Books

Generally, slavish scholarly pursuit isn’t very useful. That said, the book medium has lasted for over 4,000 years, and I think it’s still underrated how it can serve as a limitless tap into some of the best thinking our species has produced.

I’ve read less than half of these books. Books are dense and cheap, and my temperament to be slightly impatient with written content makes me a fan of the massive input style of learning.

I bolded books that I thought were especially great.

  • The Message
  • Conversations of Goethe
  • Poetry of Impermanence, Mindfulness, and Joy
  • The City in History
  • The Bhagavad Gita Comes Alive: A Radical Translation
  • On Writing
  • The Cairo Trilogy
  • Some great classic books about programming I read:
    • Code Complete
    • The Mythical Man-Month
    • The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master
  • The Socratic Method: A Practitioner’s Handbook
  • The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin
  • The Way to Wealth
  • Poor Richard’s Almanack
  • Generally enjoyed but did not finish these books on mathematics and problems:
    • How to Solve It: A New Aspect of Mathematical Method
    • Probability Theory the Logic of Science
    • Proofs: A Long-Form Mathematics Textbook
    • How to Solve It: A New Aspect of Mathematical Method
  • Moby-Dick
  • The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe
  • Disturbing The Universe
  • Robert Oppenheimer: A Life Inside the Center
  • The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe
  • Good picture books about interior design and color:
    • The Monocle Guide to Cosy Homes
    • The Monocle Travel Guide to San Francisco
    • The Monocle Guide to Better Living
    • Interaction of Color: 50th Anniversary Edition
  • The Glass Bead Game
  • Apprenticeship Patterns: Guidance for the Aspiring Software Craftsman
  • Art & Fear: Observations On the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking
  • History of technological progress:
    • The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe
    • Technics and Civilization
  • Zen Flesh, Zen Bones: A Collection of Zen and Pre-Zen Writings
  • Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Essential Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger
  • Some books on how to write well:
    • On Writing
    • Several Short Sentences About Writing
    • The Paris Review Interviews, II: Wisdom from the World’s Literary Masters
    • The Paris Review Interviews, I: 16 Celebrated Interviews
  • Eminent Economists: Their Life Philosophies
  • Software Architecture: The Hard Parts
  • Sex at Dusk: Lifting the Shiny Wrapping from Sex at Dawn
  • The Man from the Future
  • Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan
  • The Simple Path to Wealth
  • The Shallows
  • The Gospels
  • Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man
  • Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology
  • Benjamin Franklin
  • The New Atlantis
  • Old Masters and Young Geniuses: The Two Life Cycles of Artistic Creativity
  • Mycelium Running
  • Churchill
  • The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
  • Introduction to Information Retrieval
  • The Best Software Writing I
  • John Dalton and the Atom
  • A Deepness in the Sky
  • Introduction to Mineral Exploration
  • Frankenstein
  • The Myth of the Framework
  • Designing Data-Intensive Applications
  • The Visual Display of Quantitative Information
  • The New Rules of Lifting
  • Letters to a Young Contrarian
  • Hackers
  • High Growth Handbook
  • Hard Landing
  • The Republic of Plato
  • Reasons and Persons
  • The Fabric of Reality
  • A Moveable Feast
  • Advice for a Young Investigator
  • The Myth of the Machine
  • The Journalist and the Murderer
  • Foucault’s Pendulum
  • A Fire Upon the Deep
  • Angle of Repose
  • The Grasshopper: Games, Life, and Utopia
  • Mortality
  • Zhuangzi: The Complete Writings
  • The Book of Chuang Tzu
  • Thus Spoke Zarathustra
  • The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, and Social Rigidities
  • The Unbearable Lightness of Being
  • Mind of Napoleon
  • The Educated Mind: How Cognitive Tools Shape Our Understanding
  • Think on These Things
  • The Hunters
  • The Long Way
  • Nixon Agonistes
  • Men, Machines, and Modern Times
  • Bad Pharma
  • Striking Thoughts - Bruce Lee’s Wisdom for Daily Living
  • Genentech Oral History
  • Cypherpunks
  • Programming Interviews Exposed
  • The Right Stuff
  • The Slight Edge
  • Discovering, Inventing and Solving Problems at the Frontiers of Scientific Knowledge
  • How to Solve It
  • A Theory of Fun
  • The Clockwork Rocket
  • The Seven Pillars of Wisdom
  • The Arrival
  • What Got You Here Won’t Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful
  • The Wisdom of No Escape
  • Masters of Doom
  • Code Complete
  • Rick Steves Europe Through the Back Door 2018
  • But What If We’re Wrong?
