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