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