What is this?
This is list of all the books that I’ve read
Books that I think are great are listed in bold
The 2022 list also includes some lectures and courses I’ve watched
Key:
bold - Great and/or memorable
2023
Finished Books
Talking to Strangers - Malcom Gladwell
In Progress
Thinking in Bets - Annie Duke
1491 - Charles C. Mann
Finished Courses
African Experience: From “Lucy” to Mandela - Kenneth Vickery
2022 Favorite
Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson
Across the world, hundreds of millions of people live in extreme poverty, living on less than $1.90 per day (2011 dollars). It’s an impossible figure to comprehend. Stop for a second and try… Meanwhile, people in high-income nations (possibly you) regularly interact with robots, AI and life-saving medical devices. The quote by William Gibson “The future is here, it’s just not evenly distributed” seems like quite the understatement. This book poses many interesting historical narratives of how changes in institutions lead to changes in prosperity. It’s a loop where economic forces shape political institutions which go on to shape economic institutions. Aid dollars won’t help unless there are the right institutions to support them. Economic change won’t last unless it comes along with political and economic institutional change. For me, this book was an important step towards understanding one of the most incredibly widespread, fickle and devastating problems out there.
2022
Finished Books
Apocalypse Never - Michael Shellenberger
Institutions, Institutional Change, Economic Performance - Douglas North
How Mind’s Change - David McRaney
The Embattled Vote In America - Allan J. Lichtman
The World For Sale - Javier Blas
The End Of the World Is Just The Beginning - Peter Zeihan
Man’s Search for Meaning - Viktor Frankl
Disunited Nations - Peter Zeihan
An African American and Latinx History of the United States - Paul Ortiz
We Need To Talk About Putin - Mark Galeotti
The Power - Naomi Alderman
Why Nations Fail - Daron Acemoglu, James Robinson
Capitalist Realism - Mark Fisher
An Indigenous People’s History of The United States - Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Great CEOs Are Lazy - Jim Schleckser
Radical Self-Acceptance - Tara Brach
Profit First - Mike Michalowicz
The E-Myth Revisited - Michael E. Gerber
The Pumpkin Plan - Mike Michalowicz
Prisoners of Geography - Tim Marshall
Debt - David Graeber
Mostly Finished Books
Propaganda - Edward Bernays
Refuse to Choose - Barbara Sher
Climate Change in Simple Spanish - Olly Richards
1491 - Charles C. Mann
The Wine Bible - Karen MacNeil
Mind Management, Not Time Management - David Kadavy
How To Be A Billionaire - Martin Fridson
First Person Singular - Haruki Murakami
The World As I See It - Albert Einstein
Thinking In Systems - Donella H. Meadows
Capitalism in America - Alan Greenspan, Adrian Wooldridge
The Democracy Project - David Graeber
Autobiography of Angela Davis - Angela Davis
Highlighted YouTube Channels/Videos
Perun - Defense Economics
Caspian Report and Modern Conflicts by RealLifeLore - Geopolitics
John Mersheimer’s Lectures, CISAC and others - Grand Strategy
iBiology - Evolution and Cellular Biology
Yale - Free Courses on Various Subjects
Online Courses (Started, In Progress and Unfinished)
Evolution and Medicine - Stephen Stearns, Yale
Foundations of Modern Social Theory - Ivan Szelenyi, Yale
Law School for Everyone - Edward K. Cheng, Joseph L. Hoffmann, Molly Bishop Shadel, Peter J. Smith, The Great Courses
History of the Ancient World: A Global Perspective [Finished] - Gregory S. Aldrete, The Great Courses
Capitalism vs Socialism - Edward F. Stuart, The Great Courses
Intro to Political Philosophy - Steven B. Smith, Yale
Power and Politics in Today’s World - Ian Shapiro, Yale
A New History of The American South - Edward L. Ayers, The Great Courses
Years That Changed History: 1215 [Finished] - Dorsey Armstrong, The Great Courses
2021 Favorite
Autobiography of Malcolm X
Malcolm X certainly knows how to tell a story. There wasn’t a moment of his story where I wanted to put the book down, and every single sentence brought me one layer closer to understanding one of the greatest leaders of the civil rights movement. There’s almost too much to say about how this book transformed my life, but to start, it brought to me many new ideas and inspired me to get far more engaged in political theory. Since heading down the path this book set me down, I’ve fully transformed my worldview and have been able to connect far more deeply with topics that I had only ever studied in passing. I truly recommend this book to everyone. It has transformed my life.
