Bookshelf: Book Summaries and Reviews
I owe my life to books. Knowledge, like any long-term investment, compounds at a rate that bores you at first, then astounds you in a few years.
Our ancestors have toiled through the muddled fog of ignorance, painstakingly recording each spark of truth so that its glow may not be extinguished, using this accumulated wisdom to illuminate humanity’s climb to prosperity.
Locked in this bookshelf are myriad superpowers, including the ability to eliminate suffering, strengthen moral character, achieve economic success, nurture fulfilling relationships, and actualize your true potential. I read because I wish to inherit this endowment.
Books I wrote
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Books I read: Summaries and Reviews
This is a collection of my personal notes, summaries, reviews, and selected quotes from each book. I created this page because I often get asked for book recommendations, and I can direct people here for more details. I hope it also helps you discover other books you may be interested in that you may not have heard of before.
Books are listed in random order. Recommendations are not endorsements, I do not necessarily agree with books I recommend.
FAQ
- Q: Why don’t you rate books?
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A: It’s difficult to rate all books on a single scale out of 5 stars or 10 points. Rating books presumes the book can be reduced to a one-dimensional metric that makes it globally comparable to all other books, which doesn’t really make sense.
How do you compare a book that is 10/10 in writing style but 5/10 in real-world usefulness to a book that is 5/10 in writing style but 10/10 in real-world usefulness? They would both presumably get an overall 7/10 rating, but that doesn’t mean they are of similar quality.
If you care more about reading pleasure then the first book is better, but if you care more about utility then the second book is better. This nuance can’t be captured in a one-dimensional rating scale.
- Q: Why are the books ordered randomly?
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A: I couldn’t think of an obvious one-dimensional scale that reflects the natural order of the books (see my answer to the previous question).
Alphabetical is not a natural ordering because titles (or authors’ names) starting with A don’t necessarily deserve more attention than those starting with Z. Further, titles (or names) that are proximate in the alphabet aren’t necessarily proximate in subject matter. Date (read or published) has the same problems, just substitute recent for A and old for Z or vice-versa.
Dewey Decimal is also not a natural ordering because it presumes a book can be shoehorned into a single subtopic when it may in fact cover a vast landscape of topics.
Therefore, lacking an obvious ordering, a random order is at least honest about its constituents being non-proximate and fair in distributing attention.
- Q: Why did you read/recommend X?
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A: Reading or recommending a book is not an endorsement of that book. I do not necessarily agree with the books I read or recommend.
Click on the title of a book to read my review. If the title is not blue, it means I am still working on uploading my notes for that book. Get notified of new reviews.
- Priceless by William Poundstone
- The True Believer by Eric Hoffer
- Do You Talk Funny by David Nihill
- Your Money or Your Life by Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez
- Mindwise by Nicholas Epley
- Lecturing Birds on Flying by Pablo Triana
- Stumbling on Happiness by Dan Gilbert
- Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace
- Founders at Work by Jessica Livingston
- The Dip by Seth Godin
- Voice Lessons for Parents by Wendy Mogel
- Build & Launch by Justin Jackson
- The Long Tail by Chris Anderson
- The Wisdom of Psychopaths by Kevin Dutton
- Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson
- How to Solve It by George Pólya
- Die Empty by Todd Henry
- Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam
- The Habitual Hustler by Corey Breier
- How to Lie with Statistics by Darrell Huff and Irving Geis
- Animal Farm by George Orwell
- Perennial Seller by Ryan Holiday
- Brag Better by Meredith Fineman
- Brief by Joseph McCormack
- 10% Happier by Dan Harris
- Good to Great by Jim Collins
- The Dictator’s Handbook by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita
- Unthinkable by Helen Thomson
- Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
- At Home by Bill Bryson
