Bookshelf

Below is a list of books that I’ve read in the last couple of years. Some of them link to my notes and highlights. Every year’s list is roughly ordered by how much I liked the books. My all time favorites are bolded.

2023

• In Search of Lost Time (Vol 4-7) by Marcel Proust
• The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes
• The Qualcomm Equation by Dave Mock
• Moby Dick by Herman Melville
• Endure by Alex Hutchinson
• Chip War by Chris Miller
• The Power Law by Sebastian Mallaby
• More Money Than God by Sebastian Mallaby
• The Outsiders by William N. Thorndike Jr.
• How to Read and Why by Harold Bloom
• Septology by Jon Fosse
• Destined for War by Graham Allison
• Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson
• Am I Being Too Subtle by Sam Zell
• Make Something Wonderful by Steve Jobs
• [re-read] Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Taleb
• [re-read] The Black Swan by Nassim Taleb
• The History of The Future by Blake J. Harris
• Invention by James Dyson
• Jony Ive by Leander Kahney
• [re-read] Becoming Steve Jobs by Brent Schlender & Rick Tetzeli
• King Lear by William Shakespeare
• The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy
• The Wisdom of Life by Arthur Schopenhauer
• Shop Class as Soulcraft by Matthew B. Crawford
• Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare

2022

• Dominion by Tom Holland
• Churchill by Andrew Roberts
• Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (Russian)
• War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (Russian)
• In Search of Lost Time (Vol 1-3) by Marcel Proust
• Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
• Kissinger (Volume 1) by Niall Ferguson
• Powerhouse: The Untold Story of Hollywood’s CAA by James Andrew Miller
• The Machiavellians by James Burnham
• The Founders by Jimmy Soni
• Scale by Geoffrey West
• The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
• Story of Civilization (Volume 1) by Will & Ariel Durant
• The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt
• Amazon Unbound by Brad Stone
• The Decadent Society by Ross Douthat
• Talent by Tyler Cowen & Daniel Gross
• In Praise of Shadows by Junichiro Tanizaki
• Owning Your Own Shadow by Robert Johnson
• Wild Problems by Russ Roberts
• A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

2021

• Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
• Napoleon: A Life by Andrew Roberts
• The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement by Eliyahu M. Goldratt
• House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance by Ron Chernow
• The Timeless Way of Building by Christopher Alexander
• A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction by Christopher Alexander
• Working backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon by Colin Bryar and Bill Carr
• The Making of Prince of Persia: Journals 1985-1993 by Jordan Mechner

2020

• The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World by David Deutsch
• Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson by Robert A. Caro
• The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson by Robert A. Caro
• Means of Ascent: The Years of Lyndon Johnson by Robert A. Caro
• Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years of Lockheed by Ben R. Rich
• The Art of Learning by Joshua Waitzkin
• The Wright Brothers by David McCullough
• Faraday, Maxwell, and the Electromagnetic Field: How Two Men Revolutionized Physics by Nancy Forbes, Basil Mahon
• (reread) Mindstorms: Children, Computers, And Powerful Ideas by Seymour A. Papert
• (reread) Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig
• The Case Against Education by Bryan Caplan
• How to Solve It: A New Aspect of Mathematical Method by George Polya
• All I Want To Know Is Where I’m Going To Die So I’ll Never Go There By Peter Bevelin
• Poor Charlie’s Almanack by Charlie Munger
• The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer by Neal Stephenson
• The Ride of a Lifetime by Robert Iger
• Disunited Nations by Peter Zeihan
• A Mathematician’s Apology by G.H. Hardy
• Kochland: The Secret History of Koch Industries and Corporate Power in America by Christopher Leonard
• Saudi, Inc.: The Arabian Kingdom’s Pursuit of Profit and Power by Ellen R. Wald
• How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read by Pierre Bayard
• The Children’s Machine: Rethinking School In The Age Of The Computer by Seymour A. Papert
• 7 Powers: The Foundations of Business Strategy by Hamilton W. Helmer
• Thinking in Systems: A Primer by Donella Meadows
• No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention by Erin Meyer and Reed Hastings
• Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success Book by Phil Jackson
• That Will Never Work: The Birth of Netflix and the Amazing Life of an Idea by Marc Randolph
• The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin by Masha Gessen
• Softwar: An Intimate Portrait of Larry Ellison and Oracle by Larry Ellison and Matthew Symonds
• Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life by Rory Sutherland
• Unstoppable: My Life So Far by Maria Sharapova

