiful, Terrible Thing: A Memoir of Marriage and Betrayal: “For anyone that’s ever dated psychopath, this incredibly powerful memoir will not only resonate but offer inspiration. The way the book was constructed is creative and engaging”
• America's Bank: The Epic Struggle to Create the Federal Reserve: “America’s Bank by Roger Lowenstein — A legacy of the Jeffersonian era of small traditions and small government, Lowenstein tells the story of the creation of the Federal Reserve. Before the reserve, financial panics, bank runs, money shortages, and depressions were common. By the early twentieth century, it had become apparent the banking system was ill equipped to handle the rapid development of ”
• Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers: “Engaging and thoughtful, this book explores the many uses cadavers have. Done with both respect and a quirky curiosity, the author tells a fascinating story about what can happen to our bodies after we die. Reading this also provokes a lot of questions about what is life, and what really matters.”
• Merchant Kings: When Companies Ruled the World, 1600-1900: “It’s not a part of history that many are fond of remembering, tied up as it is with exploitation and murder.”
• Great at Work: How Top Performers Do Less, Work Better, and Achieve More: “A lot of practical advice in here on how to focus your energy to do more. The section on constrictive conflict and meetings dovetails well with Ray Dailo’s notion of an idea meritocracy”
• The Berlin Wall: A World Divided, 1961-1989: “When the Berlin Wall went up on August 13, 1961, it divided all aspects of life, including parents from their children, and employees from their places of work. What started as a barbed wire fence grew into a complex, multi-layered structure that was designed to stop the flow of people, goods, and ideas.”
• How to Lie with Maps: “― We’ve written previously on the blog and in The Great Mental Models book about the map/territory divide. This book is a concrete explanation of how the representation of a thing can differ wildly from the thing itself.”
• The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams, and the Making of Modern China: “― This book describes the mid-19th century conflict between Great Britain and China and the reverberations that remain to this day.”
• No One Cares About Crazy People: My Family and the Heartbreak of Mental Illness in America: “My Family and the Heartbreak of Mental Illness in America — The history of how society treats those with mental health issues is often a shocking story.”
• How to Be an Epicurean: The Ancient Art of Living Well: “So much of ancient philosophy is timeless, but there is often a gap between the original ideas and modern life.”
• The Sorcerer's Apprentices: A Season in the Kitchen at Ferran Adrià's elBulli: “The former Spanish restaurant El Bulli was named the best in the world a record five times between 2002-2009. In 2009, author Lisa Abend went behind the scenes to reveal how it all worked. Abend was given unprecedented access to the restaurant and staff.”
• Islands in the Stream: “Like hiking off the beaten path, exploring Hemingway’s lesser known works can be pleasantly surprising. The first of Hemingway’s posthumously published novels (1970), Islands in the Stream was found by Hemingway’s widow after his death.”
• The Path of Least Resistance: Learning to Become the Creative Force in Your Own Life: “A deeply insightful book about how to create what you want in life by exploring the hidden structures. Once a structure exists in our lives, energy moves through that structure where there is less resistance. The book argues you are where you are today because of the (hidden) structures in your life.”
• Chop Wood Carry Water: How to Fall in Love with the Process of Becoming Great: “This short story is my favourite read so far in 2019 and perhaps the last few years. The book chronicles a young man on his quest to become a Samurai archer. The timeless ideas will have you looking at life with a new perspective and understanding how we (unintentionally) sabotage our own efforts”
• Ultralearning: Master Hard Skills, Outsmart the Competition, and Accelerate Your Career: “In an effort to learn, author Scott Young has taken on some remarkable projects including learning three other languages and the entire MIT computer science curriculum in under one year. More than simply chronicling those journeys and the subculture of ultralearners, the book offers a roadmap for learning”
• Elastic: Flexible Thinking in a Time of Change: “Super engaging book about one of the great capacities of the human brain: what the author calls ‘elastic thinking.’ The part of our brain that gives us imagination and the ability to respond to change with new and novel ideas is at the core of our evolution into the unique species that we are.”
• Learning from the Octopus: How Secrets from Nature Can Help Us Fight Terrorist Attacks, Natural Disasters, and Disease: “You know that feeling you get when you read something that’s so amazing you’re not sure you want to share it with people because it’s your own little secret? That’s how I felt with this. Here’s the blurb from Amazon.”
• Working: Researching, Interviewing, Writing: “Finally, a glimpse into the mind of the great biographer Robert Caro. Caro is prolific. His 1,336 page biography of Robert Moses, The Power Broker, was crowned one of the hundred greatest nonfiction books of the twentieth century by the Modern Library.”
