Books I Recommend

Favourite Books

• Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

• Moral letters to Lucilius by Seneca

• Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl

• Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility by James P. Carse

• Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari

• The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt

• The Elephant in the Brain by Robin Hanson and Kevin Simler

• Behave by Robert Sapolsky

• Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini

• Poor Charlie's Almanack by Charles Munger

• Incerto by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

• Anything You Want by Derek Sivers

• Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson

• Zero to One by Peter Thiel

• The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking by Oliver Burkeman (my notes).

Other Recommendations

Biographies

• Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. Book by Ron Chernow

• Benjamin Franklin: An American Life by Walter Isaacson

• Talleyrand: Betrayer And Saviour Of France by Robin Harris

• The Autobiography of Charles Darwin by Charles Darwin

• Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! by Richard Feynman

• What I Learned Losing a Million Dollars by Jim Paul

• My Life in Advertising and Scientific Advertising by Claude C. Hopkins

• Sam Walton: Made in America by Sam Walton

• The Power Broker by Robert Caro

• Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike by Phil Knight

• Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story by Arnold Schwarzenegger

• Open by Andre Agassi

• Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick

• American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road by Nick Bilton

• Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou

Economics

• Wealth of Nations and The Theory of Moral Sentiments by Adam Smith

• That Which Is Seen and That Which Is Not Seen by Frédéric Bastiat

• Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay

• Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt

• What Has Government Done to Our Money? and Anatomy of the State by Murray Rothbard

• The Evolution of Cooperation by Robert Axelrod

• The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves by Matt Ridley

• The Art of Strategy: A Game Theorist's Guide to Success in Business and Life by Avinash K. Dixit and Barry J. Nalebuff

• Makers: The New Industrial Revolution by Chris Anderson

• Race Against The Machine by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee

Fantasy

• Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges

• The Way of Kings and Perfect State by Brandon Sanderson

• The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss

• The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch

• Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality by Eliezer Yudkowsky

• anything by Terry Pratchett

Graphic Novels

• Daytripper by Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá

• Fleep by Jason Shiga

• The Arrival by Shaun Tan

History

• The Lessons of History by Will Durant

• The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides

• Plutarch's Lives by Plutarch

• Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford

• The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World by Niall Ferguson

• The History of Money by Jack Weatherford

• Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber

• Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond

• How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World by Steven Johnson

• The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography by Simon Singh

Marketing

• The Ultimate Sales Machine: Turbocharge Your Business by Chet Holmes

• Stealth Marketing by Jay Abraham

• The Boron Letters Book by Gary Halbert

• Breakthrough Advertising by Eugene M. Schwartz

• The Ultimate Sales Letter: Attract New Customers. Boost Your Sales by Dan S. Kennedy

• The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing: Violate Them at Your Own Risk by Al Ries

• Ca$hvertising: How to Use More Than 100 Secrets of Ad-Agency Psychology to Make BIG MONEY Selling Anything to Anyone by

• Badass: Making Users Awesome by Kathy Sierra

• Traction: A Startup Guide to Getting Customers by Gabriel Weinberg

• Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products by Nir Eyal

• 80/20 Sales and Marketing: The Definitive Guide to Working Less and Making More by Perry Marshall

• SPIN Selling by Neil Rackham

Politics

• The Law by Frédéric Bastiat

• The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith

• Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media by Noam Chomsky

• The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt

• On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder

• Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed by James Scott

• Democracy in America Book by Alexis de Tocqueville

• Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business by Neil Postman

• The Social Contract by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Programming

• Professor Frisby's Mostly Adequate Guide to Functional Programming by Brian Lonsdorf (read online)

• You Don't Know JS series by Kyle Simpson (read online)

• JavaScript Allongé by Reginald Braithwaite (read online)

• Speaking JavaScript by Axel Rauschmayer (read online)

• Functional JavaScript by Michael Fogus

• The Principles of Object-Oriented JavaScript by Nicholas Zakas

• Ruby on Rails Tutorial: Learn Web Development with Rails by Michael Hartl (read online)

• Practical Object Oriented Design in Ruby by Sandi Metz

• 99 Bottles of OOP by Sandi Metz and Katrina Owen

• Eloquent Ruby by Russ Olsen

• The Well-Grounded Rubyist by David Black

• Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby by Why The Lucky Stiff (read online)

• Pro Git by Scott Chacon (read online)

• The Linux Command Line by William E. Shotts (read online)

• Don't Make Me Think!: a Common Sense Approach to Web Usability by Steve Krug

• But How Do It Know? - The Basic Principles of Computers for Everyone by J. Clark Scott

Psychology

• Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions by Dan Ariely

• Kluge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind by Gary Marcus

• Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion by Sam Harris

• The Art of Taking Action: Lessons from Japanese Psychology by Gregg Krech

• Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts by Carol Tavris

• Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert

• Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck

• The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do to Get More of It by Kelly McGonigal

Science

• The Feynman Lectures on Physics by Richard Feynman

• A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson

• Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, The Order of Time and Reality Is Not What It Seems Book by Carlo Rovelli Carlo Rovelli

• A Mind for Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science (Even If You Flunked Algebra) by Barbara Oakley

• The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World by David Deutsch

• Why We Believe in God(s): A Concise Guide to the Science of Faith by J. Anderson Thomson and Clare Aukofer

• The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins

• The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature by Matt Ridley

• Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction by Philip Tetlock

• Good and Real: Demystifying Paradoxes from Physics to Ethics by Gary Drescher

• How to Lie with Statistics by Darrell Huff

Science Fiction

• Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang

• The Player of Games by Iain Banks

• Foundation by Isaac Asimov

• The Futurological Congress by Stanisław Lem

• Paradyzja by Janusz Zajdel

• Replay by Ken Grimwood

• 1984 by George Orwell

• Little Brother by Cory Doctorow (free download)

Technology:

• Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution by Steven Levy

• Digital Gold: Bitcoin and the Inside Story of the Misfits and Millionaires Trying to Reinvent Money by Nathaniel Popper

• The Internet of Money by Andreas Antonopoulos

• The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads by Tim Wu

• The Innovator's Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book that Will Change the Way You Do Business by Clayton Christensen

• Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies by Nick Bostrom

• Clock of the Long Now: Time and Responsibility: The Ideas Behind the World's Slowest Computer by Stewart Brand

• Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think by Peter Diamandis

• Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence by Max Tegmark