Bookshelf

Saturday afternoons find my wife and me in our living room, each lost in our respective books–my idea of heaven. I typically read about 20-30 books a year, mostly non-fiction that shapes how I think about whatever it is I'm working on. I'm always plotting ways to find time to read more novels.

Rather than catalog everything I've read, I've curated the books that earned a permanent place in my thinking–the ones I reference in conversation, gift to friends, or find myself returning to when I need their particular wisdom. I aim to update this list once a year, and hope you find it useful.

Biographies

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson - The authorized biography of Apple's co-founder based on extensive interviews. One of my favorites!
Elon Musk - Ashlee Vance's biography of the entrepreneur behind Tesla, SpaceX, and other ventures, exploring his vision for the future and relentless drive.
Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson - Isaacson's comprehensive biography of Musk based on exclusive access, covering his companies, innovations, and complex personality.
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin - Franklin's classic memoir chronicling his rise from humble beginnings to founding father, filled with timeless wisdom on self-improvement and success.
The Billionaire Who Wasn't - The story of Chuck Feeney, who secretly gave away his entire $8 billion fortune through anonymous philanthropy while living modestly.
Shoedog - Phil Knight's memoir of founding Nike, from selling shoes from his car trunk to building one of the world's most recognizable brands. It's a page turner.
Losing my Virginity - Richard Branson's autobiographical account of building the Virgin empire, sharing entrepreneurial lessons learned through bold risks and unconventional business approaches. It's the first biography I ever read.
Barack Obama - A Promised Land, Obama's presidential memoir documenting his early years. A great window into what it's like to be President of USA.
Masters of Doom - Story of John Carmack and John Romero, who revolutionized gaming by creating Doom and Quake. The author captures both the raw innovation of early PC gaming and the very human drama of creative partnership pushed to its limits.
The Everything Store - Brad Stone's comprehensive biography of Amazon and Jeff Bezos, chronicling the company's rise from online bookstore to global everything store.
Amazon Unbound - Brad Stone's sequel to The Everything Store, covering Amazon's expansion into cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and global dominance.
Inside Apple - Adam Lashinsky's revealing look inside Apple's secretive corporate culture and the management principles that drive the world's most valuable company.
Made in America - Sam Walton's autobiography detailing how he built Walmart from a single store into the world's largest retailer through customer focus and operational excellence.
Invent and Wander - A collection of Jeff Bezos' writings and speeches revealing his philosophy on invention, customer obsession, and long-term thinking.
Genentech - Sally Smith Hughes' history of the pioneering biotechnology company that launched the modern biotech industry and revolutionized medicine.
Setting the Table - Danny Meyer's philosophy of enlightened hospitality that transformed the restaurant industry and created a culture of exceptional customer service.
Play nice but win - Michael Dell's memoir chronicles his brutal fight to save DELL from activist investors. It's a masterclass in playing the long game while navigating corporate warfare.
"Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" - Richard Feynman's entertaining memoir of adventures and discoveries, showcasing the Nobel physicist's curiosity, humor, and unconventional approach to life and science.
Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Essential Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger - A collection of Charlie Munger's speeches and writings on investing, decision-making, and mental models for rational thinking.
What It Takes: Lessons in the Pursuit of Excellence - Stephen Schwarzman's memoir sharing lessons from building Blackstone into a global investment powerhouse and insights into leadership and deal-making.
How to Make a Few Billion Dollars - Brad Jacob's unconventional memoir about building and selling startups, offering insights into entrepreneurship and creative business thinking.

Business & Entrepreneurship

Zero to One - Peter Thiel's contrarian guide to building monopolistic businesses and creating truly innovative companies that go from nothing to something entirely new.
High Output Management - Andy Grove's legendary Silicon Valley handbook on management focusing on maximizing the output of teams and organizations through high-leverage activities.
Measure What Matters - John Doerr's guide to OKRs (Objectives and Key Results), the goal-setting system used by Google and other top companies to achieve ambitious outcomes.
The Lean Startup - Eric Ries' methodology for building startups through validated learning, iterative product releases, and continuous innovation.
The Hard Thing About Hard Things - Ben Horowitz's candid guide to the brutal realities of running a startup, offering practical wisdom for navigating the toughest business challenges.
The Four Steps to The Epiphany - Steve Blank's customer development methodology for startups, teaching how to build products customers actually want through systematic discovery.
High Growth Handbook - Elad Gil's practical guide to scaling startups, covering hiring, management, fundraising, and other challenges faced by rapidly growing companies.
Good to Great - Jim Collins' research-based analysis of what separates great companies from merely good ones, revealing timeless principles of exceptional business performance.
Built to last - Collins and Porras' study of visionary companies that have thrived for decades, identifying the core principles that create enduring organizational excellence.
Turning the Flywheel - Jim Collins' monograph exploring how breakthrough innovations emerge from disciplined focus rather than dramatic revolutionary moments.
Only the Paranoid Survive - Andy Grove's strategic guide to navigating periods of massive change and strategic inflection points that can make or break companies.
Loonshots - Safi Bahcall's framework for understanding how breakthrough innovations emerge and how organizations can nurture crazy ideas that seem impossible.
The Innovator's Dilemma - Clayton Christensen's groundbreaking theory of disruptive innovation explaining why great companies fail when technologies or markets change.
Deming and Goldratt - The Theory of Constraints by Eliyahu Goldratt, a business novel about manufacturing and operational excellence that revolutionized process improvement.
Memos from the Chairman - Alan Greenberg's collection of irreverent and wise memos from his time leading Bear Stearns, offering insights into Wall Street culture and leadership.
Working Backwards - A rare inside look at how Amazon actually operates–from six-page narrative memos to single-threaded leadership–with practical lessons for building customer-obsessed organizations.
The Score Takes Care of Itself - Bill Walsh's leadership philosophy from his championship years coaching the San Francisco 49ers, emphasizing process over results.
The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation - Jon Gertner's history of Bell Labs and how it became the most innovative institution of the 20th century, creating technologies that shaped the modern world.
The Dream Machine - M. Mitchell Waldrop's biography of J.C.R. Licklider and the story of how the computer revolution and the internet were born from visionary thinking at ARPA.

