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