• A Little History of the World: “I’m reading this book with the kids this summer on our vacation. While written in 1935, there are many things to like — even love. We choose the illustrated edition, which has pictures on nearly ever page because it helps keeps the kids interested and associate topics to images.”
• Mind Over Machine: The Power of Human Intuition and Expertise in the Era of the Computer: “A well-reasoned case that computer intelligence will always fall short of human intelligence. The most interesting part is the preface, which neatly sums up how human associative pattern matching works.”
• How to Build a Car: The Autobiography of the World's Greatest Formula 1 Designer: “If I told you who gave me this recommendation, you’d buy the book in a heartbeat. But I’m not going to do that. Newey is a genius, and this book goes to show you not only the power of operating as a part of a team but also the value of being able to think in more than one dimension.”
• Chernobyl 01:23:40: The Incredible True Story of the World's Worst Nuclear Disaster: “Understanding what happened at Chernobyl is about understanding the Soviet system. This book makes an excellent case that the story of Chernobyl is not a ‘bad guy’ narrative of the type we often tell. The accident was not a result of good people trapped by a few corrupt leaders.”
• Love Sense: The Revolutionary New Science of Romantic Relationships: “The follow up book to Hold Me Tight, which is the best relationship book I’ve ever read. As someone who spent time in couples therapy, I find Sue’s approach remarkable.”
• The Story of French: “This book is an interesting look at the evolution of a language. The authors explore French by taking it out of the confines of a nation, and in the process give a lot of food for thought about the interplay between geopolitics and language.”
• Trust and Reciprocity: Interdisciplinary Lessons for Experimental Research: “Trust is a key component to any relationship. Those who share it reap the benefits of compounding and velocity. Those who lack it design contracts, exploit loopholes, and go slower. Trust then in essential to moving quickly. This book is a window into how we decide to trust.”
• Adventures in Memory: The Science and Secrets of Remembering and Forgetting: “We pay a lot of attention to memory at FS, as remembering is a crucial component of learning. This book covers everything about memory, from its structure to the spectrum of its capabilities, from its role in our evolution to how it shapes our identity.”
• The Calculus of Friendship: What a Teacher and a Student Learned about Life while Corresponding about Math: “The subtitle of this book is ‘What a Teacher and a Student Learned about Life while Corresponding about Math.’ Intrigued by this, I gave it a go.”
• Insight: The Surprising Truth About How Others See Us, How We See Ourselves, and Why the Answers Matter More Than We Think: “With a title like that, I never would have picked up this book if a friend didn’t directly put it in my lap. A better title would have been Self-Awareness: Tiny Insights, Big Payoffs. While we feel like we know ourselves really well, we can always learn more. These tiny insights produce a remarkable payoff.”
• The 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love That Lasts: “Another book continuing our exploration of relationships and how we connect with the ones that matter to us most. While I’m skeptical, the idea behind the book is simple and worth thinking about. We fit into one of 5 categories for the way we like to be loved. Often this is how we express love to our partners.”
• The Great Wall: China Against the World, 1000 BC - AD 2000: “The premise of this book is that to understand The Great Wall is to understand China. The author does an excellent job tracing the history of the structure and relating it to the political and cultural changes concurrently happening in country.”
• Retail Disruptors: The Spectacular Rise and Impact of the Hard Discounters: “This is another book that’s not for everyone but it’s one of the best business books I’ve read in a while. It’s a great read for anyone looking to better understand the retail industry and how it’s evolving.”
• The Mask of Command: “Through the lens of Alexander The Great, the Duke of Wellington, Ulysses S. Grant, and Adolf Hitler, this exceptional book that asks us to consider concepts like leadership, military leadership, and why people follow leaders. Keegan is an exceptional military historian”
• Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most: “I’ve been doing a lot of self reflection recently on how my conversations go astray and how my unspoken thoughts and feelings derail my best intentions in conversations. Difficult conversations was an eye opener for me, offering a foundation for improving all of my conversations.”
• Music as Alchemy: Journeys with Great Conductors and Their Orchestras: “Have you ever wondered how music gets created? That emergent property that is so much more than the sum of its parts? In this book the author dives deep into the experiences of 6 famous orchestras and their conductors to provide incredible insight into how a piece of music is realized.”
• What Smart Students Know: Maximum Grades, Optimum Learning, Minimum Time: “The first thing I did after recording a 4-hour interview with Adam Robinson (part 1 and 2) was order a book he casually mentioned in our conversation that he wrote about learning. Intelligence is often a series of learnable mental disciplines that few people have taught us.”
• Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men: “Perez examines how male bias often unintentionally creeps into the studies, systems, and algorithms used to collect data.”
• The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why: “An exceptional book about who survives and who doesn’t in a disaster.”
• The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter: “Henrich, professor of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University posits that humans dominate the earth because of our collective culture.”
• Colour Bar: The Triumph of Seretse Khama and His Nation: “This book tells the fascinating story about the disproportional impact of one interracial marriage on international relations and an entire country’s economic development.”
• Why Smart People Make Big Money Mistakes and How to Correct Them: Lessons from the Life-Changing Science of Behavioral Economics: “Gary Belsky and Thomas Gilovich reveal the psychological forces — the patterns of thinking and decision making — behind seemingly irrational behavior.”
• Identity Economics: How Our Identities Shape Our Work, Wages, and Well-Being: “Monetary incentives are counter-productive in team environments that succeed in creating a culture of identity that fosters teamwork, where mission understanding and commitment are core to performance”
• Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism: “Akerlof and Shiller reassert the necessity of an active government role in economic policymaking by recovering the idea of animal spirits, a term John Maynard Keynes used to describe the gloom and despondence that led to the Great Depression and the changing psychology that accompanied recovery.”
• Rational Decisions: “A concise, accessible, and expert view on Bayesian decision making”
• Behavioral Economics and Its Applications: “In this volume, some of the world’s leading thinkers in behavioral economics and general economic theory make the case for a much greater use of behavioral ideas in six fields where these ideas have already proved useful but have not yet been fully incorporated–public economics, development, law and economics, health,…”
• Ulysses and the Sirens: Studies in Rationality and Irrationality: “Elster critiques the notion of rationality in the economist’s sense, as a faculty that is concerned with maximizing the satisfaction of agents’ present preferences. He contrasts this notion of locally maximizing rationality with what can be called globally maximizing rationality.”
• Behavioural Finance: “William Forbes lays out the fundamentals of behavioral finance”
• Beyond Greed and Fear: Understanding Behavioral Finance and the Psychology of Investing: “An entertaining, yet scholarly overview of the subject.”
• Economics and Psychology: A Promising New Cross-Disciplinary Field: “The essays in Economics and Psychology take a broad view of the interface between these two disciplines, going beyond the usual focus on “behavioral economics.” As documented in this volume, the influence of psychology on economics has been responsible for a view of human behavior that calls into question the…”
• Irrational Exuberance: “A cult-classic at the time it was written.”
• Morals and Markets: An Evolutionary Account of the Modern World: “Economist and evolutionary game theorist Daniel Friedman demonstrates that our moral codes and our market systems-while often in conflict-are really devices evolved to achieve similar ends, and that society functions best when morals and markets are in balance with each other”
• The Little Book of Behavioral Investing: How Not to Be Your Own Worst Enemy: “Will enable you to identify and eliminate behavioral traits that can hinder your investment endeavors and show you how to go about achieving superior returns in the process.”
• The Bounds of Reason: Game Theory and the Unification of the Behavioral Sciences: “Game theory alone cannot fully explain human behavior and should instead complement other key concepts championed by the behavioral disciplines. Herbert Gintis shows that just as game theory without broader social theory is merely technical bravado, so social theory without game theory is a handicapped enterprise”
• The Methodology of Experimental Economics: “This book provides the first comprehensive analysis and critical discussion of the methodology of experimental economics, written by a philosopher of science with expertise in the field”
• The Handbook of Experimental Economics: “…presents a comprehensive critical survey of the results and methods of laboratory experiments in economics”
• Thinking and Deciding: “has established itself as the required text and important reference work for students and scholars of human cognition and rationality”
• Choices, Values, and Frames: “…presents an empirical and theoretical challenge to classical utility theory, offering prospect theory as an alternative framework. Extensions and applications to diverse economic phenomena and to studies of consumer behavior are discussed.”
• Value Investing: Tools and Techniques for Intelligent Investment: “Value Investing: Tools and Techniques for Intelligent Investment — why everything you learnt at business school is wrong”
• Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises: “…an engaging and entertaining account of the way that mismanagement of money and credit has led to financial explosions over the centuries. Covering such topics as the history and anatomy of crises, speculative manias, and the lender of last resort, this book puts the turbulence of the financial world in perspective”
• Devil Take the Hindmost: A History of Financial Speculation: “Devil Take the Hindmost: A History of Financial Speculation — A must read.”