- It’s the Way You Say It by Carol Fleming
- A Guide to the Good Life by William Braxton Irvine
- Give and Take by Adam Grant
- How to Make People Like You in 90 Seconds or Less by Nicholas Boothman
- Nuclear War: What’s in it For You? by Ground Zero and Roger Molander
- 50 Things Every Guy Should Know How to Do by Daniel Kline and Jason Tomaszewski
- Becoming a Supple Leopard by Kelly Starrett and Glen Cordoza
- Smartcuts by Shane Snow
- Focusing by Eugene Gendlin
- Venture Deals by Brad Feld and Jason Mendelson
- Superintelligence by Nick Bostrom
- Peopleware by Tom DeMarco and Tim Lister
- Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
- When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
- The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin
- The Icarus Deception by Seth Godin
- The Bed of Procrustes by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
- Future Babble by Dan Gardner
- How to Write a Good Advertisement by Victor O. Schwab
- Inadequate Equilibria by Eliezer Yudkowsky
- Cesar’s Way by Cesar Millan and Melissa Jo Peltier
- Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely
- American Kingpin by Nick Bilton
- Free Will by Sam Harris
- The Real Thirteenth Step by Tina Tessina
- 101 Things I Learned in Architecture School by Matthew Frederick
- Why Are The Prices So Damn High? by Eric Helland and Alex Tabarrok
- Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek
- Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath
- Decisive by Chip and Dan Heath
- Spent by Geoffrey Miller
- The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing by Al Ries and Jack Trout
- Difficult Conversations by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, and Sheila Heen
- Snoop by Sam Gosling
- Choose Yourself! by James Altucher
- Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson
- Wanting by Luke Burgis
- Ultramarathon Man by Dean Karnazes
- You’ll See It When You Believe It by Wayne Dyer
- Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki
- Emotional Design by Don Norman
- The Six-Figure Second Income by David Lindahl and Jonathan Rozek
- Deeper Dating by Ken Page
- A New Kind of Science by Stephen Wolfram
- Big History by David Christian
- Fuck Feelings by Michael Bennett and Sarah Bennett
- Cracking the Coding Interview by Gayle Laakmann McDowell
- Games People Play by Eric Berne
- How to Become a Straight-A Student by Cal Newport
- The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz
- The Mythical Man Month by Fred P. Brooks
- What Got You Here Won’t Get You There by Marshall Goldsmith and Mark Reiter
- The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene
- The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan
- Grit by Angela Duckworth
- The Dark Fields by Alan Glynn
- The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt
- How to Fly a Horse by Kevin Ashton
- Principles by Ray Dalio
- How Children Succeed by Paul Tough
- The Hard Thing about Hard Things by Ben Horowitz
- Only the Paranoid Survive by Andy Grove
- Yes! by Robert Cialdini and Noah Goldstien
- Catch Me If You Can by Frank W. Abagnale and Stan Redding
- Bare Minimum Parenting by James Breakwell
- The $100 Startup by Chris Guillebeau
- Pre-Suasion by Robert Cialdini
- The Opposite of Loneliness by Marina Keegan
- Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug
- Practical Programming for Strength Training by Mark Rippetoe and Andy Baker
- The Book on Rental Property Investing by Brandon Turner
- The World Until Yesterday by Jared Diamond
- How To Read A Book by Mortimer J. Adler
- Win Your Case by Gerry Spence
- On Truth by Harry G. Frankfurt
- Annoying by Joe Palca and Flora Lichtman
- Talent by Tyler Cowen and Daniel Gross
- This Explains Everything by John Brockman
- Why Men Don’t Listen and Women Can’t Read Maps by Allan and Barbara Pease
- In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan
- The 4-Hour Chef by Tim Ferriss
- The 50th Law by Robert Greene
- Free by Chris Anderson
- The Flinch by Julien Smith
- Critical Mass by Philip Ball
- What Women Want by Tucker Max and Geoffrey Miller
- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig
- Back Mechanic by Stuart McGill
- Linear Algebra: Foundations to Frontiers by Margaret E. Myers and Robert A. van de Geijn
- Food Rules by Michael Pollan
- Zero to One by Peter Thiel and Blake Masters
- Deep Work by Cal Newport
- Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds
- The War on Normal People by Andrew Yang
- The Road To Character by David Brooks
- Originals by Adam Grant
- Class by Paul Fussell
- Trump: The Art of The Deal by Tony Schwartz
