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
Books
Book Notes
Last modified 3yr ago