• Everything Is Obvious: *Once You Know the Answer: ““Every once in a while, a book comes along that forces us to re-examine what we know and how we know it. This is one of those books. And while it is not always pleasurable to realize the many ways in which we are wrong, it is useful to figure out the cases where our intuitions fail us.”—Dan Ariely”
• Priceless: The Myth of Fair Value (and How to Take Advantage of It): “Poundstone dives into the latest psychological findings to investigate how and why prices are allocated”
• Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious: “Wilson attempts to explain why there’s so much about ourselves that we fail to understand, which can lead to misdirected anger”
• Born Liars: Why We Can't Live Without Deceit: ““… a lively, engaging read that also makes a bold argument about the role of lying in our lives””
• Ulysses Unbound: Studies in Rationality, Precommitment, and Constraints: “This provocative book argues that, very often, people may benefit from being constrained in their options or from being ignorant”
• What Investors Really Want: Know What Drives Investor Behavior and Make Smarter Financial Decisions: ““We all share behavioral traits that are major roadblocks to intelligent financial decisions. Bottom line: if you really want to achieve investment success, understand yourself and eliminate or minimize these traits. This book will help you do exactly that.”—John C. Bogle”
• Prospect Theory: For Risk and Ambiguity: ““This masterful survey of major theories of choice and of their implications for measurement represents two decades of research and teaching by a flawless perfectionist. Wakker’s view of the field is scholarly, coherent and deeply personal.”—Daniel Kahneman”
• Utility of Gains and Losses: Measurement-Theoretical and Experimental Approaches: “…provides a penetrating analysis of the axioms underlying human choice theory and a thorough review of the evidence. Most importantly, he illustrates the process of decomposing theories into testable properties that become the building blocks for better theories.”
• The Darwin Economy: Liberty, Competition, and the Common Good: “Books Everyone Should Read on Psychology and Behavioral Economics … I wanted to choose books that these military leaders wouldn’t normally have come across in everyday life. Books they were unlikely to have read. Books that offered perspective. — The Darwin Economy: Liberty, Competition, and the Common Good by Robert H. Frank”
• The Folly of Fools: The Logic of Deceit and Self-Deception in Human Life: “Books Everyone Should Read on Psychology and Behavioral Economics … I wanted to choose books that these military leaders wouldn’t normally have come across in everyday life. Books they were unlikely to have read. Books that offered perspective. — The Folly of Fools: The Logic of Deceit and Self-Deception in Human Life by Robert Trivers”
• The Hour Between Dog and Wolf: Risk Taking, Gut Feelings and the Biology of Boom and Bust: “Books Everyone Should Read on Psychology and Behavioral Economics … I wanted to choose books that these military leaders wouldn’t normally have come across in everyday life. Books they were unlikely to have read. Books that offered perspective. — The Hour Between Dog and Wolf: Risk Taking, Gut Feelings and the Biology of Boom and Bust by John Coates”
• Passions Within Reason: The Strategic Role of the Emotions: “Books Everyone Should Read on Psychology and Behavioral Economics … I wanted to choose books that these military leaders wouldn’t normally have come across in everyday life. Books they were unlikely to have read. Books that offered perspective. — Passions Within Reason: The Strategic Role of the Emotions by Robert H. Frank”
• Introducing Evolutionary Psychology: “Books Everyone Should Read on Psychology and Behavioral Economics … I wanted to choose books that these military leaders wouldn’t normally have come across in everyday life. Books they were unlikely to have read. Books that offered perspective. — Introducing Evolutionary Psychology by Dylan Evans & Oscar Zarate”
• Games of Strategy: “Books Everyone Should Read on Psychology and Behavioral Economics … I wanted to choose books that these military leaders wouldn’t normally have come across in everyday life. Books they were unlikely to have read. Books that offered perspective. — Games of Strategy (Fourth Edition) by Avinash Dixit, Susan Skeath & David H. Reiley, Jr.”
• The Trial: “The tale of Josef K., a responsible bank officer who is suddenly and inexplicably arrested and must defend himself against a charge about which he can get no information. This is widely considered one of the great works of the twentieth century.”
• Fooling Houdini: Magicians, Mentalists, Math Geeks, and the Hidden Powers of the Mind: “From the back rooms of New York City’s century-old magic societies to cutting-edge psychology labs; three-card monte on Canal Street to glossy Las Vegas casinos; Fooling Houdini recounts Alex Stone’s quest to join the ranks of master magicians.”
• White Bread: A Social History of the Store-Bought Loaf: “White Bread teaches us that when Americans debate what one should eat, they are also wrestling with larger questions of race, class, immigration, and gender.”