2021
Books I’ve Finished
Wander Purposefully - Eric Travis
Rise of Communism, From Marx to Lenin - Vejas Liulevicius
Woke Racism - John McWhorter
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
The Antidote - Oliver Burkeman
A People’s History of the United States - Howard Zinn
The Autobiography of Malcom X - Malcom X, Alex Haley
High Performance Habits - Brendon Burchard
Behave - Robert Sapolsky
Understanding the US Government - Jennifer Nicoll Victor, The Great Courses
Augustus - Adrian Goldsworthy
Narrative Economics - Robert J. Shiller
Nine Nasty Words - John McWhorter
Wayward Galaxy - Jason Anspach, JN Chaney
Eager - Ben Goldfarb
The 48 Laws of Power - Robert Greene
The Obstacle Is the Way - Ryan Holiday
The Invention of Nature - Andrea Wulf
Lost Connections - Johann Hari
How to Hide an Empire - Daniel Immerwahr
The Invisible Hook - Peter T. Leeson
World Order - Henry Kissinger
Books I read most of
101 Conversations in Mexican Spanish - Olly Richards
Debt - David Graeber
Manufacturing Consent - Edward S. Herman, Noam Chomsky
The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism - Noam Chomsky, Edward S. Herman
The Heart of Everything That Is - Bob Drury, Tom Clavin
The 50th Law - 50 Cent, Robert Greene
Value Based Fees - Alan Weiss
The Hard Thing About Hard Things - Ben Horowitz
Books I’ve started
James Cook - Peter FitzSimons
Indistractable - Nir Eyal
The 1-Page Marketing Plan - Allan Dib
How Europe Underdeveloped Africa - Walter Rodney
I’ve also listened to these Audible Originals*
Nut Jobs - Marc Fennell
The Tragedy of Rudy Giuliani - Michael Wolff
Fauci - Michael Specter
American ISIS - Trevor Aaronson
* - Audible Originals are roughly 4 hours long (~100 pages) and are like a cross between a podcast and an audiobook
2020 Favorite:
Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker, PhD
Typically, my favorite book is the one that I remember the most, or the one that I cite the most frequently. Before I read this book, I was an advocate of 8.5-9 hours of sleep per night. This book made me double down on the importance of sleep. Because of this book, I think about the effects of alcohol and caffeine on sleep daily. I now understand not only how sleep makes you feel sharp, but also how it contributes to the importance of sleep on feeling “sharp”, but also on long-term learning. This book utterly convinced me of sleep’s importance and helped me understand the topic more deeply. I strongly recommend this book to anyone who sleeps and wants to make the most of their life.
2020
The Great Debate - Yuval Levin
A History of the World in 6 Glasses - Tom Standage
Designing Your Life - Bill Burnett and Dave Evans
The Defining Decade - Meg Jay, PhD
The End Is Always Near - Dan Carlin
How to Be Everything - Emilie Wapnick
New Sales. Simplified - Mike Weinberg
A Wicked Company - Philipp Blom
Brainwashed - Ben Shapiro
Range - David Epstein
Why We Sleep - Matthew Walker, PhD
Friend of a Friend - David Burkus
Never Split the Difference - Chris Voss and Tahl Raz
Because Internet - Gretchen McCulloch
Empire of the Summer Moon - S. C. Gwynne
Atomic Habits - James Clear
The Accidental President - A.J. Baime
Language Families of the World - John McWhorter
The The 5 Love Languages - Gary Chapman
Make Your Bed - William H. McRaven
33 Strategies of War - Robert Greene
The Culture Code - Daniel Coyle
How to American - Jimmy O. Yang
I’ve also listened to these Audible Originals*
History of Bourbon - Ken Albala
Caffeine - Michael Pollan
* - Audible Originals are roughly 4 hours long (~100 pages) and are like a cross between a podcast and an audiobook
2019 Favorite:
The Alter Ego Effect by Todd Herman
The Alter Ego Effect was an incredibly fun read about how to unlock your super powers. It uses the framing of an alter ego to show you how to unlock your potential. It has many specific tips that illustrate larger psychological concepts and are incredibly useful representations of what goes on in our heads. I don’t have a secret identity, but this book showed me that I don’t need to - I just need to change the way I think about myself, and I’ll be the person I want to be.