2019

• Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age by Michael A. Hiltzik
• The Path to Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson I by Robert A. Caro
• Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War by Robert Coram
• From Third World to First: The Singapore Story - 1965-2000 by Lee Kuan Yew
• The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert A. Caro
• (reread) Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn by Richard W. Hamming
• Tuxedo Park: A Wall Street Tycoon and The Secret Palace of Science That Changed The Course of World War 2 by Jennet Conant
• (reread) Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder by Nassim Taleb
• Working by Robart A. Caro
• (reread) Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel and Blake Masters
• The Courage to Be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi & Fumitake Koga
• The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World’s Greatest Philosophers by Will Durant
• A Nietzsche Reader by Friedrich Nietzsche
• Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. by Ron Chernow
• Isaac Newton by James Gleick
• A Crack in Creation: Gene Editing and the Unthinkable Power to Control Evolution by Jennifer A. Doudna & Samuel H. Sternberg
• The Girard Reader by Rene Girard & James G. Williams
• Creative Selection: Inside Apple’s Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs by Ken Kocienda
• Genentech: The Beginnings Of Biotech by Sally Smith Hughes
• What You Do Is Who You Are: How to Create Your Business Culture by Ben Horowitz
• Sam Walton: Made In America by Sam Walton
• The Accidental Superpower by Peter Zeihan
• The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of The Structure of DNA by James D. Watson
• Collaborative Circles: Friendship Dynamics and Creative Work by Michael P. Farrell
• Organizing Genius: The Secrets of Creative Collaboration by Warren Bennis and Patricia Ward Biederman
• Education in a Time Between Worlds: Essays on the Future of Schools, Technology, and Society by Zachary Stein
• Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire by James Wallace & Jim Erickson
• Deschooling Society by Ivan Illich
• Instead of Education by John Holt
• The New Evolution Diet by Arthur De Vany
• Troublemakers: Silicon Valley’s Coming of Age by Leslie Berlin
• Benjamin Franklin: An American Life by Walter Isaacson
• The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution by Gregory Zuckerman
• Peak Performance: Elevate Your Game, Avoid Burnout, and Thrive with the New Science of Success by Brad Stulberg & Steve Magness
• Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein

2018

• Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture by David Kushner
• Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life by Nassim Taleb
• The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu
• Stubborn Attachments: A Vision for a Society of Free, Prosperous, and Responsible Individuals by Tyler Cowen
• The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires by Tim Wu
• Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams by Matthew Walker PhD
• The Inner Game of Tennis: The Classic Guide to the Mental Side of Peak Performance by W. Timothy Gallwey
• Brief Answers to the Big Questions by Stephen Hawking
• The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life by Kevin Simler & Robin Hanson
• Death’s End (Remembrance of Earth’s Past) by Cixin Liu
• Who Is Michael Ovitz? by Michael Ovitz
• 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos by Jordan B. Peterson
• The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World by Niall Ferguson
• Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah
• Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Taleb
• An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood by Neal Gabler
• Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win by Jocko Willink & Leif Babin
• High Growth Handbook by Elad Gil
• Measure What Matters by John Doerr
• Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue by Ryan Holiday
• The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking by Saifedean Ammous
• Digital Gold: Bitcoin and the Inside Story of the Misfits and Millionaires Trying to Reinvent Money by Nathaniel Popper
• A Man for All Markets: From Las Vegas to Wall Street, How I Beat the Dealer and the Market by Edward O. Thorp
• Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man’s Fight for Justice by Bill Browder
• An Absolutely Remarkable Thing: A Novel by Hank Green
• The Square and the Tower: Networks and Power, from the Freemasons to Facebook by Niall Ferguson
• Propaganda by Edward Bernays
• Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber
• Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don’t Matter by Scott Adams
• Swimming Across: A Memoir by Andrew S. Grove
• The Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dream by Tyler Cowen
• Bruce Lee: A Life by Matthew Polly
• Billion Dollar Whale: The Man Who Fooled Wall Street, Hollywood, and the World by Tom Wright & Bradley Hope
• Dawn of the New Everything: Encounters with Reality and Virtual Reality by Jaron Lanier
• Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence by Max Tegmark