• Notes on Democracy: “This is probably Mencken’s least well known (and most outrageously and politically incorrect) essay on democracy and its discontents. It’s not so much that we need to make the world safe for democracy. Mencken argues just the opposite — the world should be made safe from democracy.”
• How We Reason: “Good reasoning can lead to success; bad reasoning can lead to catastrophe. Yet, it’s not obvious how we reason, and why we make mistakes – so much of our mental life goes on outside our awareness. In recent years huge strides have been made into developing a scientific understanding of reasoning.”
• A Curious Man: The Strange and Brilliant Life of Robert "Believe It or Not!" Ripley: “As portrayed by acclaimed biographer Neal Thompson, Ripley’s life is the stuff of a classic American fairy tale. Buck-toothed and cursed by shyness, Ripley turned his sense of being an outsider into an appreciation for the strangeness of the world.”
• The Dao of Capital: Austrian Investing in a Distorted World: “Spitznagel presents the methodology of Austrian Investing, where one looks for positional advantage.”
• The (Mis)Behavior of Markets: A Fractal View of Financial Turbulence: “A critique of modern finance theories, which usually gets built on the underlying assumption that distributions are normal.”
• Why Stocks Go Up and Down: “This is a basics book on the fundamentals of equity and bond investing – financial statements, cash flows, etc. A good place to start on the nuts and bolts. If you’re looking to learn accounting also check out The Accounting Game: Basic Accounting Fresh from the Lemonade Stand, I’m serious.”
• Corporate Confidential: 50 Secrets Your Company Doesn't Want You to Know---and What to Do About Them: ““Your number one job is to keep your job,” Shapiro, a former human resources executive, writes in this informed and disillusioned take on the corporate life, so don’t ever “publicly complain, disagree or express a negative view,” take more than one week of vacation at a time, “volunteer,” or “tell anyone what you’re…”
• Power: Why Some People Have It and Others Don't: “Pfeffer claims that intelligence, performance, and likeability alone are not the key to moving up in an organization; instead, he asserts, self promotion, building relationships, cultivating a reputation for control and authority, and perfecting a powerful demeanor are vital drivers of advancement and success”
• What Got You Here Won't Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful: “Goldsmith, pinpoints 20 bad habits that stifle already successful careers as well as personal goals like succeeding in marriage or as a parent. Most are common behavioral problems, such as speaking when angry, which even the author is prone to do when dealing with a teenage daughter’s belly ring.”
• Managing with Power: Politics and Influence in Organizations: “The big problem facing managers and their organizations today is one of implementation – how to get things done in a timely and effective way.”
• Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy: “The Best Books on The Psychology Behind Human Decision Making and Irrationality … This is a great way to build your antilibrary. — Buyology by Martin Lindstrom”
• The Psychology of Judgment and Decision Making: “The Best Books on The Psychology Behind Human Decision Making and Irrationality … This is a great way to build your antilibrary. — The Psychology of Judgment and Decision Making by Scott Plous”
• Turning Numbers into Knowledge: Mastering the Art of Problem Solving: “The Best Books on The Psychology Behind Human Decision Making and Irrationality … This is a great way to build your antilibrary. — Turning Numbers into Knowledge: Mastering the Art of Problem Solving”
• You Are Not So Smart: Why You Have Too Many Friends on Facebook, Why Your Memory Is Mostly Fiction, and 46 Other Ways You're Deluding Yourself: “The Best Books on The Psychology Behind Human Decision Making and Irrationality … This is a great way to build your antilibrary. — You Are Not So Smart, David McRaney”
• The Science of Storytelling: Why Stories Make Us Human and How to Tell Them Better: “I'm really enjoying The Science of Storytelling by Will Storr.”
• A Crack in Creation: Gene Editing and the Unthinkable Power to Control Evolution: “Riveting. An insightful look at the future of gene editing. The book clearly identifies some of the moral and ethical debates we will have in the future. The first part is a fairly detailed explanation of how our bodies work and the technology we’ve created to edit DNA.”
• Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions: “Gary Klein explains the recognition-primed decision model.”
• Tiny Beautiful Things: “In a way Sugar’s advice columns — combined into the amazing collection Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar — represents an ad hoc memoir.”

Books written by Shane Parrish

• The Great Mental Models, Volume 1: General Thinking Concepts
• The Great Mental Models, Volume 2: Physics, Chemistry, and Biology
• The Great Mental Models, Volume 3: Systems and Mathematics
• The Great Mental Models, Volume 4: Economics and Art
• Clear Thinking: Turning Ordinary Moments into Extraordinary Results