- The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker
- The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick
- Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari
- Story by Robert McKee
- Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport
- Everything is Fucked by Mark Manson
- Choke by Sian Beilock
- How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big by Scott Adams
- Conspiracy by Ryan Holiday
- The New Rules of Marriage by Terrence Real
- The Primal Blueprint by Mark Sisson
- The World Is Flat by Thomas Friedman
- Click by Ori Brafman and Ron Brafman
- The Age of the Infovore by Tyler Cowen
- Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker
- 12 Rules For Life by Jordan B. Peterson
- Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
- Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon
- The Consulting Economy by Jonathan Dison
- The 5 Love Languages by Gary Chapman
- The Hacking of the American Mind by Robert Lustig
- How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
- Hardboiled Web Design by Andy Clarke
- The Robert Collier Letter Book by Robert Collier
- The Fifth Discipline by Peter Senge
- Pricing on Purpose by Ronald Baker
- And Mark an Era by Melvin T. Copeland
- The Tower by Chris Guillebeau
- The Sports Gene by David Epstein
- The Science of Lifting by Greg Nuckols and Omar Isuf
- SPIN Selling by Neil Rackham
- You Are Not So Smart by David McRaney
- The Power Of Moments by Chip and Dan Heath
- The One Sentence Persuasion Course by Blair Warren
- Manufacturing Consent by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky
- Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur
- Snakes in Suits by Paul Babiak and Robert D. Hare
- What Every BODY is Saying by Joe Navarro and Marvin Karlins
- Talking The Winner’s Way by Leil Lowndes
- Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
- Daring Greatly by Brené Brown
- Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl
- Lying by Sam Harris
- Whatcha Gonna Do with That Duck? by Seth Godin
- Wikinomics by Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams
- The Secret of Selling Anything by Harry Browne
- Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
- On Bullshit by Harry G. Frankfurt
- Attached by Amir Levine and Rachel Heller
- The 4-Hour Body by Tim Ferriss
- The Power Tactics of Jesus Christ by Jay Haley
- The World Is Curved by David Smick
- Ready to Run by Kelly Starrett and T.J. Murphy
- The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham
- The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss
- How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan
- The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engles
- Crucial Conversations by Patterson, Switzler, McMillan, and Grenny
- Don’t Call It That by Eli Altman
- All Marketers Are Liars by Seth Godin
- A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
- Mastery by Robert Greene
- The Network State by Balaji Srinivasan
- Crucial Accountability by Patterson, Switzler, McMillan, and Grenny
- Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville
- So Good They Can’t Ignore You by Cal Newport
- Drunk Tank Pink by Adam Alter
- A Random Walk Down Wall Street by Burton G. Malkiel
- How To Make Maximum Money in Minimum Time by Gary Halbert
- Opening Up by Tristan Taormino
- David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell
- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
- Tribe by Sebastian Junger
- The Language Hacking Guide by Benny Lewis
- Deskbound by Kelly Starrett
- Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It by Kamal Ravikant
- The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
- How Children Learn by John Holt
- Atomic Habits by James Clear
- The Mind-Gut Connection by Emeran Mayer
- As a Man Thinketh by James Allen
- Creativity by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
- Switch by Chip and Dan Heath
- This Will Make You Smarter by John Brockman
- The Upside of Irrationality by Dan Ariely
- Advertising Secrets of the Written Word by Joseph Sugarman
- The Antidote by Oliver Burkeman
- Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber
- The Bogleheads’ Guide to Investing by Taylor Larimore, Michael LeBoeuf, and Mel Lindauer
- The Effective Manager by Mark Horstman
- Range by David Epstein
- Fluent in 3 Months by Benny Lewis
- Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
- Beloved by Toni Morrison
- Triggers by Marshall Goldsmith
- No More Mr. Nice Guy by Robert A. Glover
- Poverty, by America by Matthew Desmond