  • A Sense of Where You Are: Bill Bradley at Princeton
  • A Mathematician’s Apology
  • On Bullshit
  • Barbarian Days
  • The Old Way
  • Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel
  • The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner
  • Whole Earth Catalog
  • Quantum Computing Since Democritus
  • Tender Is the Night
  • Age of Ambition
  • On Love and Barley: Haiku of Basho
  • Tulsa
  • Tao Te Ching
  • The Nude, a Study in Ideal Form
  • American Frugal Housewife
  • The Open Society and Its Enemies
  • Working in Public
  • The Great Depression: A Diary
  • Circe
  • Bhagavad Gita
  • Something Incredibly Wonderful Happens: An Intimate Biography of Frank Oppenheimer
  • The Pleasure of Finding Things Out
  • Structures: Or Why Things Don’t Fall Down
  • The Case against Education
  • The Principia: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy
  • The Uncensored Picture of Dorian Gray
  • Inward
  • Greek Lives
  • On the Move
  • The Dream Machine
  • The Making of Prince of Persia: Journals 1985-1993
  • Addison Wesley - Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering
  • The Art Spirit
  • The Count of Monte Cristo
  • The Endurance: Shackleton’s Legendary Antarctic Expedition
  • The Soul of a New Machine
  • Don Quixote
  • How to Fight a Hydra: Face Your Fears, Pursue Your Ambitions, and Become the Hero You Are Destined to Be
  • World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction
  • Get Together: How to build a community with your people
  • Staff Engineer: Leadership beyond the management track
  • Hyperion
  • Statistical Consequences of Fat Tails
  • Private Truths, Public Lies. The Social Consequences of Preference Falsification (1997, Harvard University Press)
  • The Blind Watchmaker
  • Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
  • Images of Organization
  • Moral Mazes: The World of Corporate Managers
  • The Inner Game of Tennis
  • Cryptography: An Introduction
  • Sparks of Genius: The 13 Thinking Tools of the World’s Most Creative People
  • The Vital Question: Why Is Life the Way It Is?
  • Endurance
  • Principles, Techniques, and Tools 2nd Edition
  • The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter
  • The Art of Multiprocessor Programming, 2nd Edition
  • Beyond Order
  • The Greatest Minds and Ideas of All Time
  • Memoirs of Hadrian
  • Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End
  • Bloodlands
  • The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers
  • Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World
  • Discourses on Livy (Oxford World’s Classics)
  • Brave New World
  • Human Anatomy and Physiology
  • Overcoming Unwanted Intrusive Thoughts: A CBT-Based Guide to Getting Over Frightening, Obsessive, or Disturbing Thoughts
  • Effective Python: 90 Specific Ways to Write Better Python, 2nd Edition
  • A Philosophy of Software Design
  • Buddhism without Beliefs
  • They Both Die at the End
  • How to Solve It (Princeton Science Library)
  • The Song of Achilles
  • The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist
  • Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future
  • Thinking in Bets
  • The Prince
  • Microeconomics: A Very Short Introduction
  • Economics in One Lesson
  • The Way to Love: The Last Meditations of Anthony de Mello
  • The Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral
  • Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery (2nd ed)
  • Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams (3rd Edition)
  • Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency
  • Don’t Think of an Elephant!: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate
  • Only the Paranoid Survive
  • Osho, Books I have Loved
  • Intermediate Microeconomics
  • Edison
  • Your Brain on Porn
  • Candide (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)
  • The Complete I Ching - 10th Anniversary Edition
  • The Boy Who Could Change the World
  • The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are
  • The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation
  • Where the Crawdads Sing
  • Probability Theory the Logic of Science
  • The Phoenix Project
  • The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement
  • An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management
  • Practical Vim, Second Edition
  • What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
  • Ruhlman’s Twenty: 20 Techniques, 200 Recipes, a Cook’s Manifesto
  • Starting Strength: Basic Barbell Training
  • The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness
  • The Odyssey
  • Flatland
  • Six Easy Pieces
  • Either/Or: A Fragment of Life
  • The Red Book: A Reader’s Edition
  • Can’t Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds
  • Counsels and Maxims
  • Invisible Cities
  • The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion
  • The War of Art
  • The Wandering Earth
  • The Dream of Reason
  • Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One’s Reason and of Seeking Truth in the Sciences
  • Essays and Aphorisms
  • Principles
  • Emerson: The Mind on Fire
  • Children of Time
  • Siddhartha
  • Science, Strategy and War: The strategic theory of John Boyd
  • Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality
  • How to Change Your Mind
  • René Girard’s Mimetic Theory (Studies in Violence, Mimesis, & Culture)
  • Autobiography of a Yogi (The Complete Edition)
  • Envisioning Information
  • Inner Ring
  • The Beginning of Infinity
  • Hell Yeah or No
  • The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind
  • Metaphors We Live By
  • Notes on the Synthesis of Form
  • A Pattern Language
  • alphabet (New Directions)
  • The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the fall of New York
  • The Drama of the Gifted Child
  • Managing Oneself
  • Becoming a Technical Leader: An Organic Problem-Solving Approach
