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Reading

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 (only those narrated by the author)

  • 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
  • A Promised Land, by Barack Obama

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
  • Hard Drive, by James Wallace and Jim Erickson
  • Business Adventures, by John Brooks

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
  • Diary of a Madman, Lu Xun

Classics

  • Beyond Good and Evil, by Friedrich Nietzsche
  • Meditations, by Marcus Aurelius
  • Walden, by Henry David Thoreau
  • The Prince, by Niccolo Machiavelli
  • The Wealth of Nations, by Adam Smith
  • The Lord of The Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien
  • Five Dialogues, by Plato
  • Nicomachean Ethics, by Aristotle
  • The Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison
  • Victor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

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
  • Democracy and Education, by John Dewey
  • How Children Succeed, by Paul Tough
  • Mindset, by Carol Dweck
  • The Coddling of the American Mind, by Greg Kuianoff
  • The Future of Professions, by Richard Susskind and Daniel Susskind
  • Education and the Commercial Mindset, by Samuel Abrams

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
  • Three Men in a Boat, by Jerome K. Jerome
  • The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand

Finance

  • Valuation, by McKinsey & Company
  • Accounting and Finance for Managers, by Matt Bamber & Simon Parry
  • The Partnership - A History of Goldman Sachs
  • Venture Deals, by Brad Feld and Jason Mendelson

Government

  • Democracy in America, by Alexis De Tocqueville

History + Non-Fiction

  • 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
  • Everything by Vaclav Smil
  • Red Notice, by Bill Browder
  • The Fourth Turning, by Neil How and William Strauss
  • Guns, Germs, and Steel, by Jared Diamond
  • The Beginning of Infinity, by David Deutsch
  • Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Empire, by V.M. Zubok

Just for Fun

  • Everything by Michael Lewis
  • 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
  • Reinventing Organizations, by Frederic Laloux
  • Dare to Lead, by Brene Brown

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
  • Simply Effective, by Ron Ashkenas
  • Turn the Ship Around, by L. David Marquet

Marketing + Sales

  • Epic Content Marketing, by Joe Pulizzi
  • Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook, by Gary Vaynerchuk
  • Ogilvy on Advertising, by David Ogilvy
  • Hyper Sales Growth, by Jack Daly
  • Loved, by Martina Lauchengco
  • Anything by Chip and Dan Heath

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
  • Oedipus Rex, by Sophocles

Philosophy and Religion

  • Zen and the Art of Archery, by Eugen Herrigel
  • Analects, by Confucius (Slingerland translation)
  • Dao De Ching, by Laozi
  • The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins
  • Anything by C.S. Lewis

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
  • Drive, by Daniel Pink

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
  • The Daily Stoic, by Ryan Holiday
  • Principles, by Ray Dalio
  • Good Arguments, by Bo Seo
  • Building a Second Brain, by Tiago Forte

Shorts/Essays/Speeches

  • Caffeine, by Michael Pollan
  • Lying, by Sam Harris
  • Most essays by Paul Graham
  • Anything by David Foster Wallace
  • Anything by Christopher Hitchens
  • The Myth of Sisyphus, by Albert Camus
  • Anything by James Baldwin
  • Anything by David Sedaris
  • A Collection of Essays, by George Orwell
  • Letter from Birmingham Jail, by Martin Luther King Jr.
  • Ballot or Bullet, by Malcolm X

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