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