2019
The Science of Self-Learning - Peter Hollins
Words on the Move - John McWhorter
How to Behave Badly in Elizabethan England - Ruth Goodman
Blowout - Rachel Maddow
Managing Transitions - William Bridges and Susan Bridges
How Democracies Die - Steven Levitsky, Daniel Ziblatt
Way of the Wolf - Jordan Belfort
Factfullness - Hans Rosling
AI Superpowers - Kai-Fu Lee
Strategy: A History - Lawrence Freedman
Creative Schools - Sir Ken Robinson, Ph.D.
Great Ideas of Philosophy - Daniel Robinson, Ph.D.
Educated - Tara Westover
Blink - Malcom Gladwell
Girl Logic - Iliza Shlesinger
A River in Darkness - Masaji Ishikawa
The Alter Ego Effect - Todd Herman
Leonardo Da Vinci - Walter Isaacson
Thinking, Fast and Slow - Daniel Kahneman
Sex at Dawn - Christopher Ryan, Cacilda Jetha, et al.
Utopia for Realists - Rutger Bregman
Unlimited Memory - Kevin Horsley
Genghis Khan - Jack Weatherford
God Save Texas - Lawrence Wright
Switch - Chip and Dan Heath
Democracy in America – Alexis de Tocqueville
Sapiens – Yuval Noah Harari
Columbine – Dave Cullen
The Happiness Hypothesis – Jonathan Haidt
Drive – Daniel Pink
Outliers – Malcom Gladwell
I also listened to these Audible Originals*
The Burnout Generation - Anne Helen Peterson
The Last Days of August - Jon Ronson
Power Moves: Lessons from Davos – Adam Grant
* - Audible Originals are roughly 4 hours long (~100 pages) and are like a cross between a podcast and an audiobook
2018 Favorite:
The Willpower Instinct by Kelly McGonigal, Ph.D.
The Willpower Instinct is about all the evolutionary psychology related to willpower. It uses convincing evidence and understandable language to kept me interested and amazed for the entire book. It’s also very practical, uses clear structure and provides specific tactics and anecdotes that I still remember and use today, even though I read it almost a year ago. Reading this book literally changed the way I go about daily life, and I can’t recommend it enough.
2018
Brief Answers to the Big Questions – Stephen Hawking
The Case Against Education – Bryan Caplan
The Tyranny of Metrics – Jerry Muller
The Coddling of the American Mind – Greg Lukianoff, Jonathan Haidt
Conspiracy: Peter Theil, Hulk Hogan, and the Anatomy of Intrigue – Ryan Holiday
Where Should We Begin? – Esther Perel
Extreme Ownership – Jocko Willink, Leif Babin
Zero to One – Peter Theil
Freakonomics – Stephen Dubner, Steven Levitt
Three Cups of Tea – Greg Mortenson, David Oliver Relin
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People – Stephen Covey
Crucial Conversations – Patterson, Grenny, McMillan, Switzler
The Art of Learning – Josh Waitzkin
Maps of Meaning – Jordan Peterson
Why Liberalism Failed – Patrick Deneen
The End of Politicians – Brett Hennig
Calypso – David Sedaris
The Lean Startup – Eric Ries
A Higher Loyalty – James Comey
Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury
The Willpower Instinct – Kelly McGonigal, Ph.D.
12 Rules for Life – Jordan Peterson
True Enough – Farhad Manjoo
Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? – Graham Allison
The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down – Haemin Sunim
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck – Mark Manson
The Selfish Gene – Richard Dawkins
Fooled By Randomness – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Verbal Judo – George Thompson, Ph.D., Jerry Jenkins
The Tragedy of Great Power Politics – John Mearsheimer
Elon Musk: Tesla, Space, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future – Ashlee Vance
Ready Player One – Ernest Cline
Born a Crime – Trevor Noah
Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House – Michael Wolff
Let Trump Be Trump – Corey Lewandowski, David Bossie
The Dictator’s Handbook – Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, Alastair Smith