- Nobody Wants to Read Your Shit by Steven Pressfield
- The 33 Strategies of War by Robert Greene
- 80,000 Hours by Benjamin Todd
- Mightier Than the Sword by Kathleen Adams
- It’s Not All About “Me” by Robin K. Dreeke
- Algorithms To Live By by Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths
- The Personal MBA by Josh Kaufman
- The Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldratt
- What Color Is Your Parachute? by Richard Bolles
- Tools of Titans by Tim Ferriss
- How to Not Die Alone by Logan Ury
- The Art of War by 孫子 (Sūnzǐ), Translated by Lionel Giles
- Get Together by Bailey Richardson, Kevin Huynh, and Kai Elmer Sotto
- The Mis-Education of the Negro by Carter G. Woodson
- The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben
- Fahrenheight 451 by Ray Bradbury
- Six Pillars of Self-Esteem by Nathaniel Branden
- The Phoenix Project by Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, and George Spafford
- Models by Mark Manson
- A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa, Murray Silverstein, Max Jacobson, Ingrid Fiksdahl-King, and Shlomo Angel
- Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus by John Gray
- She Has Her Mother’s Laugh by Carl Zimmer
- Quiet by Susan Cain
- How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman
- Designing Data-Intensive Applications by Martin Kleppmann
- Captivate by Vanessa Van Edwards
- The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan
- The Boron Letters by Gary Halbert Letter
- How to Do Things by David Cain
- Stop Stealing Dreams by Seth Godin
- Lifespan by David Sinclair and Matthew LaPlante
- The Art of Non-Conformity by Chris Guillebeau
- Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner
- What Should I Do With My Life? by Po Bronson
- The Elephant in the Brain by Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson
- Quirkology by Richard Wiseman
- The Charisma Myth by Olivia Fox Cabane
- Outlive by Peter Attia
- Hit Makers by Derek Thompson
- Growth Hacker Marketing by Ryan Holiday
- The Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi
- How To Speak How To Listen by Mortimer J. Adler
- Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe and Jason Kelly
- Universal Principles of Design by William Lidwell, Kritina Holden, and Jill Butler
- Money Master The Game by Tony Robbins
- Investment Banking by Rosenbaum and Pearl
- The Drama of the Gifted Child by Alice Miller
- Purple Cow by Seth Godin
- The Medici Effect by Frans Johansson
- The ABCs of Student Leadership by Sunjay Nath
- Average is Over by Tyler Cowen
- It’s The Way You Say It by Carol A. Fleming
- I Will Teach You To Be Rich by Ramit Sethi
- How To Write Letters That Sell by Christopher Godefrey
- Nineteen Eighty Four by George Orwell
- What Is Your Dangerous Idea? by John Brockman
- Free Prize Inside by Seth Godin
- Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman
- Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son by George Horace Lorimer
- The Defining Decade by Meg Jay
- The Obstacle Is The Way by Ryan Holiday
- We by Yevgeny Zamyatin, Translated by Natasha Randall
- Reinforcement Learning by Richard S. Sutton and Andrew G. Barto
- The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
- Sway by Ori Brafman and Ron Brafman
- The Chrysalids by John Wyndham
- Skin In The Game by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
- Nudge by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein
- Introduction to Algorithms by Cormen, Leiserson, Rivest, and Stein
- You Are What You Speak by Robert Lane Greene
- Eat That Frog! by Brian Tracy
- The Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki
- Unleashing the Ideavirus by Seth Godin
- The Passion Economy by Adam Davidson
- The Book In A Box Method by Tucker Max and Zach Obront
- Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
- Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi and Tahl Raz
- What The Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell
- Astrophysics for People in a Hurry by Neil deGrasse Tyson
- I Got There by JT McCormick
- The 2-Hour Cocktail Party by Nick Gray
- Understanding Machine Learning by Shai Shalev-Shwartz and Shai Ben-David
- Successful Aging by Daniel J. Levitin
- Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss and Tahl Raz
- The Laws of Human Nature by Robert Greene
- Great by Choice by Jim Collins and Morten T. Hansen
- You’re Invited by John Levy
- Mother Nature by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy
- The Power of Persuasion by Robert Levine
- The Art of Deception by Kevin D. Mitnick and William L. Simon
- Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill and Ben Holden-Crowther
- Fuck Love by Michael Bennett and Sarah Bennett
- When Anger Hurts by Matthew McKay and Peter Rogers
- Win Bigly by Scott Adams
- How to Be Miserable by Randy J. Paterson
- The Day The Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt and Oliver Jeffers
- The Honest Truth about Dishonesty by Dan Ariely
- What to Talk About by Chris Colin, Rob Baedeker, and Tony Millionaire
- Ogilvy on Advertising by David Ogilvy
- Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
- Modern Money Mechanics by Federal Reserve Bank Of Chicago
- Trying Not to Try by Edward Slingerland
- Influence by Robert Cialdini
- The Definitive Book of Body Language by Allan and Barbara Pease
- Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim and Renée A. Mauborgne
- Guns Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond
- The Age of Em by Robin Hanson
- The Art of Seduction by Robert Greene
- Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
- Lean Startup by Eric Ries
- Vampire Plagues by Sebastian Rook
- The Straussian Moment by Peter Thiel
- Start with Why by Simon Sinek
- America Against America by 王沪宁 (Wáng Hùníng)
- Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me) by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson
- The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle
- How to Be a High School Superstar by Cal Newport
- Seeking Wisdom by Peter Bevelin
- Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell
- The Way of Men by Jack Donovan
- Small Giants by Bo Burlingham
- Cracking the Tech Career by Gayle Laakmann McDowell
- Anything You Want by Derek Sivers
- Elon Musk by Ashlee Vance
- Farsighted by Steven Johnson
- How to Win at College by Cal Newport
- Blink by Malcolm Gladwell
- Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari
- Radical Honesty by Brad Blanton
- Rationality from AI to Zombies by Eliezer Yudkowsky
- On Writing Well by William Zinsser
- The Complacent Class by Tyler Cowen
- Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces by Remzi H. Arpaci-Dusseau and Andrea C. Arpaci-Dusseau
- Buyology by Martin Lindstrom
- Social Intelligence by Daniel Goleman
- Risk by Dan Gardner
- This Book Will Teach You How To Write Better by Neville Medhora
- The Scout Mindset by Julia Galef
- Power and Love by Adam Kahane
- Poor Charlie’s Almanack by Charles T. Munger, Peter D. Kaufman, Ed Wexler, and Warren E. Buffett
- Age of Propaganda by Anthony Pratkanis and Elliot Aronson
- Advanced Linear Algebra: Foundations to Frontiers by Robert A. van de Geijn and Margaret E. Myers
- Play It Away by Charlie Hoehn
- The Start-up of You by Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha
- The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk
- Snowball by Warren Buffet
- The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work by John Gottman and Nan Silver
- Night by Elie Wiesel and Marion Wiesel
- The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein
- Faster, Higher, Stronger by Mark McClusky
- The Myth of the Garage by Chip and Dan Heath
- Nonviolent Communication by Marshall B. Rosenberg
- Future Crimes by Marc Goodman
- Rich Dad’s Cashflow Quadrant by Robert Kiyosaki
- Dressing the Man by Alan Flusser
- Brain Trust by Garth Sundem
- The Art of Lifting by Greg Nuckols and Omar Isuf
- Financial Accounting by Paul Kimmel and Jerry Weygandt
- Tribes by Seth Godin
- Ego Is The Enemy by Ryan Holiday
- Contagious by Jonah Berger
- 40 Alternatives to College by James Altucher
- Blitzscaling by Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh
- The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck by Mark Manson
- Secret Ingredients by Stuart Laidlaw
- Impossible to Ignore by Carmen Simon
- How To Love by Thích Nhất Hạnh
- Enchantment by Guy Kawasaki
- The War of Art by Steven Pressfield
- Lord of the Flies by William Golding
- Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg
- How to Instantly Connect with Anyone by Leil Lowndes
- Supercommunicators by Charles Duhigg
- The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker
- The Body by Bill Bryson
- Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber
- Moonwalking With Einstein by Joshua Foer
- Permission Marketing by Seth Godin
- Dark Lord’s Answer by Eliezer Yudkowsky
- Hackers and Painters by Paul Graham
- Breath by James Nestor
- Built to Last by Jim Collins and Jerry I. Porras
- Linchpin by Seth Godin
- The Unthinkable by Amanda Ripley
- Trust Me, I’m Lying by Ryan Holiday
- Peak by Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool