I have been asked more than once what my reading recommendations are. Slowly compiling them into a list form here. By no means exhaustive. I’ve also tried categorizing, but find that some books fit into multiple categories. Anyways, here’s my best shot, alphabetized by category. If you’re a student, Young Adult Recommendations are at the bottom.
Audiobooks
- Will, by Will Smith
- Greenlights, by Matthew McConaughey
- Born a Crime, by Trevor Noah
Biography + Autobiography
- Steve Jobs, by Walter Issacson
- The Snowball, by Alice Schroeder
- Team of Rivals, by Doris Kearns Goodwin
- Mornings on Horseback, by David McCullough
- Elon Musk, by Ashlee Vance
- Titan, by Ron Chernow
- Will, by Will Smith
- Hit Refresh, by Satya Nadella
- A Year of Magical Thinking, by Joan Didion
- What It Takes, by Stephen A. Schwarzman
- A Year of Magical Thinking, by Joan Didion
- The Undoing Project, by Michael Lewis
- Bossypants, by Tina Fey
- The Assassination of Fred Hampton, by Jeffrey Haas
- Twelve Against the Gods, by William Bolitho
- A Truck Full of Money, by Tracey Kidder
- Siddhartha, by Herman Hesse
- The Radical King, by Cornel West
Business
- The Goal, by Eliyahu Goldratt
- Moneyball, by Michael Lewis
- Poor Charlie’s Almanack, by Charlie Munger
- Superforecasting, by Philip Tetlock
- The Black Swan, by Nassim Taleb
Business How-Tos
- Growing Pains, by Eric Flamholtz and Yvonne Randle
- Venture Deals, by Brad Feld
- Good Strategy, Bad Strategy, by Richard Rumelt
- The Automatic Customer, by John Warrillow
- The Startup Checklist, by David Rose
- The Messy Middle, by Scott Belsky
Business Bios
- Shoe Dog, by Phil Knight
- The Everything Store, by Brad Stone
- Bad Blood, by John Carreyou
- Onward & Pour Your Heart Into It, by Howard Schultz
- Ride of a Lifetime, By Bob Iger
- Let My People Go Surfing, by Yvon Chouinard
- Alibaba, by Duncan Clark
China
- Dream of the Red Chamber - Chinese Classic, by Cao Xueqin
- The Last Kings of Shanghai, by Jonathan Kaufmann
- How Asia Works, by Joe Studwell
- Factory Girls, by Leslie Chang
- The Corpse Walker, by Liao Yiwu
- The Mao’s Famine Trilogy, by Frank Dikkoter
- On China, by Henry Kissinger
- Age of Ambition, by Evan Osnos
- Wild Swans, by June Chang
- Out of Mao’s Shadow, by Philip Pan
- When China Rules the World, by Martin Jacques
- Country Driving, by Peter Hessler
- Oracle Bones, by Peter Hessler
- One Billion Customers, James McGregor
- Little Soldiers, by Lenora Chu
- Tombstone, by Yang Jisheng
- Red Star Over China, by Edgar Snow
Classics
- Beyond Good and Evil, by Friedrich Nietzsche
- Walden, by Henry David Thoreau
- The Prince, by Niccolo Machiavelli
- The Wealth of Nations, by Adam Smith
Company Culture
- Amp It Up, by Frank Slootman
- Radical Candor, by Kim Scott
- Good People, by Anthony Tjan
- Setting the Table, by Danny Meyer
- Reinventing Organizations, by Frederic Laloux
- Delivering Happiness, by Tony Hsieh
- The Alliance, by Reid Hoffman, Ben Casnocha, Chris Yeh
Education
- Excellent Sheep, by William Deresiewicz
- Class Clowns, by Johnathan Knee
- Educated, by Tara Westover
Epics
- Principles, by Ray Dalio
Fiction/Novels
- The Illiad, by Homer
- Lord of the Flies, by William Golding
- The Lord of the Rings, by J. R. R. Tolkien
- Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley
- Lamb, by Christopher Moore
- Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand
- The Godfather, by Mario Puzo
- The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas
- Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
- The Road, by Cormac McCarthy
- The Brothers Karamazov, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- The Trial, by Franz Kafka
- Half a Yellow Sun, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche
- Diary of a Madman, by Lu Xun
- Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy
- In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote
Finance
- Valuation, by McKinsey & Company
- Accounting and Finance for Managers, by Matt Bamber & Simon Parry
- The Partnership - A History of Goldman Sachs
Government
- Democracy in America, by Alexis De Tocqueville
History
- Boys in the Boat, by Daniel James Brown
- Empire of the Summer Moon, by S.C. Gwinne
- The Gray Lady Winked, by Ashley Rindsberg
- The Great Game, by Peter Hopkirk
- Foreign Devils on the Silk Road, by Peter Hopkirk
Just for Fun
- Pretty much everything Michael Lewis has written
- Bringing down the House, by Ben Mezrich
- A Walk in the Woods, by Bill Bryson
Leadership
- Leadership and Self-Deception, by the Arbinger Institute
- Turn the Ship Around, by L. David Marquet
- The Great CEO Within, by Matt Mochary
- What You Do is Who You Are, by Ben Horowitz
- The Hard Thing About Hard Things, by Ben Horowitz
- Start With Why, by Simon Sinek
- Leadership, by Doris Kearns Godwin
- The Leader Within Us, by Warren Rustand
- Awareness, by Anthony De Mello
Management
- High Output Management, by Andy Grove
- Anything by Patrick Lencioni
- Excellence Wins, by Horst Schulze
- Anything by Ichak Kalderon Adizes
- The Game-Changer, by A.G. Lafley & Ram Charan
- Managing Oneself, by Peter Drucker
Marketing
- Epic Content Marketing, by Joe Pulizzi
Non-fiction
- Red Notice, by Bill Browder
- The Fourth Turning
Plays/Stage
- Hamlet, by William Shakespeare
- Death of a Salesman, by Arthur Miller
- Pygmalion, by George Bernard Shaw
- Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, by Tom Stoppard
- Waiting for Godot, by Samuel Beckett
- Hedda Gabler, by Henrik Ibsen
- Angels in America, by Tony Kushner
- Glengarry Glen Ross, by David Mamet
- The Odd Couple, by Neil Simon
- Doubt, by John Patrick Shanley
- Topdog/Underdog, by Suzan-Lori Parks
- The Importance of Being Earnest, by Oscar Wilde
- Scams of Scapin, by Moliere
- And Then There Were None, by Agatha Christie
Philosophy and Religion
- Zen and the Art of Archery, by Eugen Herrigel
- Analects, by Confucius (Slingerland translation)
- Dao De Ching, by Laozi
- Man’s Search for Meaning, by Viktor Frankl
- The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins
Popular Science/Psychology
- How to Change Your Mind, by Michael Pollan
- The Power of Habit, by Charles Duhigg
- Hooked, by Nir Eyal
- The Gene, by Siddhartha Mukherjee
- Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman
- A Brief History of Time, by Stephen Hawking
- Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, by Neil deGrasse Tyson
Sci-Fi
- Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury
- The Three-Body Problem, by Cixin Liu
- The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury
- Dune, by Herbert
Self-Help
- Never Split the Difference, By Chris Voss
- The Almanack of Naval Ravikant, by Eric Jorgenson
- The Great Work of Your Life, by Stephen Cope
- How to Win Friends and Influence People, by Dale Carnegie
- The Road to Character, by David Brooks
Shorts/Essays
- Caffeine, by Michael Pollan
- Lying, by Sam Harris
Women/Women’s Studies
- Half The Sky, by Nicholas Kristof + Sheryl WuDunn
- Men Explain Things to Me, by Rebecca Solnit
- Invisible Women, by Caroline Criado Perez
Young Adult
- Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card
- To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
- The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, by C.S. Lewis
- The Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Grahame
- Peter Pan, by J.M. Barrie
- The Hound of the Baskervilles, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
- Night, by Elie Wisel