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