2017

• Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang
• Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder by Nassim Taleb
• The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu
• The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Taleb
• Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman by James Gleick
• The Sovereign Individual: Mastering the Transition to the Information Age by James Dale Davidson & William Rees-Mogg
• The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements by Eric Hoffer
• Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike by Phil Knight
• The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation by Jon Gertner
• Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story by Arnold Schwarzenegger
• Finite and Infinite Games by James Carse
• The Road to Serfdom by Friedrich Hayek
• Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging by Sebastian Junger
• Liar’s Poker by Michael Lewis
• An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth by Chris Hadfield
• The Evolution of Everything: How New Ideas Emerge by Matt Ridley
• The Score Takes Care of Itself: My Philosophy of Leadership by Bill Walsh & Steve Jamison
• Principles: Life and Work by Ray Dalio
• The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life by Alice Schroeder
• The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
• Felicity: Poems by Mary Oliver
• Siddhartha by Herman Hesse
• Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers by Tim Ferriss
• Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader by Brent Schlender & Rick Tetzeli
• No Matter the Wreckage by Sarah Kay
• How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life by Scott Adams
• Tribe of Mentors: Short Life Advice from the Best in the World by Tim Ferriss
• The Upstarts: How Uber, Airbnb, and the Killer Companies of the New Silicon Valley Are Changing the World by Brad Stone
• The Upside of Stress: Why Stress Is Good for You, and How to Get Good at It by Kelly McGonigal
• Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Harari

2016

• Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn by Richard W. Hamming
• Эта странная жизнь (Russian Edition) by Granin D. A.
• The Dream Machine: J.C.R. Licklider and the Revolution That Made Computing Personal by M. Mitchell Waldrop
• How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading by Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren
• Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination by Neal Gabler
• Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Harari
• The Lessons of History by Will & Ariel Durant
• Seeking Wisdom: From Darwin to Munger by Peter Bevelin
• High Output Management by Andy Grove
• The Elon Musk Blog Series: Wait But Why by Tim Urban
• Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration by Ed Catmull & Amy Wallace
• Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
• Mindstorms: Children, Computers, And Powerful Ideas by Seymour A. Papert
• The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia by Ursula K. Le Guin
• What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami
• Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport
• Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
• Anything You Want: 40 Lessons for a New Kind of Entrepreneur by Derek Sivers
• When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
• Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
• Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick
• Why Only Us: Language and Evolution by Noam Chomsky & Robert C. Berwick
• Alibaba: The House That Jack Ma Built by Duncan Clark
• The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick
• The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
• Slaughterhouse-Five: A Novel by Kurt Vonnegut
• On the Move: A Life by Oliver Sacks
• The Wave in the Mind by Ursula K. Le Guin
• The War of Art by Steven Pressfield
• Blindsight by Peter Watts
• Logicomix: An epic search for truth by Apostolos Doxiadis & Christos Papadimitriou
• The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back Again) by Andy Warhol
• The Greatest Minds and Ideas of All Time by Will Durant
• Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days by J. Knapp, J. Zeratsky, B. Kowitz
• The Mindful Geek: Mindfulness Meditation for Secular Skeptics by Michael Taft
• How the Other Half Banks: Exclusion, Exploitation, and the Threat to Democracy by Mehrsa Baradaran

