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