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