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