Technology & Programming

How Google Works - Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg's insider account of Google's culture, management philosophy, and approach to innovation and talent.
The $1000 genome - Kevin Davies' exploration of the genomics revolution and how DNA sequencing technology is transforming medicine and human understanding.
Deep Learning with Python - A comprehensive guide to deep learning using Python and Keras, written by the creator of Keras, covering both theory and practical applications. Great for beginners!
Learn Python the Hard Way - A hands-on approach to learning Python programming through 60 carefully crafted exercises with emphasis on typing code and fixing mistakes.
Clojure for the Brave and True - A fun and engaging introduction to Clojure programming language that teaches functional programming through humor and practical exercises. I greatly dislike OOP and prefer functional-style programming.
Deep Learning - Ian Goodfellow has written the definitive textbook that took deep learning from academic obscurity to accessible knowledge–dense, mathematical, but still the bible for anyone serious about understanding neural networks.
A Philosophy of Software Design - John Ousterhout's practical guide to software complexity management, emphasizing deep modules, good abstractions, and tactical versus strategic programming approaches.
Go Programming Language - The authoritative guide to Go programming by its creators, covering language fundamentals, concurrency patterns, and best practices.
The Joy Of X: A Guided Tour of Math, from One to Infinity - Steven Strogatz's accessible journey through mathematics, making complex concepts engaging and understandable for general readers.

Health & Science

The Patient Will See You Now - Eric Topol's vision of how digital technology will democratize healthcare and empower patients to take control of their medical care.
The Emperor of All Maladies - Siddhartha Mukherjee's Pulitzer Prize-winning "biography of cancer" tracing the history of the disease and the fight against it.
The Cleveland Clinic Way - Toby Cosgrove's account of transforming Cleveland Clinic into a world-class healthcare organization through patient-centered care and operational excellence.
Management Lessons From Mayo Clinic - Leonard Berry and Kent Seltman's study of Mayo Clinic's culture and management principles that create exceptional patient care and organizational performance.
Starting Strength - A comprehensive guide to basic barbell training covering squat, bench, deadlift, press and power clean with detailed instruction for strength beginners.
Total Immersion Swimming - A technique-focused approach to swimming that emphasizes perfect stroke mechanics over fitness for improved efficiency.
Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity - Peter Attia's comprehensive guide to longevity medicine, focusing on preventing chronic diseases and optimizing healthspan through evidence-based strategies.
Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams - Matthew Walker's comprehensive exploration of sleep science, revealing how sleep impacts every aspect of our physical and mental well-being.

Management & Leadership

Radical Candor - The bestselling leadership guide teaching how to care personally while challenging directly to become a better boss and build stronger teams.
Just Work - Kim Scott's framework for creating inclusive workplaces by distinguishing between bias, prejudice, and bullying to build kick-ass cultures of respect.
The Checklist Manifesto - Demonstrates how simple checklists can dramatically improve outcomes in complex fields like medicine, aviation, and business.

Investment & Finance

The intelligent investor - Benjamin Graham's classic guide to value investing that has influenced generations of successful investors including Warren Buffett.
The Almanack of Naval Ravikant - A collection of Naval Ravikant's wisdom on wealth creation and happiness, compiled from his tweets, podcasts, and interviews.
More Money Than God - Sebastian Mallaby's comprehensive history of hedge funds, chronicling the rise of these financial institutions and their impact on global markets.
The Man Who Solved the Market - Gregory Zuckerman's biography of Jim Simons and his secretive hedge fund Renaissance Technologies, revealing how they revolutionized investing through mathematics and data science.