2015

• Foundation by Isaac Asimov
• Foundation and Empire by Isaac Asimov
• Second Foundation by Isaac Asimov
• Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance
• The Martian: A Novel by Andy Weir
• The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers by Ben Horowitz
• The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution by Walter Isaacson
• The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker
• The 5 Elements of Effective Thinking by Edward B. Burger and Michael Starbird
• The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance by Steven Kotler
• The Pmarca Blog Archives by Marc Andreessen
• Quantum Computing since Democritus by Scott Aaronson
• The Silver Cord by Kevin Kelly
• Cat’s Cradle: A Novel by Kurt Vonnegut
• Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel by Rolf Potts
• The Start-up of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and Transform Your Career by Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha
• Love and Math: The Heart of Hidden Reality by Edward Frenkel
• Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
• Essays in Love by Alain De Botton
• Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies by Nick Bostrom
• Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
• Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind by Shunryu Suzuki
• Think Like a Freak by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
• The Crossroads of Should and Must: Find and Follow Your Passion by Elle Luna
• Working Days: The Journals of The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
• It’s Been a Good Life by Isaac Asimov
• The Charisma Myth: How Anyone Can Master the Art and Science of Personal Magnetis by Olivia Fox Cabane
• Lying by Sam Harris
• To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others by Daniel H. Pink
• MONEY Master the Game: 7 Simple Steps to Financial Freedom by Tony Robbins
• Viral Loop: From Facebook to Twitter, How Today’s Smartest Businesses Grow Themselves by Adam L. Penenberg
• Alone on the Wall by Alex Honnold

2014

• Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! by Richard P. Feynman
• Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality by Max Tegmark
• Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel and Blake Masters
• Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
• On the Shortness of Life by Seneca
• Seneca: Letters from a Stoic by Seneca
• What Do You Care What Other People Think? by Richard P. Feynman
• In The Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives by Steven Levy
• 1984 by George Orwell
• Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain
• So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love by Cal Newport
• Animal Farm: A Fairy Story by George Orwell
• Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity by David Lynch
• Decoded by Jay-Z
• Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell
• Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative by Austin Kleon
• The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch
• Thoughts on Design by Paul Rand
• Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son by George Horace Lorimer
• Silence by Josh Long
• When Google Met WikiLeaks by Julian Assange
• Design as Art by Bruno Munari
• The Secret World of Sleep: The Surprising Science of the Mind at Rest by Penelope A. Lewis

2013

• Hackers & Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age by Paul Graham
• Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl
• Understanding Power: The Indispensible Chomsky by Noam Chomsky
• The Art Spirit by Robert Henri
• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig
• The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon by Brad Stone
• The One World Schoolhouse: Education Reimagined by Salman Khan
• The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin
• My Inventions by Nikola Tesla
• Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything by Joshua Foer
• The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg
• Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…And Others Don’t by Jim Collins
• Without Their Permission: How the 21st Century Will Be Made, Not Managed by Alexis Ohanian
• Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose by Tony Hsieh
• The 4 Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat Loss, Incredible Sex and Becoming Superhuman by Tim Ferriss
• Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey
• The Queen of Katwe by Tim Crothers
• The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White
• Designing with the Mind in Mind: Simple Guide to Understanding User Interface Design Guidelines by Jeff Johnson
• Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal by Nick Bilton
• The Non-Designer’s Design Book by Robin Williams
• The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss
• Screw It, Let’s Do It: Lessons In Life by Richard Branson
• Rework by Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson
• The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology by Ray Kurzweil
• Creative Confidence: Unleashing the Creative Potential Within Us All by Tom Kelley and David Kelley