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