  • We Learn Nothing
  • Winning Through Intimidation
  • Gratitude
  • The Left Hand Of Darkness
  • Algorithms: Part I
  • Blood Meridian
  • Narcissus and Goldmund
  • Moral Letters to Lucilius / Letters from a Stoic (Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium)
  • Snow Crash
  • Small Fry
  • The Personal MBA
  • Too Like the Lightning (Terra Ignota)
  • What You Can Change … And What You Can’t
  • The Sovereign Individual: Mastering the Transition to the Information Age
  • The Lessons of History
  • Algorithms to Live By
  • The Art of Risk: The New Science of Courage, Caution, and Chance
  • Tempo: timing, tactics and strategy in narrative-driven decision-making
  • Hsin-Hsin Ming
  • Walden and Civil Disobedience
  • Good Strategy/Bad Strategy
  • The Girard Reader
  • The Boron Letters
  • Golden Son
  • Be Slightly Evil: A Playbook for Sociopaths
  • I See Satan Fall Like Lightning
  • The Iliad (The Stephen Mitchell Translation)
  • Red Rising
  • The Kybalion
  • The Art of Communicating
  • How to Say It, Third Edition: Choice Words, Phrases, Sentences, and Paragraphs for Every Situation
  • Mind Gym: An Athlete’s Guide to Inner Excellence
  • Make It Stick
  • Mastery
  • Turning the Mind Into an Ally
  • The Craft of Power
  • Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (Incerto)
  • The Daily Stoic
  • The Ride of a Lifetime
  • Business Adventures
  • Mathematics: A Very Short Introduction
  • The Order of Time
  • The Theoretical Minimum: What You Need to Know to Start Doing Physics
  • Doublespeak (Rebel Reads)
  • Dune: The Gateway Collection
  • Dune Messiah
  • Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind
  • Miyamoto Musashi: His Life and Writings (Book of Five Rings)
  • Wind, Sand and Stars
  • The Way of the Superior Man
  • Live Your Truth
  • Thank You for Arguing (Revised and Updated)
  • The Elements of Eloquence: How to Turn the Perfect English Phrase
  • The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn
  • Labyrinths
  • When Things Fall Apart
  • Introduction to Algorithms, Third Edition
  • Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk
  • A Beautiful Question
  • The Art of Worldly Wisdom
  • Spiritual Enlightenment - The Damnedest Thing
  • Practical Programming for Strength Training
  • The Longing for Less
  • The Most Important Thing
  • Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
  • “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!”: Adventures of a Curious Character
  • The power of myth
  • Essentialism
  • Stubborn Attachments: A Vision for a Society of Free, Prosperous, and Responsible Individuals
  • Falling into Grace Insights on the End of Suffering
  • Epictetus: Discourses, Fragments, Handbook
  • Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life
  • Focusing
  • How to Live on 24 Hours a Day
  • Seeking Wisdom: From Darwin To Munger
  • Poor Charlie’s Almanack
  • A Win Without Pitching Manifesto
  • The Prophet
  • Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart: Thirty True Things You Need to Know Now
  • Curious: The Desire to Know and Why Your Future Depends On It
  • To Be Taught, If Fortunate
  • The Great Mental Models: General Thinking Concepts
  • Finite and Infinite Games
  • Atomic Habits: Tiny Changes, Remarkable Results
  • To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others
  • Digital Minimalism
  • Deep Work
  • Stillness Is the Key
  • Ego Is the Enemy
  • How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life
  • Total Freedom: The Essential Krishnamurti
  • The 50th Law
  • The Art of War
  • Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual
  • Fragments
  • 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos
  • Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre
  • The Science of Storytelling: Why Stories Make Us Human, and How to Tell Them Better
  • Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims
  • How To Win Friends and Influence People
  • Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World
  • This Life
  • The Art of Statistics: Learning From Data
  • The Most Important Thing Illuminated: Uncommon Sense for the Thoughtful Investor
  • A Piece of Cake
  • Why Can’t We Sleep?: Understanding Our Sleeping and Sleepless Minds
  • The Last Wish (The Witcher Book 1)
  • The Think and Grow Rich Success Journal
  • Seven Surrenders
  • The Bed of Procrustes
  • Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love
  • The Practicing Stoic
  • Reality Is Not What It Seems
  • Emotional Intelligence
  • Thinking in Systems
  • Difficult Conversations
  • So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love
  • Lovely science fiction:
    • Tomorrow Factory
    • The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories
    • Stories of Your Life and Others
  • Man’s Search for Meaning
  • Enchiridion (Dover Thrift Editions)
  • A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy
  • Seven Brief Lessons on Physics
  • The Laws of Human Nature
  • Release
  • Less
  • When Breath Becomes Air
  • The Fall
  • The Three-Body Problem
  • Consciousness as a Scientific Concept: A Philosophy of Science Perspective
  • Exit West
  • Anything Is Possible
  • Lincoln in the Bardo
  • Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking
  • 5/3/1
  • Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
  • Lying
  • Fooled by Randomness
  • Blood, Sweat, and Pixels
  • The Obstacle Is the Way
  • Dandelion Wine
  • The 48 Laws of Power
  • Tribe
  • Wool
  • A Closed and Common Orbit
  • On The Shortness of Life - Lucius Seneca
  • Wuthering Heights
  • How to Be a Stoic
  • The Power of Meaning: Crafting a Life That Matters
  • The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
  • Ukulele for Dummies
  • All the Birds in the Sky
  • Soft Skills: The Software Developer’s Life Manual
  • Start with No
  • On Writing Well
  • Meditations