Philosophy

Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder - Explores how certain systems become stronger when stressed and how to build antifragile systems in life and business.
The Black Swan - Examines the impact of highly improbable events and how they shape our world more than we realize.
Skin in the Game - Explores the importance of having shared risk in decision-making for fairness, efficiency, and understanding reality.
Optionality - A strategy guide for building resilience and positioning yourself to profit from an unpredictable world through smart risk management.
Man's Search for Meaning - A powerful memoir of survival in Nazi concentration camps and the development of logotherapy, focusing on finding meaning in suffering.
On the Shortness of Life - Seneca's timeless Stoic essay arguing that life is not short but that we waste much of it, with practical wisdom for purposeful living.
Meditations - Marcus Aurelius' personal philosophical reflections on Stoic principles, virtue, and leadership, written during his campaigns as Roman Emperor.
Thinking, Fast and Slow - Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman's exploration of the two systems of thinking that drive decision-making and the cognitive biases that influence judgment.
Thinking in Systems - A primer on systems thinking that teaches how to develop the systems-thinking skills critical for problem-solving on personal and global scales.
The art of war - Sun Tzu's ancient Chinese military strategy treatise that has become essential reading for business leaders and strategists worldwide.
Letters from a Stoic - Seneca's collection of moral letters to Lucilius, offering practical Stoic philosophy on ethics, virtue, and living a meaningful life.
Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind - Shunryu Suzuki's introduction to Zen meditation and mindfulness, emphasizing the importance of maintaining a beginner's open and eager mind.

Psychology & Decision Making

Influence - The foundational guide to understanding the six universal principles of influence and how to apply them ethically while defending against manipulation.
Six Thinking Hats - Edward de Bono's revolutionary method for parallel thinking that transforms meetings and decision-making by separating thinking into six distinct functions.
Lateral Thinking - De Bono's foundational work on creativity that teaches techniques for breaking out of conventional thought patterns to generate innovative solutions.
Flow - Explores the psychology of optimal experience and how to achieve deep enjoyment and total involvement in life activities.
Blink - Gladwell's fascinating look at rapid cognition and how we make split-second decisions that can be surprisingly accurate or dangerously flawed.
The tipping point - Gladwell's examination of how small changes can make big differences and what causes ideas, products, and behaviors to spread like epidemics.
Outliers: The Story of Success - Malcolm Gladwell's exploration of the factors that contribute to exceptional achievement, from the 10,000-hour rule to cultural advantages.
Predictably Irrational - Dan Ariely's exploration of behavioral economics, revealing how people systematically make irrational decisions and the hidden forces that shape our choices.

Learning & Personal Development

The Art of Learning - A chess and martial arts champion's insights into the learning process and achieving optimal performance.
Peak - how to learn anything and get peak performance - Reveals the science behind deliberate practice and how anyone can achieve extraordinary performance through focused effort rather than innate talent.
Moonwalking With Einstein - Chronicles the author's journey into competitive memory training and explores the art and science of remembering.
How to Remember Anything - A practical system for harnessing your brain's memory capacity using visualizations, sound-alike words, and odd juxtapositions.
How to solve it - George Pólya's timeless guide to mathematical problem-solving that provides heuristic methods for approaching any problem that can be reasoned out.
The One Thing 2024 - Gary Keller's focus strategy showing how concentrating on the most important task dramatically improves productivity and results.
On Writing Well - The classic guide to writing nonfiction that has sold over 1.5 million copies and offers fundamental principles for clear, effective writing.
Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals - Oliver Burkeman's philosophical approach to time management, accepting human limitations and finding meaning in our finite existence.
From Strength to Strength - Arthur Brooks' guide to finding fulfillment in the second half of life by shifting from fluid intelligence to crystallized wisdom and deeper relationships.
Stein On Writing - Sol Stein's comprehensive guide to the craft of writing, offering practical techniques from a master editor and author for creating compelling fiction and nonfiction.
On Writing: A Memoir Of The Craft - Stephen King's part memoir, part masterclass on writing, sharing his personal journey as a writer and practical advice on the craft of storytelling.

Novels

The Magus - John Fowles' complex psychological novel about a young Englishman who becomes involved in mysterious games on a Greek island.
The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov's masterpiece blending satire, fantasy, and romance as the devil visits Soviet Moscow with chaotic results.
One hundred years of solitude - Gabriel García Márquez's magical realism epic chronicling seven generations of the Buendía family in the fictional town of Macondo. Possibly my favorite novel.
Everything Is Illuminated - Jonathan Safran Foer's debut novel weaving together a young writer's quest to find his grandfather's Ukrainian past with humor and tragedy.
The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen - Franzen's acclaimed family drama exploring the decline of the Lambert family and broader American middle-class values.
Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov's controversial masterpiece about the destructive obsession of middle-aged Humbert Humbert with twelve-year-old Dolores Haze.
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous - Ocean Vuong's lyrical debut novel written as a letter from a son to his illiterate mother, exploring trauma, immigration, and identity.
The Circle - Dave Eggers' dystopian novel about a powerful tech company that promotes total transparency and the dangerous consequences of surveillance culture.
Old Man and the Sea - Hemingway's classic novella about an aging Cuban fisherman's epic struggle with a giant marlin, exploring themes of perseverance and dignity.